The Brink’s Job (1978)

You’ve got a cast that includes Peter Falk, Peter Boyle, Gena Rowlands, Paul Sorvino, and Warren Oates. You have William Friedkin in the director’s chair. What could go wrong?

The Brink’s Job is a heist film and in almost all heist movies something has to go wrong. There has to be some element to the operation that trips up the plan and prevents the criminals from getting away scot-free. I won’t give away the hitch that unravels the heist in this film, but I will say that it is Friedkin’s inability to direct comedy that nearly spoils The Brink’s Job.

The first third of this film shows the struggles of Tony Pino, a small time Boston safe-cracker, played by Peter Falk. Pino’s trouble with safes and with the law are played for comedy. Most of the gag’s are prat falls, slapstick, and corny. Falk’s performance is a variation of his Columbo persona, but with a cartoonish Italian accent. Gena Rowlands is completely wasted as Pino’s girl, a devoted woman who turns a blind eye to her man’s business. Peter Boyle  and Paul Sorvino are solid, but not stellar. It’s only Warren Oates who gets a chance to shine, but even in the one or two scenes where the film focuses on his character he’s never given the chance to deliver the sort of performance that has made Warren Oates a beloved cult figure.

When the film operates only as procedural action film or thriller it is at its best, but these moments are few and far between. With the first third of the film leans to heavily towards comedy and the final third of the film trying too hard to make commentary about criminals as pop-culture icons, the middle of the film, where the heist is planned and executed is left raise the picture from ho-hum to slightly above average. In total, The Brink’s Job delivers a good deal of entertainment. It’s just when you look at all the elements in the equation it feels like it should add up to far more that just a good film.

Whiffs (1975)

If no military farces were made between M.A.S.H. and Whiffs then the latter has a right to claim itself as the most hilarious military farce since M.A.S.H.

Whiffs is a cavalcade of uninspired jokes. It’s Gould and company reacting in grossly over-exaggerated physical gestures to the effects of various chemical warfare agents being tested on them. That or it grown men riffing on the word gas like a pack of elementary school boys getting off on their own potty-mouth humor. Either way, it’s a losing battle for the audience. Beneath this haze of low-low-brow humor is the faint strains of social and political satire. A comedy about bio-chemical warfare might work well in the hands of Terry Southern, but Malcolm Marmorstein is no Terry Southern. He’s not even George Armitage who penned Roger Corman’s less-than-amazing, Gas-s-s-s. What Malcolm Marmorstein appears to have done is made a cottage industry out of writing M.A.S.H. influenced comedies for Elliot Gould. Before penning this stinker he also wrote the anagrammatically incorrect S*P*Y*S.

I shouldn’t just beat up on the writer. Certainly Ted Post, the director of Whiffs has to share some blame. However, I have seen other films by Post that were far more enjoyable than this picture. The Baby, Magnum Force, and Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker are all more entertaining, but then again none of them are comedies by intention. Perhaps, comedy is just not Post’s strongest suit.

Now, should I dare to brave S*P*Y*S*? It does start Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland and it was directed by Irvin Kershner. Could it be as wretched as Whiffs?

http://www.videodetective.net/flash/players/movieapi/?publishedid=2408

Lonely Boy (1962)

Musically, I could not care less about Paul Anka. As a documentary, I find Lonely Boy endlessly fascinating.

Lonely Boy is one of the earliest celebrity documentaries. It predates Don’t Look Now and hints to the endless celebrity reality shows cranked out by today’s cable channels. This short film is part teen idol expose, part promotional film designed to introduce the star to a larger audience, and part experiment in various observational and cinema vérité techniques.

Throughout the picture Paul Anka and his manager attempt to present Paul as both a normal young man looking for that one special girl and a highly manufactured musical commodity making bold moves to break into newer markets. The subjects of the film have a clear agenda for the piece, continue feeding Paul’s teenage female audience the image and sound that drives them wild, while showing those in the music industry that Paul can appeal to a more sophisticated, older crowd; the kind that frequent upscale night clubs. Directors Koenig & Kroitor capture all of this, but they capture something deeper.

A good percentage of the film is presented as fly-on-the-wall observation. We see Paul sing. We see him, in only his underwear, rushing to get dressed before taking the stage. We see him on the Atlantic City boardwalk signing autographs and giving girls kisses on their cheeks. Then there are isolated moments with either Anka or his manager, direct interviews telling the audience just how Anka has risen to fame, while all the while making it seems like he’s just an ordinary kid with big dreams, a solid work ethic, and some raw talent. In a word, he’s wholesome. Then, midway through the documentary the film changes from being about Paul’s rise and his adoring teenie-bopper fan-base to an artist in transformation.

