McCABE & MRS. MILLER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Heartbreaking Altman on Criterion Blu

Booze, brothels, love and tragedy in the Old West.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Dir. Robert Altman
Nvl. Edmund Naughton
Scr. Altman and Brian McKay
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, René Auberjonois, Michael Murphy,
Antony Holland, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, William Devane,
John Schuck, Hugh Millais, Jace Van Der Veen, Manfred Schulz, Corey Fischer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Under the big grey skies of Washington State, a stranger slowly rides from out of the wet greenery of a boreal forest and heads straight for the tiny, squalid, muddy little mining town of Presbyterian Church. His name is John McCabe (Warren Beatty). On the outskirts, away from prying eyes, he removes the bulky fur coat he's been wearing to shield himself from the damp cold of the Pacific Northwest. He's all about appearances, you see. As soon as he reveals what's beneath the fur we know this all too well. Wearing a clean burgundy sport jacket, crisp white shirt, handsome black diamond-shaped tie and grey vest, he pops a smart bowler hat on his head - all in marked contrast to the grimy attire of the town's denizens.

In the old west, when a stranger rides into town, people notice. Anonymity becomes just a fleeting memory. John McCabe is a gambler, businessman and, it is whispered, a gunfighter. He wants to make an impression and he wants it to stick, like flies to shit, like peanut butter in the craw and the ties that bind.

Though his entrance is adorned with the surface tropes of the genre, director Robert Altman, like his protagonist McCabe, is all about appearances too. He wants us to know we're watching a western, but good goddamn, it's not going to be like any western we've ever seen.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a true original - the kind of movie we seldom see anymore, at least not from any major Hollywood studio. Ah, but it was 1971 when this picture first rode into town and it was, for all its bold, fresh innovation, a movie that was produced under the aegis of Warner Brothers, a studio which, up to that point always broke molds (think: the first major sound picture The Jazz Singer, Busby Berkeley, gritty dirty 30s crime pictures and, uh, Casablanca anyone?). These days we're more likely to see the Warners' banner in front of machine-tooled Harry Potter movies, the turgid Dark Knight turds of Christopher Nolan and (God Help Us!!!), Peter Jackson's unwatchable Hobbit series. (In fairness to the studio, they have, of late, delivered the unique Zack Snyder and David Ayer re-imaginings of the DC comic book universe, though all of those pictures have been panned by most of the contemporary scribes purporting to be "critics".)

Oh, but this was the 70s, the greatest decade in movie history and Warner Bros. (my personal favourite of all the studios) green-lit McCabe & Mrs. Miller, a haunting, leisurely-paced and decidedly elegiac western. I had, of course, seen several million westerns in movie theatres with my Dad, but at the age of twelve, as I sat in a first-run movie theatre (a 1500-seat picture palace, no less), positioned next to dear Pater, I knew, I knew even then, at that tender age, based solely on the aforementioned first few minutes, that I was watching something I'd never seen before and now, so many decades later, as I sat in front of my Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Robert Altman's movie, I thought, "You know, I've not seen anything like this since".

Of course it's different. These are not wide open dusty spaces with the phallic ancient outcroppings of Monument Valley rock under sunny skies. We're surrounded by mist, virtually claustrophobic greenery and most of all, as Vilmos Zsigmond's floating camera captures the rain intermittently pouring, streets filled with murky pools of water, soupy streets of mud, somber, peppery clouds above a ramshackle village, the soundtrack is neither Elmer Bernstein bombast nor, even, Ennio Morricone whistles and twangs.

We hear, Leonard Cohen.

"It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender. And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger"

Cohen's "The Stranger Song" is not only the opening theme music of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, but its haunting lyrics and melody become a main theme throughout the picture. Along with other great works by the late Canadian troubadour, we hear lively fiddles as source music played by Presbyterian Church local musicians and a series of haunting guitar riffs performed by Cohen. Most notable is the location sound and very subtle foley, capturing the unique aural qualities of life in an isolated community during the latter part of 19th century America, but lest we forget, there is the unique Altman dialogue recording. When people speak, we hear what we'd hear in any crowded room - the blend of voices, overlapping conversations and the only time any words are crystal clear is when we absolutely need to hear them.

