Let me just say up front that I know next to nothing about the people living in the Ozark Mountains. I have never stepped foot in the Ozarks. I have never met a hillbilly. My knowledge of hillbillies comes from The Beverly Hillbillies and Deliverance. For me, the word hillbilly conjures up an image of either: 1) a shotgun-toting, moonshine-swigging, rotten-toothed inbred mental defective or 2) Jethro Bodine. I’m sure I’m harboring some serious misconceptions. Still, I have to ask: have the mountain folk of the Ozarks ever spawned a creature as fine as Jennifer Lawrence? Under all that strategically placed grit and grime it’s easy to spot the beauty of a Hollywood starlet - she’s the hottest hillbilly since Elly May Clampett. This is, perhaps, the first indication that the film isn’t as authentic as many critics would have us believe - critics, I’m sure, who have no more real world experience with Ozark hillbillies than I have. Despite all the accolades she’s received, I can’t help but think Lawrence is miscast as 17-year-old hick, Ree Dolly. Her ethereal beauty belies her situation; the role calls for an “earthier” actress.

But that’s a mere quibble. Harder to believe is how mature and responsible Ree is considering her circumstances and upbringing. She lives in poverty. She’s uneducated. Her mother is a mentally ill invalid. Her father, Jessup, is a methamphetamine cooker/dealer. Her uncle, Teardrop, is a mean SOB and a meth-addicted jailbird. And as we come to learn, she is surrounded by murderous neighbors. Yet Ree is a genuine anomaly among all the crazies, druggies and killers, a figure of purity, grace, intelligence and resourcefulness who, despite not benefitting from any parental guidance herself, has assumed the role of family matriarch and taken responsibility for the upbringing of her younger siblings. All this in a godforsaken landscape bleak enough to kill anyone’s spirit: Under perpetually overcast skies, Ree trudges through a barren countryside littered with dilapidated houses, seedy bars, rusted-out cars and burned-out meth labs. Everything around her seems hopeless, lifeless and unhealthy, with monochrome-gray photography to match the wintry desolation. (One of the film’s undeniable pluses is Michael McDonough’s evocative location photography, which effectively captures the bleakness of this environment; it’s a key factor in selling the film’s purported “authenticity”).

Granik, however, doesn’t bother to provide any insight into how Ree blossomed into such an admirable young lady amid such an unnurturing environment. She just did. She just is. Somehow she’s turned out to be an inspiring example for all - a truly special gal. But such a simplistic portrait only ensures that Ree seems less like a credible flesh and blood character than a symbol of the “indomitability of the human spirit” - a trite idea borrowed from a thousand Hollywood films. I’m afraid the film offers, finally, little more than a “you go girl” message transposed from the black ghetto to the white trash Ozarks. Just watch her overcome those plot obstacles.

All this is, I think, more than a quibble. Nevertheless, even though Ree seems a bit too good to be true, it’s hard not to become involved in her story, to empathize with her, to root her on. After all, that’s how the deck is stacked: she’s the quintessential underdog figure gallantly struggling against seemingly insurmountable odds. You’d have to be heartless not to care about her - which applies equally to the characters in the film itself, as we will see.

Now about those plot obstacles. The story revolves around Ree’s search for her daddy, Jessup, who has gone missing after using their home as collateral to get out of jail (apparently hillbillies now cook meth rather than run moonshine). Her quest to find Jessup immediately runs into serious resistance, first from fearsome Uncle Teardrop, who puts his hands around her throat and warns her to stop searching, then from Merab, the frightening wife of the local boss of meth operations, Thump Milton, advertised as the baddest mofo in the land. Merab apparently does Thump’s dirty work because it is she (along with her equally fierce sisters) who beats Ree to an inch of her life and warns her to stop snooping around. And Merab has good reason to stop Ree: turns out that daddy ratted out the other meth dealers - a major no-no in white trash country - and paid for it with his life. Proof of his murder could well bring the law down upon the Miltons. This is bad news for Ree because if Jessup doesn’t show up in court the family will lose their shack.

Around this point the film’s contrived humanism comes to the fore. Granik, it turns out, wants to have it both ways: to rub our noses in hillbilly despair and to lift our spirits with comforting notions about human goodness. For most of the film Ree stands in stark contrast to the rest of the community. She seems to have sprung from a different world entirely. She stands above the rest, both physically (she’s the only attractive character in the film) and morally, functioning not as a plausibly drawn character in her own right but as the embodiment of an abstract idea: that of the human capacity for goodness. Ree exhibits many of the traits we typically admire in people: integrity, kindness, courage, perseverance, unselfishness - traits scarcely glimpsed in the other characters. She has not been “contaminated” by her rotten environment the way virtually everyone else has been; she is a symbol of purity living among the dregs, the one “untainted” soul among all the trash and scum who seemingly lost their humanity long ago.

But Ree, glorious Ree, seems to reawaken something “good” in others. Her basic decency pierces the callous exteriors of even the most hostile characters and reaches their underlying humanity - the humanity which has eroded away after years of struggle and hardship, violence and drug abuse. Soon they too exhibit some of those admirable traits: kindness, generosity, selflessness. This is a major theme of the picture, which can be discerned from a pattern of altruistic behavior shown toward Ree: one neighbor gives her food and clothing; another one loans her a truck; a complete stranger, after hearing Ree’s tale of woe, directs her to the Miltons, even though doing so could get her in big trouble (she makes sure to tell Ree not to say who sent her); Teardrop risks his life to help and protect her; the bail bondsman gives her some unclaimed cash out of the goodness of his heart (instead of keeping it for himself). Ree becomes the moral center of the Ozarkian universe, around whom the other characters eventually revolve - if only until she gets her house back. By the end, Ree has become the recipient of some truly astonishing acts of altruism, climaxing with a highly improbable errand of mercy carried out by the Milton clan. Yes, just when things look bleakest, hillbilly humanity asserts itself.

In Daniel Woodrell’s novel, Teardrop is described thus: “Three blue teardrops done in jailhouse ink fell in a row from the corner of his eye on his scarred side. Folks said the teardrops meant he’d three times done grisly prison deeds that needed doing but didn’t need to be gabbed about. They said the teardrops told you everything you had to know about the man and the lost ear just repeated it.” [In the book, one side of Teardrop’s face has been badly disfigured in a meth lab explosion].

Of course, the teardrop tattoos do not tell you everything about the man. As the book progresses, Teardrop reveals his sense of loyalty by helping Ree, his kin, in her time of need. And his tattoos (and his nickname) take on a deeper significance than merely signifying that he’s killed people: they also indicate that, because he’s too tough, too guarded to cry real tears, he must express his profound sadness with ink instead, that beneath the vicious exterior resides a tortured, sensitive soul: raging on the outside but crying on the inside. There’s a moving moment in the book when Ree hugs him for the last time and weeps for her uncle, releasing the tears that Teardrop himself cannot shed. Beneath the hard-boiled surface, then, there’s a certain sentimentality built into the Teardrop character, which is notably more pronounced in the film. Granik not only trims down some of Teardrop’s more unsavory characteristics, particularly his constant snorting of crank, she also adds sentimental bits of business not found in the novel to further soften Teardrop’s character, such as his bringing chicks to Ree’s young sibs or his strumming a song on Jessup’s old banjo.

Consider what Granik says about Teardrop at the 17:45 minute mark of this audio clip:

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tt/tt100616debra_granik

“There may be these characteristics that you see in him that you’ve always admired or that you know are good and yet it’s mired or covered-up by some choices or vulnerabilities that he has”.

For Granik, Teardrop’s “goodness”, his “humanity” has been “covered-up”. It just needs someone to come along and “uncover” it. That someone is Ree. She “breaks through” Teardrop’s “vulnerabilities” and “brings out” his capacity for goodness. Ree reawakens his long dormant compassion, and the better white trash angel of his nature rises to the surface. He reclaims his lost humanity and becomes loyal protector of Ree, risking his own life and acquiring redemption in the process. That he would come to her aid is understandable, I suppose; she’s kin, after all. But as the film progresses Teardrop continues to undergo a discernible softening; before long the film seems on the brink of becoming a backwoods tearjerker. By the end, Teardrop’s latent tears have nearly been brought to the surface. Granik, however, is too restrained, too “tasteful” a filmmaker to resort to anything as melodramatic as unleashing Teardrop’s pent-up waterworks. So, he strums the banjo instead. (John Hawkes himself reportedly balked at the notion of Teardrop playing the banjo, saying, “a guy like that shouldn’t have any artistic outlets at all”).

Thankfully, Granik didn’t soften his character as much as she originally wanted to. At the 2 minute mark of this clip she discusses an alternate ending which would have amounted to a directorial intervention on Teardrop’s behalf, rescuing him from his tragic destiny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnVupngBUMo&feature=related

Happily (or, unhappily, as the case may be), harder heads prevailed (apparently Hawkes’), and Teardrop’s sad end is retained. Despite his softer side, in both novel and film Teardrop ultimately emerges as essentially a tragic figure, his fate sealed, finally, by his rigid adherence to the immutable harshness of the Ozark moral code, which dictates that he must avenge his brother’s death. If Ree shines bright as a beacon of hope for the future, Teardrop’s tiny flickering flame is snuffed out for good by his inability or unwillingness to change, doomed by the dark, deathly ways of the past. I hope John Hawkes is remembered at Oscar time, because he does wonders within the limitations of his slightly underwritten role, bringing a quiet poignancy to the hardened Teardrop, even if the character’s behavior swings - from violent psycho to banjo-strumming softie - don’t always ring quite true.

Some have referred to Winter’s Bone as “country noir.” But good noir, real noir, retains its bleak worldview all the way to the bitter end. It doesn’t go soft. It doesn’t pull back and offer the audience cozy, reassuring messages about the “indomitability of the human spirit” or the “capacity for human goodness” like Winter’s Bone does. And the protagonists of real noir would never be used as symbols of purity the way Ree is.

Nowhere is this tendency to go soft more noticeable than in the climactic actions of the Milton clan. For the majority of the film they operate according to the dictates of their own self-interest, demonstrating a willingness to go to great lengths to prevent Ree from finding Jessup and bringing his murder to light. Their behavior conforms to what we would expect from such a clan under the circumstances, right up until their pummeling of the defenseless girl. But then Thump and the gang come face to battered face with Ree.

In this clip from a Q&A session with Granik, an audience member asks her how she reconciles the film’s violence and unpleasantness with its sentimentality and romanticism. Here’s what Granik says about Merab: “…she does the right thing ultimately. She does have a conscience. She’s able to be reflexive about her behavior. That final plea gets under her skin. She uses violence and threatening behavior, and in the end - goodness - she had the humanity to be able to see someone in their naked plea and do something about it.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpQDFmmRVi4&feature=player_embedded

After Merab and her sisters beat Ree to a pulp (off screen, of course, because Granik is too “tasteful” a filmmaker to actually show such things) Thump arrives and allows Ree the opportunity to explain herself; she delivers an impassioned plea on her family’s behalf - explaining that she isn’t seeking revenge or to find out what happened to Jessup, that she just wants to save her family’s house - and the Miltons relent. They admire her pluck, respect her promised adherence to the Ozark code of silence, and empathize with her plight. You can actually see the change of heart register on Merab’s face. Just as Ree reawakens Teardrop’s long dormant humanity, so she reawakens the Miltons’. They take pity on her and “do the right thing” by taking her to her “daddy’s bones”.

Some still might argue that the Miltons are motivated purely by self-interest, that helping Ree was the best way to put an end to all “the talk” - as if neighborhood gossip posed a more serious threat to the Miltons than the risks incurred by bringing Jessup’s murder to light. The Miltons simply have far more to lose than to gain by helping her. Allowing Ree to drop her father’s decaying hands off at the sheriff’s office offers incontrovertible proof that a murder has taken place, which will only increase the likelihood of what the Miltons have been trying to avoid the entire film: bringing the law down upon them. Thump might just as well have stamped “I did it” on his forehead. After all, the fact that Jessup snitched on Thump kind of narrows down the likely suspects, don’t you think?

Moreover, helping Ree will make it more likely that the one local they have reason to fear, Teardrop, will be provoked to seek revenge against them, because now Teardrop knows without a shadow of a doubt that his brother Jessup was murdered, and by whom. If the body is never discovered there always remains open the possibility that Jessup simply skipped bail and fled the area, and Teardrop would not be duty bound to avenge his brother’s murder. Thump gives Teardrop good reason to take action: two decaying hands on a platter.

From the standpoint of pure self-interest, helping Ree is downright foolish (and actually taking her to where the body is buried is just idiotic; if they have to help her at all, why not just deliver her the hands?). The logical conclusion to this is that the Miltons acted more out of compassion than self-interest - which is precisely what Granik means when she says that Merab does the right thing. People do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because it’s in their self-interest. Which is why, for me, the denouement travels about as far into the realm of “fetchedness” as a story can go. Granik asks us to believe that the Miltons do what’s morally right by Ree, despite the grave risks involved. Quoting from Sweet Smell of Success: that’s fish four days old and I won’t buy it: the Miltons’ concluding errand of mercy is merely symptomatic of Granik’s attempts to wrest false optimism out of the despairing bleakness. That the Miltons would risk arrest and the wrath of Teardrop just to help a girl they barely know simply stretches credulity to the snapping point. No, I’m afraid the clan’s sudden about face has more to do with contrived plot mechanics and Granik’s need to overlay soothing notions about the capacity for human goodness on the bleak material than it does with plausible character motivation.

Granik was wise to keep off screen the scene in which Thump instructs Merab to take Ree to Jessup’s body, because it would have gone something like this:

Thump: Go git the chainsaw.

