This is the third part of a three part post on American movie director Franklin J. Schaffner.  Part One is here and Part Two is here.

Papillon

Another courageous man, in the unlikely shape of a small-time Parisian crook, “Papillon” so-called because of the large butterfly tattoed on his chest.  Set in the 1930’s, Steve MacQueen’s Papillon is sent to Devils Island, a horrific French penal colony in French Guiana, from which there is no return. 

Papillon

Once there, the convicts discover that the real prison is the island, a hostile jungle filled with poisonous snakes and savage crocodiles.  If that were not enough the sea cuts them off from the mainland and is filled with sharks.  For most prisoners acceptance comes quickly and they settle into the appalling conditions, their grim lives only punctuated by the sadistic brutality of the guards.  Life is cheap on Devils Island and the prisoners quick learn that they are worthless, except as slave labour. 

But not Papillon.  He is determined to escape.  Time after time he tries, fails and is horribly punished.  

Schaffner gets a magnificent performance from Steve MacQueen.  He ages, degenerates really, before our very eyes.  No movie star looks here.  As various wardens try to break his spirit, he changes into a damaged older man, his body battered, his skin grey from years in solitary confinement.  However his spirit continues to carry him and it is this that we watch. 

Papillon (Steve Macqueen) after five years in solitary confinement

Schaffner’s jungle is beautiful but absolutely lethal.  His human beings look weak and vulnerable in it.  It serves to make McQueen’s bravery even more potent.  Man against everything.  At the end of the movie McQueen finally escapes and somehow it becomes a victory for every man. 

Exposition and the story

 One of the reasons that Franklin Schaffner’s movies were both intelligent and successful, was that he had a marvellous gift for exposition.  Exposition, the telling of information onscreen, is the bane of every movie that tires to deal in complex ideas.  Franklin Schaffner excelled at effortlessly communicating ideas and concepts that had to be understood for the movie to work. 

In the Warlord he had to communicate the concept of Droit Du Seigneur (The right of a Lord to a bride’s first night of marriage) to an audience that had no understanding of it.  He did these by making the subject a heated argument amongst the principal characters.  In doing so he placed it in its historical, sexual and emotional significance, quickly and in a way an audience could understand. 

In Papillon many characters walk on and off camera, and impart critical information about Devils Island and the penal system, as a way of seeking Papillon’s help or getting his favour.  The Nazi counter-intelligence sub-plot which informs us about Patton is a stroke of genius.  These movies are textbook examples of how to do exposition superbly.

Papillon and Louis Dega (Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman) on Devils Island

Islands in the Stream

In my view one of the few movies that truly understands Ernest Hemingway.  I suppose that it was no surprise that the man who told stories of Alpha males should film the great American novelist.

Again the teaming with George C Scott produced results.  If Scott was able to look like Patton, he was almost a double for Ernest Hemingway himself, in Islands.  Scott is Thomas Hudson, a sculptor, a father, a man who has dealt with his own demons by removing himself to a small Caribbean island.  His only friends are a few rough men, sailors and roustabouts who accept him for who he is.  A proud, troubled and difficult man, Hudson has a dark side that makes him aggressive and dangerous, especially when drunk.  The loose community of the Island gives him the freedom to expose that side of himself, from time to time.

George C Scott as Thomas Hudson in Islands in the Stream

Islands roughly follows the story of Hemingway’s novel.  In the first half, the movie concentrates on Hudson’s relationships with his sons and his divorced wife.  It is notoriously difficult to film Hemingway and these are amongst the most moving, perceptive interpretations of Hemingway ever filmed.  Franklin Schaffner captures the terse poetry of Hemingway’s language beautifully.  In the key scene between Hemingway and his beautiful, intelligent wife, very few words are spoken, yet it is crystal clear that they are still very much in love.  The scene is touching and ineffably sad.  That said, the first half of the movie also contains a shark attack scene, which is one of the most tense, dramatic and thrilling scenes ever shot in a movie.

The second half of the movie finds Hudson motivated to help refugees fleeing the war in Europe, to enter the Americas illegally.  This is different, action oriented, with a harsher tone.  The scenes here are clever and exciting, but they lack the delicate, lucid beauty of the first half of the movie.

Hudson and his crew run the blockade

This is a good but flawed movie.  The problem is not with the movie but the source material.  The writing of Islands in the Stream was a problem for Hemingway.  He started writing it and put it down.  The second half was written some fifteen years later, after many life changes.  The two halves were edited together after Hemingway’s death and published.  So Islands is really two books, a meditation on art and family, and a story of hard decisions made in pursuit of freedom.  The movie reflects that.

Franklin Schaffner made a good movie of all of this and that was huge achievement in itself.  Worth seeing for the quality of the performances and the real questions of manliness and courage that the movie raises.

Life and the Spirit

 In all of Franklin Schaffner’s movies there is an underlying connection to a greater spirit, a mystical energy that his warrior men are forced to engage with.  In the Warlord, Charlton Heston tries to take the virgin Bronwyn by force, before invoking the Droit Du Seigneur.  On both occasions strange events protect her, and force him to reconsider.  By invoking the Droit Du Seigneur and then breaking his side of the agreement he unleases forces which, initially, he does not understand.  Pagan idols gain a power over this most rational of men.

In Patton, there are strange, unsettling scenes where Patton tells of his belief in reincarnation.  There is a surreal and strangely moving scene near the beginning of the movie where Patton is seized by a vision and directs his driver to an ancient battle site.  Here, he goes into a virtual trance state and retells of his life as a Carthaginian commander, two thousand years earlier.  His ability to understand and anticipate the Germans verges on the visionary, almost like the gifts of a religious mystic. 

The most blatant insertion of a spiritual presence is in Papillon, where he has two surreal out-of-body visions which crystalise his determination to escape, at some kind of soul level.  These scenes contrast completely and utterly with the brutal realism of the scenes of Papillon’s life in prison.  The scenes are so powerful that they completely change our perception of the movie.  Even the troubled Thomas Hudson in Islands is touched by something spiritual.  As he lies dying, Thomas Hudson sees a bright, white light and the movie implies that he is seeing another existence, as a reward for his courage and endurance.

Somewhere in this attachment to the spiritual, is the essence of what makes Franklin Schaffner’s movies great.  To be a Schaffner hero for a moment and myself overreach, Franklin Schaffner reminds me of Holbein.  Holbein was the dutch portrait painter who painted the powerful nobles of the English Tudor court of king Henry the Eighth.  Like Holbein, Schaffner draws portraits of powerful men and also like Holbein, he searches for the mystical connection to whatever makes these men what they are.    

The Big Why

The English philosopher R.A. Collingwood said that the purpose of Art was to ask the question but that it could not provide the answer.  Seen in that context, all of the  movies discussed above are art. 

Franklin Schaffner movies take the view that assertive Alpha men are necessary, if only to nurture freedom. 

Raw male power, Richard Boone as Bors in The Warlord

 In all of the movies discussed, each man has or comes to, a deep conviction that the world has to be made, that the world is a product of our decisions.  That regardless of our good intentions, both good and ill spring from our actions, that no man can achieve a perfect result, a perfect victory.  This integrity, this faith in the real world is what makes Franklin Schaffner’s movies so vital.  It makes the movies adult and big in spirit and explains why they retain their ability to engage us.

I described the endings of Franklin Schaffner’s movies as satisfying which they are.  However he never tries to answer the big dilemmas that his heroes’ actions lead themselves to.  The Warlord ends with Heston’s Norman knight, wounded in body and soul, journeying back to his Duke to seek forgiveness for the chaos he has unleashed.  He is now a different man from when he left.  How will he be received?  Can he rebuild a life?  Will be able to live happily with the woman he has sacrificed so much for?  Does he deserve to?

In Planet of the Apes we never find out what happens to Taylor’s moral certitude (and superiority) when he finds out the truth about mankind.  The ending is almost a Rorschach test, we can all read it differently.  At the end of Patton, George Patton’s victory is flawed by political machinations and intimations of mortality.  Is he right or are his enemies right, about the need for war?

In Papillon, Franklin Schaffner makes a virtue of a necessity.  The story of Papillon has to end somewhere so we end with his successful escape.  But so much has happened to Papillon, he is a different man from when he was first imprisoned and we have been through all of those changes with him.  Quite simply, what will happen to him?  How will he live?

Even Thomas Hudson, whose life has been a succession of hard choices, makes us question.  Was there a value to his manly courage?  Was it worth it to die, alone and apart from friends and family?

These are great movies made by a perceptive and intelligent director, who had the courage to ask the big questions about leadership and bravery in ways that still engage and excite us.  Bravo, Mr Schaffner, wherever you are.