Performing for the first time at the illustrious Copacabana night club Anka must not only win over an older clientele, but also the nightclub’s owner. The filmmakers capture a strange, almost foreign, ritual as young Anka presents gifts to the older club owner. A piece of jewelry to match the owner’s pinky ring and a blown up photograph of Anka for the club’s office are as much symbols of gratitude as they are offerings. This owner is a king-maker who can make or break Anka’s career. As the ritual unfolds before the camera kisses the owner on the cheek. However, the camera misses the kiss and from behind the camera we hear Koenig or Korinor ask Anka and the owner to re-do the kiss. Both subjects laugh and agree to do it again. It’s such a transformative moment for the film, showing new sides to both Anka and the club owner as they drop their pretenses and joke for the camera, as well as showing the makers’ abilities to manipulate a situation.

It would be naive to think whole film is without manipulation, either by the filmmaker or its subjects, one always knows a hand or force is guiding the process. Still, a stark contrast is struck when we see this hand at play. For, there is no technical reason why the filmmakers had to leave in the first, failed, attempt at a kiss. Its inclusion does show a change in behavior in the subjects. At the same time it is a moment of manipulation in a scene about manipulation. After the incident in the nightclub, the question of just how constructed the entire piece is becomes magnified. When the film closes with an unknown passenger in Anka’s car saying he’s unsure why he’s on the road with Anka and that he should be back home with his wife and kid, Paul Anka responds to the man by saying that the guy is not fooling anyone and that he knows exactly why he’s on the road with Paul. The unspoken answers is – because he is part of the business team. Paul is this man’s job and this is how he makes a living to support his family. At the same time, the mention of a family, a wife and child, comes right after we’ve heard Paul singing his hit “Lonely Boy” – a syrupy lament about Paul’s inability to find the right girl. The stranger’s line suddenly echoes Paul’s lyrics. Two seemingly unconnected elements get spliced together to equal the summation of Paul Anka, a manufactured lonely boy singing about his search for the woman who will complete his life, but really he’s just trying to make it big in show business.

http://media1.nfb.ca/medias/flash/ONFflvplayer-gama.swf

Tomorrow’s Saturday (1962)

Tomorrow’s Saturday cheer-up. Michael Grigsby‘s Free Cinema documentary makes exquisite use of sound to connect a loose pastiche of images depicting the weekend activities of an English town. Starting in a factory and ending after a night in the pub, the film wanders from children at play, to a busy marketplace, to a soccer match. Everything is leisurely captured in black and white, with a wide range of grays. Routinely, the audio precedes the images we are about to see. This technique creates a curiosity for what lies around the corner.

Even when the source of a sound is reveled the film’s lack of fully synchronous sound keeps the viewer from a full entrance into the lives of the townfolk being documented. The noise of a factory or the boisterous singing in a pub forever keeps us from evesdropping on the whispered words shared between co-workers and friends. Upon our final arrival at the futbol match we are left outside the field’s stone walls. The sounds of the match spill outward to the crowds filing inside. These moments of great noise give way to quiet, contemplative shots of lone figures traversing the landscape. A compelling tension is born of the intimacy of the imagery and the spatial boundaries of the audio.

City of Gold (1957)

City of Gold is the story of Dawon City, a remote Klondike mining community that boomed during the gold rush. Smooth camera movements retrace photographs of Dawson City at its prime, while the film’s narrator, Pierre Berton, retells stories passed down from his father, just one of the many men who trekked to Dawson in search of fortune. The film is book-eneded with bucolic images of children at play, old men on porches, and dilapidated structures filmed in present day (1957) Dawson City.  The film sets up a contrast between the calm, empty present and the wild, adventurous, bustling past.

While certainly not as colorful as Deadwood, this sentimental documentary impresses me with its ability to pluck beauty from the banal and to mix emotions with history. It’s quite easy to see how this film would inspire Ken Burns. Burns cites this film, by the Canadian team of Wolf Koenig and Colin Low, as the film that inspired him to dramatize history by adding movement to still photos. Breathing life back into dead matter is not easy, but people like Koenig, Low and Burns make it look easy. I’m growing  to appreciate their ability.

Soul Power (2008)

I once read a quote attributed to Yoko Ono. In short it said that if you filmed something, anything, even the banal or mundane and then buried the film for 50 years it would be important. I like this idea of film as a time capsule and I’d love to know where I buried this quote from Yoko Ono.

Soul Power is a time capsule film. Shot in 1974, footage of a legendary, but now forgotten, soul concert in Zaire finally gets assembled and released in 2008.Time has done wonders for the film. More time could be spent placing the concert in context and stressing the relevancy and politics behind the concert, much like this film’s sister picture When We Were Kings does for the boxing match that took place in Zaire along with this concert. However, to suddenly interject modern interviews into this footage might diffuse the beauty and energy from what is on display. What the film lacks in a strong narrative it makes up lyrical beauty. The grainy 16mm film soaked with color and the fragmented editing play out like a dream or memory.