Mumbling is also a recurring auditory motif, but brilliantly, Altman uses it mostly for McCabe himself as a delightful character trait. McCabe mumbles - only when he's alone. He's a man used to being alone for large periods of his life and as such, he thinks aloud. (The first time McCabe speaks he's alone, on the periphery of the town and yes, mumbling to himself.)

Yes, this is a western. On the surface we've seen this story many times. A stranger comes to a small town, immediately spots the burgeoning glory of opportunity, sets up a successful business, spurns the advances of corrupt powerful corporate interests to buy him out and is then swiftly assailed by hired killers, their goal to rub him out permanently and secure his valuable holdings for zilch.

Ah, but that's merely the outward narrative coat hanger. The picture is so, so much more than this simple exterior. The heart and soul of the movie is a love story. After all, Altman has chosen to eschew the simple "McCabe" title of the Edmund Naughton novel the film is based on and append the "& Mrs. Miller" to the title of the movie itself. And then there are the songs by Leonard Cohen. In addition to "The Stranger Song" we also get to hear "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady" (all three released in 1971 as a 7" single on vinyl which, I still own). Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) is the gorgeous, classy (in spite of her Cockney accent) prostitute/madame who goes into business with McCabe, helping him wrangle a stable of women. Like the song says:

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Indeed, it is the whores who offer McCabe some fleeting glory and solace and in turn serve the needs of men in the village - those who stay, and those who pass through. Inevitably, and perhaps most sadly of all, it is the sisters of mercy who remain a constant presence. Others might come, and others, most notably McCabe himself, may go. The women, however, are ever-present.

Mrs. Miller, the "Winter Lady" of Cohen's song, will indeed remain.

Trav'ling lady, stay awhile
Until the night is over.
I'm just a station on your way,
I know I'm not your lover.

Ah, but he is her lover. Though they are business partners and though Mrs. Miller charges McCabe for all their evenings of bedroom gymnastics, she indeed experiences a love she's never known. The sorrow she eventually will feel is so devastating that she will be drawn to the mind numbing properties of opium. The town is misty, not just with the fog of the Pacific Northwest, but the haze of poppy seeds.

This is a movie that seems fuel-injected with sorrow and though it's set in a time and place so long ago and far away, Robert Altman has crafted a film that is not only perfect in every respect, but is as universal in its exploration of both corporate exploitation and humanity (specifically in the complexities of love) - now, as much as it was in 1971.

The character trait of McCabe mumbling to himself is not only a wonderful "quirk", but it's used to great effect in one of the most moving and tragic on-screen monologues in movie history. After McCabe has attempted to "reason" with one of the assassins, we find him in the deep darkness of an early morning winter, burning the midnight oil. Downing a few shots of booze, putting some final grooming touches to his appearance and slowly loading bullets into his gun before handily affixing his holster, he looks out his window and notices the warm glow coming from across the way at the whorehouse where Mrs. Miller is servicing a client.

Whilst performing his ablutions and the rituals of preparing for what will, no doubt, be a series of urgent encounters, McCabe does indeed mumble to himself, maybe for the last time:

"I tell ya', sometimes, sometimes when I take a look at you, I just keep lookin' and a'lookin' so I won't feel your little body up against me so bad I think I'm gonna bust. I keep trying' to tell ya' in a lotta different ways... well I'll tell ya' something, I got poetry in me, I do, I got poetry in me, but I ain't gonna put it down on paper. I ain't no educated man. I got sense enough not to try."

Eventually, Altman expertly stages one of cinema's most tense western showdowns. The church is burning down. The whole town is empty and desperately trying to quell the flames. Snow is falling heavily. Three armed dangerous killers are on the hunt. McCabe is alone. Guns will blast and blood will spill, spattering crimson upon the white blanket resting heavily upon the ground of Presbyterian Church, Washington.

There is no urgent musical score; only the sounds of breathing, footsteps upon the snow and the wind - oh, the howling wind. And every so often, we are jolted with shotgun blasts and the sickening sounds of shattering glass.

Mrs. Miller is nowhere to be seen. There is, you see, an opium den in town.

Well I lived with a child of snow
When I was a soldier,
And I fought every man for her
Until the nights grew colder.