Details

The Warlord

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Planet of the Apes

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Patton

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Papillon

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Islands in the Stream

Get it in the UK here and the US here

This is the second part of a three part post on American movie director Franklin J. Schaffner.  Part One is here and Part Three is here.

Franklin Schaffner had a reputation as a competent director, coming in within budget and schedule, when he was given the job of directing Planet of the Apes.  It was to be a huge success and changed the way science fiction was perceived in the movie world.  Planet of the Apes made it clear that science fiction could both be an adult story and a global financial success.

Planet of the Apes

Ape Hunters pose after capturing humans

 

A starship with four astronauts aboard, three men and a woman.  As they enter their suspended animation capsules, their captain, Taylor (Charlton Heston) sets the controls for an automated jump through hyperspace, a jump that will cross time as well as space.

Blackness.

The crew come out of suspended animation with alarms screaming and the ship in a death dive, tearing itself apart.  Taylor struggles to land the ship.  As he pulls the crew from their pods he discovers that the woman crewmember’s pod has failed and that she has died of accelerated old age.

The ship crashlands in a lake in a mountainous desert region.  The planet seems earthlike, the air is breathable.  But where in the galaxy are they? And when?

Its Alpha male time again and then some, because we soon discover that Heston’s Taylor is an absolute bastard.  Hiking away from the crash, there is a marvellous scene where Heston’s surviving crew members rag on him.  In short order we find out that Taylor is cynical, arrogant, unfeeling, power-hungry and a born leader.  We also learn that he was fucking the female crew member and it is implied that he abused his power as ship’s captain to do this.

Heston is unfazed by this hostility and leads his crew through a mountainous desert, filled with menace.  Dry lightning fills the skies and the ground is cracked and broken.

Schaffner takes no little trouble to build our picture of this arrogant Alpha male.  The reason for this becomes apparent when Taylor is captured by the apes.  Only a man who truly believes in himself can survive when an entire world is pitted against him. 

Taylor, on trial by a council of apes

There is also a very funny counterpoint that Schaffner keeps running throughout the movie.  Heston is the embodiment of the proud assertive male, held captive by a female chimpanzee scientist.  Worse, she calls him by the pet name “Brighteyes”.  Even worse, she frequently tells Heston that she finds him “cute”. 

Schaffner also has to get credit for one of the most shocking, thrilling, scary scenes ever filmed.  Taylor has encountered wild humans, when suddenly they are being hunted by unseen foes, to the wailing sound of an alien hunting horn.  As they run through a cane break, armed Gorillas on horseback burst into view and begin firing on them.  Franklin Schaffner makes this happen in split-second shots, one shock after another and never gives the audience time to get its breath.  Masterful.

Planet of the Apes is possibly the least politically correct movie ever made.  Throughout the movie, Taylor never falters in his conviction that men and especially himself, are better than apes.  Compare this to the more recent remake of the movie, where humans are seen as “guilty” of some undefined crime against the universe and the apes are just as good, if different.  This moral relativism robs the re-make of much of the original’s power.

And the casting of Charlton Heston was a master-stroke.  We watch and accept Taylor because some part of us knows Heston as a good, kind, honourable man, from all of his hero roles in the past.  Heston subverts that role-type, but we never quite give up hoping that Taylor will evolve into the Heston hero that we know. 

But anyone who has seen the movie knows that Taylor cannot become the much-loved hero that Heston portrays in other movies.  Like almost all of Schaffner’s movies the ending has an integrity that bears out the movie’s themes.

Patton, Lust for Glory

Actually the sub-title could easily have been “the necessity of great leaders”, though it would not have been so catchy.  “Patton” hits all the bases and does a great job of portraying General George Patton.  This is a rounded, provocative, exciting biography of a great and complex man.  Schaffner gives Patton’s life the benefit of all of his perceptive intelligence.  Though Patton’s story lends itself to a sensational treatment, Schaffner never sensationalises the man.  Schaffner had the good sense to see that Patton was already larger than life.  

George C Scott as General George S. Patton

Schaffner makes it clear that how Allies needed Patton and shows how his inspired generalship helped win World War 2.  But he also shows the wily political soldier, sometimes good, as when he forces his British allies to make the right decisions in his support and sometimes bad, as when he politics for promotions and rank.  Schaffner also shows the lonely man, alone and sad, the victim of his own overreaching arrogance and pride. 

Schaffner’s gift for exposition really serves him well in Patton.  He has to do two things in what is in effect a blockbuster movie.  He has to explain how Patton became the soldier that he is and sketch in some of the military history that informs Patton’s generalship.  He also has to show the audience the strategic geography of the Normandy invasion, without confusing them, but so they understand the threat the Allies face.  He does both of these well.  He sketches out Patton’s life with an ingenious sub-story, whereby a Nazi counter-intertelligence team analyse Patton’s life.  These scenes, intercut with the battles, show us why Patton was a great general, the inner man driving the genius warrior.    

General Omar Bradley (left) and General George Patton

George C Scott looked like Patton, had the manner and body, and had the courage to play the whole man, good and bad.  I do not think that a movie like this will ever be made again, certainly not in Hollywood.  It is too intelligent, too visceral, too real.   By turns beautiful and harrowing, it thrills us with the heroism of our forebears and tells the real story of their sacrifice.  And the music has to be mentioned.  Throughout the film, Schaffner uses the sound of hunting horns to underline his scenes.  They make the atmosphere strange, they evoke feelings of danger, of fighting, of hunting, of blood.  A masterful touch in a magnificent movie.

A masterpiece.

Landscape and mood

 For a New York TV director who started out in tiny studios clad in sound proofing, Schaffner had an incredible eye for nature and for the landscape.  In fact, Landscape plays a crucial part in his movies.  He uses it as a backdrop to enhance or counter-point what his characters are doing, it never just “there”.  In the Warlord, the swampy ponds, the fogs, the weird twisted trees underline the unnaturalness of the costal plain and the pagan village.

In Planet of the Apes the landscape is rocky and unyielding.  There is no soft, comfortable place to be found.  The sky is full of lightning, the soil is arid and cracked.  Even the beaches and cliffs seem cheerless under the sun.  And of course the land holds the secret.  The apes know not to go to the Forbidden Zone, a hostile deadly land that tells of their origins.

The landscape has similar properties in Patton.  But here Schaffner does something different.  He uses the beautiful landscapes of Africa and Europe in a new way, to slow the tempo of the movie.  The camera pans slowly and widely over the entire distance of the landscape. providing a contrast to the cruelty of war.  Men are broken, nature is not.

In Franklin Schaffner’s movies, nature always has a role.  Polluted and deceptive in the Warlord, menacing and unyielding in Planet of the Apes.  In Papillon the jungle is jewel-bright and colourful but absolutely deadly.  In Islands in the Stream even the Caribbean is oppressive, a harsh bright sun and an open sea upon which men bob helplessly, no place to hide.   

Part Three of this post is here

This is part one of a three part post about Franklin J Schaffner.  Part two deals with his most famous movies and is here.  Part three talks about his later successes and is here.

Franklin J. Schaffner

March 30^th was the Birthday of Franklin J Schaffner.  One of the reasons I wanted to write about him was that he has virtually disappeared from history.  There are no biographies of him and no current critical studies.  Yet he made a sizable contribution to movies.

Franklin Schaffner was an American movie director, who made some of the greatest films of the Sixties and Seventies.  This was all the more remarkable given the loss of identity that commercial cinema was then undergoing.

Franklin J Schaffner

Getting to the movies

Franklin Schaffner served in World War 2, in the US Navy. After the war, he drifted into television.  Through the fifties he became a a talented TV director, excelling at producing literate, exciting tv plays and movies in the demanding world of New York televison, with its tight budgets and even tighter schedules.  In this time he became an emmy-winning director and worked with Charlton Heston.  The two men became friends and colleagues and had the greatest of respect for each others skills.    

Alpha Male stories

 Franklin Schaffner’s best movies were about leaders, men of power and what they did with that power.  His readings of these men are close, uncompromising and perceptive.  His first big movie was the Warlord, with his friend Charlton Heston as a cold and deadly Norman knight.  Heston’s Chrystagon was a ruthless and cruel man, confident in his power.  Chrystagon relishes his power, which he justifies because he is a dutiful servant of the Duke of Ghent.  It is when he strays from the path of duty that his world becomes hostile.