Merab: What fer?

Thump: I’m a-want’n you and yer sisters to take that thar girl to Jessup’s body and saw his haynds off.

Merab: What fer?

Thump: Dogonnit, woman, I’m agonna whup ya like a rented mule if’n you dernt git a-doin’ like I tell ya to git a-doin’.

Merab: But Thump, what’m I a-suppose to do with them thar haynds?

Thump: y’all aggona have that thar girl drop ‘em off at that a po-lice station.

Merab: What fe…

[Thump punches Merab in the face]

Thump: Dagnabbit, woman, quit askin’ what fer.

Merab: But Thump, won’t a-bringin’ them thar haynds to that thar po-lice station bring the law a-snoopin’ round these har parts. That could mean a heap ‘o trouble.

Thump [sighs]: Sho ‘nuff might, woman. But that thar girl done melted old Thump’s heart. Shoulda never had y’all beat on her like’n I done. I reckon it were just wrong. I’m all tore up inside over what we a done to that purdy lil child. And by Gawd, we are a go’n to do the right thang by that thar girl, even if’n it means fryin’ in one of them thar lectric chars.

[A teardrop forms in Thump’s eyes and falls on his cheek, matching the little teardrop tattoo adorning Teardrop’s cheek]

Merab [hugging Thump]: Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit. Thump Milton,

you do have a heart.

Thump: ‘course, I do, woman. Looky hyeer, I got me a heart as big as all outdoors. I caint stop a-thinkin’ ‘bout that thar child fend’n fer herself out yonder. An’r kinfolk, too. Why, them young’ns ain’t even knee high to a duck.

[Thump is now weeping inconsolably]

Thump: That thar theory of the eee-vo-lution says that altruism rarely extends beyond the clan. But we agonna show them thar Yankee eggheads that the Milton Clan ain’t a-like the t’others. We agonna dee-mon-strate that Miltonian altruism extends to all humanity.

Merab: Well, paint me purple and call me Barney! Thump Milton, I never knew you were a so durn smart. Where did you come by so much larnin’? Usin’ all them big words and all.

Thump: I read, woman. I be aimin’ to edgy-cate myself. You should try it sometime ‘stead a sittin’ ‘round gossipin’ with them thar sisters of yers. Why, you’re so dumb if they put your brain on the head of a pin it would roll around like a BB on a six-lane highway.

Merab: That were uncalled fer. I got me feelings, too.

Thump: I do ‘pologize, woman. Sure as the vine twines ’round the stump, you are my darlin’ sugar lump.

Merab [blushing]: Ahhh, Thump. But wait. You said that the altryism rarely extends beyond the clan.

Thump: Yeah, what of it, woman?

Merab: Well, I reckon with all the inbreedin’ goin’ on in these har parts we all one big clan. Scientifically speaking, like.

Thump: Lord a’mercy! How could you be relations with that thar girl? Why, she’s as purty as a spotted horse in a daisy pasture, and you’re so ugly they’d have to tie a pork chop ‘round your neck to get the dawg to play with you. Now, look what you gone and done. I plum lost my train a thought. What were I a-sayin’?

Merab: Somethin’ ‘bout the eee-vo-lution and the altryism and the clan and the eggheads.

Thump: Right. You skedaddle now and fetch yer sisters and take that sweet child to her daddy’s bones sos’n she can save her family shack. It be the right thang to do, and by Gawd I’m a-fixin’ to do it.

Merab: I declare that girl done brung out the sweet side of you. Thumper, it be a gen-u-ine miracle.

Thumper: Call me Thumper agin. Jist one more time, woman. Go on now, give me a reason…

Let me just say up front that I know next to nothing about the people living in the Ozark Mountains. I have never stepped foot in the Ozarks. I have never met a hillbilly. My knowledge of hillbillies comes from The Beverly Hillbillies and Deliverance. For me, the word hillbilly conjures up an image of either: 1) a shotgun-toting, moonshine-swigging, rotten-toothed inbred mental defective or 2) Jethro Bodine. I’m sure I’m harboring some serious misconceptions. Still, I have to ask: have the mountain folk of the Ozarks ever spawned a creature as fine as Jennifer Lawrence? Under all that grit and grime it’s easy to spot the beauty of a Hollywood starlet - she’s the hottest hillbilly since Elly May Clampett. This is, perhaps, the first indication that the film isn’t as authentic as many critics would have us believe - critics, I’m sure, who have no more real world experience with hillbillies than I have.

But, okay, I’ll suspend my disbelief and accept Lawrence as 17-year-old hick, Ree. Harder to believe is how mature and responsible Ree is considering her circumstances and upbringing. She lives in poverty. She’s uneducated. Her mother is mentally ill. Her father is a methamphetamine cooker/dealer/addict. Her uncle, Teardrop, is a mean SOB. And as we come to learn, she is surrounded by murderous neighbors. Yet Ree is a genuine anomaly among all the crazies, druggies and killers, a figure of grace, beauty, intelligence and resourcefulness who, despite not benefitting from any parental guidance herself, has assumed the role of family matriarch and taken responsibility for the upbringing of her younger siblings. All this in a wintry landscape bleak enough to kill anyone’s spirit. Dilapidated houses. Gnarled trees in dead-looking forests. Perpetually overcast skies. Everything around her seems lifeless and unhealthy, with monochrome-gray photography to match.

But Granik doesn’t bother to provide any insight into how Ree blossomed into such an admirable young lady in such an unnurturing environment. She just did. She just is. Against all odds, she’s quite a gal - inspiring, even. But such a simplistic portrait only ensures that Ree comes off less like a credible flesh and blood character than a symbol of the “indomitability of the human spirit” - a trite idea borrowed from a thousand Hollywood films. In the end, I’m afraid the film offers little more than a “you go girl” message transposed from the black ghetto to the white trash Ozarks. Just watch her overcome those plot obstacles.

But okay, I’ll suspend my disbelief and accept Ree as a mature-beyond-her-years teenage hick who overcomes. Now about those plot obstacles. The story revolves around Ree’s search for her daddy, who has gone missing after using their home as collateral to get out of jail (apparently hillbillies now cook meth rather than run moonshine). Her quest to find good old dad immediately runs into serious resistance, first from fearsome Uncle Teardrop, who puts his hands around her throat and warns her to stop searching, then from Merab, the psycho-scary wife of the local boss of meth operations, Thump, advertised as the baddest mofo in the land. But apparently Merab does Thump’s dirty work because it is she (with her vicious female cohorts) who beats Ree to an inch of her life and warns her to stop snooping around. And Merab has good reason to stop Ree. Turns out that daddy ratted out the other meth dealers - a major no-no in white trash country - and paid for it with his life.

This is bad news for Ree because if daddy doesn’t show up in court the family will lose their shack. But just when things look their bleakest, Ree finds help from the unlikeliest sources: Teardrop and Merab - the very people who made things so hard on her. Turns out Teardrop and Merab are actually pretty swell people, after all. Oh, the hillbilly humanity! Too bad Granik fails to plausibly account for this sudden change of heart. Again - it just happens. One minute Teardrop is strangling Ree and warning her to stop looking for daddy, the next he’s rescuing her from Thump’s clan and helping her look for him. He even stops by the shack to play a little banjo (though with far less skill than that inbred boy from Deliverance). But even with that unlikely nickname, which suggests he’s a sensitive soul beneath the vicious exterior, his sudden transformation from violent psycho to compassionate, banjo-strumming old softie is less than credible (at least John Hawkes is very good within the limits of the underwritten role). 

But okay, I’ll suspend my disbelief and accept that the better white trash angel of Teardrop’s nature rises to the surface, obliging him to come to Ree’s aid. She’s kin, after all.  Merab’s behavioral turnabout is less convincing still. She has been abundantly established as someone willing to go to great lengths to prevent Ree from finding daddy, and then without apparent reason she suddenly decides to take Ree to her “daddy’s bones”. The notion that this woman (or, more accurately, this clan, since Merab obviously does Thump’s bidding) would have a change of heart and risk being arrested for murder to help a girl she barely knows simply stretches credulity to the snapping point. No, I’m afraid her (or, rather, her clan’s) sudden about face has more to do with contrived plot mechanics than plausible character motivation.

But, okay… Ah, fuck that - my disbelief can no longer be suspended.

Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996)

Wes Anderson and Owen C. Wilson could spend the rest of their careers making quirky, offbeat films and never top their wonderful debut, Bottle Rocket, a completely original, hilarious send-up of the botched heist/caper movie in which a trio of dimwitted slackers, led by Wilson’s spacey Dignan, endeavor to make something of themselves by becoming master thieves. Of course, these terminal screw-ups prove as bad at thievery as everything else they’ve tried, partly because they’re none too swift but also because they’re basically good guys who (endearingly) lack the necessary ruthlessness it takes to succeed as criminals.
Nevertheless, even after several failed robberies they don’t give up. In fact, they get more ambitious and plan a “major heist”. Of course, planning a heist and successfully executing it are two entirely different things, and their attempt turns into a bungled robbery of truly epic proportions. Remarkably, however, the film is as poignant as it is funny, because no matter how misguided these likeable losers may be they truly are putting forth a genuine effort to improve themselves. The result is an extraordinarily deft blend of comedy, pathos and characterization, anchored by Wilson’s exceptional performance, which somehow manages to be sidesplittingly funny, endearingly loopy, and genuinely poignant without ever resorting to parody or condescension.

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Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974)

Waters’ bad taste classic stars Divine as Dawn Davenport, an obese juvenile delinquent whose life may have turned out better if she’d just gotten those cha-cha heels she wanted for Christmas. Sadly, she doesn’t, and Dawn responds by thrashing her parents, destroying the Christmas tree, and running away from home. But life is tough out there: she’s raped by a sex pervert, has his child (the daughter from hell) and turns to a life of crime and prostitution. Then things get really bizarre. After her face is horribly disfigured by acid, Dawn acquires a substantial following as the sexiest and most dangerous woman alive (never mind how). With what’s left of her face caked in gaudy makeup, Dawn struts around in all her rotund glory wearing the trashiest clothing imaginable, convinced she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, while committing outrageously violent crimes, including the murder of her own daughter for becoming a Hare Krishna (”I would have killed you at birth if I’d thought you’d even entertain such an idea!”). But she always has time for her adoring fans: in one of the funniest sight gags ever she regales a crowd with her amazing trampoline act, whipping them into a frenzy with a couple of stupendous half-flips while furiously masturbating. Vulgar and determinedly offensive, yes, but Waters’ film is also an uproarious satire of mindless idolatry and the cult of talentless celebrity - all the more relevant in this age of idiotic reality television shows and the hero worship of vacant social debutantes and no-talent pop singers and movie stars.

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Whiskey Galore (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)

Life without whiskey is scarcely worth living for the Scottish islanders of this memorable Ealing comedy, and when their ration is cut off during WW1 the inhabitants treat the situation as a tragedy comparable to famine. But just when things look their bleakest a miracle occurs: a ship carrying thousands of cases of whiskey shipwrecks on their island! This dream come true restores the islanders’ will to live, and they’re roused to action when unwise British officials attempt to deny them their right to the whiskey. The witty script, which also includes a darker subtext about British colonialism, is aided by rich characterizations, evocative atmosphere (foggy shores, tooting ships, smoky pubs etc) and Mackendrick’s knack for visual humor: after being tipped off about some hidden whiskey on a beach, a British official finds a drunken man passed out on the sand with two trails of footsteps ending at his feet, one running perfectly straight (to the whiskey), the other twisting to and fro (returning, drunk)!

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It’s a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934)

In this classic W.C. Fields comedy, the Great Man plays an Everyman, who’s mercilessly pecked by the shrillest hen in the coop, the inimitable Kathleen Howard as the embodiment of the stereotypically nagging, insufferable wife, most of whose sentences start with “don’t” - “don’t smoke at the table!” “don’t throw matches around!” “don’t try that innocent look with me!” It must take a superhuman effort by Fields to restrain himself from strangling this shrew. But neither can Fields find relief from the rest of the family, including a bratty son and a problem daughter whose monopolization of the bathroom denies him even the simple pleasure of shaving in peace. The situation is little better at his grocery store, where he must put up with a useless assistant, a cantankerous blind man who trashes merchandise with his cane, and a rude customer who insistently demands “cumquats.” The universe seems to be conspiring against him. The poor guy can’t even find a good night’s sleep on his porch, what with the milkman’s rattling bottles, a coconut tumbling down a flight of stairs, the crashing of overturned garbage cans, an inane conversation between mother and daughter, a kid dropping grapes in his open mouth and, of course, a salesman famously asking about one Carl LaFong. The accumulation of domestic annoyances Fields endures makes for a hilariously nightmarish vision of small town family life. It’s enough to drive one crazy. Or to drink. Fields drinks. But he’s not crazy, as we find out in one of the all-time classic lines:

Man: You’re drunk!

Fields: And you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy for the rest of your life.

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Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925)

With only a few hours to get married before losing a lucrative inheritance, Buster endeavors to find a bride (with amusingly disastrous results), only to have the situation reversed when he becomes the target of a mob of wannabe brides who’ve learned about his inheritance. An unstoppable force of nature on a par with the cyclone that blows through town in Steamboat Bill Jr., these wannabe brides relentlessly pursue Buster, and anyone or anything unlucky enough to be in the path of this stampeding mob will be flattened, including an entire football team. The film starts a little slowly, but it picks up momentum and before long there’s no stopping it, concluding with an exhilarating, beautifully sustained chase sequence in which Buster does some of his finest acrobatic work while eluding the pursuing brides, jumping from cliff to cliff, somersaulting and back flipping his way down a hill, and most impressively, nimbly dodging a landslide of boulders rapidly rolling towards him.