A man of poetry is fighting for his life. A sister of mercy wants to forget.

Life is just like that sometimes.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is available on the Criterion Collection and includes a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a 2002 commentary with Altman and producer David Foster, new making-of documentary, new conversation about the film and Altman’s career between film historians Cari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell, 1970 production featurette, 1999 Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A with production designer Leon Ericksen, excerpts from archival interviews with Vilmos Zsigmond, gallery of on-set stills, excerpts from 1971 episodes of "The Dick Cavett Show" featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael, the trailer and an essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich.

GUMSHOE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stephen Frears Debut Hardboiled Brit Kitchen Sink

Finney great as hardboiled schlub

Gumshoe (1971)
dir. Stephen Frears
Starring: Albert Finney, Frank Finlay, Billie Whitelaw, Janice Rule

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of the most infuriating things is when a picture throws in everything, including the kitchen sink, and resembles a ratty patchwork quilt designed to comfort the posteriors of smelly hippies sitting on a cold, rain-soaked, mosquito-breeding patch of earth during some loathsome folk festival. On the other hand, there are patchwork quilts like Stephen Frears’s first feature Gumshoe which, like the work of a serious folk artist, is designed specifically for aesthetic scrutiny.

Frears’s long-form debut wanders between loving parodistic homage and straightforward detective drama – a picture that succeeds winningly in spite (or perhaps even because) of its desire to both comment on the form of detective fiction whilst being the thing itself. In this sense, Gumshoe comes close to satire, but because it doesn’t have a mean bone in its celluloid body (save for some of the roughing-up the genre demands) and never quite comes close to roasting the folly of humanity over an open fire in the Swift-like fashion we’ve become accustomed to, it doesn’t really earn the right to be called satire either. It earns the right, however, to be called a kick-ass picture that stays with you long after it’s unspooled.

Spinning the tale of clinically depressed schlub Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney) and his obsession to parlay a photographic memory of hardboiled detective movies into his own reality, Gumshoe uses every cliché in the Warner-Brothers-RKO book. Of course, so does Eddie, and he’s the one driving the narrative – a narrative where dream gives way to reality.

When we first meet Eddie, he’s undergoing therapy and working in a seedy working class Liverpool nightclub as an emcee, bingo caller and standup comedian. Longing to be part of the world of rumpled Humphrey Bogarts where he can merrily be dispensing wisecracks, justice and indulging in kisses and repartee with a bevy of femme fatales (and potential victims of the evils of higher powers), he’s a man in search of something, anything that can help him escape what a miserable drudge his life has become. Turning 31 years of age, Eddie treats himself to a want ad in the newspaper announcing his services as a gumshoe – a private eye for whom no job is too big, too small or too dangerous. Quicker than he can spit out a hard-boiled quip, he’s offered a seemingly routine job on a case that eventually extends well beyond its simple surface intrigue.

The convoluted mystery that follows is, like most mysteries, secondary to the world and style of the genre itself. What really sets Gumshoeapart is that Eddie’s just a regular Joe and most importantly, his stylized patter and adventures are set against a kitchen sink British backdrop that would definitely be more at home in the "Angry Young Man" genre of the early 60s where the likes of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Tom Courtenay and Laurence Harvey railed against the injustices of working class life, but seldom found a way to crawl completely out of the muck. Eddie’s character is certainly not unlike those abovementioned anti-heroes. His ex-wife Ellen (Billie Whitelaw), a woman he will always love, left him for his own brother William (Frank Finlay), a shipping magnate who offered the sort of stability Eddie could never provide and, even to the end, has no intention of ever providing.

And, of course, in any great crime drama, betrayal always cuts deeper than anyone involved in the proceedings could ever imagine and in Gumshoe, betrayal is laid on thickly indeed, pistol-whipping Eddie constantly in the face.

This is an incredibly strange, beautiful and compelling picture. I’ve avoided detailing too much of the mystery, not so much for the continual surprises it offers, but because there is a political backdrop that, while dated, seems to have as much, if not more resonance in our contemporary world of strife and the gradual discovery of this makes for extremely engaging viewing. Also, Eddie’s family situation is one that figures very prominently in the proceedings and this is an especially poignant touch.