Similarly in Planet of the Apes and Papillon, strong men strive for freedom with the entire world turned against them.  The fascination for Schaffner was in what these men could reach inside themselves and find, to keep them alive and to win out.   Probably his greatest movie is Patton, who was of course a truly great general in the real world.  Patton uses his power for the good of the free world, in a conflict that Franklin Schaffner himself risked his life in.  This gives him free rein to look at the consequences of decisions made by powerful men and how they manage those consequences.  At some point in all of these movies Schaffner makes the point that power gives men the chance to remake the world. 

No greater Alpha Male, Charlton Heston, Planet of the Apes

Here are some observations about his movies.

The Warlord

The first movie that really brought Franklin Schaffner to the public perception and proved that he could direct a major movie.  He was helped by a superb script/story and by the fact that his star was at the height of his popular appeal and took some real risks with the role.   

Sir Chrysagon De La Crux (Charlton Heston)

Charlton Heston is a poor Norman knight, Sir Chrisagon de la Crux. He arrives in a fiefdom on the Normandy coast, granted to him by his lord, the Duke of Ghent.  His job is rule the fiefdom and potect it from Friesian sea raiders (late medieval Vikings). He brings with him his cruel and arrogant younger brother Draco and his brutish and taciturn sergeant-at-arms, played by the very masculine Richard Boone.  Boone is superb as the scarred, implacable soldier and he steals every scene that he is in.  He is truly scary, monumental presence throughout the movie. 

It soon becomes apparent that the villagers Heston has been sent to protect are pagans, with a thin veneer of Christianity on top.  Nothing is what it seems, the heat and polluted marshes breed suspicion, fevers and foolishness.  Schaffnervery cleverly gets the landscape to do his work for him, using it to suggest chaos and evil.  Everything is dirty, the villager’s hovels are crooked and tumbledown.  The countryside is strange, trees are twisted into unnatural shapes, the streams are unclean.  Schaffner sets all of this up in a wonderful contrast with the Norman’s stone keep.  Their tower sits directly opposite all of this earthy chaos, clean, straight and strong.  Throughout the movie, Schaffner uses the tower to symbolise the antagonism between the rational and the wild.

THe Norman tower in The Warlord

The Normans are all Alpha males and look down on the dirty, ragged villagers.  Power and power-plays become ever more emotionally unhinged as the Normans rule the fiefdom.  Heston falls in love with a beautiful village girl and takes her on her wedding night in an act of Droit Du Seigneur.  The villagers rise up, invite the enemy Friesians to join them and lay siege to the tower.  The siege is exciting on every level, not least because Schaffner uses authentic medieval siege techniques to make it feel very real.  The ending is clever and very satisfying, marrying up Chrystagon’s new-found love with his duty to his Duke.                       

A superb movie, powerful, intelligent, provocative and very underappreciated.  

Part Two of this post is here

This is the second part of an article on John Wayne.  The first part, which talks about how John Wayne evolved his movie persona, is here

By the mid-thirties, the actor that we know as John Wayne existed, even if he was not fully formed.   But something else was needed.

John Wayne and John Ford

In 1938, Ford had become obsessed with the story that was to become Stagecoach.  He needed an actor who was tall, handsome, could ride and use a gun.  The story of how he chose John Wayne is a story in itself but chose him he did.  It was an act of genius.  Stagecoach was a huge success and anyone with a brain could see it was because of John Wayne.

The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach

John Wayne’s performance in Stagecoach is luminous, the light shines out of him.  What Ford shot was Wayne’s essential goodness, his belief in people, his courage, his ability to endure.  Though Wayne’s Ringo Kid was on the wrong side of the law, he was so clearly a good man, an honourable man and very brave.  The contradiction of Wayne’s superb understated acting and his own inner character made for a superb performance. 

Red River

So John Wayne was becoming a star.  But it was not until he made Howard Hawks’ Red River, that he truly became one.  In Red River, he plays Tom Dunson, an ex-soldier, who follows the wagon train to Texas, where he almost single-handedly builds a great cattle ranch.  Threatened with bankruptcy by the post-Civil War economic collapse, Dunson plans the largest cattle drive in history.  In the process of this personal odyssey, he goes from courageous hard-driving cattleman to obsessive, vengeful tyrant.  Wayne played the role with effortless skill, moving from light-hearted to steely to monster.  John Wayne consumes the movie.  This is the dark side of a strong man and you cannot take your eyes off him when he is onscreen. 

Tom Dunson in Red River

And from then on he becomes the John Wayne we know.  What he gives us is the perfect demonstration of courage, how to endure.  He showed us the value of endurance, of commitment, as no other has.  He personified grit and manliness. 

On screen he showed the values that he believed in.  He was gentle with women, polite and soft-spoken until provoked.  There is his wonderful credo in “The Shootist”;

I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted and I won’t be laid a hand on.  I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same from them. 

John Wayne personifies honour, courage and manly struggle.  Only John Wayne can make decency and classical values exciting. 

John Wayne’s characters honour the meaning of courage – it’s easy to take a position when you have nothing on the line.  John Wayne’s characters put everything on the line.

Happy Birthday John Wayne, wherever you are.

Details:

Books

I am indebted to Randy Roberts and James Olsen for their book:

John Wayne: American

I have read much about John Wayne but I believe that their biography is the one book that captures the true spirit of John Wayne.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Movies

Everybody has a favourite John Wayne movie, here are my top ten:

They Were Expendable.

Surprisingly not a cowboy movie.  Directed by John Ford and one the finest movies about the Second World War, John Wayne gives a superb performance.  His Lieutenant Rusty Ryan is a powerful fighter, fiercely individual, who learns to fight with others, for the common good.  Wonderful battle scenes and one of the truest portrayals of the American spirit.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Red River 

John Wayne’s Tom Dunson is a masterly performance, real, complex and violent.  Every scene has a charge to it.  There is so much in this man and the performance is effortless, moving from emotion to motivation to action.  Wonderful.  

Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Searchers

Now considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made.  Like Red River, it is the complexity of Wayne’s Ethan Edwards that makes this a great movie.  At the end of the movie, Edwards has completed his quest and is once again alone.  Framed by the dark arch of the cabin doorway he stands in the bright sunlight. As he stands, he seemingly unconsciously, takes his right arm in his left.  For me it is the most iconic moment in movies.  It is cinema’s Mona Lisa, the moment of indefinable beauty.        

Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Alamo

John Wayne’s personal project and the only movie he directed.  I have loved this movie all my life.  All the criticisms are true, there are scenes that are too talky, a couple of the supporting cast are just plain awful.  But the passion and heartfelt patriotism shine through and the battle scenes are epic and heroic.  This movie is a hymn to freedom.  Wayne is passionate and courageous as Davey Crockett and we understand why men will fight and die for his vision of a free country.  The Alamo is the enduring myth of Americans and as an Englishman I do not truly understand it but this movie makes me feel it.     

Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Quiet Man

Wayne is funny here, which I did not think he could be.  I love this movie for that georgeous, supernatural romantic moment when he sweeps Maureen O’Hara up in his arms and kisses her.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Rio bravo 

Back with Howard Hawks, John Wayne gives a a really engaging performance as Chance, a mature gunfighter who ends up as sheriff against his better judgement.  By turns cranky, wily and brave, this is a funny, clever performance in a great movie.  Epic Hollywood cowboy, the sort of thing we expect from John Wayne.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Stagecoach

The one that started it all.  John Wayne as the Ringo Kid.  A truly thrilling story, real characters, great Hollywood actors and a young star.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

They Wore a Yellow Ribbon

I had to pick at least one from John Ford’s cavalry trilogy and any one is as good as the others.  I picked this one because it has more of a mythic quality about it.  Wayne’s captain Nathan Brittles is larger than life.  When he rides off into the sunset at the end John Ford convinces us that he is immortal.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

The man who shot Liberty Valance

A marvellous movie and a story where I felt like I had lived several lives.  Only John Wayne could have combined so many ambiguous qualities into a character and made him believable.  The ultimate c ontrast between the manly man of the wilderness and the civilised man.  For me the greatest scene in the movie is where Wayne confronts Jimmy Stewart’s politician.  Wayne is in a bad way, dirty, hungover, unshaven, dressed in a storm coat, dirty clothes and drovers chaps, driven by demons that Stewart cannot even understand.  No one ever looked more manly than Wayne does here and the contrast with the bookish Stewart is extreme.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Shootist

John Wayne plays J.B. Books, the last gunfighter (“Shootist”) of the old west.  In 1901 Books is an anomaly, worse, he is dying.  This is a truly sensitive performance from John Wayne, his presence is this movie is enormous.  This is a movie of greats.  Directed by the very talented Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood’s mentor, from a fine story by Glendon Swarthout, it has a very fine cast.  It also gives the lie to the charge that John Wayne was a dumb actor.  As Don Siegel recounted  before his death, so many of the great moments in the movie came from John Wayne.  The harrowing but compelling scenes between Books and the doctor, discussing his cancer, were from Wayne.  They seem all the braver, knowing that he was dying from the same disease as he shot the scenes.  Similarly, the unspoken love scenes between Brooks and Lauren Bacall’s stiff-necked landlady are precise, understated and beautiful.