The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)

Rivaled only by The Passion of Joan of Arc in dramatic intensity among silent films, this bizarre thriller is the pinnacle of the Tod Browning/Lon Chaney collaborations. Chaney plays a circus knife thrower so obsessed with his beautiful but apparently frigid assistant, who suffers from a phobia of men’s hands, that he has his arms amputated in a gesture of his undying love for her. Luckily for Chaney he possesses amazing pedal dexterity which allows him to smoke, drink, gesture, throw knives and play guitar with his feet! But when Chaney finds out that the girl has miraculously overcome her phobia and married the strongman, his face, not his feet, becomes the focal point. Held in tight close-up Chaney’s countenance undergoes an astonishing series of expressions, first grimacing, then forcing an absurd smile, then laughing hysterically, and finally, twisting his face into a visage of murderous intent until the strain is too much and he faints - proving that The Man of a Thousand Faces might just as well have been dubbed The Man of a Thousand Facial Expressions.

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Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh, 1942)

Even those who despise boxing should enjoy this spirited biopic of Jim Corbette, which features one of charismatic Errol Flynn’s most dynamic performances. As played by Flynn, Corbette emerges as a colorful and engaging lad, cocky yet immensely charming, the kind of guy who, through the sheer force of his personality, draws everyone’s attention wherever he is. His girlfriend would sometimes like to see someone knock the conceit out of his swollen head, but she’s irresistibly drawn to his magnetism anyway. I love when he shows off his fancy footwork by darting back and forth between pedestrians walking in a crowded street, a scene that nicely showcases Flynn’s athletic gracefulness and captures his character’s exuberant cockiness.

Despite his brashness, it’s hard not to like him - unless of course you’re the champ, Ward Bond, who’s the target of Flynn’s merciless taunting. But the film concludes with a wonderfully touching scene between the two fighters following Flynn’s decisive defeat of the prideful Bond. Bond used to strut around boasting that he could whip any man in the world, but when he shows up in shame at Flynn’s victory party to hand over his championship ring, Flynn magnanimously tells him that he’s glad he didn’t have to fight him in his prime. The macho emotionalism of Flynn’s gesture of good sportsmanship is a genuinely touching moment, beautifully capping off this highly enjoyable winner.

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The Suspect (Robert Siodmak, 1944)

One of the great practitioners of film noir, Siodmak made a string of excellent thrillers in the ‘40s, none better than The Suspect, a taut suspenser in which henpecked Charles Laughton’s infatuation for beautiful Ella Raines drives him to murder his shrewish wife. Siodmak pulls off a couple of gripping Hitchcockian set-pieces, notably a marvelously suspenseful scene in which unexpected visitors to Laughton’s house sit on the very couch he has hidden a body behind, but the film’s true strength lies in its poignant character study of a fundamentally decent man who resorts to murder for perfectly understandable reasons. Because Laughton, in an unusually restrained performance as a humble, genteel English gentleman, is far more sympathetic than his monstrous victims - his wicked wife and a no-good, blackmailing neighbor - we want him to get away with murder and run away with his beloved Raines. But, alas, his fate is sealed, ironically, by his own sense of decency in the genuinely moving conclusion.

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The Whip and the Body (Mario Bava, 1963)

The snapping whip belongs to Christopher Lee, the ravishing body to Daliah Lavi in this thrilling sado-masochistic fantasy from horror maestro Bava. First in life and then from beyond the grave, Lee derives pleasure from exerting his power over Lavi by violently flagellating her until she’s “whipped” into a sexual frenzy, with Bava’s camera fetishistically capturing every detail of pain and pleasure, desire and shame, that registers on Lavi’s lovely face. Treading about as far into sexual taboo territory as a mainstream director can go, the result is at once deeply unsettling, powerfully erotic and, thanks to the haunting piano concerto Carlo Rustichelli composed for the ill-fated S&M lovers, oddly romantic. Listen to Rustichelli’s music here.

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Last Night at the Alamo (Eagle Pennell, 1983)

The traditional image of the macho cowboy takes a serious beating in Last Night of the Alamo, one of the best, if sadly little known, independent features of the ‘80s. Revolving around the various characters at The Alamo, a once-popular local waterhole about to be torn down, the film chronicles the death throes of a way of life, and the attitude of the filmmakers toward its demise seems to be, “good riddance, cowboy!” The big man at the Alamo, suitably named Cowboy, is the very embodiment of the cowboy ideal and aesthetic. But as the film progresses, Cowboy, like the bar itself, will be chopped down to size. His boastful talk of becoming the next John Wayne is pure delusion; his promise to use his “connections” with the governor to stop the razing of the bar utter nonsense; and his alleged stature as a ladies’ man is seriously called into question when he reveals a bald head hidden under his ten-gallon Stetson - a perfect symbol of the cowboy image long past its heyday. Boasting vivid characterizations, insightful observations, and a richly detailed sense of time and place, Last Night at the Alamo is more than worthy of rediscovery.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Like Kubrick’s great Paths of Glory, Strangelove is an equally stinging indictment of the military mind, though here straight drama is replaced by a black comedy in which gung-ho warmongers, paranoid Generals, venal Russkies, humanoid Nazi bomb makers, and rodeo cowboy bomber pilots engage in an absurd conflict that can only result in their mutual destruction, concluding appropriately with that yahooing cowboy riding a huge phallic missile to oblivion, a fitting final image of life as we know it and proof that the world will end not with a whimper but with a bang.

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The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

Chronicling the events surrounding the titular battle of the Algerian War, this fascinating political film, which remains as authentic, powerful and relevant today as it was 45 years ago, uses a documentary-like approach to explore the ruthless tactics employed by rebels and occupiers alike to conduct urban warfare. It also benefits from Ennio Morricone’s forceful score. 

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Westfront 1918 (G.W. Pabst, 1930)

Ask the typical movie buff to name a WW1 film from 1930 which uses elaborate tracking shots in its harrowing depiction of bloody hand-to-hand trench warfare, and the likely answer you’ll get will be, of course,  All Quiet on the Western Front. And that’s a pity because Westfront 1918 is a more realistic and better acted, less sentimental and heavy-handed account of similar events than the comparatively dated All Quiet on the Western Front.

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Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)

Bergman’s bleak, apocalyptic vision of war, which focuses on a pacifist couple’s futile attempt to remain neutral when armed forces invade their island, powerfully demonstrates how quickly and easily the tenuous thread between order and chaos, peace and conflict, civilization and savagery can snap.

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Objective Burma! (1945) Raoul Walsh

Detailing the plight of a platoon stuck behind enemy lines in the unforgiving jungles and marshes of Burma, Objective Burma is the best WW2 combat film of the ‘40s thanks to Errol Flynn’s compelling performance, an authentic recreation of the Burmese jungle, and above all, Walsh’s genuinely potent direction. Particularly impressive is the way Walsh heightens suspense by emphasizing the anxiety and tension the soldiers experience before a battles begins.

Rounding out the top ten:

Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)

Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)

Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

The Ascent (Larissa Shepitko, 1977)

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Additional recommendations:

The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1927)

Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

The Lost Patrol (John Ford, 1934)

La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1938)

Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)

Der Fuehrer’s Face (Jack Kinney, 1942)

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)

Ivan’s Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)

It Happened Here (Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo, 1963)

The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)

Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)

The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

On April 30, 1989 Sergio Leone died - 21 years ago today. To commemorate Leone, my favorite director, I am posting this tribute to Once Upon a Time in the West, my favorite film. It’s an epic film, and so only an epic post will do. So strap on your holster, load your six-shooter, grab your Stetson, don your duster, pour yourself some rotgut whiskey, saddle up your horse, crank up the Morricone, and let’s take a ride through Leone’s West.

After completing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Leone was not interested in making another Western. He was done with the genre and wanted to make a gangster epic called Once Upon a Time in America instead. Fate had different ideas. Or at least Paramount did. Because of the phenomenal success of the “Dollars Trilogy”, the studio insisted that he make another Western first, and Leone agreed on the condition that he got to do the film his way. Paramount responded by giving him virtual carte blanche, and so with a free rein Leone set out to make nothing less than the ultimate Western. Once Upon a Time in the West was born. Over the next few months Leone and his collaborators, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, concocted a massive treatment, the basic idea of which according to Leone was “to use some of the conventions, settings, and stereotypical characters, of the American Western, and a series of references to individuals Westerns – but to use these things to tell my version of the story of a birth of a nation.”

One of the conventions Leone refers to is a storyline revolving around the coming of the railroad and the blossoming of a town in the wilderness. This basic scenario, which signifies the birth of civilization and the end of the Wild West, is as old as the genre itself, extending all the way back to 1924’s The Iron Horse and showing up in numerous subsequent Westerns.

One of the settings Leone chose couldn’t be more iconic - John Ford’s Monument Valley. Significantly, tracks are being laid down in Monument Valley, winding through the country where John Wayne once rode, marking not just the end of the Wild West but also the end of an era of Hollywood filmmaking. When Leone made Once Upon a Time in the West the Hollywood Western was nearly dead, and Leone’s elegiac film, which features one final coach ride through an unspoiled section of Monument Valley, mourns its passing.

The five main “stereotypical characters” Leone alludes to should be instantly recognizable to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Western genre:

Morton - the archetypal businessman.

A corrupt capitalist literally rotting on the inside from tuberculosis, Morton owns the railroad company laying down tracks from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To fulfill his dream of “seeing the blue of the Pacific outside that window”, Morton enlists the services of a hired gun, Frank, to “remove small obstacles from the track.”

Frank - the villainous gunslinger.

Although nobody is better at removing obstacles, Frank has loftier ambitions. Foreseeing the imminent passing of the Wild West, Frank realizes that his services will soon be obsolete, and so he figures the only way to survive is to make the transition from gunslinger to businessman. But Frank will eventually realize that, like all gunfighters, he has no place in the emerging civilization. As Morton tells him, “you’ll never be like me Frank…because you’ll never understand that this [holding up a wad of cash] is far more powerful than that [pointing to the gun Frank just pulled on him].”

Jill - the hooker with a heart of gold.

Formerly the finest whore in New Orleans, Jill hoped to start a new life with rancher Brett McBain. But it wasn’t meant to be, because McBain had the misfortune of being one of those “small obstacles”. His property, Sweetwater, is the only land for miles which holds the water Morton’s trains need to continue their trek westward, and so Frank “removes” McBain and the rest of his family before Jill arrives, not realizing that Jill and McBain had been married in New Orleans and that she now owns the land. 

Cheyenne - the romantic bandit.

Framed by Frank for the slaughter at the McBain ranch, Cheyenne shows up at Jill’s door to find out why Frank covets her land. Cheyenne takes an instant liking to Jill because, aside from being played by the delectable Claudia Cardinale, she makes good coffee and reminds him of his mother - “the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman who ever lived.”  Jill, the damsel in distress, elicits Cheyenne’s protective instincts and he endeavors to prevent Frank and Morton from carrying out their nefarious plans. But to do so he’ll have to form an alliance with the film’s fifth major character…

Harmonica - the mysterious lone avenger.

Harmonica shows up to settle an old score with Frank, the nature of which won’t be fully revealed until the inevitable climactic showdown between them.

“With these five most stereotypical characters from the American Western,” Leone explained, “I wanted to present an homage to the Western at the same time as showing the mutations which American society was undergoing at the time. So the story was about a birth and a death. Before they even come on to the scene these stereotypical characters know themselves to be dying in every sense, physically and morally - victims of the new era which was advancing”.

Explaining the film’s many references to earlier Westerns, Leone said: “We wanted the feeling throughout of a kaleidoscopic view of all American Westerns put together. But you must be careful of making it sound like citations for citations’ sake. It wasn’t done in that spirit at all. The references aren’t calculated in a programmed kind of way; they are there to give the feeling of all that background of the American Western to help tell this particular fairy tale. They are part of my attempt to take historical reality - the new, unpitying era of the economic boom - and blend it together with the fable”

Christopher Frayling has identified 57 explicit references to Hollywood Westerns in Once Upon a Time in the West, ranging from 1924’s silent film The Iron Horse to 1962’s How the West Was Won. (The folks over at fistful-of-leone.com have compiled their own list of references). As Leone said, however, the references are never used simply for their own sake. Frayling explains: “OUATITW is structured around a series of ironic reversals of famous moments from the Hollywood Western…to create the impression that the audience was watching a film they’d seen somewhere before - only to jolt them with the realization that they’d never seen the story told in quite this way before”.

Once Upon a Time in the West never feels recycled or secondhand, not only because Leone’s inimitable style breathes new life into the well-worn scenarios but also because his knowing commentary on the genre itself lends the film a postmodern reflexivity necessarily absent from earlier Westerns. The first three scenes of OUATITW offer prime examples of how Leone puts an imaginative spin on familiar scenes:

Scene #1:

In the opening scene three pistoleri await the arrival of someone at Cattle Corner train station. High Noon has a similar scene, except in that film the three gunfighters are waiting for the villain (whose name, by the way, is Frank!). But for whom are Leone’s characters waiting? Leone is in no rush to answer, and the ensuing ten-minute credit sequence comprises what critic Richard Jameson called, “as outrageously personal a piece of cinema as one could ever hope to see…in which Leone exercises the director’s full prerogative to choose precisely the nature of the action and non-action to take place, and the speed and manner of it.”