Save for a clunker of a performance from Janice Rule (though she looks great) as a femme fatale, the movie explodes with great acting. Finney fits his role like a glove and frankly, it might be one of his best performances in a very stellar career. As his brother Willie, Frank Finlay is the icy epitome of familial meanness.

Neville Smith’s screenplay bristles with crisp hardboiled narration and dialogue and the characters are full of delightful eccentricities and subtexts that always add to the forward movement of the convoluted, but always compelling narrative. The cinematography by Chris Menges (The Killing Fields, The Mission) dazzles with its stunning virtuosity. Blending film noir stylings with garish kitchen sink realism, this is perhaps one of the picture’s greatest achievements. The lighting and compositions are in perfect tandem with the strangeness of the screenplay and the two worlds that are often separate, but occasionally blend together, is always a visual wonder to behold. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s weird-ass score that veers from parody to homage to out and out straight up romantic old-Hollywood stylings is occasionally jarring in the wrong ways, but more often than not, hits the notes it needs to.

And last, but certainly not least, threading this altogether is Frears’ bold, yet controlled direction. He clearly loves these characters and this world. And frankly, so do we.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ Three and a half stars

Gumshoe is currently available on the Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment DVD label as part of their “Martini Movies” brand, which seems like a convenient way to lump a grab bag of catalogue titles under one banner. Alas, the banner makes no sense whatsoever with respect to the vast majority of films contained under it.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH - Review by Greg Klymkiw - The Bard of Avon gets a delectable Roman Polanski bloodbath via this gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray!

Macbeth (1971)
Dir. Roman Polanski
Scr. Kenneth Tynan & Polanski

Stars: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis

MY MOM, MRS. RAPPAPORT, MACBETH and ME
a personal memoir & review by Greg Klymkiw

My late mother taught me to read by the age of 5. She did it with comic books. Not just ANY comic books, mind you, but via the wonderful Classics Illustrated series which adapted great literature in comic book form. At the end of every issue were the words: "Now that you've read the comic, read the original."

When Mom signed up a couple of years later for the Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club - not for her, but for me - one of the "free" (of four) introductory titles she selected was "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare". (The other three were Pierre Boulle's "Monkey Planet", AKA "Planet of the Apes", "The Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson" and "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe".) Being a sick puppy even at the tender age of 7, I chose to read "Macbeth" first. Of all the Shakespeare plays represented in those comics, it was the one story that ferociously consumed me. As a child, I was Regan in "The Exorcist" and the devil himself was the Thane of Cawdor.

My sweet, darling mother painstakingly read the play with me, both of us taking turns reading aloud to each other and often alternating roles. Through this process we oft-referred to the Classics Illustrated adaptation and Mom even bought a "Coles Notes" book (AKA "Cliff's Notes") to address stuff she herself didn't "get", just so she could make sure I did.

At the ripe old age of 14 I first saw Roman Polanski's film version of The Tragedy of Macbeth which my Mom took me to see when it opened first-run in Winnipeg at the Park Theatre on November 30, 1973, a good two years after it opened in the United States. As a kid, I'd been chomping at the bit to see it. Released in many markets as simply, Macbeth, I was well aware of the picture's existence as I'd started reading the show business trade bible "Variety" at the age of 10 and now, oh happy day, the movie was finally playing in our midwestern Winter City.

There were a whole whack of cool films playing in the 'Peg that weekend. It was the opening day of two amazing drive-in double features. In the west end of the city, A.I.P.'s The Little Cigars Mob featuring Angel Tompkins robbing banks with a gang of armed midgets and the jaw-dropping Ray Milland-Rosie Grier=grafted-together horror-comedy The Thing With Two Heads (both of which Dad took me to see on the Saturday night) and in the north end, Gimme Shelter and Monterey Pop were unspooling, but neither parent would take me to see those movies since the only music they enjoyed were Ukrainian Liturgies, Ukrainian Folk Songs, Nana Mouskouri, Mantovani and the Percy Fsith Orchestra. (The closest they ever got to Heavy Metal was Harry Belafonte.) That weekend in Winnipeg was ALSO opening night of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould, but as I'd already ear-marked it to see alone during my usual Saturday afternoon movie forays downtown, I asked Mom if she could drive me all the way to the south-end Friday night and take me to watch the movie I'd so desperately wanted to see. She agreed.