This was John Wayne’s last movie and no actor could have a better final testament than The Shootist.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

This is the first part of two-part article on John Wayne.  The second part is here

Today is the birthday of John Wayne, a true movie star.

For me growing up, John Wayne in the movies was the reassuring presence of a real man.  Slow to anger, he went from silent to action in a split second.  There was no hesitation in his characters, they were men confident of the finality of violence.  I realise now that this was one of the main attractions of his movies for me, that there was a place of last resort where a man could go, which would allow him to triumph over evil.  John Wayne was the personification of the concept that one man can make a difference.  For me he was the personification of America, of individual freedom and the right of every man to make his own world.

And for many others too.

With John Wayne, more than any other movie star, it is difficult to separate the man from the movie character.  I want to talk about some of the things that I think made him such a wonderful actor.

John Wayne started in movies in the twenties, first as a set labourer, then doing walk-ons.  By the beginning of the thirties he was a name actor, if only a very minor one.  John Ford had taken an interest in him when Wayne did stunts and walk-ons in his movies.  But John Ford blew hot and cold, and John Wayne spent most of the thirties making cheap Poverty Row movies.        

But there were several very interesting attributes to John Wayne that kept him in work in the depression thirties, and later would make him a great star.

Reinventing the Cowboy

Firstly John Wayne was quietly re-inventing the cowboy hero. By the 1920’s a lot of real cowboys had joined the movies, having worked out that there was more money playing a cowboy than being one.  John Wayne was a very observant, intelligent young man and he saw in these men a naturalness and individuality that did not get shown on-screen.  He began to build an onscreen persona, who, though on the side of Good, was less reverential to the law than the rather polished cowboy sheriffs who then dominated the movies. 

He built a natural understated style, at a time when Hollywood still had an inferiority complex, deferring to the classical stage theatre. John Wayne worked extensively on his diction, not to adopt a faux British accent, but to craft and refine a truly American voice. 

He was also superbly professional.  Many actors turned up, did their piece, got paid and left.  John Wayne always knew his lines, knew the story, knew what his character was doing.  He knew movies were a business and brought value to the process of movie-making.  

As Rusty Ryan (with Donna Reed) in They Were Expendable

John Wayne got his first big break with The Big Trail in 1930, where he was the lead alongside Tyrone Power.  Raoul Walsh, directing The Big Trail, swiftly realised that Wayne’s realistic, natural acting style was much more suited for the movies than Power’s rather hammy classical style.  Wayne also impressed Walsh with his grasp of story, character and lines.  John Wayne never needed a re-shoot.  By comparison with the drunken antics of his co-stars John Wayne looked very good indeed. 

However the big break was not to be.  The Big Trail was not a success and John Wayne would have to wait for stardom.  Still, Hollywood began to realise that John Wayne brought real quality to any movie and could even save some that were borderline.  It was a good skill for a working actor to have.

As Tom Doniphon in The Man who shot Liberty Valance

So by the mid-thirties, the actor that we know as John Wayne existed, even if he was not fully formed.   But something else was needed.

To read the seond part of the article, go here

Today is the birthday of Pierce Brosnan, he is 58.  Happy Birthday, Mr Brosnan.

This article is a revised version of a piece I first published two years ago. 

Part 1 deals with Mr Brosnan rise to fame as James Bond and can be found here

Part 3 deals with Mr Brosnan’s masterpieces, the period from 1999 through to 2007, when he made magnificent films like “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “Evelyn” and can be found here

This part also includes references and links to the movies discussed in all three articles.      

Having made the break with conventional expectation…..

Seraphim Falls
Brosnan has talked on the record about how he had failed to get roles because he was considered too handsome, too pretty, how Matador and Julian Noble was his answer to that.

In Seraphim Falls he goes to what is for him an unexplored movie style, the western. The movie opens with a cowboy, heavily bundled in furs, cooking a rabbit in a snowy forest. He looks up and we see a hairy, bearded man and realise its Pierce Brosnan. His face looks as if carries all the sorrows of the world. He stands and looks around at the snowy vastness of the Ruby Mountains of New Mexico. All is peaceful; the only sound is the crackle of the fire. As he starts to kneel to his food, a shot ring out and he falls to the ground.

And it is a pretty shocking opener for a western vengeance movie, a chase though the wilderness of America. Brosnan is being tracked by Carver (Liam Neeson), who is obsessed with killing Gideon (Brosnan). Is Gideon the good guy or the bad guy? Should we want Gideon to live or Carver to catch and kill him?

In a way Seraphim Falls is the measure of Brosnan’s work as an actor. A few years earlier we would have assumed that Brosnan is the hero. But now, after The Tailor of Panama and Matador, we just don’t know. I think that he has always calculated his screen persona to have this effect. I think he revels in finding ways to keep it fresh.

Brosnan plays Gideon as a man burdened by a terrible guilt. Once again, a lot of his interpretation is in the physicality of the character. He walks as though pursued by something he cannot shake off. He is always looking inward and his conversations with others are notable for the degree to which he is detached and simultaneously holding some inner dialogue.

And here the rage, the power, is in him from the beginning, a rage to live. Gideon wants to live and flees from Carver. Brosnan plays him as a wild animal of man, a soldier, a killer, a mountain man. Gideon is resolute, almost silent, his face locked in a grimace of anger, guilt and a confused desire to survive. Brosnan gives him the walk of some homicidal soldier, marching along, part killer, part beast. And yet when he speaks, his voice is educated, measured and knowing, a soft growl. The voice does not belong to the body; it belongs to another man, another time. This is one of the deliberate contradictions that keep us watching Gideon.

Brosnan plays Gideon as a dried husk of a man, tough as leather, driven onward only by his own indomitable will. He stares but does not see, he kills competently, without remorse, he moves on. Yet, in the company of a simple farming family he weeps with such anguish that that we share his pain, yet we still do not know why he cries. In any other actor this would become tiresome, but this is what Brosnan does so well. His performance is calculated and magical; he shows us how the strength of a man can battle with his inner pain and still function. We understand that Gideon is tied to Carver in some fatal way, but we do not know how. He invites us to come see the crisis, the battle of the self, and like every hero’s journey, we are drawn to know the answer.

With respect to Liam Neeson’s measured and powerful performance, this is Brosnan’s movie. There are long stretches where there is only Gideon and the landscape. We stay with the movie because Brosnan progressively reveals the growing desperation of Gideon, the increasingly desperate stare, the cracking voice, the confusion in him as he recedes from humanity and cannot really understand what people are saying.

Without Brosnan, Seraphim Falls could be just a western chase movie. He elevates it, by giving us a character study that enthrals us, as his story unravels.

Butterfly on a Wheel (“Shattered” in its DVD release)
…is a mystery within a mystery. Gerard Butler (the 300) is Neil Randall, a corporate high-flyer and Maria Bello is his wife Abby. They have a wonderful life, a designer home and a beautiful baby daughter, Sophie. Suddenly a violent psychopath appears in their life. The psychopath is Tom Ryan (Brosnan) a mystery man who tells them he has kidnapped their child and will kill her if they do not do as he says. He then proceeds to wreck their lives.

Tom Ryan is the absolute concentration of anger, hatred and cruelty. Holding their child is frightening enough but it swiftly becomes clear that Ryan is only just this side of sane, and Neil and Abby’s fear that they might tip him over the edge, increases the tension ten-fold.

This is a Brosnan master-class. There is no gradual build-up, just an outpouring of anger, hate and control at a colossal level. From the moment he appears on screen, Pierce Brosnan gives a blistering performance of great intensity. Some off this we have seen before, the quickness of an animal, the inhuman stare, the sadistic enjoyment of another human’s plight. Some of it is new, like the unnerving Irish voice, cold, measured but about to slip over the edge into ranting madness. He makes Ryan mercurial, changing mood on the young couple in a split second. Hell, this is scary stuff; you really do not know what is coming next. If Brosnan was evil in the Tailor of Panama and Matador, he was redeemed by the fact that those movies were black comedies. Here he is pure evil, the personification of death, or is he?

Neil and Abby want to know why this man is persecuting them, and for different reasons so do we. Tom Ryan clearly has a motive, but what could it be to drive a man to these extremes of hate? The clue is in the duality that Brosnan plays so well, Ryan is another character under tension from two extreme and opposite forces, and the revelation of these explosive energies is the climax of the movie.

