Dated "edgy" 1960s comedy #95258672804678437580276

When Ted Turner bought the rights to the films that became the so-called "Turner Library" that formed the backbone of the programming in the early days of TCM, I think the Warner Bros. movies only went through about 1950; in any case the 1950s and 1960s Warner Bros. stuff always seemed to show up rather less frequently. That's been changing in recent years, giving me the chance to catch a lot of new-to-me stuff. One such movie was the 1966 sex comedy Any Wednesday.

Jane Fonda stars as Ellen Gordon, who lives in a Lower East Side ground floor apartment with a couple of friends. She works at an art gallery, in charge of some rented artworks at a swanky party. There, she's impressed into service by John Cleves (Jason Robards). He's just called his wife, and for reasons that will soon become obvious needs to make it sound as though he's calling from out of town, which is why Ellen has to play the part of the long-distance operator. (Nowadays, of course, John would just call his wife on the cell phone and caller ID would identify the number regardless of where in America John was calling from.)

As it turns out, John is stepping out on his wife Dorothy (Rosemary Clooney), claiming to be on business trips while he really stays in New York every Wednesday evening for his assignations. He immediately falls for Ellen, who is smart enough to say hell no to John's ideas. But circumstances change for her as she gets appendicitis, while both of her roommates move out because the apartment building is turning to co-ops and none of them can afford the price of the new co-op.

This gives John his in. He'll buy the co-op for Ellen, or at least have the conglomerate he runs buy it so that he can claim it's an "executive suite" and get a tax write-off. Ellen can live there, and John can visit every Wednesday evening for those assignations with nobody being any the wiser. Except, of course, that this arrangement is going to be found out eventually, or else we wouldn't have much of a movie.

That discovery is courtesy of John's secretary Miss Linsley (Ann Prentiss long before she screwed up her life). A man with whom John is doing a business deal, Cass Henderson (Dean Jones), is coming in to town and can't get a hotel room. So Miss Linsley helpfully offers Cass the executive suite, since logically it should be used for things like this. But we all know that there's a woman there, and boy isn't everybody going to be surprised when Cass shows up and finds Ellen. He gets the not-quite-right idea about what Ellen is, since he has no way of knowing that Ellen lived there before John turned the place into the executive suite.

And, as you can also guess, Dorothy is going to find out about the suite and walk in on Cass, Ellen, and John. So Cass and Ellen have to play the part of a married couple to keep the ruse going. Dorothy, meanwhile, hears Ellen's voice and knows she can recognize it from somewhere, although not yet from the fake telephone operator. All sorts of complications are going to ensue before the film reaches an ending that may or may not be happy for each of the characters.

Any Wednesday is based on a Broadway play, and it's again the sort of material that I can kind of see being popular with the self-styled urbane theater-goers of the mid-1960s. On the big screen, however, it's fairly stagey, and 60 years on it's decidedly dated. It also doesn't help that Jason Robards is playing a sort of character I don't much care for, that being the man who lies his way through everything, with the lies having to get bigger and bigger to maintain the ruse.

People who like this sort of look at New York City as it was in the 1960s may enjoy Any Wednesday, but I was glad to see the end of it.

The film you have just seen is an improvisation

I'm always up for something I haven't seen before. So some time back when TCM had a double feature of films directed by John Cassavetes, I recorded both of them. It took me a while to get around to watching either, in part because I also had A Woman Under the Influence on my DVR, but recently I watched the first of the movies, which was in fact Cassavetes' directorial debut: Shadows.

Hugh (Hugh Hurd) is a black jazz singer living in New York, although he's not exactly successfull because his style is no longer in style. He's got two younger siblings living with him, both of whom are lighter-skinned than him: Ben (Ben Carruthers) and Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), although thanks in part to the low quality of the film stock you wonder whether both of them could have passed as white, which is important to the plot such as it is.

One night at a party, Lelia meets Tony (Anthony Ray), who seems like a nice enough guy, and also seems sincerely interested in Lelia. But of course, Tony is white, which is going to be a problem for some people since interracial relationships are still an issue for some people today. One of those people, in fact, is Hugh.