Let's place this in perspective, folks. My Mother, a nice, polite, North End Winnipeg Ukrainian girl drove her son across town to sit with him and watch The Tragedy of Macbeth, Roman Polanski's blood-soaked, ultra-violent adaptation with, I might add, Lady Macbeth parading about in the nude whilst delivering her madness monologue. I don't know a lot of Moms who would do this for their progeny, but MY MOM DID!!!

By my teen years, I had occasion to read "Macbeth" again - this time within the context of a North End Winnipeg public school English class under the divine tutelage of Mrs. Elaine Rappaport. She was the best English teacher I ever had until my post-secondary years, and even then, she held her own with the best of them. The wife of noted Rabbi Sidney Rappaport from the Rosh Pina Synagogue in Winnipeg (he passed away in 2009), she was one classy, snappy, sharp-witted lady.

That said, and not wishing to toot my own horn, but she soon found herself face-to-face with the Macbeth-like madness lodged within the heart and soul of a teenage movie freak. After the astoundingly brave act of showing a bunch of kids a 16mm print of Polanski's film, I immediately dove in on the picture's violence, linking it to the despair and guilt Polanski must have been feeling over the murder of his beloved wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson Clan. Years later I discovered that every Tom, Dick and Harry had made this same cliched, unoriginal and condescendingly simplistic observation.

So shoot me. I was a teenager. Besides, not a bad observation for a kid.

Though she tried to take issue with my comment, I knew Mrs. Rappaport was always ahead of the curve and I suspected, even at the time, that she mildly and politely disputed my precocious assertion so she could take our discussion away from a sickening murder that many kids in those days, even in high school, had been sheltered from.

I plunged ahead, though, and began recalling the specific date and explicit DETAILS of Sharon Tate's murder, in addition to the approximate dates as to WHEN the writing of the script and subsequent PRODUCTION of the film would have occurred. I then insisted that based upon the aforementioned findings, my point could not be disputed.

I'll never forget the sparkles in Mrs. Rappaport's eyes as she then launched into a brief elaboration of my point and then moved us on ever-so gracefully (and graciously) to discuss the differences between the film and play.

One week after my Mother took her final breath of life after a long battle with stomach cancer, I was reminded of her dedication to a precocious son's desire to read and obsess over all things "Macbeth" and, of course, the movies. I'm eternally grateful to her. My love for cinema, theatre and literature was both encouraged and indeed nurtured by her. She might well have been seen by the world as "only" a mother, housewife and part-time bank teller, but even as a kid I knew how she'd studied violin at the Conservatory of Music and eventually gave up a professional life as a musician to be a loving Mother and dutiful Wife. She had the soul of an artist which she saw in me also and did everything in her power to arm me with the means to never give up on my own desires and talents as she had done in the days when many women felt forced by societal pressures to do so. In the words of the old Russian-Jewish folk song, popularized by the Welsh songstress Mary Hopkins, "Those were the days, my friend".

Indeed they were.

In fact, the thought that we'll ever again see a Shakespeare film adaptation as truly great as Polanski's (and in fairness, I tend to include and acknowledge those elements Francis Ford Coppola borrowed for Godfathers I & II), is not something I take solace in. What I do accept wholeheartedly is that Polanski's The Tragedy of Macbeth is so "modern", so forward-thinking, so ideally faithful and intelligently interpreted that we do, in fact, have a film for the ages.

Polanski so wisely centres his film firmly and fiercely within Lady Macbeth's successful exertions of influence and then secondarily, that of the witch hags Macbeth encounters on the way home after his victories in war to fling himself into the loving arms of his wife. The good Lady's wifely influence provea to be too successful. Her ambitious husband's subsequent actions of lying, cheating, stealing, traitorously conspiring and committing murder in the coldest of blood is the stuff which all our dreams are made on. (Personally, I've always been aware of my own roiling needs, rooted as they were, and still are, in a kind of selfish know-it-all "quality" so that ultimately, the only possible influence I have to exert them, comes from me and me alone.)