The three men pass the time in different ways: one stands under a dripping water tower; a second sits on a trough cracking his knuckles; and the third reclines on a swinging bench doing battle with a pesky fly. Leone had Morricone write music for the sequence, but when he decided it wasn’t working he substituted music with amplified sound effects - a creaking windmill, a squeaky door, a nattering telegraph machine, a cocked gun, a buzzing fly, a crowing rooster, chirping birds, flapping dusters, cracking knuckles, crunching footsteps, whistling wind, dripping water, a chugging train etc. The result is a veritable symphony of natural sounds - no music is heard but the sequence is gloriously “musical” nonetheless.

Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, who are these gunmen waiting for, anyway? Reversing the situation in High Noon, it is not the villain but the hero they’re waiting for, and they’re not there to greet him but to kill him, providing the first of many expectation-defying twists to scenes which intentionally echo earlier films.

Scene #2:

In the second scene we’re introduced to the McBain family as they prepare a celebration at Sweetwater in anticipation of Jill’s arrival. The patriarch, Brett, reminds his elder son, Patrick, to pick up Jill at the train station, while his daughter, Maureen, sets a table outside, and his younger son, Timmy, brings the pheasants Brett just shot inside. It is a fairly typical domestic scene borrowed from countless Westerns. But something is not right. The chirping cicadas fall eerily silent. Birds inexplicably take flight out of the brush. The only sound is the whistling wind - until a deafening shot rings out. Brett sees Maureen crumple to the ground, and then Brett himself and young Patrick are picked off in quick succession by unseen assailants. Only little Timmy remains alive. He runs outside to see what has happened, but stops in his tracks when he sees his fallen family. Just then the first note of Morricone’s classic score powerfully announces itself with one reverberating pluck of an electric guitar (there were no electric guitars in John Ford Westerns!), the beginning of a badass cue called “As a Judgment” which is the musical motif associated with the primary culprit behind this massacre. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyone who has seen The Searchers might expect that the perpetrators of this slaughter would be Indians; after all, a family is similarly massacred in Ford’s film by marauding Comanches. Instead, a gang of outlaws materialize out of the brush - with guns smoking, dusters flapping, and Morricone’s music intensifying. But Leone has an even bigger surprise in store for audiences. As the gang approaches petrified little Timmy, now the only surviving member of the McBain family, the camera pans around the gang’s leader who’s revealed to be… Henry Fonda! Yes, the same Henry Fonda who played humanistic Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, noble upholders of justice in The Ox-Bow Incident and 12 Angry Men, and even Honest Abe himself in Young Mr. Lincoln. How could that Henry Fonda, the personification of goodness, be this Henry Fonda, the embodiment of pure evil? Surely he won’t kill innocent, helpless little Timmy too. But Henry Fonda had never been in a Sergio Leone film before, and this Henry Fonda is playing one of cinema’s great villains, Frank, whose heartless dispatching of little Timmy proves there’s no obstacle too small he won’t remove on Mr. Morton’s behalf.

Scene #3:

A straight cut from the gun blast that kills Timmy to a train whistle signaling Jill’s arrival at the Flagstone station introduces Scene #3. When nobody comes to pick her up, Jill decides to take a wagon to the Sweetwater ranch.  As the first few aching notes of Jill’s Theme begin the camera tracks with her as she walks toward the Flagstone station. She enters the station and the camera pauses for a few moments outside the front window observing her as she arranges for a wagon; then, as the music continues to build, Jill walks out the back door and the camera slowly cranes skyward, higher and higher until it passes over the station’s rooftop, finally revealing Jill on the other side walking in the bustling, half-built Western town just as Morricone’s soaring music reaches its rhapsodic crescendo. To call the shot awe-inspiring would be an understatement, but it is just one of countless such breathtaking moments in this masterpiece. In fact, it is a mere prelude to where Leone is taking this sequence.

A direct cut catches Jill riding out of town on her way to Sweetwater.  At the outskirts of town men from Morton’s railroad company are laying down tracks - tracks that will ultimately extend all the way to Sweetwater and beyond. But in order to reach Sweetwater Jill’s wagon must pass through a very special place in cinematic lore: John Ford’s Monument Valley. As Richard Jameson wrote, “…Jill’s buckboard curves along a desert track through a flare of sun, and Leone pans with it 180 degrees, and then - if any location in the world is possessed of cinematic meaning - you draw your breath and hold it a long, long time: Claudia Cardinale gets on a buckboard amid the studied aestheticism of the foreign-grown Western and rides out into John Ford’s Monument Valley. Sergio Leone is committing - and knows he is committing - an act of sheer hubris. And he pulls it off in one luminous stroke. It is plainly and simply a religious experience…”

Leone places an unusual emphasis on this scene for another reason: it is significant that Jill, a woman, travels through Monument Valley - the rugged country where The Duke once saddled up - for it is Jill more than any other character who will, by film’s end, be associated with the burgeoning civilization. Jill will ultimately come to represent the near future when the Wild West will surrender to the civilized West of families, communities, and law and order; significantly, Jill outlives the heroes and villains of the Wild West, who either die or ride off into the sunset never to be heard from again - leaving behind “a world without balls” as Leone somewhat indelicately put it.

It should be obvious by this point that something extraordinarily special is unfolding onscreen - a mere half hour into the film and already Leone has pulled off more cinematic coups than most directors could hope to achieve in an entire career. But a film that begins this magnificently damn well better have an equally magnificent ending - and Leone, to say the least, doesn’t disappoint. Nothing can quite compare to the operatic power of the final moment of reckoning between Harmonica and Frank, when their mysterious connection to each other is finally revealed through a hypnotic flashback, cued by Harmonica’s haunting “death rattle” and climaxing with another of Morricone’s overpowering crescendos. Critic Richard Jameson put it beautifully, “The final confrontation of Frank and Harmonica, and the revelation of Harmonica’s claim on Frank, is one of the several most powerful moments the cinema has ever given us…the synthesis Leone achieves in every aspect of the sequence, the sheerly cosmic sense of unification, is staggering.”

The film concludes as spectacularly as it begins with the crane shot to end all crane shots (actually it’s a crane/zoom/pan shot). With Morricone’s poignantly beautiful music swelling to its full tumescent glory, Leone’s majestic camerawork reveals a moment in time that magnificently encapsulates the film’s main themes: a tooting train carrying thirsty railroad workers arrives at Sweetwater station and as Jill, now earth mother to the “boys”, carries water to them, Harmonica, the lone gunfighter with no place in the civilized West, rides away with Cheyenne’s body. As critic Dave Kehr writes, “In the continuity of this final sequence, Leone balances a beginning and an ending, a settling and an escape, a celebration and a profound mourning. It is one of the most complex images in the history of the Western, and certainly one of the most beautiful.”

Leone was not just aiming for greatness with OUATITW; he was aiming to make the definitive Western - an ambition all the more remarkable considering he was an Italian working in a (supposedly) exclusively American genre. Nobody can deny Leone had chutzpah. But, when all is said and done, who better than Leone to attempt such an ambitious undertaking?  No director took better advantage of the expressive possibilities of cinema than Sergio Leone, and there’s no better example of his cinematic genius than Once Upon a Time in the West, a beautifully wrought masterpiece on all levels, boasting an intricately structured screenplay crammed with quotable dialogue, great costuming (those dusters!), an imaginative sound design (that opening!), superb casting (villainous Fonda!), painterly widescreen compositions, stunning art direction, brilliant editing, and, at last and forever, Morricone’s immortal score.

Screenplay/Quotable dialogue

So much is made of the visual magnificence of Leone’s films that it’s often forgotten how well scripted they are. Once Upon a Time in the West is probably the best script Leone ever worked from, thanks in part to his collaboration with cine-savvy director buddies Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento. The ambitious, intricately structured screenplay not only tells a riveting tale that stands on its own, it also functions as a reflexive commentary on, tribute to, and critique of the entire history of the Western genre - at once lovingly celebrating and radically subverting the traditional Hollywood Western. Indeed, the film is so aware of itself and its place in cinematic history that Christopher Frayling calls it “a metawestern - the first truly post-modernist movie.”

For films with a minimum of dialogue there are an unusual number of memorable lines in Leone films, especially The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West.  Much of the credit for this, I’m sure, belongs to Mickey Knox, who had the job of translating the Italian dialogue into English. Here are some great lines/exchanges of dialogue (as they appear chronologically in the film) you might find yourself quoting:

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[Opening scene, Cattle Corner station – Harmonica confronted by three gunmen]

Harmonica: And Frank?
Gunman: Frank sent us.
Harmonica: Did you bring a horse for me?
Gunman: Well… looks like we’re…
[snickers]
Gunman: looks like we’re shy one horse.
Harmonica [shaking head]: You brought two too many.

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[Monument Valley rest stop - Harmonica and Cheyenne meet]

Cheyenne: Interested in fashions, Harmonica?
Harmonica: I saw three of these dusters a short time ago; they were waiting for a train. Inside the dusters there were three men.
Cheyenne: So?
Harmonica: Inside the men there were three bullets.

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[continued from above]

Cheyenne: That’s a crazy story, Harmonica, for two reasons. One, nobody around these parts got the guts to wear those dusters except Cheyenne’s men. Two, Cheyenne’s men don’t get killed.
Harmonica: Well, you know music, and you can count - all the way up to two.
[Cheyenne spins the magazine of his revolver]
Cheyenne: All the way up to six if I have to…
[gestures to Harmonica’s wound]
Cheyenne: And maybe faster than you.

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[Wobbles’ laundry – Harmonica thrashes Wobbles, who set up the “meeting” at Cattle Corner between Harmonica and Frank.]

Harmonica: Ya know, Wobbles, I’m kinda mad at you.

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[Sweetwater ranch – Cheyenne pays a visit to Jill]

Cheyenne: They wanna hang me. The big, black crows. Idiots. What the hell? I’ll kill anything. Never a kid. Be like killin’ a priest. Catholic priest, that is.
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[Sweetwater ranch – continued – Jill eyes a knife]

Cheyenne : If somebody had a mind to kill me … fires me up. And a fired up Cheyenne ain’t a nice thing to see – especially for a lady.

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[Sweetwater ranch -continued]

Cheyenne: Now if somebody gets dressed up to look like me so they can hang this around my neck, I don’t like it none. But I can understand it. Why I don’t understand is the why.
Jill: Neither do I.
Cheyenne: But I see you looked for the why. Yeah, what if there were a whole heap of whys? Round. Yellow. You know the kind. You wrap ‘em on a stone and they go ‘ding!”

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[Sweetwater ranch - continued]

Cheyenne [to Jill]: Do you know anything about a man going around playing a harmonica? He’s someone you’d remember. Instead of talking, he plays. And when he better play, he talks.

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[Sweetwater ranch - continued]

Cheyenne [to Jill]: Ya know, ma’am, when you’ve killed four it’s easy to make it five.

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[Sweetwater ranch - continued]

Jill: If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself. And even call in your men. Well. No woman ever died from that. When you’re finished, all I’ll need will be a tub of boiling water, and I’ll be exactly what I was before - with just another filthy memory.
Cheyenne: [sighs] You make good coffee, at least?

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[Morton’s train – Morton and Frank discuss “business”]

Morton: Tell me, was it necessary that you kill all of them? I only told you to scare them.
Frank: People scare better when they’re dying.

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[Morton’s train - Frank sits at Morton’s desk]

Morton: How does it feel sitting behind that desk, Frank?
Frank: Almost like holding a gun… only much more powerful.

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[Morton’s train - continued]

Morton: There are many things you’ll never understand.
[Frank draws on Morton as he pulls out money to show him]
Morton: This is one of them. You see, Frank, there are many kinds of weapons. And the only one that can stop that - is this.
[Morton’s train stops as Frank’s men ride up to it]
Morton: Now, shall we get back to our little problem?
Frank: My weapons might look simple to you, Mr. Morton, but they can still shoot holes big enough for our little problems.

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[Sweetwater ranch – Compliment for Jill, Cheyenne style]

Cheyenne: You know, Jill, you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.

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[Sweetwater – Harmonica prepares Jill for her role as water-bearer]

Harmonica: Get me some water.
[grabs Jill when she starts heading inside]
Harmonica: From the well. I like my water fresh.

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[Sweetwater – Cheyenne covertly watches as Harmonica quickly dispatches two of Frank’s men sent to kill Jill]

Cheyenne: He not only plays. He can shoot too.

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[Morton’s train – Wobbles unwittingly leads Harmonica to Frank]

Wobbles: You know that I’m mighty careful, Frank. No one could have followed me. That’s the first thing I learned working for you: to listen unseen and to watch unheard.
Morton: You should learn to live as if you didn’t exist.

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[Morton’s train - continued – Frank insults Wobbles]

Frank: How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can’t even trust his own pants.

Note: in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, Kirk Douglas’s character placates a newspaper editor by saying, “I have lied to men who wear belts, and I have lied to men who wear suspenders, but I would never be so dumb as to lie to a man who wore both a belt and suspenders.”

________________________________________

[Morton’s train – continued - Frank captures Harmonica]

Frank: End of the line.
________________________________________

[Morton’s train – continued – Frank and Harmonica verbally spare]

Harmonica: Your friends have a high mortality rate, Frank. First three, then two.
Frank: So you’re the one who makes appointments.
Harmonica: And you’re the one who doesn’t keep them.

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[Morton’s train – continued - Harmonica provokes Frank]

Frank: What do you want? Who are you?
Harmonica: Dave Jenkins.
Frank: Dave Jenkins is dead a long time ago.
Harmonica: Calder Benson.
Frank: What’s your name? Benson’s dead, too.
Harmonica: You should know, Frank, better than anyone. You killed them.