Meanwhile, Ben is flailing in his career as a would-be trumpeter, and seems to spend more time with his white friends Tom and Dennis going to bars and trying to pick up women than he does trying to get jobs. Ben is also obviously trying to find his place in the world, and as we'll see he's not always successful in this, although it's also not necessarily because of race since his white friends are just as aimless.

Hugh hosts a party where he tries to set Lelia up with a nice black man, and when Tony shows up later looking for Lelia who is out with the guy Hugh set Lelia up with, Hugh is none too happy. Will anybody be able to find love? Will everybody overcome racism to live in harmony?

The end of the movie contains a title card claiming that Shadows is an improvisation, which is only partly true, and also a big part of the problem the movie has. Cassavetes' original intention was for the entire movie to be an improvisation, but that proved to be a disaster when he showed the original cut to audiences. So he reworked the movie with some scripted stuff, and the result is the movie we have today.

I think Cassavetes should have spent more time coming up with a good script rather than trying to be daring and experimental. There's some good ideas here, but the actors don't come across as talented enough to be doing improv, so a lot of it feels rather amateurish. Ultimately Shadows is an interesting attempt, but one that doesn't quite succeed.

City Hall

When I write up posts on movies and schedule them, I generally try to do it in such a way that I don't have a couple of movies starring the same person or being in closely related genres coming up in rapid succession. But at the same time, I've got enough extra posts written up that, combining it with moving posts around when the following month's TCM schedule comes out, I sometimes wind up with stuff that in a perfect world I wouldn't have right next to each other. With that in mind, the next post is on a relatively recent (by the standards of my blog) movie set in New York City politics: City Hall.

John Cusack plays Kevin Calhoun. He's a Deputy Mayor in New York under Mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino). Deputy Mayor, in New York, is an appointed, not elected position, and the job duties are, as I understand it, not clearly defined in the legal sense. Kevin is a bright young thing who moved from the South to be someplace more to his liking politically, and thinks he can change the world, which is why he's gotten into politics. He's also an acolyte and admirer of Mayor Pappas and a very capable underling.

One morning, at the same time Pappas is giving a speech in Manhattan, things are happening in the outer boroughs, specifically Brooklyn. Tino Zapatti is a member of one of the Mob families, which of course means that he's involved in crime, although he's not at the top of the food chain. Cops such as Eddie Santos are trying to maintain law and order so that parents can send their children to school safely. All of this is about to come together when Santos and Tino get involved in a shootout. Both of them die, but there's another bullet that hits an innocent bystander: a young boy on his way to school. Worse for the political class is that this is a young black boy, which causes all sorts of political considerations thanks to the class and ethnic divides in New York's seemingly hegemonic Democratic Party. (OK, I don't think political parties are actually named here. But when you get a jurisdiction where one party seems to have a huge majority, the political fight is really within the party.)

Mayor Pappas comes across as someone who's come up from the bottom and made good, and can present himself well to the Manhattan grandees who represent the rich old money, the people who are fine with mass immigration and ethnic strife because that's happening in the outer boroughs instead of their leafy districts. But he also understands the corruption inherent in the system and is willing to make deals with the aldermen and others who are spokesmen for some of the other coalitions within the Party, such as Frank Anselmo (Danny Aiello), who has considerable sway within Brooklyn's Italian-American working class. They've been haggling over how to get a new transportation connection from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan built, and the shootout between the cops and Mob threatens to complicate that even further.

Marybeth Cogan (Bridget Fonda) is a lawyer for the police union. She has a different view of the corruption that's going on behind the scenes, as she realizes that various parts of the Party are going to try to turn on the cops for their own political benefit. Her job is more to protect Santos, the cop who's been killed, but Santos isn't squeaky clean himself. The closest to squeaky clean, and that's only because he's so darn naïve, is Calhoun, who wants to get to the bottom of what happened in the shooting. He has no idea what he's getting himself into as the conspiracy grows.