There’s a powerful intuition about Pierce Brosnan’s acting. “Butterfly” is frenetic, high energy, it unfolds at a very fast pace. Brosnan matches it; he is scary because he is fast, physically and mentally quicker than Neil and Abby, outwitting them at every turn. In so many of his movies Pierce Brosnan understands the tempo, the pace and the timing that will make the movie a success. This is one of them.

Married Life
This movie just passed me by, I don’t know how it was marketed, maybe my attention was elsewhere. But I was intrigued by the concept of the movie and glad I caught up with it.

Married Life is set in 1949, and initially centres on a relationship between two friends, two businessmen, stockbrokers I think, in upstate New York. The milieu is the professional middle-class and the requirement back then was for men to dress well for work. So the early scenes are all beautifully cut suits, fedoras and brightly-polished shoes, in bars of polished brass and glossy cherry wood. Pierce Brosnan is one of the few modern movie stars who understand how to wear clothes well, and in that respect alone he is right for the part.

Brosnan is Richard Langley, a handsome, elegant bachelor who is a very successful ladies man. His best friend is Harry Allen (Chris Cross), who is known to be very happily married to a lovely wife. The movie opens with Harry telling Richard that he is having an affair with a young beautiful blonde, Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams) who he loves. Unfortunately, as their lunch ends, Harry chooses to introduce Kay to Richard, who is instantly attracted to her. In that moment, in a very genteel, imperceptibly quiet way, all their relationships start to go to hell.

This is a subtly drawn, intelligent and wryly funny story of a group of friends, whose secrets are exposed and who have to deal with the resulting chaos. It needs actors who understand how to discipline themselves, play their parts like a jazz ensemble, not over-emote. In a stand-out cast, Brosnan is the best, the living heart of the movie. As Richard he has the task of stealing the love of Kay and betraying his friend Harry. But Brosnan refuses to play the role as a conventional cad. His Richard is considerate, softly-spoken and ever so slightly duplicitous. Brosnan’s ability to portray worldly confident men serves him well here, because he simply inhabits that friendly confident grin, the considered aside lightly delivered. Nothing is too visible, too showy, he acts with the lightest of touches.

It is also a cerebral role, with Richard delivering the 50s style narration that holds the movie together. Once again he has a role with two contradictory pulls, though without the intensity of previous roles. Richard is a man and without making a fuss about it the movie delineates the difference between fifties men and modern new age men. Richard is puzzled by his sudden attack of love but rather than spend time analysing it he goes after what he wants, Kay. Brosnan plays Richard as an essentially good man, who will not stop until he has got what he wants. It is the way that Brosnan plays out the set-backs, the embarrassing moments, the final betrayal that gives this film so much of its enjoyment. Watching Brosnan derail Richard’s smoothness, panicky pauses as he tries to say the right thing, the relaxed slouch as he (internally) frantically backpedals is a delight.

The role of Richard suits Brosnan down to the ground, with its style, thoughtful action and quiet good humour. He tackles it with love, verve and quiet dedication. This is an actor at the very top of his game, who knows how to produce an original screen presence and evoke many emotions in the audience, as he leads his character to the story’s culmination. In the final analysis Married Life is a character study, a quietly intelligent movie that asks some very searching questions about being married. Pierce Brosnan gives us a character that is truly worthy of the movie. This is not Bond, not Desmond Doyle, but it is virtuoso acting.

The story up till now…..

So here I am, with my view of Mr Brosnan’s movies. I have been slightly partial and missed out a couple of movies from the last ten years. I have missed out Mamma Mia. I admire Pierce Brosnan for having a punt at it, much as I admire any man who has a go at anything outside his comfort zone. But as a role I do not think it tells us anything about the actor.  I have missed out the most substantive movie of the last two years “The Ghost Writer” but i have such as aversion to Tony Blair, real or imagined, that I cannot bring myself to watch it. 

A personal plea… 

Like many men, I rate the Thomas Crown affair as one of the greatest movies of all time. Also, like many fans of the movie, I have been waiting a long time for Thomas Crown 2. I do not know about all you other men out there but I want that movie. So please Mr Brosnan, make the movie soon!

Anyone who has stayed with me through this long piece will have guessed that I am a fan. But writing this has made me see Pierce Brosnan’s work more clearly and I think it is truly worthy of appreciation.

He is a movie star but more importantly he is a superb actor. He is a great actor because he understands how to give us a character. He does not burst onto the screen and emote for 2 hours. He builds a character, showing him to us bit by bit, building a person and, in the end, we see that character as he does. If some movie stars are one note, Pierce Brosnan is a symphony.

In all of his films he shows an enormous respect for his roles and for the audience. This would not be enough if he did not fill them with life. But he always gives energy to his characters, a truth that makes them very real. But it is his discipline, his hold on the integrity of his characters that make him a superlative actor. He builds characters for us to see and marvel at and that is the one true and best thing that an actor can do.

Thank you very much for your movies Mr Brosnan, they are much appreciated and greatly enjoyed.

Reference Information

Here are movies discussed in the article, in the order in which they appear:

Goldeneye

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Grey Owl

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

The World is not Enough

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

The Tailor of Panama

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Die Another Day

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Evelyn

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

After the Sunset

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Matador

Get it in the UK here and the US here. 

Seraphim Falls

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Butterfly on a Wheel

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Married Life

Get it in the UK here and the US here.

Today is the birthday of Pierce Brosnan, he is 58. Happy Birthday, Mr Brosnan.

This article is a revision of a piece I wrote about Mr Brosnan’s movies some two years ago.  The first part, covering his emergence as Bond and is growth as a star actor is here 

Masterpieces and changes
For me Brosnan really hit his stride with The World is Not Enough and I think this emboldened him to become even more creative. His next movie was a risky undertaking and turned out to be a masterpiece.

The Thomas Crown Affair
A re-make of the original Thomas Crown Affair by Pierce Brosnan’s own Irish Dreamtime productions, this is a superb movie that knocks the original into a cocked hat. This version plays out an art-heist that is colourful, exciting and fun. Brosnan plays the head of a Mergers and Acquisitions boutique bank, whose rogue alpha male superiority leads him into pulling heists.

One of the problems with the original was that Steve McQueen did not understand who he was playing. In the romantic and action scenes he was fine, in the scenes where he plays Crown as a businessman he was embarrassingly bad. The truth is actors rarely understand how to play businessmen. They play them well when they play them as greedy, as stupid, as unable to relate to other people. They do know how to play them positively, as gamblers, risk-takers, fighters and winners.

Having worked in Mergers and Acquisitions myself, my assessment is that Brosnan’s Thomas Crown is pitch-perfect. Early on there is a wonderful scene, where Brosnan strides confidently across the floor of his boutique bank, left hand in his pocket. He slips from one conversation to the next and as he nears his office he stretches out his right hand and says to the guy sitting at the next-to-last desk “Give me good numbers Jimmy”. Gesture, timing, tone of voice, posture are all perfect, the complete high-risk banker. Brosnan is just as good in all his other scenes. He clearly understands who this man is and he shows us, the audience, all the little facets of character that make this man the successful Alpha male he is.

Brosnan really inhabits this role. He has often been considered the successor to Cary Grant and here he shows the qualities that got him nominated. He is funny, suave, sophisticated and charming. Playing a rich banker gives him the chance to play wealthy and cultured and he does it with silky ease. He is a classic body-shape and the clothes in the movie (bespoke tailored by Campagna of New York) are perfect on him, he has the sensitivity and sensibility to understand the importance of those tailored suits.

And this movie is a feel-good movie, there is no violence, the real world is somewhere outside, along with Mergers and Acquisitions.  Brosnan dominates the movie, yet the scenes are with Rene Russo as his love interest/adversary are balanced, intimate and beautifully paced. Brosnan is a generous co-star as he shares the screen with Russo. And Brosnan plays off Russo, perfectly in character. There is a pivotal moment where the masterful, successful Thomas Crown has to admit to Russo that she is the first woman to visit his secret Caribbean home. By doing so, he loses a skirmish in their battle of wits and admits, by implication, that their relationship is more than just sex. He plays it with just the right amount of confusion and embarrassment.

And Brosnan plays Crown as a manly man, successful, a solitary risk-taker having the adventure of a lifetime, who is suddenly confused by the appearance of love. This movie was Brosnan acting as a classic Hollywood movie star and he did it to perfection. Audiences loved it.  For me it is a favourite film.

Deliberately messing it up….