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[Morton’s train – continued - after Cheyenne rescues Harmonica]

Cheyenne: Hey, Mr. Choo-Choo. It’s easy to find you. Bastard! I don’t have to kill you now. You leave a slime behind you like a snail. Two beautiful shiny rails.

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[Navajo Ridge – Morton visits Frank where he’s holding Jill captive]

Frank: You’ve made a big mistake, Morton. When you’re not on that train, you look like a turtle out of its shell. Just funny. Poor cripple talking big so nobody’ll know how scared you are.
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[Navajo Ridge – continued - Frank knocks Morton off of his crutches]

Morton: Is that sufficient to make you feel stronger?
Frank: I could squash you like a wormy apple!
Morton: Sure. But you won’t do it… because it’s… not to your advantage…
Frank: Hmm. Who knows how far you’d have gone with two good legs, huh?

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[Sweetwater – after Harmonica explains that McBain bought the Sweetwater property for its water rights]

Cheyenne: Aha, he was no fool our dead friend, huh? He was going to sell this piece of desert for his weight in gold, wasn’t he?
Harmonica: You don’t sell the dream of a lifetime!

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[Sweetwater – continued - Cheyenne calculates how much Sweetwater is worth]

Cheyenne: Harmonica, a town built around a railroad.
[laughs]
Cheyenne: You could make a fortune. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hey, more than that. Thousands of thousands.
Harmonica: They call them “millions.”
Cheyenne: “Millions.” Hmm.

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[Navajo Ridge – Frank has his way with Jill – only the villain “gets” the girl!]

Frank : You like to feel a man’s hands all over you. You like it. Even if they’re the hands of the man who killed your husband.

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[Flagstone auction – Harmonica buys Sweetwater with the reward money for Cheyenne, foiling Frank’s plan]

Harmonica: The reward for this man is 5,000 dollars, is that right?
Cheyenne: Judas was content for 4,970 dollars less.
Harmonica: There were no dollars in them days.
Cheyenne: But sons of bitches… yeah.

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[Flagstone saloon – Frank confronts Harmonica after the auction]

Frank: Who are you?
Harmonica: Jim Cooper, Chuck Youngblood.
Frank: More dead men.
Harmonica: They were all alive until they met you, Frank.

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[Flagstone saloon – continued - Frank makes Harmonica a “deal”, not comprehending that Harmonica doesn’t invest in land]

Frank: You paid five thousand dollars for something that belongs to me!
[puts down a bunch of dollar bills]
Frank: Five thousand…
[pulls out a silver dollar]
Frank: Plus one!
[puts the dollar on the table]
Frank: You got a right to make a profit too.

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[Flagstone saloon – continued]

Frank: Just hurry up and make the deal!
Harmonica: Which deal Frank? We’ve got more than one to settle you and me.

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[Flagstone room above the saloon – some of Frank’s men, after having been paid off by Morton, have just tried to gun down Frank on the streets of Flagstone. Harmonica, however, wants the pleasure of killing Frank himself, at the right time and place, and so, almost perversely, he helps Frank eliminate his attackers. Jill confronts Harmonica over this startling turn of events.]

Jill: But… but those were his men.
Harmonica: Yeah.
Jill: And they tried to kill him.
Harmonica: They must’ve found someone who pays better.
Jill: And you… You saved his life!
Harmonica: I didn’t let them kill him, and that’s not the same thing.

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[Sweetwater ranch – Jill watches Harmonica, who’s waiting for Frank, from her window]

Jill: Cheyenne. What’s he waiting for out there? What’s he doing?
Cheyenne: He’s whittling on a piece of wood. I got a feeling when he stops whittling, something’s gonna happen.

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[Sweetwater – Frank and Harmonica wax philosophical before dueling]

Frank: Surprised to see me here?
Harmonica: I knew you’d come.
Frank: Morton once told me I could never be like him. Now I understand why. Wouldn’t have bothered him knowing you were around somewhere alive.
Harmonica: So you found out you’re not a businessman after all.
Frank: Just a man.
Harmonica: An ancient race. Other Mortons will be along, and they’ll kill it off.
Frank: The future don’t matter to us. Nothing matters now - not the land, not the money, not the woman. I came here to see you. ‘Cause I know that now you’ll tell me what you’re after.
Harmonica: …Only at the point of dyin’.

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[Sweetwater ranch – Cheyenne urges Jill into her new role]

Cheyenne: You know what? If I was you, I’d go down there and give those boys a drink. Can’t imagine how happy it makes a man to see a woman like you. Just to look at her. And if one of them should pat your behind, just make believe it’s nothing. They earned it.

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[Sweetwater ranch continued – Cheyenne explains Harmonica’s character to Jill and why he won’t – can’t – stick around Sweetwater]

Cheyenne: You don’t understand, Jill. People like that have something inside… something to do with death.

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[Leaving Sweetwater – Cheyenne’s dying words to Harmonica]

Cheyenne: Hey, Harmonica - when they do you in, pray it’s somebody who knows *where* to shoot… Go away… go away… go away, I don’t want you to see me die.

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Painterly widescreen compositions

Critics sometimes praise a film’s visual beauty by saying you could hang any frame of it on a wall. It’s usually hyperbole. In the case of Once Upon a Time in the West it’s not. And I would go one further: you could hang any frame of OUATITW in the Louvre Museum, right next to the Rembrandt’s, van Gogh’s and Michelangelo’s – which stands to reason considering that Leone, an avid art collector, instructed his brilliant cinematographer, Tonino Delli Colli, to compose shots with particular painters or paintings in mind.

According to Frayling, “Leone showed Delli Colli the paintings and engravings of Rembrandt before shooting Once Upon A Time in The West. The monochrome darkness and portraits of faces. Not portraits of aristocrats but ordinary people like his (Rembrandt’s) mother, his friends, someone he met in the street. Rembrandt invented the physiological portrait. And in OUATITW you can read the person’s history on his face”.

Delli Colli himself would have none of it: “Look, whatever Vittorio Storaro says, we are not making poetry. We turn the lights on, and we switch them off. That’s what we do.”

You be the judge.

Note: According to a Leone fan at fistful-of-leone.com, “it was Giorgio de Chirico’s surrealist paintings that inspired the camera angles and compositions of the larger shots, i.e. the landscapes, town shots etc.

Trivia: The painting of the ocean waves Morton owns is by Alexander Dzigurski

Image of Cheyenne above from www.moviescreenshots.blogspot.com

Art Direction

From the rickety Cattle Corner station to the sturdy Sweetwater log cabin, from Morton’s elegantly decorated passenger carriage to the cluttered, dust-filled interior of the Monument Valley rest stop, Carlo Simi’s production design is a tour de force. But the pièce de résistance is the town of Flagstone. Based on archive photographs of El Paso, Texas, Flagstone is an historically accurate full-scale replica of an actual old Western town, complete with station, hotel, saloon, bank, barbershop, stable etc. Remarkably, however, the town is shown to be a work in progress, with parts of it fully built and other parts still under construction – reflecting the film’s central theme: the development of civilization.

Discussing the rationale behind making Flagstone a half-built work in progress, Simi said, “It was my basic idea. Sergio liked it a lot. Historically, the Western town was characterized by the passage of human beings through time: a track where humans, instead of animals, passed through. So as time proceeds, a saloon appears, then a bank, then a prison etc. This is usually called Main Street. I studied the process, with architectural knowledge and historical research.”

The historical accuracy of the town is a reflection of Leone and Simi’s attention to detail and their insistence on authenticity – which provides an interesting contrast to the film’s fanciful story, mythical characters and operatic style. As Leone said “I wanted to nourish my fairy-story with a documentary realism - the important thing is to make a real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth to live.”

Editing

Critic Richard Jameson nicely summed up the essence of Leone’s approach to editing: “He is not a director of the efficient throwaway school: he will never use one quick shot when twenty lengthy ones will work a little better.” This approach is, of course, radically different from the rapid fire brand of editing practiced in today’s action movies, which might explain why some people find the film interminable. Someone on the IMDB boards complained that OUATITW was too slow, that it wasn’t a film you could just pop in and watch quickly. Quite right, I retorted: that’s the difference between scarfing down fast food and savoring an exquisite full-course meal.

Discussing the pace of OUATITW, Leone said, “The rhythm of the film was intended to create the sensation of the last gasps that a person takes just before dying. Once Upon a Time in the West was, from start to finish, a dance of death. I wanted to make the audience feel, in three hours, how these people lived and died…” And Leone’s editor, Nino Baragli, said, “When we have to cut because the movie is too long, we never cut within a scene, we cut out whole blocks, because the rhythm must remain the same. You mustn’t confuse rhythm with speed – in that case the editors of TV commercials would be the great masters. Instead, you need much greater ability to edit slow tempos because it is harder to find the right spot to cut…”

Much of the visual poetry in Leone’s films can be attributed to the distinctive editing rhythm Leone and Baragli bring to them and that rhythm is a major reason I respond so strongly to Leone’s films in general and OUATITW in particular – whether it be tight close-ups juxtaposed against magnificent landscapes, or seamless match-on-action shots, or scenes linked by analogy (as when Frank’s smoking gun barrel turns into the whistling smokestack of Jill’s chugging train). The two clips below offer examples of what I’m talking about, though I would hasten to add that showing isolated clips out of context cannot possibly do justice to the film’s overall editing achievement:

At the 34 second mark of the above clip, Frank is walking from left-to-right, but when he moves behind a wooden beam a cut shows Harmonica walking in the opposite direction from right-to-left –as if they were walking toward each other. The editing here has marvelous rhythm and symmetry, while eerily foreshadowing the climactic showdown between the two gunmen.

At the 11 second mark someone opens one of the train doors, and notice how beautifully edited the reaction shots of the gunmen are: Strode turns his head from left-to-right and reaches for his gun, while Elam turns his head from right-to-left to look in the same direction. Again, the rhythm and symmetry of the editing here is just exquisite

Perhaps no better example of the “Leone style” exists than the great opening scene, which violates one of the cardinal rules of classical continuity editing: cut out the “boring” bits that, presumably, nobody wants to see. The three pistoleri awaiting the arrival of Harmonica’s train are not long for the world, and Leone affords them an unusual amount of screen time, obsessively detailing their last few moments on earth. There’s a ritualistic quality about the scene, almost as if Leone were eulogizing these gunman, and it’s only right that he give them a memorable sendoff. To be sure the scene is protracted far beyond the point many viewers will tolerate, but for us passionate fans it remains one of Leone’s great signature moments.

As I wrote earlier, the sequence is “musical” even though no music is heard. Part of this has to do with Leone’s decision to replace scoring with natural sounds, and part of it has to do with the cadenced, rhythmic quality of the editing - its deliberately largo pacing might have been edited according to the measured beats of a metronome. Viewers who find this opening unendurable might as well stop watching because the film scarcely deviates from the languid rhythms established here. Indeed, from this lengthy credit sequence at Cattle Corner station to the concluding gun duel at Sweetwater, Once Upon a Time in the West insistently maintains a slow, measured pace - as critic Robert Cumbow wrote, “Once Upon a Time in the West is precision itself, never wavering from the relentless slow build that begins with its very first shot.”

Music

Sergio Leone: “For me the music is fundamental, especially in a Western where the dialogue is purely aphoristic. The films could just as well be silent; one would understand all the same. The music serves to emphasize states of mind, facts and situations more than the dialogue itself does. In short, for me the music functions as dialogue.”

Ennio Morricone: “There is a special satisfaction in working with someone like Leone. Not only does he make excellent films, but he respects the work of the composer and the orchestra. Other directors do a bad job of mixing the music, they keep it too soft or cover it with noises. But Sergio always gave full value to what I wrote for him.”

Leone and Morricone created a new kind of western and Once Upon a Time in the West is the cinematic and musical apotheosis of their legendary collaboration. In an unusual but inspired move Leone had Morricone write the score before filming began, and then had the music played on the set, which not only allowed Leone to synchronize camera movements and modulate editing rhythms with the tempo of the music, but also inspired the actors to shape their performances around the rhythms of the score. The result is an unrivalled marriage of music and image.

Each of the five main characters has his/her own musical motif, all of which are wholly memorable in different ways. Listen to them here:

‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (Main theme) – Someone on the IMDB once complained that this cue, which is mainly associated with Jill, never varies, that it remains essentially the same theme from the beginning to the end of the film. My retort: why change perfection? I could listen to this glorious music until the end of time and never tire of it, never find it any less magnificent and stirring. I extend my gratitude to Ennio Morricone and Edda Dell’Orso, the gifted soprano who contributes the soaring vocalizations, for bringing this sublime music into the world.

Harmonica’s ‘Death Rattle’ - Never have a few blows on a harmonic made such haunting sounds. It ain’t pretty, but Harmonica’s spine-tingling death rattle, an expression of his lifelong grief emanating from the depths of his haunted, deadened soul, is perfectly suited to a character with “something to do with death”.

‘As a Judgment’ – More or less shared by Frank and Harmonic, this powerful cue, propelled by electric guitar, occurs at moments of great tragedy (the McBain massacre) or when macho gunfighters go mano-a-mano – Harmonica and Cheyenne’s initial confrontation and Harmonica and Frank’s final duel. (The electric guitar of “As a Judgment’ and the harmonica wails of “Death Rattle” are blended together to great effect during the climactic duel).