City Hall is an interesting movie that, however, probably should have been written as one of those limited-length TV series that you get on cable nowadays. There's a lot going on here for a movie that runs a bit under two hours, and the material I think would have worked better over several hour-long episodes, giving the various subplots time to open up and make character development work.

One thing I did find interesting about City Hall is watching the movie in the light of current-day political developments in the city. I watched the movie before the Party's primary election that put an avowed socialist in the catbird's seat to win the general election in November, although obviously this post didn't get scheduled until well afterward. The current (as of this writing) mayor was rejected by the Party in the wake of conveniently-timed corruption charges made when the mayor squawked about some of the Party's bad policies on a federal level. You don't get to the top without being corrupt, and none of the do-gooders avoid the corruption, either. It's more a question of when internal Party politics results in the so-called do-gooders falling out of favor.

Getting back to the movie City Hall however. As a story of its own it works reasonably well with good enough performances. It's just the sort of thing that feels like it could have been so much better.

At least somebody laughed

Some time back TCM had a two-movie salute to actor John Ritter, who is of course better known for his TV work on Three's Company than the movies he made, so both of the movies were new to me. First up will be the bittersweet comedy They All Laughed.

The movie opens up with John Russo (Ben Gazzara) taking a taxi down to the heliport in New York City. John is a divorcé and private detective who is going to the heliport in order to see, or at least watch, Angela Niotes (Audrey Hepburn). Angela is the subject whom John is investigating, as Angela's husband is worried that she might be having an affair. In addition to his work, John is carrying on a romance with country singer Christy (Colleen Camp). But it's a long-suffering romance for her, as John seems to be unable to make a committment. As a sign of this, John almost immediately asks his cab driver, "Sam" (real name Deborah although John keeps calling her Sam) on a date.

Also working at the detective agency is Charles Rutledge (John Ritter). He too is following a woman whose husband is worried that his wife, Dolores (tragic Dorothy Stratten) is having an affair, this one with a man names Jose nicknamed "The Gaucho" (Sean Hepburn Ferrer, Audrey's real-life son). Charles and another colleague at the agency, Arthur, follow Dolores from a Broadway show to a hotel where she meets Jose, and then eventually back to an apartment where Dolores and Jose enter through different doors but have a way of getting into each other's apartment from the inside. So they're clearly having an affair.

But things get complicated. Charles finds himself falling in love with Dolores, which is a fairly obvious ethical problem for him. Arthur makes things even more difficult by arranging for Charles to meet Dolores up close and personal. I guess in some detective work that would make sense, but it does make things a mess for Charles. Meanwhile, John finds himself falling for Angela, and Arthur comes up with a ruse for John and Angela to meet. And, of course, John is also already in multiple other relationships. Christy realizes what's going on, so she decides that she's going to try to get back at John by starting a relationship with Charles. And there's still the issue that Charles and John are supposed to be private investigators following women they're falling in love with.

They All Laughed is the sort of movie where you can see why director Peter Bogdanovich wanted to make material like this. However, the production was tragic as Bogdanovich fell in love with Stratten and her estranged husband killed her and himself before the original schedule release of the movie, which as a result was dedicated to her. (Dorothy Stratten's tragic end is, of course, the subject of the Bob Fosse movie Star 80, which is definitely worth watching.) As a result, the release was held back, and limited, with nobody really wanting to see it.

It also doesn't help that Bogdanovich, being the director and having co-written the screenplay (with the actor who played Arthur, a man I didn't recognize and didn't go on to big things), made it way too complex for the film's own good, as though he was making a film to please himself without paying heed to the idea that it would need to pay back its costs at the box office. There are a lot of good ideas here, but they don't jell as well as they probably should or might have had Bogdanovich had stronger studio heads overseeing the project.

Those who love New York City, as well as those who like Peter Bogdanovich and/or Audrey Hepburn, will definitely like They All Laughed. But it's not quite going to be to everybody's taste.

Something Wild (1961)

Another of the movies that I recently got around to watching to try to free up some space on my DVR is Something Wild.