The Tailor of Panama
This was the movie that told us that Brosnan was never going to be content to be an action hero. It starts with Andrew Osnard MI6 (Brosnan), being exiled to Panama in disgrace. So I thought it was going to be a kinda Bond spy movie….

Well, everybody gets it wrong sometimes, including me. The Tailor of Panama is a truly black comedy about British and American interference in other countries. And Andrew Osnard is a truly evil man, even by spy standards. Amoral and self-obsessed, he invents a wholly imaginary conspiracy against the Panama Canal, with the intention of rehabilitating himself with his boss and getting back to a plum posting.

To do this he finds vulnerable and foolish people and uses them without mercy. He intimidates, blackmails and threatens these people in order to make them do his bidding. Brosnan holds nothing back in the role, is truly frightening, completely evil. Osnard watches these people like a cat watching a mouse, takes pleasure in their pain and then you can see him calculating how to inflict more. He is intelligent, articulate and with a quickness and a savagery that scares the life out of his victims. Brosnan finds a cruel, sadistic part of himself and has no compunction about unleashing it onscreen. His face does the work here, the smile becomes a sneer, the twinkle in the eye becomes a glare. There is no concession to his earlier hero persona at all, he takes a hammer to it in this movie and clearly has a great time doing it.

Along with a wonderful cast he makes a movie so blackly funny, you have to laugh or you would cry. An unexpected departure for an actor who clearly had something to say.

Die Another Day
Next came Die Another Day, Bond is betrayed, to the North Koreans. Brosnan gives us a Bond who is not only vengeful but paranoid, slightly world-weary and short of patience. There is a new ruthlessness about Bond and Brosnan plays him as a man who wants satisfaction, whose impatience shows in his abruptness and his short fuse. And it’s time for Bond the hedonist, who meets his like in CIA agent Jinx (Halle Berry). As Bond, Brosnan throws himself into sex with Jinx and their sex scene is passionate, athletic and feels very real. This was Brosnan’s darkest Bond, his thinly veiled anger being acted out the set of his shoulders, the light in his eye and the tone of his voice. In many ways this was Brosnan’s Bond at his most real.

When Daniel Craig made Casino Royale, a lot of nonsense was talked about James Bond, by newspaper journalists who had no understanding of Bond or his story. Like many men I have long been a James Bond fan. I loved Casino Royal and thought Daniel Craig was a tough hero. But the real Commander Bond? The archetypal Bond of Fleming’s books?

Brosnan was the better Bond. Sean Connery defined Bond and consequently cannot be beat, but Brosnan comes a close second.

Evelyn
I have to be honest; I did not want to see Evelyn. I had heard that it was sentimental, set in fifties Ireland (a period in English history defined by poverty and parochialism) and about a trial, none of which interested me. But my wife, that gorgeous girl, told me it great and she was surprised, given my appreciation of Brosnan, that I was not interested in it. At the time I was absorbed by Brosnan the action hero, worried that he had descended into soap opera.

I was an idiot. Evelyn is a wonderful movie and I am happy to tell you why.

Evelyn is the true story of Desmond Doyle, an Irish painter and decorator, who, in fifties Ireland, has the misfortune that his wife leaves him. His three young children are taken into care by the Catholic Church, acting at the behest of the Irish government. Desmond loves his children and this working-class man pits himself against the state to reclaim them.

Brosnan is marvellous as Desmond Doyle, he gives a breathtaking performance. His Doyle is a loving father, irresponsible and charming. Brosnan already had that part down pat, the cheeky grin, the quip, the smooth charm. But he goes much deeper into the character, playing Doyle as a frightened, desperate man. Brosnan gives us a man who simply cannot be still, whose courage comes in sudden bursts. He switches emotions so quickly, so that we can see Doyle go from a courageous speech to shrinking with fear, looking around furtively for an escape from the consequences of his own courage. Brosnan hoods his eyes, bites his lip and draws furiously on a cigarette, eloquent in fear and frustration. But when Doyle talks of his love for his children, his voice is calm and clear, full of love and conviction. Brosnan gives Doyle a voice from the heart, a conviction that will move the planet on its axis.

But above all of this, it is the painstaking care and respect that Brosnan shows for Desmond Doyle’s life that makes this such a marvellous performance. If Doyle acts like a fool, Brosnan shows that it is lack of knowledge that makes act that way, that he has a quick mind and an honest heart. He never coarsens Desmond Doyle or insinuates he is less of a man for growing up in poverty. Rather his Doyle is very honest about his life, has an innate pride in himself (for all his fear) and knows that his children are his life.

And Brosnan makes Doyle grow through the movie. His speech becomes calmer, his actions more considered and we thrill to his new-found self-esteem and urge him on in his fight to get his children back. Yet even in the final climactic scene when Desmond Doyle fits with everything he has got, the fear is still there. And I had to ask myself how do I know that? Watching that scene again, I realise that Brosnan had kept Doyle’s frightened quick breathing whilst adding in all the other physical changes that showed Doyle’s growth. Though it is almost imperceptible, you can hear Doyle’s fear as he fights for the breath to reclaim his children. The scene and the acting is simply magnificent.

The more I see Evelyn, the more I see what a wonderful movie it is. It is a Frank Capra movie for our time. Full of struggle, but respectful of ordinary people’s lives, it manages to be fun, uplifting and joyous at the same time. Simply wonderful.

After the Sunset
After the Sunset continued the rounding out of Pierce Brsosnan’s movie persona. Set on a Caribbean holiday island, After the Sunset is a lightweight romp that advertises itself as a heist movie but quickly turns into a comedy. The joke is that Brosnan is a master jewel-thief who is smoking hot at heists, but it soon becomes apparent that he is a bit of loss at anything else. So it was a disappointment for us Thomas Crown fans, but the more I see the movie I realise that it has a lot going for it.

The first of these is that Brosnan plays jewel thief Max Burdett without ego. He happily plays sloppy and stupid and lets Salma Hayek’s fiery Lola play off him for laughs. There is a laugh-out loud scene where Brosnan’s Burdett meets the Island’s crime kingpin, Henri Moore (Don Cheadle) who tells Burdett that he has developed a life philosophy based on the songs of the Mammas and Poppas. The scene cuts to Brosnan driving his car, listening to “Go where you wanna go”, nodding his head like an idiot, with that earnest puzzled look on his face. Perfect.

It also gave Brosnan the opportunity to play out his dry sense of humour to great effect. This works so well in a scene with his nemesis, Agent Lloyd of the FBI (Woody Harrelson);

Lloyd: Just because you’re British you don’t have to hide your feelings.

Burdett: I’m Irish, we tell people how we feel. Now Fuck Off.

Timing and delivery were dry, delivered with relish. Watch it and see.  The battle of wits between Burdett and Agent Lloyd is truly great fun. 

Like Grey Owl, After the Sunset is less than the sum of its parts. But Brosnan gives us a character we can care for. Once again he is the movie.

Matador
Brosnan made Matador after the Eon productions told him that they did not want him for a fifth Bond. If Matador was not Brosnan’s revenge movie for being denied a fifth Bond, I will eat my hat.

Julian Noble is a hit-man with delusions, a “facilitator of fatalities” as he puts it. Sleazy, unwashed, with a vile little moustache and nasty clothes, he has a taste for booze and young girls. Unwholesome does not even begin to cover it. Brosnan revels in the role, deliberately making Noble as offensive as possible. And it is non-stop, just when you think it cannot get any worse, he gets that little bit more provocative, Julian’s tone gets just that bit more self-justificatory and whiny. And Brosnan so obviously loves doing it, he revels in playing a human Gollum.

Julian is burnt-out and starts to suffer panic attacks at the precise moment when he is meant to be killing someone. One night Julian meets Greg Kinnear’s businessman in a bar in Mexico. Brosnan is hypnotic as he befriends the businessman with all the sleazy charm he can muster. Julian is obviously soul-deep lonely and Brosnan plays this as a switchback of bluster and blubbing. He starts by being macho and loud, switching in a second to being plaintive, weak and whiny, then back to bluster. Brosnan has always had the ability to hold two opposites in a character and here he uses that gift to its fullest extent. If there was an ambiguity in some of his previous roles its ambiguity squared here. And Brosnan inhabits this unflattering role to its fullest extent. Matador is quite simply one of his finest performances.

Brosnan acts out Julian’s loneliness. There is an outrageous scene where he walks through the lobby of a plush hotel clad only in a tiny pair of speedos and black ankle boots. The clientele are appalled but any reaction is better than no reaction as far as Julian is concerned. Thomas Crown it is not. And the other side of the coin is the Brosnan charm, which he deploys to the full as he tries to wheedle Greg Kinnear into being his only friend.