‘Farewell to Cheyenne’ – According to Frayling, Cheyenne’s “casual clip-clopping piano and banjo melody was the closest Morricone ever came to a straightforward musical cliché from the Western: the plodding horse, the campfire whistle, the lazy rhythm.” Nevertheless, I’ve never heard a theme quite like it - one that so memorably captures both the humorous and tragic sides of Cheyenne’s character. I also like how the theme has a slightly sinister edge to it when Cheyenne is first introduced, but then changes into a more likable, hummable tune once he’s established as an essentially “good” guy.

‘Morton’s Theme’ – Morton, the corrupt capitalist, is not treated kindly by the film, but his poignant theme, a undulating piano tune accompanied by the soothing sound of ocean waves, beautifully evokes his unfulfilled dream of “seeing the blue of the Pacific outside that window.”

Water motif

As Harmonica explains to Cheyenne: “Them steam engines can’t roll without water and the only water for 50 miles west of Flagstone is right here under this land.” Of course, “this land” is the aptly named Sweetwater, so named by Brett McBain, who had the vision to acquire the rights to the land - the same land that Frank and Morton are determined to swipe because of that invaluable source of water hidden beneath it. Because the plot hinges on the value of water, Leone uses water as a recurring motif – visually, verbally and symbolically. Few films are as concerned with water as Once Upon a Time in the West; not even Chinatown boasts as much water imagery as Leone’s film. Consider these examples:

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In the opening scene, Leone purposely draws our attention to a creaking windmill, which pumps the water needed to replenish the trains at Cattle Corner.

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Water drips on Woody Strode’s head, and then on his hat, from which he ceremoniously drinks as the train arrives at Cattle Corner.

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Al Mulock dips his hands in a water basin before cracking his knuckles.

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Before the massacre at the McBain ranch, Brett fetches water from the well.

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Jill’s wagon driver, Sam, stops at the Monument Valley rest stop for a drink – whiskey, perhaps, for himself, water for his horse (“Don’t the train stop?”).

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At the rest stop, Jill asks Stander for water and a bath, leading to some humorous banter about how many people have used the bath that day. Stander also says “water is poison in these parts ever since the days of the great flood.” Paraphrasing Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who have the vision to see the value of water in these parts, and those who don’t. Stander doesn’t.

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When Harmonica beats up Wobbles, he tosses him against a tub of water, which tips over and drenches Wobbles - who, by the way, runs a laundry in which the workers hand-wash the clothes.

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Suspecting that Cheyenne is going to rape her, Jill defiantly tells him, “When you’re finished all I’ll need is a tub of boiling water” – her second reference to taking a bath.
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Morton dreams of seeing “the blue of the Pacific outside that window” and looks longingly at a painting of ocean waves, while the sound of crashing waves is overlaid on the soundtrack.

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Morton’s dream is not realized: he ends up dying face first in a puddle of muddy water, with the ocean waves poignantly splashing on the soundtrack as he expires.

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In the scene in which Harmonica stops Jill from leaving Sweetwater, he tells her to “get me some water from the well - I like my water fresh.” By ripping the fancy frills off her New Orleans-style clothes, Harmonica prepares Jill for her transformation from high-class New Orleans whore to earth mother and water bearer, a role she will fully assume by film’s end.

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As Jill fetches water from the well, Harmonica picks off two of Frank’s henchmen who Frank sent to kill Jill.

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Jill tells Harmonica she needs hot water after Frank rapes her – echoing her earlier comment to Cheyenne. A few minutes later we see her taking that long-awaited bath. Throughout the film, she talks about taking a hot bath to wash away her “filthy memories,” and the bath functions as a sort of baptism, a moral purification that completes her transformation from whore to earth mother and water carrier.

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Just before making his classic “whittlin’ on a piece of wood” remark, Cheyenne splashes his face with water, while Jill heats water for his shave.

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In the closing moments, a train carrying a bunch of thirsty workers arrives in Sweetwater. Cheyenne encourages Jill to “give those boys a drink” (just as someone will give the train a drink) and the final image of Jill is of her carrying water to the thirsty workers. Whereas Harmonica has “something to do with death,” Jill is a life force - a nurturer of civilization.

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Reveals

Nobody was better than Leone at using “the reveal” – a shot which suddenly or gradually shows something that was not previously visible or known. The reveal shot can be used to establish character, shock us, awe us etc., and Leone does all this and more in Once Upon a Time in the West, turning the technique into a veritable art form. Here are some examples:

In the opening sequence Leone introduces Harmonica via a reveal. As the train pulls away from Cattle Corner station, the three gunfighters who were waiting for him turn to leave. Just then the ominous notes of Harmonica’s “Death Rattle” sound for the first time. The gunfighters look back at the departing train, and as the final car passes out of the way, Harmonica is standing there. Thus, his enigmatic, mysterious nature is instantly, and memorably, established. (Throughout the film he will suddenly appear at the edges of the frame, as if materializing out of nowhere).

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A group of gunslingers materialize out of the brush after massacring the McBain family. As they approach little Timmy, the camera slowly pans around the leader revealing him to be Henry Fonda! Viewers associating Fonda with upstanding characters were understandably shocked by this revelation – a reaction Leone was clearly counting on.

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The majestic crane shot up and over the Flagstone station’s rooftop reveals the bustling, half-built town on the other side, awing us with a “privileged” view of the bourgeoning civilization under construction.

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As Jill and Sam ride through the desert toward Sweetwater, a pan shot reveals that the coach is traveling through Monument Valley.

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In the Monument Valley rest stop, a slight upward camera tilt reveals handcuffs on Cheyenne.

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With the camera positioned to the side of Jill, she opens the front door of her ranch, and as the door swings toward the viewer, the camera pans around the door revealing Cheyenne standing on the other side of it. This left-to-right pan nicely parallels the earlier right-to-left pan that revealed Fonda/Frank.

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Recalling the opening scene, Leone again uses an entire train to reveal Harmonica’s presence, this time when a passing train reveals Harmonica secretly trailing Wobbles to Morton’s train.

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A slight upward tilt reveals Cheyenne hiding under Morton’s train just before Frank shoots Wobbles.

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As Jill frantically searches for a model of the Sweetwater station, a hand holding the model suddenly enters the frame. The camera pans up from the kneeling Jill to reveal Frank’s grinning face (“Lookin’ for this?”). This is yet another example of a character’s uncanny ability to appear, unseen and unheard, seemingly out of nowhere.

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The recurring out of focus figure walking toward the camera in Harmonica’s flashbacks is ultimately revealed to be the younger Frank.

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In Harmonica’s flashback during the final duel, the camera cranes up and away from a close-up of young Harmonica, revealing the horrible lynching Frank and his men carried out on Harmonica’s brother - with Ford’s Monument Valley as the backdrop.

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Reputation among directors

Once Upon a Time in the West is a film that virtually validates the auteur theory. Leone controlled every facet of the production, and his personal style is stamped on every frame. Perhaps that’s why the film is held in such high regard among fellow directors:

• Martin Scorsese - In an interview for Christopher Frayling’s Once Upon a Time in Italy, Scorsese says that OUATITW has “become a favorite film of mine - such an obsession. There’s no doubt that Once Upon a Time in the West influenced the 1970s generation of filmmakers - Spielberg, Lucas, Milius, Carpenter. And there’s no doubt that he created his own special body of work, which is almost like the reinvention of film language. People try to imitate him, but he was the one, the original. And we look at Leone’s films now for the inspiration they give us.”

• Quentin Tarantino - “Once upon a Time in the West, I always loved it. It was almost like a film school in a movie for me.”

• John Boorman - In his Money into Light, Boorman writes, “In Once Upon a Time in the West, the Western reaches its apotheosis. Leone’s title is a declaration of intent and also his gift to America of its lost fairy stories. This is the kind of masterpiece that can occur outside trends and fashions.  It is both the greatest and the last Western.”

• Paul Schrader - According to Scorsese, at the 1976 Cannes film festival Schrader made a dinner toast to Sergio Leone for making one of the greatest films of all time: Once Upon a Time in the West.

• Stanley Kubrick - According to Frayling, Kubrick admired OUATITW so much that he selected the music for Barry Lyndon before shooting the film in order to attempt a similar fusion of music and image, and even phoned Leone to discuss it with him.

• John Carpenter - “Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the classics of all time, a movie that states the essence of the Western, and the essence of mythology, and maybe finished off the genre.” He had Morricone’s music played at his wedding. 

• George Lucas - According to Frayling, Lucas referred to the music and images of Once Upon a Time in the West while cutting Star Wars.

• Ang Lee, a great fan of Leone, introduced the world premier of a newly restored version of Once Upon a Time in the West at the 2007 Rome Film Festival.

• John Milius - “He took the whole experience of the American West and the American Western and distilled it into a certain kind of romantic view. He made us look at our Westerns again.”

• Alex Cox - “My reaction to the film the very first time I saw it was one of astonishment. Everything - the costumes, the music, the construction of the sets, the faces of the actors - is flawless.

• Nils Gaup - Gaup called his Pathfinder a “reindeer western” and its opening scene was inspired by the McBain family massacre.

• In the 2002 Sight & Sound Top Ten Film poll, five directors placed OUATITW on their lists of the greatest films of all-time: John Dahl, Joe Dante, Asif Kapadia, Jonathan Kaplan and Mika Kaurismaki.

Final Note

I first saw Once Upon a Time in the West around 1990 on AMC (when AMC was actually worthy of its name). As soon as it ended the telephone rang. It was my brother, Mark. “Did you see that?” he asked. I didn’t know he was going to watch it too, but of course I knew exactly what he was talking about. And so we talked excitedly about what we’d just seen, and the next time we saw each other we watched the climactic showdown between Harmonica and Frank again and again, marveling at the scene’s power, cinematic brilliance, and just plain “coolness”. And that is, perhaps, the highest compliment I can bestow upon Once Upon a Time in the West: it is a film that inspires you to shout about its greatness from the rooftops - or at least call your brother.

Viva Leone!

1929-1989

Chapter 1 is entitled “Once Upon a Time…in Nazi Occupied France” - an obvious nod to Sergio Leone and a clear indication that the film you’re about to see is a stylish excursion into cinematic mythmaking. Imaginatively blending the men-on-a-mission war movie with the Spaghetti Western, Inglourious Basterds offers revisionist history Tarantino-style in a (tall) tale about a group of Jewish American Nazi killers known as “the basterds”. Not only do the basterds gain the attention of the Führer himself (who’s thrown into a tizzy over the basterds’ brutal treatment of captured Nazi’s), they also alter the very course of history by eliminating all the major players of the Nazi party, including the Führer, in one fell swoop! The basterds (and a “bitch” named Shoshanna) virtually singlehandedly win WW2! Tarantino understands and embraces the cinema’s unique capacity to transform historical reality into personal myth and it’s no coincidence that the film’s memorable climax takes place in a movie theater - a theater where all the Nazi brass gather to watch a piece of Nazi propaganda and where they receive their richly deserved comeuppance.

After Bigelow won at this year’s Director’s Guild Awards fellow nominee Quentin Tarantino called her the “Queen of Directors” - an apt description of a woman who’s been making solid films in a variety of genres for years (if you haven’t already be sure to check out Near Dark and Strange Days). Winning the DGA is usually a strong indicator of who will also win the Oscar but I was still worried that her ex-husband, James Cameron, would steal it from her as he did at the Golden Globes. Happily my worries were unfounded and the highlight of the Academy Awards show was when the Queen of Directors beat the The King of the World.

It took 82 years for a woman to win an Oscar for directing. It only took three years to win a NOFFscar. This category came down to a two man man and a woman race between The Queen and QT. It was a tossup but since Tarantino is taking home NOFFscars for Best Picture (see above) and Best Screenplay (see below) I’ll go along with the Academy and give it to Bigelow. And it’s not as if she doesn’t deserve it. Focusing on an EOD unit’s death-defying efforts to defuse bombs, her remarkable direction milks every last bit of suspense out of the film’s tense, edge-of-your-seat scenarios. Rarely has a film sustained such a heightened sense of imminent disaster for such a lengthy period of time - the film is 2 hours long and for the majority of that running time you get the uneasy sense that something’s about to explode. Much of the credit for that belongs to Bigelow. After the success of The Hurt Locker offers must be pouring in for her and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Why the Academy, in its infinite wisdom, nominated Matt Damon for his forgettable supporting work in Invictus but snubbed his eminently more memorable starring role in The Informant! was one of the inscrutable mysteries surrounding this year’s Oscars (another was what the Extraordinary League of Dancers were doing on stage). Perhaps it was because his rugby player in Invictus had worthy goals and transparent motives and was easily understood. The Academy tends to like that. His character in The Informant!, a corporate whistle blower working with the FBI, is not so easy to pin down. He’s a decidedly more complex figure whose shady goals and contradictory motives may have exasperated the Academy as much as the FBI agents for whom he’s ostensibly working.

But his complexity is precisely what makes him a far more interesting character. He possesses a child-like enthusiasm yet thrives in a cut-throat corporate environment. He’s endearingly naïve (does he really think the Board is going to make him the CEO after his whistle blowing activities?) yet cunningly shrewd. He considers himself the “good” guy even though he’s embezzled $ 5 7 9 11 13 million out of his company (the number keeps going up the more we find out). You never know when/if he’s sincere, withholding crucial information, or outright lying - which makes him, hilariously, the most unreliable narrator imaginable. Is he a sociopath? a repentant do-gooder? a poor deluded schmuck? It’s a fascinating, quirky character study and Damon, sporting steel-rimmed glasses, a ratty mustache and a paunch, delivers a brilliantly nuanced performance which explores every delicious facet of his eccentric character.