Carroll Baker plays Mary Ann, who goes to night school and lives with her mother (Mildred Dunnock). One night, while walking home from school through a park, she's accosted by a strange man and raped, although of course this being a 1961 movie it's shown with innuendo and never referred to as rape. In any case, it's obvious what happened as Mary Ann tries to clean both the literal and figurative residue of the assault off of her.

Mom doesn't understand what's caused such a change in her daughter, and the daughter isn't about to tell Mom the truth. Eventually, not being able to handle Mom any longer, Mary Ann runs away to get a room in a seedy apartment, and a job as a cashier at the local five-and-dime. A sign of how seedy it is is that one of her neighbors, Shirley (Jean Stapleton) brings home random guys and seems to be willing to offer Mary Ann a man, too, obviously not knowing that Mary Ann had been raped.

Mary Ann's co-workers also treat her less than well, also being unaware of her past. This keeps going on for a surprisingly long amount of screen time until one day, Mary Ann has decided she's had enough and decides that she's going to throw herself off one of the bridges that connect the various boroughs of New York.

She's saved by Mike (Ralph Meeker), however. Mike works for one of the taxicab companies as a mechanic, and lives in two run-down rooms in the basement of a dilapidated apartment building. Since Mary Ann won't tell him where she lives, Mike takes her to his place to let her sleep off her melancholy until she can recover and go home.

At least, that's what Mary Ann expects. She gets a bit of sleep, and even has a bite to eat with Mike. But Mike seems to figure that perhaps this will make Mary Ann fall in love with him, so he propositions her. Big mistake, even if Mary Ann hadn't been raped. Mary Ann wants nothing to do with Mike's drunken advances, so she kicks him, blinding him with one eye. Not that this is going to stop Mike from pursuing Mary Ann. Even though Mike is unconscious, Mary Ann doesn't leave, because she can't. Mike has locked the door and Mary Ann can't find the key.

Mike goes out to work and comes back, leaving Mary Ann trapped inside the apartment. (I'll assume she quit her job, which is why nobody comes looking for her.) Mike lets Mary Ann know that he's not going to give her up because he's a failure in life and sees her as his last chance. But really, what woman would want to be with a man who treated her this way?

Something Wild is an interesting, if very slowly paced movie. It runs 113 minutes, with the suicide attempt not being until almost halfway into the movie, and most of the second half being in just the two rooms of Mike's apartment. As such, some people are going to find it a bit of a slog. There's also the ending, which some people might find controversial.

But Baker and Meeker do ultimately make the material work, and are helped by the cinematography of New York City as it was about 1961, and not the glamorous parts of Manhattan that we normally get in New York-set movies of the era. People from New York City, or those interested in the city's past, will definitely like this aspect of the movie.

So even though Something Wild has its share of flaws, I'd say that it's worth a watch. It got a Criterion release which means it's a bit pricey, and doesn't show up on TCM enough. Note that there was a mid-1980s movie with the same title but different story which is also on DVD.

Serpico

I had the opportunity to record Serpico during one of the free preview weekends. It's going to be on again multiple times this week, starting at 4:45 PM tomorrow on Showtime 2, so I sat down this weekend to watch it and do a post on it here.

Based on the true story of New York police detective Frank Serpico, the movie starts off in 1971 with his being shot in the face and taken to hospital. The police chief, Sidney Green (John Randolph) is informed, and he worries that Serpico was shot by another cop. After all, several police officers have already said they wouldn't mind seeing Serpico shot.

Flash back several years, to when Serpico graduated the police academy. He'd always dreamed of becoming a police officer, and his family are understandably proud of him. Serpico becomes a patrolman, partnered with an older cop, and it's here that he has his first taste of corruption, when a diner owner offers both of them free chicken soup. Frank doesn't want chicken soup, and is willing to pay for the roast beef sandwich he does want, but the older cop is horrified that Serpico won't just shut up and take the free meal.

Then on the police radio, he hears of a potential rape in progress. He's probably in the closest car, but the location is technically in a different sector, so his partner tries to let the cops in the other sector handle it, which doesn't seem good for public safety. When Serpico does arrest one of the suspects, the other cops pressure him not to take credit for the arrest.