This is a car-crash movie, you are fascinated and horrified at the same time, you cannot look away. The worst thing is the Brosnan charm. You can actually see yourself becoming buddies with the monster that is Julian, and then shudder at the thought. And it is not the plot, or the action, it is simply this incredible monster that Brosnan has built. A performance built of courage, insight and great acting talent.

Today is the birthday of Pierce Brosnan, he is 58.  Happy Birthday, Mr Brosnan.

This article is a revised version of a piece I first published two years ago.  Mr Brosnan has been busy in the last two years, most notably making ”The Ghost Writer” , a kind of thriller that flirts with a  fantasy version of the British ex-prime minister Tony Blair.    

Like many men, I am waiting for “The Thomas Crown Affair 2″ , the long-promised followup to his wonderful 1999 caper movie.  Unfortunately the news on this is not good, as the director has left the project and there is apparently, dissension over the script.  Still we can hope.   

Here is the first part of the article, which of course starts with Pierce Brosnan’s rise to fame as James Bond .

Part 2, which deals with some of Mr Brosnan’s greatest m0vies, is here 

Part 3, which deals with his later movies and has links to all the movies referenced, is here

Getting Started

The first time I saw Pierce Brosnan was back in 1995. “Goldeneye” had just been released and everybody wanted to know who the new Bond was. Pierce Brosnan was the guest on a UK TV programme “TGI Friday”. The host introduced him, and immediately played a clip from Goldeneye. The scene was set in a sauna, with Bond indulging in some repartee and rough sex-play with Famke Janssen’s scantily-clad Russian assassin, whose speciality was crushing the life out of her victims with her super-strong thighs. The scene was sloppily salacious and frankly very old Bond, too reminiscent of Roger Moore being beaten up by gimmicky women villains. The clip ended, and the TV host implied that Brosnan had seen Famke Janssen’s breasts in the scene. He laughed and said “Well you know how it is, you’re a boy, you look.” This with a slight shrug, he changed the subject.

It was the reply that intrigued me. Honest, respectful to his co-star, dryly funny, but somehow private. He clearly was not going to go into ego-playtime even when offered the opportunity. This actor made me want to see Goldeneye. But in the 10 years since I am not sure I have found out that much more about Pierce Brosnan. He talks about being transplanted, at the age of 10, from rural Ireland to urban London and being an outsider. Like many men who are outsiders, he is emotionally reticent and, for a movie star, shy about himself. All movie stars say they are shy private people, but I think this is mostly bullshit. I think Pierce Brosnan is the real deal.

And since Goldeneye I have been a Brosnan movie-watcher. I am going to use the occasion of Mr Brosnan’s birthday to talk about his movies. Because if he will not talk about himself, his movies do say a lot about him.

A word about this article. It is long. When I started it I had not thought about the body of work that Pierce Brosnan has produced since 1995. However I wanted to really look at his movies and that meant writing about a lot of them (thirteen to be exact). It was not a difficult task, for even at the outset I could see that he was a versatile actor and that his movies span a number of genres. I hope that you find the article good enough to read to the end and that you enjoy my thoughts on an actor who I think is very interesting and very different.

Goldeneye

Goldeneye was a huge success, and for me it was because Brosnan gave Bond back his arrogance, his certainty, his surety. Brosnan was a fit young actor and he took over the movie, every move fast, sure and confident. The arrogance that Connery had was back, along with a dash of cruelty for its own sake. Brosnan also gave Bond a brio, a joyful lust for smashing things up that made Goldeneye such a thrill-ride. Brosnan moved Bond back to being physical and manly.

There was one other key factor. Brosnan played Bond as ambivalent. The Bond dry humour was now mordant, a far cry from the patrician “I say old boy!” of Roger Moore. It was no longer clear whether the dry humour was funny or just plain cynical. His humour was now as much triumphalism as wit. Brosnan played Bond as slightly bitter but still a loyal assassin with a job to do. Bond was now as implacable as the Terminator, with Brosnan playing him as a man whose superbly-controlled anger will take him past any enemy.

If Connery was the iron-fisted and slick personification of post-war British power and Roger Moore was the British upper-class at war, Brosnan was the spy for the uncertain Nineties. Sworn to duty but too sophisticated to be unaware of the contradictions of his role, he reconciles it all in a manly way, by taking action. Brosnan gives us a glimpse of the inner workings of Bond and after that we could not be complacent, could not relax, because we had to be alert for more surprises from the cynical spy. Goldeneye was a marvellously perceptive and assured performance, especially from a first-time Bond.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Brosnan made Bond his own in Tomorrow Never Dies. Several small things made for a very assured performance. Brosnan made Bond more arrogant, more assured. He did this by making Bond still, a centre of power. He did it by taking away all unnecessary physical action and by making Bond imperturbable in the face of a situation. Once again it was about uncertainty. Roger Moore would raise an eyebrow and make a comment to show he got it, and the comment showed that he had preserved his Brit sang-froid, and was unmoved. Brosnan subtly narrows his eyes to show he’s got it and has a poker-play expression which can change instantly to amusement or outright fury. There was this sense that mayhem could kick off at any second.

Brosnan’s physical presentation of Bond changed. Bond became more deft, balanced, his actions quick and careful. There was a now a kind of master Samurai sense about him, that he could see four moves ahead and was simply anticipating the battle.

And Brosnan shows us how a secret agent loves,…very carefully. His encounter with his lost love Paris Carver (Terri Hatcher) is notable for the tenderness, the soft look, the gentle touch, that are absent from his more casual couplings. And then Brosnan takes Bond to a new place. When Bond comes across Paris’ murdered body, he opens the man up, in a way we have never seen before. It is not just the loss, but the meaninglessness of the death, the finality, the loss of future. This is a small scene but its key to Brosnan’s Bond. Brosnan makes Bond mourn like a real man mourns and it makes the audience feel closer to him.

And of course, this unleashes in Bond the anger necessary to destroy the villain Elliott Carver. Brosnan plays Bond like a man who has an internal switch, which, once activated, he will stop at nothing.

Changing the game….

I believe that the next movie, though a commercial failure, paradoxically showed what a great actor Pierce Brosnan is.

Grey Owl

Moving from mystery to eco-statement, Grey Owl was Richard Attenborough’s bio-pic of the life of an Objibway Indian/Scottish half-breed fur trapper who became one of the first champions of the native environment (in this case the Canadian wilderness) and a huge celebrity in England and Canada. The mystery lay in the fact that Grey Owl was in fact an Englishman who had been adopted into the Ojibway tribe, and is eventually exposed as such.

Brosnan gives us a gruff, mostly humourless man, who is ill at ease in the white world. Once again there is a kind of stillness, a zen in which Brosnan cloaks the character. Brosnan builds a man of utter simplicity, who undertakes each task with total concentration. This is a wise man, who judges the world in his rare utterances. Where Bond had arrogance, Grey Owl has power, and native wisdom. Brosnan does power very well and his Grey Owl is an imposing figure.

Once again it is the small moments in Brosnan’s performance, gem-like scenes where he lets us into the inner character. There is a wonderful moment early on in the film, where Brosnan is acting as a guide for a young woman he does not particularly like (but will eventually fall in love with) and takes her to his adopted Ojibway tribe. The chief starts promoting Grey Owl as a husband, to his evident discomfort. The small tics, the nervous glances that give Brosnan away, are beautifully done.

There is a deliberate rhythm to Brosnan’s Archie Grey Owl. When he is in his place and his power he is fluid, deliberate and spare, with no wasted movement. However, as his secret starts to overwhelm him, his actions begin to stutter, his guilty pauses get longer, sentences that start out calmly explode into anger. Brosnan’s performance grows and grows, and he shows us the immensity of his guilt growing with it. The tension in the man becomes tangible and heart-wrenching as Brosnan increasingly bares the two halves of Grey Owl’s soul. The progression from (supposedly) simple woodsman to troubled eco-celebrity is marked by Brosnan progressively showing the depths of this man’s emotional pain.

This is a masterful performance, Brosnan is the film, because the subtle complexity of his performance outclasses every other aspect of this film.

And back to Bond..

The World is Not Enough
This is a great Bond movie, mythic, manly and with a sense of real danger. This one works so well because it taps into one of Brosnan’s great strengths, the ability to play men who are both powerful and troubled. In The World is Not Enough, Bond is compromised by his failure to save the life of a British industrialist (and friend of M). He is further compromised by M’s use of him, to spy on a woman who may be endangered by Bond’s actions. Once again, Brosnan shows us a man who lives on the edge, showing us the little signs of a man who is getting closer and closer to being a merciless killer, but never overplaying those emotions.