I like Sandra Bullock. She’s a charming, delightful lady. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s an Oscar statuette sitting on her mantel that needs to be taken away. (The Razzie she received for All About Steve can stay). In The Blind Side, one of those soggy inspirational movies the Academy embraces, she plays an admirable middle-class white woman who selflessly adopts and improves the lot of an orphaned black boy. Her win was a safe and predictable choice. The industry has now rewarded Bullock, a bankable star, for years of loyal service. Bullock has graciously thanked the Academy. Now life will go on as usual. Bullock will move on to the next middling romantic comedy or whatever, and chances are she won’t hear from the Academy again for 30 years when it honors her with a Lifetime Achievement award.

But let’s talk about a truly deserving performance. Despite appearances in a few recent blockbusters and an Oscar for her role as a heartless corporate attorney in Michael Clayton, Tilda Swinton is not an actress who has, or ever will, “go Hollywood” (let’s not forget that she started her career in the avant-garde films of the late Derek Jarman). Unlike most actresses she is not looking to be liked, nor does she crave the approbation of the Academy. She seems to thrive on taking on challenging, risky roles, and as the alcoholic, promiscuous, thoroughly unlikable titular character of Julia she delivers the year’s best, and bravest, performance. Ironically, Swinton’s character, like Bullock’s, ends up saving a kid too (albeit in a very different way), but not before she kidnaps him by knifepoint, literally scares the shit out of him, and holds him for ransom! That she followed up her Oscar win by playing such a repugnant woman is a testament to her artistic integrity. What will Sandra B. do? All About Steve 2?

Tarantino certainly has a knack for casting. He has resurrected the careers of some (John Travolta), provided choice roles for others (Samuel L. Jackson) and now he’s boosting the careers of some relative unknowns in Inglourious Basterds - Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger and Mélanie Laurent. But he may have outdone himself with Christoph Waltz. Where did this guy come from? It’s probably safe to say that before Inglourious Basterds few had ever heard of Waltz outside of his native Austria; now he’s virtually a household name.

There is virtual unanimity of opinion among critics that Waltz delivered the best performance of the year in a supporting role and I am not about to be the lone dissenter. After watching just the first few minutes of the great opening scene I knew he’d be a shoe-in for the NOFF award. Since the ‘40s countless Nazi’s have been portrayed in film but none like the one Waltz plays. His character, Col. Hans Landa, displays no outward sign of his loathing of the Jew; he just goes about his job as “Jew Hunter” with good cheer, hiding his sinister intentions behind a charming, affable exterior. His is a study not in the banality of evil but in the geniality of evil.

As the abusive mother of Precious, Mo’nique gives one of those rare performances that seem to transcend mere acting. The raw, emotional ferocity of her playing - the highpoint of which is her searing, self-justifying monologue - suggests that she must be tapping into some dark, personal emotional reservoir for inspiration (and the unsavory details of her interview with Barbara Walters provide some clues as to what that might be). Her performance is all the more remarkable considering that she’s primarily known as a comedian. But will Mo’Nique follow up this bravura turn with equally impressive work or is she a one-trick pony?

One of Tarantino’s avowed cinematic heroes is Sergio Leone, but the influence of the great Italian director is not immediately apparent in Tarantino’s heavy emphasis on the spoken word. After all, Leone’s films were known for their long dialogue-less sequences which emphasized the anticipation of imminent violence rather the violence itself. Leone loved building a scene slowly, drawing it out well past the point most directors would, and then bringing it to a swift conclusion with a quick burst of violent mayhem. Tarantino does the selfsame thing, except that whereas Leone primarily used music to extend scenes Tarantino uses dialogue instead.

Inglourious Basterds provides one of best examples of Tarantino’s knack for building tension through extended dialogue between adversaries. At a small, out of the way bar some of the basterds, disguised as Nazi’s, meet an informant to discuss their plan of action, not anticipating that some actual Nazi’s are celebrating there. The basterds’ lives soon fall into jeopardy when the Nazi’s decide to strike up a conversation with them. The ensuing scene is all talk, talk, talk, but a foreboding pall hangs over the conversation even at its most banal, and as the conversation goes on matters become increasingly strained until finally the scene climaxes in a sudden explosion of bloody violence. It’s a testament to Tarantino’s screenwriting skills that the suspense is already built into the film via the script long before anyone sets foot on the set.

Not surprisingly Watchmen was shut out by the Academy. Was it because of its early release date? its bleak, gloomy subject matter? or perhaps because they didn’t want to acknowledge a film that was commonly considered inferior to the source material? In any case, it would have been too much to expect a nod for any of the major categories, but what about the technical categories? If nothing else the technically brilliant Watchmen was certainly nomination-worthy in cinematography, sound, costume design, makeup, art direction, visual effects and, of course, editing. The editing as a whole, which weaves together multiple storylines with clarity and paciness, is superb. But it’s in the individual sequences where it really shines, notably the memorable credit sequence, an extraordinary montage showing a short history of masked heroes, from their glory days to their ignominious demise, hauntingly set to Bob Dylan’s classic ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Coppola and his talented DP, Mihai Malaimare Jr., use state-of-the-art HD cameras to evoke the classical high contrast B&W photography of yore, and the results are stunning. The stationery camera setups and static, formalized compositions allow the viewer to luxuriate in the richly detailed B&W imagery in a way rarely seen since the ‘60s – which should offer hope to those lamenting the inevitable transition from film to digital technology.

In an interview Giacchino said that Up “”is essentially a love story about Carl and his wife Ellie, and so it was just about going there and finding out what that means. What I ended up doing was this very simple waltz that grows and twists and turns.”

The “twists and turns” of his lovely waltz, which begins as a jaunty swing melody and ends as heartbreaking elegy, reflect the joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments of Carl and Ellie’s marriage over the years in the extraordinary 4 ½ minute “married life” montage. With a dizzying assortment of instruments (clarinet, violin, piano, xylophone etc.) and a few changes in tempo to suit the shifting tones of the montage, Giacchino weaves together a rich tapestry of emotions out of that “simple waltz”, transforming the composition into an emotionally complex commentary on the seasons of a marriage. Film score fans lamenting the relative paucity of melody in modern film scoring should be rejoicing over Michael Giacchino’s melodious main theme - steeped in nostalgia and sounding as if it might be coming from your grandmother’s scratchy old Victrola, it is perhaps the most instantly recognizable movie music of the last decade.

One reason You, the Living took three years to make is because its director, Roy Andersson, dislikes digital effects, and so all the sets had to be meticulously constructed by hand the old-fashioned way. And a lot of sets had to be made because the film is comprised of 50 short vignettes in many different locations - bars, restaurants, dining rooms, bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, offices, barbershops, train stations etc. The sets are particularly important, too, because Anderssen’s static long takes draw attention to them - he wants the viewer to be aware of his characters’ surroundings because they reveal much about the characters and their place in the world. When his camera focuses its gaze on a lonely man watching television in his living room, for example, Andersson says he wants to “emphasize the existential vulnerability and loneliness of the individual by accentuating the room.” Few filmmakers, indeed, place as much significance on set design as Anderssen.

In Watchmen’s great opening scene, a masterpiece of editing and sound design, an unidentified intruder attacks The Comedian at his high rise apartment. Set to Nat King Cole’s ‘Unforgettable’, the brilliantly choreographed mano-a-mano, which concludes with The Comedian being hurled to his death through a plate-glass window, is enhanced immeasurably by the precisely mixed, remarkably vivid sound effects - punches landing with punishing force, glass shattering with ear piercing sharpness, weapons whistling threateningly through the air, and through it all, Nat’s incongruously silky smooth singing.

Less a police thriller than a thoughtful character study/morality play, this Romanian drama focuses on the crisis of conscience experienced by a cop assigned to an investigation that could result in the arrest and incarceration of a high school boy merely for smoking weed. The remarkable concluding scene - in which the authoritative Police Captain makes the cop read the definitions of various words from a dictionary – moral, law, conscience etc. – in order to remind the cop of his duties as a police officer – provides a perfect example of the unbridgeable chasm between Hollywood popcorn movies and serious art films. Hollywood would never allow a police drama to conclude in this fashion, yet the Captain’s subtle abuse of power through dictionary discipline is more riveting than a summer action movie’s worth of high speed car chases and violent shootouts.

You don’t have to be a member of PETA or a vegetarian to acknowledge there’s something seriously wrong with the food industry. Did you know that cows spend much of their lives knee deep in feces? Did you know that chickens are pumped full of antibiotics to make the breast meat plumper? If you don’t care about the humane treatment of cows or chickens, you might care that the cow shit routinely finds its way into your meat and that the inoculation of chickens could create antibiotic-resistant bacteria which could potentially infect humans. These are just two alarming facts in this eye-opening documentary which persuasively argues that the corporations controlling the food industry place maximizing profits ahead of the health of consumers.

It’s a good thing that the Academy increased the number of nominees to 5 this year because it was a particularly strong year for animation (I wasn’t able to find a spot for the enjoyable Sita Sings the Blues and I didn’t even see The Secret of Kells or A Town Called Panic). Still, Pixar continued to reign supreme with Up (though I wouldn’t put up too much of a fight against those preferring Coraline or Fantastic Mr. Fox). A hugely entertaining adventure story about a widowed balloon salesman who attaches thousands of balloons to his house and takes off seeking the adventure he and his wife always dreamed about but never found, Up mixes sophisticated adult themes (see Best Scene below) with delightful kid’s stuff (talking dogs, goofy purple birds etc.) to genuinely disarming effect.

Note: I was disappointed that Partly Cloudy, Pixar’s charming short that played before Up in theaters, was not even nominated in the Best Animated Short category. I thought it was better than all of the other nominees, especially the dreadful Granny O’Grimms’s Sleeping Beauty.

How do you write a catchy, thematically relevant ditty in less than 30 seconds? Look no further than They Might Be Giants’ sole contribution to Coraline. An upbeat yet vaguely creepy ode to Coraline sung by her “other” father, the exhilarating song sprints from beginning to end lickety-split and possesses a refreshing sense of spontaneity as if it were being made up on the fly.

Whatever reservations I have regarding Avatar’s story (and there are many), there’s no denying the brilliance of its groundbreaking use of CGI and 3D. Rather than merely tossing things in front of your face like the usual 3D film does Avatar achieves something much more impressive: it immerses you in its world so completely that you actually feel as if you’re part of the action. That’s a significant achievement, and for that it deserves the accolades it’s receiving. Nevertheless, I suspect that Avatar is not going to hold up well. It won’t be long before its groundbreaking technology becomes commonplace, and when its novelty value wears off, all it will have to offer is its thrice told tale and poorly developed characters.

When I saw Up at the theater I felt mildly out of place as a middle-aged man among a crowd of stay-at-home moms and their children. Until the “married life” montage started, that is. Detailing the ups and downs of a married couple over the years, the montage featured remarkably adult subject matter, including infertility, unfulfilled dreams, and death and grieving! Suddenly it was not I but these children who seemed out of place. What did they know about such things? What were they doing here munching on their popcorn and twizzlers? Damn, I love Pixar.

NOFFSCAR AWARDS TALLIES
46 films represented from 18 categories out of the 142 eligible films seen

3 Wins
Inglourious Basterds
Up

2 Wins
Watchmen

1 Win
Avatar
Coraline
Food, Inc.
The Hurt Locker
The Informant!
Julia
Police, Adjective
Precious
Tetro
You, the Living

12 Nominations
Inglourious Basterds

7 Nominations
The Hurt Locker

6 Nominations
Coraline
Up

5 Nominations
Fantastic Mr. Fox
A Serious Man
Watchmen
You, the Living

3 Nominations
Antichrist
An Education
Il Divo
The Informant!
In the Loop
Police, Adjective

2 Nominations
Avatar
Drag Me to Hell
The Good, the Bad, the Weird
The House of the Devil
The International
Moon
Tulpan

1 Nomination
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Black Dynamite
Bright Star
Broken Embraces
Brüno
Burma VJ
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Crazy Heart
District 9
Food, Inc.
Humpday
Julia
Mary and Max
Me and Orson Welles
The Merry Gentleman
Precious
Second Skin
A Single Man
Sita Sings the Blues
Star Trek
Summer Hours
Tetro
Two Lovers
Tyson
The White Ribbon

First things first: A word about eligibility. NOFF’s Rules and Regulations Committee, which is comprised of myself, has instituted a rule change. Unlike last year, when only films with an official commercial release date during the awards year were eligible for consideration, NOFF has decided to extend eligibility to films from previous years that did not receive a commercial release in the U.S. until the awards year. Were this rule not enacted several award-worthy films would have to be excluded from consideration, including The Hurt Locker, which according to the IMDB was first released commercially in 2008 in Italy. The rules governing film festival showings have not changed: films shown only at festivals in 2009 are not eligible, whereas films shown at festivals in 2008 (or before) but not released commercially until 2009 are eligible.