At the beginning of the film, we learn that Macbeth (Jon Finch) has done magnificently in battle. The manner in which Polanski sets this up is simply masterful. Who will ever forget the murky skies overlooking the bodies and blood upon the muck, the poor flailing sod being ball and chained to death and the kind of mad horror in actor Jon Finch's eyes as Macbeth's otherwise poker-face surveys the damage/victory he's wrought.

This is the horror Polanski thrusts us immediately into and it's impossible to unglue one's eyeballs from the proceedings. This tragedy of Shakespeare's is indeed a work of horror and Polanski seems to understand this better than any other filmmaker who tackled the play (including, I might add, the rich, evocative, but fatally flawed Orson Welles version). When Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor by King Duncan for leading a successful decimation of the enemy (and capturing the rebel leader who previously bore the title), we get the tiniest glimmer of pride - perhaps even a smidgen of happiness - in Macbeth, this newly honoured young warrior.

Fate has other plans for him though. Encountering a gaggle of horrendous hags - witches of the most odious order - Macbeth hears and is infected with their prophecy that he will be King. Though he attempts to eschew thoughts of such glory, he won't have a chance against the most powerful witch of all, the extremely mortal, but bewitchingly concupiscent, mind-alteringly ravishing Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis).

Polanski's first triumph was in casting these two actors. Finch, many of whom will remember as the strangely unlikeable loser protagonist Richard Blaney in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, is such an astonishing Macbeth I suspect I'll never be able to imagine the face of the character with any other visage. Finch so brilliantly captures the various shades of Macbeth's intensity as it percolates slowly whilst his alluringly magnetic Lady places thoughts of being King in his mind - almost taunting, shaming him into desiring as quick an ascension to the throne as possible - one in which only murder can pave the way to.

Annis, of course, is the ultimate Lady Macbeth. She is not only stunning in every camera-loves-her respect, but she delivers her desires with the deftness of a fox and increasingly with viper-like stings which soon latch unshakeably onto Macbeth's manly psyche.

If murder be the only way, so be it.

Polanski continues to focus upon their relationship throughout until the narrative shifts into Shakespeare's astonishingly wrought parallel descents into derangement of the most fevered order. As Macbeth becomes more tyrannical, Lady Macbeth begins to slip into madness. They both lose their souls - in fact, Polanski emphasizes that it's their deep love, their bottomless pit of passion which is the unholy instrument which undoes both of them. Lady Macbeth's madness causes her to erupt into guilt so appallingly, deeply, debilitatingly and destructively molten whilst the crown-thieving maniac Macbeth fills his dwindling spiritual reserves as his soul pours out paranoia which is as catastrophic in its decimation of his humanity as the guilt is so ruinous to his lady.

When I first saw The Tragedy of Macbeth as a kid, I still remembering how I chuckled out loud, receiving odd stares from both my Mother and audience members. I soon kept my guffaw-bursts in check, but later revealed to my mother in the drive home after the screening that every single time Macbeth looked upon a potential enemy (i.e. murder victim), it reminded me of those fantasy sequences in the Fleischer Popeye cartoons when a starving Wimpy would look at virtually any living thing and imagine them to be a pig, a cow, a chicken - anything he could slaughter and eat. Seeing the movie again on the Criterion Blu-Ray I got the same thoughts. I'm convinced that Polanski intentionally staged, shot and cut Finch's glares at his eventual victims - not in homage to the Fleischer cartoons, but certainly with the same mad, darkly hilarious undercurrent which Fleischer imbued his own films with.

Not only are we tantalized with one blood spattering grotesquerie after another, but Polanski wisely has Lady Macbeth wander buck naked throughout the castle as she delivers her madness monologue. Let's not make the mistake here of downplaying Polanski's genius as a showman - he's the ultimate showman. He dazzles us with both prurience and a veritable rampage of brutality. Shakespeare was a showman, too. Let's not forget that. If anything, Polanski's delectably and suitably exploitative indulgences allow us one HELL OF A GOOD SHOW whilst at the same time, shove our faces in the sheer horror of Macbeth and his Lady's respective madness.

Seeing The Tragedy of Macbeth during one of the most emotionally draining periods of my life was exactly what the doctor ordered. Running parallel to this sentient drainage in my own life were also feelings of sentiment and nostalgia - I couldn't help but do the math as I faced so much of what I loved in a place that reminded me how these things of beauty were either gone or about to go and would soon be relegated, and in fact were actually being consigned to the hallowed place of memory.