What is so great about this movie is that Brosnan gets the tone perfectly right. This is a very real menace (stolen Russian nukes to be detonated in a major city) and Brosnan’s Bond has never been harder or more deadly. But this is also Bond, and Brosnan is truly funny here, the jokes and quips are perfectly timed, delivered in that slightly menacing tone. The sight and situation gags are done perfectly and Brosnan is as slick as hell in doing them. Here Brosnan gives us the Bond he had always promised us, the mature, cosmopolitan sensualist, a man in great physical shape, who happens to be a killer.

Masterpieces and changes
For me Brosnan really hit his stride with The World is Not Enough and I think this emboldened him to become even more creative. His next movie was a risky undertaking and turned out to be a masterpiece

Just a quick article to celebrate the birthday of Stewart Granger, whose movies were big draws in the forties and fifties. 

Stewart Granger was tall, handsome and very stylish.  An Englishman of good birth, he was a manly man and a gentleman.  He was a well-spoken confident, worldly Brit who Hollywood embraced with open arms.  Hollywood took his measure and put him into swashbucklers and sweeping romantic dramas where his manly good looks and passionate intensity could be used to great effect. 

Stewart Granger

Stewart Granger hit the big time with “Scaramouche” a French Revolutionary drama where he hides his identity in order to serve justice.  By night he was a clown in a comedia dell ‘arte troupe and by day a dashing swordsman.  Granger’s consummate ability to handle a quip and a sword at the same time made him a star.  Similar roles followed, including the classic movie version of “King Solomon’s Mines” and the very wonderful “Prisoner of Zenda”.   

British Alpha Male

In many roles Granger affected an indolent, melodious upper-class drawl, a world-weary but masterful man, for whom no problem cannot be solved, calmly.  However, once in action Granger delivered an athleticism and intensity that verged on the feral.  Scratch the aristocrat and the warrior was just underneath.  Most of his roles called for him to be carelessly masterful around women, though he was in truth an intelligent, perceptive man.  These characteristics, combined with his imposing physique and exceptional good looks, meant that women were mesmerised by him.  One of the reasons I like Granger is he was the British Alpha Male, without par.       

As he got older he became even more handsome, getting that little bit of grey at the temples that women call, distinguished.  Like many English actors he understood the part good clothes played in the Alpha Male image and dressed very well.  His second wife was Jean Simmons, who was much younger than him.  In the picture below you get a real sense of his immaculate style and how he aged so well.

Stewart Granger and his second wife, Jean Simmons

However, with the sixties his star waned.  In the sixties, movies wanted their heroes ugly and dirty, badly dressed and badly spoken.  Stewart Granger was none of these.  Clearly an aristocrat, Stewart Granger offered nobility and honour, and the movies were no longer interested, it was time for the common man as hero.  However he continued to work through the sixties and seventies, giving good performances in lesser roles.

The Prisoner of Zenda

For me the Prisoner of Zenda is Stewart Granger’s greatest film.  He was never better than as Rudolf Rassendyll, the British gentleman who through an accident of history is the exact double of the boorish prince of Ruritania, an exotic Mittel-Europa kingdom.  The prince is about to be crowned king and is kidnapped by his enemies to prevent his succession.  Rassendyll, the honourable man, is persuaded to impersonate the king for the coronation.  And the stage is set for romance, danger, swordplay and high adventure.   

The Prisoner of Zenda (with Deborah Kerr)

Ruritania is an end-of-the-Victorian-era fantasy land, where men are manly and military, swagger around in incredibly showy uniforms and fight duels with swords.  Honour and nobility are held high, at the risk of a man’s life. 

This is a great movie and up there with the best Technicolor adventure movies Hollywood ever produced.  However it was also very well written and has some intelligent and perceptive things to say about duty, honour and courage, and what they cost a man.  The script sparkles, Granger was never better and James Mason makes a truly magnificent villain, Rupert of Hentzau, an evil aristocrat straight out of Bismarck’s Germany.  Without giving anything away, the denouement of The Prisoner of Zenda” is one of the most satisfying in movie history, it has an unexpected integrity that lifts the movie into greatness.

Stewart Granger has never really been applauded for his joie de vivre or his wonderful contribution to Hollywood’s glory days.  I think that his combination of style, manliness and nobility are distasteful in these politically correct times.

Stewart Granger was a British hero, when our heroes were brave and noble.  Happy Birthday Mr Granger, wherever you are.

Details

Get the Prisoner of Zenda in the UK here and in the US here

For many men, movies of vengeance are a great pleasure.  Law-Abiding Citizen is one of the finest and most original.

I was keen to see Law-Abiding Citizen because I am a fan of F. Gary Gray’s movies.  His “Italian Job” (reviewed here, scroll to bottom of article)) was a fine, funny movie, with assured and exciting direction married up with a clever heist plot. I also liked “Be Cool” though it did not have the tight plotting of The Italian Job.  But still, a pretty good track record for someone directing a modern thriller.

 Law-Abiding Citizen opens with Gerard Butler’s Clyde Shelton getting ready for dinner with his wife and young daughter.  The little we see of their house suggests a comfortable middle-class existence.  There is not much time to see it, as a knock on the door signals a brutal house invasion.  Two psychopathic killers beat, bind and stab Butler, leaving him for dead.  As he bleeds out, they murder his wife and child.  All of this is (mercifully) shot in quick cut-aways.  This is the first shock, how brutal and uncompromising this movie is willing to be.     

 A long shot across a wintry Philadephia tracks to Jamie Foxx, the prosecuting attorney responsible for prosecuting the two killers, now in captivity.  Foxx, more concerned with keeping up his conviction rate than with justice, makes a deal with the most evil of the two murderers, who as a result gets off with a light sentence.  Unfortunately for Foxx, Butler, who has survived, see the murderer shake Foxx’s hand.  Butler, denied justice and shocked beyond comprehension, wanders off, a broken shell of a man.  The movie pauses, we take a breath, evil and brutality have traded off to cynicism and injustice.  Law-Abiding Citizen has already taken us through the wringer and it is only the first act.  

Vengeance

The stage is set but for what?  Time passes and suddenly horrific revenge is taken against the two men.  Butler’s Clyde Shelton reappears and makes it plain that he will kill and kill until he brings the whole rotten system to the ground.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) captured

 The beating heart of the movie are the head-to-head confrontations between Gerald Butler and Jamie Foxx, each trying to bend the other to his will.  Foxx has all the power of the state and Butler has nothing to lose.  Gerard Butler is magnificent here and shows us a clever complex man, with a hole burnt through his soul.  Clyde Shelton could have been played as a ranting angry man.  Instead Butler gives us a quick, coldly intelligent man who we believe can bring down the Philadelphia legal system.  More than that we sympathise with him, even as he commits atrocious acts of revenge.  Butler produces some magnificent acting, never playing to type, never softening the character, yet he still manages to engage our sympathies. 

Attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) threatens Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler)

 Jamie Foxx is almost equally good as the prosecuting attorney Nick Rice, whose conscience is troubled but not enough to give Butler what he wants.  On-screen, these two game each other, mis-direct and lie, looking for a weakness.  Watching them try to intimidate each other is electrifying.  Even outside the orbit of these two men, the ensemble playing by some very good and seasoned actors is perfect and builds real depth into the movie.

 Law-Abiding Citizen is a tone-poem in coldness.  Philadelphia looks bleak and bright in the cold winter sun. Breath steams, the metal of cars is too cold to touch, grey ice and snow drape the depressingly ugly buildings of old-town Philadelphia.  Everyone in the movie feels alone and powerless, further dehumanised by F. Gary Gray’s signature helicopter tracking shots.  Grey, cold and bleak.   

Detective Dunnigan (Colm Meaney) at the scene of one of Clyde Shelton's crimes

 Above everything else this is the director’s movie.  Exciting and incredibly tense, what makes this movie special is that Gray absolutely refuses to pander to thriller stereotypes, either in the story or with the characters.  In fact Gray plays with us.  Ruthlessly.  You think you know where this story is going to go?  Think again. 

This is not a movie for everyone.  It takes a strong stomach to watch some of the things Gerard Butler does in his quest for vengeance.  If your impression of F. Gary Gray was formed around the charming, cuddly criminals of Italian Job, then be warned, this is very different.  Completely without warmth, completely uncompromising and very tense this is one of the finest thrillers of recent years.  LAC is immensely satisfying, as it refuses to submit to cliché and movie convention and instead tells a rip-roaring story.  Even the twisty ending has a satisfying note to it. 

 There will be no better thriller this year.

Law-Abiding Citizen is on general release in England from the 27th November