In accordance with the above rules I have seen the following 142 eligible films:

Adam
Adoration
Adventureland
Amreeka
Antichrist
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Avatar
Away We Go
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, The
Battle for Terra
Big Fan
Black Dynamite
Blind Side, The
Box, The
Bright Star
Broken Embraces
Bronson
Brothers
Brothers Bloom, The
Brüno
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
Capitalism: A Love Story
Chéri
Christmas Carol, A
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coco Before Chanel
Cold Souls
Coraline
Cove, The
Crazy Heart
District 9
Drag Me to Hell
Duplicity
Education, An
Every Little Step
Extract
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fighting
(500) Days of Summer
Food, Inc.
Fragments
Funny People
Gigantic
Girlfriend Experience, The
Good, the Bad, the Weird, The
Goodbye Solo
Great Buck Howard, The
Hangover, The
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Haunting in Connecticut, The
Headless Woman, The
Home
House of the Devil, The
Humpday
Hurt Locker, The
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Il Divo
I Love You, Man
I Sell the Dead
Informant!, The
Informers, The
Inglourious Basterds
International, The
In the Electric Mist
In the Loop
Invention of Lying, The
Invictus
Is Anybody There?
It Might Get Loud
It’s Complicated
Jerichow
Julia
Julie & Julia
Knowing
Last Station, The
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Life is Hot in Cracktown
Limits of Control, The
Lorna’s Silence
Lovely Bones, The
Lymelife
Maid, The
Mary and Max
Me and Orson Welles
Men Who Stare at Goats, The
Merry Gentleman, The
Messenger, The
Monsters vs Aliens
Moon
9
Nine
Observe and Report
Of Time and the City
Orphan
Paper Heart
Paranormal Activity
Passing Strange
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Perfect Getaway, A
Police, Adjective
Pontypool
Ponyo
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Princess and the Frog
Public Enemies
Road, The
Second Skin
September Issue, The
Serious Man, A
Sherlock Holmes
Single Man, A
Sin Nombre
Sita Sings the Blues
Skin
Soloist, The
Star Trek
State of Play
Stoning of Soraya M
Sugar
Summer Hours
Sunshine Cleaning
Taking Woodstock
Terminator Salvation
Tetro
Thirst
Treeless Mountain
Trick ‘r Treat
Tulpan
24 City
Two Lovers
Tyson
Under the Sea
Uninvited, The
Up
Up in the Air
Watchmen
Whatever Works
Where the Wild Things Are
White Ribbon, The
World’s Greatest Dad
You, the Living
Zombieland

So now I invite you to take a look at the nominees and let me know your thoughts. Do you generally agree with my selections or have I got it all wrong? Tell me what you think. And don’t forget to return on March 14th to see which nominees take home the NOFFscars!

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Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)

Does Avatar mark the beginning of a new age in cinema? According to James “I’m king of the world” Cameron, yes. But he’s only partly correct. Technically, the film is a definite leap forward, as it utilizes 3D and CGI better than any film ever has. Too bad, then, that Cameron’s storytelling is as primitive as his technology is advanced. Technically, Avatar indeed represents a new age; story-wise, however, it’s stuck in the Stone Age. Cameron uses his pen like a cudgel, battering us over the head with a heavy-handed ecological message in a trite tale involving a war between the peace-loving, tree-hugging Na’vi of Pandora and an invading army of greedy earthlings. Predictably, the 10-foot, blue-skinned spiritual inhabitants of Pandora are in tune with nature and recognize the interconnectedness of all things, while the rapacious humans literally bulldoze their way through the Na’vi’s pristine habitat in search of a precious energy source. The fact that the Na’Vi blue-skins could be an alien version of the North American Indian, and that one of the humans joins their cause and carries on an obligatory (interspecies) romance with one of them, confirms that Cameron’s unimaginative script merely transplants the plot of Dances with Wolves into his futuristic sci-fi fantasy. No wonder one critic memorably dubbed the film Dances with Smurfs! If this hackneyed plot weren’t lame enough, Cameron also indulges in risible attempts to inject some modern relevance into the cornball proceedings with several oh-so-obvious references to Iraq and Afghanistan, including a hawkish General’s use of the latest military catchphrase, “shock and awe”, which is sure to get some eyeballs rolling.

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Letting Go of God (Julie Sweeney, 2008)

I’m a non-believer, but frankly I’ve found most pro-atheist films rather distasteful, notably Bill Maher’s smug Religulous, which exhibits an arrogant, intellectually superior condescension toward believers and betrays an attitude every bit as self-righteous as the most dogmatic Bible-thumper. I suppose that’s why I found Sweeney’s one-woman monologue so refreshing. Instead of adopting a superior tone and resorting to cheap shots at easy targets like Maher does, Sweeney offers something much more interesting and substantive: a poignant, highly personal account of her emotionally conflicted transition from Christianity to atheism. Her conversion to atheism was a gut-wrenching process because, for her, letting go of God also entailed letting go of a very real part of herself and her past – which is why you get the sense that she’s mourning her loss of faith. She still wants to believe, but can’t, because the lack of evidence and her insistence on logical thinking simply won’t allow it. In the end, her heartfelt yet persuasive repudiation of God, which “attacks” theism from within, is sure to hit far closer to home of the theist than a barrage of smug-bombs tossed by an entire army of militant atheists.

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Invictus (Clint Eastwood, 2009)

Eastwood has been on a downward spiral ever since his canonization following Unforgiven, and I’m afraid the spiral has reached its nadir. Last year he made two of the year’s worst films, and he’s at it again this year with Invictus, a heavily dramatized account of Nelson Mandela’s efforts to unite South Africa through rugby. The country’s rugby team, once a symbol of apartheid, has been struggling but Mandela, in his infinite wisdom, realizes how important the team’s success at the upcoming World Cup will be to the country. And so through Mandela’s encouragement the team’s captain, Matt Damon(!), leads the team to a triumphant victory in the climactic “big game” over a seemingly invincible club, bringing the entire country together in the process. In detailing the team’s stirring quest for victory Eastwood gets himself firmly stuck in inspirational goo, reducing Mandela’s story to facile melodramatics and simplistic “can’t we all just get along” sentimentality, and confirming once and for all that the canonization of Eastwood the director is one the biggest jokes in the critical community.

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It’s Complicated (Nancy Meyers, 2009)

Were it not for Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, as a divorced couple carrying on an affair together, this uneven romantic comedy, which indulges in overly broad comedy one moment, then shamelessly tugs at your heartstrings the next, would be quite awful. But the onscreen rapport between these two consummate professionals is good enough to transform the subpar sitcomish material into something marginally palatable.

1. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

Like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Lynch’s mesmerizing film occurs entirely in the mind of his dying protagonist, “Betty”, a would-be Hollywood starlet who (re)casts herself in fantasy as the heroine of a mystery story, the solution to which only leads her back to grim reality. In telling Betty/Diane’s sad story Lynch and Naomi Watts - whose shocking transformation from a naïve, endearingly optimistic aspiring actress named Betty to a disillusioned failed actress and jilted lover named Diane is utterly astonishing - expose the filthy underbelly of Tinseltown, whose glittery surface conceals a darker reality of shattered dreams, broken hearts and lost identities.

Angelo Badalamenti’s eerie score sets just the right mood for Lynch’s mysterious and haunting imagery. Listen to it here.

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2. No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007)

After a couple of disappointing films, the Coen brothers made a stunning return to form with this powerfully directed crime thriller, which boasts the most memorable villain of recent memory in the form of Javier Bardem’s coin-flipping, bolt gun-brandishing Anton “Friend-o” Chigurh, the personification of pure evil whose hideous bowl-cut alone is enough to give you the heebie-jeebies. Aside from Bardem’s unforgettable portrayal, perhaps the most notable aspect of No Country for Old Men is its lack of a film score. I am a certified film score connoisseur, but the Coen brothers prove that music is not a requirement for great cinema (much to the chagrin of Carter Burwell, I’m sure). Indeed, the brothers’ inspired use of sound (and silence) makes the need for a composer completely superfluous. Consider the unbearably suspenseful sequence in which Chigurh pays an unexpected visit to Llewelyn’s hotel room. Seriously unnerved, Llewelyn sits oh-so-quietly on his bed, nervously clutching his gun as Chigurh stealthily walks up to his door, stops for a few seconds just behind it, and then slowly walks away. Llewelyn sees the hallway lights go off underneath his door and waits in complete silence for an agonizingly tense few moments until…WHAM!…Chigurh breaks the silence by blowing the lock off the door with his bolt gun. Most directors would try to ratchet up the tension with suspenseful music. Not the Coens, who demonstrate that light footsteps and the soundless anticipation of imminent violence can be far more nerve-racking than an orchestra’s worth of heart pounding music.

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3. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007)

Dominik asserts himself as one of the most promising directors working today with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a poetic, elegiac Western which both celebrates and debunks the legend of Jesse James through the eyes of Casey Affleck’s Bob Ford, whose childhood idolization of James turns to fear and resentment in adulthood when the reality of the man fails to live up to the myth living in his head. If you’re like me and you consider American film of the ‘70s to be the last golden age in cinema, then chances are you’ll greatly appreciate The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, an unusually ambitious genre film which would have seemed perfectly at home between, say, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Godfather.

Listen to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ memorable score here.

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4. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

Brimming with imagination, populated by amazing creatures and as richly animated as anything by Disney, Miyazaki’s enchanting animated tale, one of the few sheer delights of recent cinema, ties an Alice in Wonderland type fantasy to an exciting adventure story, while touchingly celebrating courage, friendship and personal identity.

Listen to the great Joe Hisaishi’s memorable score here.

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5. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)

As the steadicam follows Celine and Jesse, the reunited lovers from Before Sunrise, around Paris and finally up to Celine’s apartment, Linklater and his actors, who once again deliver uncannily naturalistic performances, achieve a rare sense of intimacy, as if we really were following this couple around, eavesdropping on their private conversations. Even more remarkable, the evident rapport between Hawke and Delpy is so authentic, so genuine and true, that the essence of romantic love seems to have been captured on the celluloid itself. If you’re tired of watching mindless Hollywood romances, check out Before Sunset, a genuine thinking person’s romance (but make sure to watch 1995’s Before Sunrise first!).

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6. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)

Combining grainy documentary-like authenticity with dark romantic poetry, The Wrestler might best be described as a vérité fairy-tale, working both as a naturalistic glimpse inside the brutal world of professional wrestling and as an elegiac requiem for washed-up wrestler Randy “the Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke). Rourke takes the viewer on an emotional journey with his “broken down hunk of meat”, never stepping wrong in a complex, multi-faceted performance of body-slamming, heart-rending, tear-shedding and blood-letting power. Having failed in his attempt to create a new life for himself after wrestling, Randy finds himself compelled to return to the only place he knows: the ring. With an aura of tragic fatalism hovering over him, Randy enters the ring for the last time, determined to recapture his past glory, if only for one fleeting moment before departing the arena forever. Poignantly, he succeeds, climbing the ropes to salute the crowd and deliver his signature “Ram Jam” for the final time, and then leaping through the air, onto the canvas, and into cinematic folklore.

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7. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)

Employing myriad visual/aural techniques to convey the manic, fragmented, disoriented state of mind of the addict, Aronofsky captures the subjective experience of drug addiction with harrowing, visceral intensity in Requiem for a Dream, an experimental near-masterpiece which concludes with an extraordinary montage sequence that cuts back and forth between the four main characters as their sad, tragic fates unfold, building to an astonishing crescendo, aided by Clint Mansell’s already-classic music, that would have impressed the Griffith of Intolerance.

Listen to Mansell’s amazing score here.

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8. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Eschewing the gratuitous gore and CGI effects of the typical modern Hollywood horror movie, Let the Right One In favors a slow burn atmosphere of mounting dread with an emphasis on story and characterization, while still managing to pull off several memorably horrific sequences, notably the soon-to-be famous “pool scene” featuring remarkably imaginative decapitations and dismemberments. The result is a stunningly original horror movie which combines an ingenious re-imagining of the vampire flick with a surprisingly sweet romance/poignant coming-of-age tale - or, given that one character happens to be immortal, a poignant coming-of-agelessness tale.

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9. Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)

In Haneke’s creepy thriller, the stable relationship of a happily married couple is upset when they start receiving mysterious videotapes of their home under surveillance. But who’s sending them? Haneke never definitively answers. Caché works best, I think, as a self-reflexive acknowledgment of the director’s godlike role in manipulating his characters and the audience. For it is Haneke, is it not, who’s really sending those surveillance tapes? Certainly the fact that Haneke stages many scenes with the same kind of static, voyeuristic camera set-ups we see on the surveillance tapes lends credence to this reading. That, above all, implicates Haneke in the “crime”. After all, it links the director’s shooting style to that of whoever is shooting the tapes. As such he can be seen as the omnipotent presence hovering above and beyond the proceedings, manipulating the characters in the filmic universe of his own creation. But there is enough going on in this provocative, formally inventive film to support multiple interpretations, which is why it is probably destined, like Blow-Up before it, to be analyzed ad nauseam by stuffy film school professors everywhere (not that that’s a good thing).

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10. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon, 2007)

My favorite documentary of the 2000s was not about the Iraq War but about the Donkey Kong War, the monumental struggle between good and evil waged by video arcade geeks Steve Wiebe, the nice guy underdog, and Billy Mitchell, the villainous nerd and undisputed Donkey Kong champ whose rock star status among video gaming geeks even landed him a silicon-filled trophy wife. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters may not have been “the best” documentary of the decade, which was a particularly rich period for the form, but it was certainly the most entertaining one.

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Here are a few additional recommendations:

Memento
You Can Count on Me
Amores Perros
In the Mood for Love
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Ghost World
Devils on the Doorstep
The Piano Teacher
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Bully
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Magdalene Sisters
The Son
Bus 174
Capturing the Friedmans
Touching the Void
Kill Bill Vol. 1
A Tale of Two Sisters
Sideways
Open Water
Shaun of the Dead
Maria Full of Grace
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Red Lights
Grizzly Man
A History of Violence 
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
The Lives of Others
Exiled
United 93
Ratatouille
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
There Will Be Blood
Once
Zodiac
Cloverfield
WALL•E
Bigger Stronger Faster*
Inglourious Basterds
Up
A Serious Man
In the Loop
Coraline