The Tragedy of Macbeth as deftly rendered by Polanski did what any great work of art should do. Here I was, watching a work written over 400 years ago and interpreted in a version from over forty years ago and it touched me on a very personal level.

I thought, with the indelible sharpness of crystal that SOME women, like my Mother and English teacher, inspire the sun, moon and stars of the mind, while others, as scribed by Shakespeare, inspired pure NAKED ambition.

Luckily the ambition inspired by the two great women in MY early life was fully clothed.

THE FILM CORNER RATING for Film and Blu-Ray: ***** 5-Stars

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of The Tragedy of Macbeth is yet another example for me of the genuine art of creating home entertainment for as rich an experience as possible. The 4K transfer was personally approved by director Roman Polanski and as such, both sound and picture are as mind blowing as one could imagine.

The extra features are a pure goldmine of information, insight and education. An all-new one hour documentary entitled Toil and Trouble: Making “Macbeth” includes wonderful contemporary interviews with Roman Polanski which provide a marvellous retrospective glimpse into his film from the position of having to discuss it over forty years after it was made. The doc is fleshed out with appearances by production executives and actors (including Annis herself).

The 1971 Frank Simon documentary Polanski Meets Macbeth delivers a historical look at the making of the film and includes footage of the cast and crew on set. It's thoroughly fascinating.

Two other extra features are so wonderful, they could have been the ONLY value added elements and I doubt anyone would have been disappointed. The first is Polanski's co-screenwriter Kenneth Tynan being interviewed by the great Dick Cavett in 1971. The piece not only allows us the privilege of meeting with the brilliant Tynan to hear his perspective on the process, but as per usual, we get yet another example of just what a great interviewer Cavett was.

Secondly, and perhaps the most vital document is Two Macbeths from the wonderful 1972 British TV series Aquarius. This is must-see viewing for anyone who loves film and theatre as we are blessed with a conversation about "Macbeth" between Polanski and the noted theater director Peter Coe.

In addition to the supply of trailers and a Terrence Rafferty essay within a lovely booklet, this Criterion Blu-Ray is yet again adorned with a stunning cover design from Sarah Habibi whose work is so consistently amazing that I almost wish she could just design every Blu-Ray and DVD cover for every movie I love.

Needless to say, this Criterion Blu-Ray is a keeper folks.

WAKE IN FRIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canadian Director Ted Kotcheff's 1971 Classic exploration of machismo on the Australian outback now on the big screen and Blu-Ray. Savage, brutal and horrifying depiction of life in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Wake in Fright – also known as: Outback (1971) Dir. Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Al Thomas, Jack Thompson, Peter Whittle and Sylvia Kay

****

By Greg Klymkiw

It seems unthinkable in this day and age of film preservation and restoration that a motion picture classic made – not during the silent period of the early 20th century, but in 1971, a Cannes Palme D’Or nominee no less, and often cited (along with Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout from the same year) as the beginning of Australia’s revitalization as a filmmaking force – was one week away from having all of its original negative elements destroyed. After a two-year search all over the world at his own expense, the film’s editor Anthony Buckley finally discovered the elements in the bowels of the CBS vaults in Pittsburgh (no less) in a pile of items marked to be “junked” (industry parlance for “destroyed”) and, I reiterate, ONE WEEK from the date he found them.

Because of his Herculean efforts as well as the frame-by-frame restoration by the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia and Deluxe Labs, Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (released outside of Australia as Outback) has a new lease on life – to shock and mesmerize audiences all over the world. Screened at Cannes in May of 2009 (only one of two features ever to be screened on two separate occasions at Cannes) and in a special presentation featuring Kotcheff in a personal dialogue on the film at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, Wake in Fright stands as one of the most powerful explorations of male savagery in the context of a topography that seems as rugged and barren as the surface of the Moon. In a world of Samuel Fuller and Sam Peckinpah, Kotcheff’s brilliant film holds its own.