It continues like this, while Frank tries to become a detective and starts dating a woman who studies ballet. Frank is also unconventional in other ways, growing his hair out and wanting to patrol in plain clothes and his own car, since he figures this is a better way to catch criminals. The downside to this is that during one arrest, some cops in uniform don't recognize him (and to be fair, why should they).

The monetary corruption continues, and Serpico contacts Bob Blair (Tony Roberts), a man in the Mayor's office investigating police internal affairs. Blair wants Frank to testify, although that carries the obvious risk that cops will know who threw a giant spotlight on the rampant corruption going on and whom to target. Frank starts thinking about going to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, it's increasingly becoming clear that the corruption isn't just beat cops taking bribes from local businesses and drug dealers, but that it goes all the way to the top, and has for decades. The idea that the brass would be ignorant of what's going on is ludicrous, of course. The police increasingly turn against their colleague Serpico, which is going to lead to his shooting when, during a drug bust, two of them refused to back him up and let the drug dealer shoot him.

Al Pacino gives a pretty good performance, while location shooting greatly enhances the feeling of realism. This is a New York City that's crumbling both physcially and societally, with the police and much of the political class being responsible for a good share of that destruction. Serpico is highly worth watching, and is available on Blu-ray if you don't have the Showtime package.

Serpico is a movie that's relevant 50 years on, largely because police corruption has never gone away, and never will as long as we have a state that has so much power that nobody can enforce all the laws and they have to be enforced arbitrarily. Of course, nobody wants learn that lesson, because you've got half the country that still believes in "law and order", while the other half really cares more about law enforcement being used for their ends against people in the first half than they actually do about corruption and state-sanctioned violence. (And to be fair, Serpico himself is shown to be rather violent when dealing with criminals like the rapists.) One doubts that the lessons that should be learned from Serpico are the ones that will be learned.

Never had it, never will

Overnight tonight at 2:00 AM (so still on Saturday night in the Pacific time zone), TCM is run in The Seven-Ups.

Roy Scheider plays Buddy, who at the start of the movie goes into a tony Manhattan antiques store and asks about some of the items there. A guy delivering bottled water comes in, and he and Buddy have an accident that results in a huge dispute, but enough to bring in the cops. At this point, Buddy hands the cops a box that's been retrieved from the office upstairs. Buddy and the guy with the water bottle, it turns out, are both plainclothes police detectives. Buddy is the head of the group, known as the Seven-Ups because they investigate serious crimes that generally carry sentences of at least seven years, hence the title. But the group is also disliked for their methods which can be violent and are probably not quite legal.

Next up is Kalish, a mobster running a local racket who is meeting at a hotel to collect the money from one of his underlings. That night at home, the doorbell rings, and it's another plainclothes cop with a badge, to take him to headquarters. Only it's not really a cop, and they don't go to headquarters; it's a kidnapping for ransom. And since the victim is a mobster, they can't really go to the cops. After the ransom is paid, a second mobster gets kidnapped in the same way, except that this time the fake cops pull the guy off the street in broad daylight. Buddy witnesses the commotion, and realizes he's got a serious case on his hands.

The mobsters meet at a funeral home to discuss the case, but Buddy has his men be the chauffeurs (you'd think mobsters would have their own drivers), with one of them wired to get evidence. Unfortunately, the mobsters figure out what's going on, and find the guy with the wire. But they decide to turn this to their advantage by putting him in the trunk of the car where the ransom money is supposed to be. However, when the kidnappers find out it leads to a shootout with a dead cop and Buddy wanting answers.

The Seven-Ups has a lot going for it. It was filmed in New York in the era just after it was beginning to come to light who much cops are corrupt bastards and not saints at all. This was also an era of decline for New York City, and the movie captures that atmosphere quite well. It's a much different New York from the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies, and boy does it show. Schneider is quite good in his role, and the story moves along at a fair clip. There's also a memorable car chase. When it comes to New York crime of that era, I think I slightly prefer The French Connection and The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. But The Seven-Ups isn't far behind.

Sadly The Seven-Ups does not seem to be available on DVD, so you're going to have to catch tonight's TCM showing.