I first saw the movie when I was about 13 or 14 years old as Outback during a late night showing on the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) when, during this time, Canadian content guidelines allowed for the broadcast of ANY film that came from Britain’s Commonwealth to meet said guidelines. (Because of this, we saw some really fine movies and TV series during the 60s and 70s.) It was a movie that completely bewildered and obsessed me. Even a full frame standard telecine transfer did not detract from its strangeness, its terrible and terrifying beauty and its depiction of a world so foreign to my own, yet seeming to be imbued with a quality that suggested to me, even then, that what I was seeing was the stuff of life itself. For over thirty years I looked and waited, seemingly in vain, to see it again. To think I almost didn’t have that opportunity because of the aforementioned disappearance and death sentence is now, after seeing it again much older and (hopefully) wiser (on a big screen in a pristine, lovingly restored 35mm print), makes me feel like I have been witness to a miracle.

And what a miracle this movie is! Kotcheff, the Canadian born, raised and trained director (trained via and not unlike Norman Jewison, within the legendary CBC television drama department of the late 50s and early 60s), has made his fair share of good pictures – most notably the Berlin Golden Bear Award winner The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, the droll Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? and the first and, by far, the best of the Rambo pictures First Blood – but nothing in his canon comes close to the mind boggling perfection of Wake in Fright.

Stunningly photographed by Brian West, the picture opens on one spot of the desolation that is the outback of Australia and the camera proceeds to do a slow 360 degree turn – shocking us with the reality that the land is the same whichever direction one looks and that it seems to go on forever. Into this environment we’re introduced to the impeccably groomed and fussily attired schoolteacher John Grant (Gary Bond) who is about to leave the two-building rail town for a much-needed vacation to Sydney.

Grant describes his position as being enslaved to the Ministry of Education as they have required all new teachers to post a one-thousand-dollar bond to ensure they serve their entire first term in the most desolate postings imaginable. During a stopover in the bleak mining town of Bundanyabba, Grant meets Jock (played by legendary Aussie actor Chips Rafferty), an amiable policeman who plies him with beer. Soon our hero drunkenly indulges in a frenzied gambling spree and loses all of his money. Stranded, perpetually drunk and eventually and brain-numbingly hung-over, Grant is hosted by a motley crew of locals (several hard drinking macho men and one extremely horny single female) who proceed to take him into the very heart of the Australian darkness.

It appears Australians enjoy getting loaded and going out into the wilderness in the middle of the night to mercilessly slaughter kangaroos for fun.

The kangaroo hunt sequence is utterly sickening. It's impossible to believe it was all captured without using real kangaroos really being shot. Well, believe it. This was the 70s. People made real movies then and the sequence involves real kangaroos, real firearms and real carnage. It's supposed to be sickening an horrifyingly real - and it is. Enjoy!

Grant is practically force-fed steady supplies of beer, seduced by the lonely woman (which is scuttled when he pukes while trying to penetrate her), taken on a mad, drunken and vicious kangaroo hunt and finally locked in a sweaty, smelly and almost violently homoerotic coupling with the mad alcoholic doctor Tydon (a malevolent Donald Pleasance).

Donald Pleasance proves to be not too pleasant.

At first, we are shown a passive observer, but as the film progresses, he regresses to the same savage state as the men he initially holds his nose up to and he decidedly and actively engages in acts so barbaric that he is forced to confront his inner demons and is sickened to the point of contemplating suicide.

Not unlike the world of playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Edward Albee, we find ourselves in the realm of alcohol-fueled depravity and game playing. Like any respectable Walpurgisnacht, booze is sloshed into empty cups with abandon and full cups are drained greedily, but these pagans who celebrate ARE the tortured spirits walking amongst the living and any bonfires they create seemed to be aimed squarely at themselves. Furthermore, the movie presents a “Paradise Lost” situation where depravity is merely presented and much like John Milton’s “hero”, Grant makes a conscious choice to immerse himself in the foul macho shenanigans like a pig in shit.

This is one daring, nasty piece of work and without question, the movie Kotcheff will ultimately be best remembered for. He not only elicits fine performances from a stellar cast, but his mise-en-scene is pretty much perfect.

It’s also no coincidence that he is Canadian and perhaps the perfect director outside of Australia to have tackled this story so rooted in that nation’s pathology. Given that the vast majority of Canada’s population resides within 100 kms along the Canadian and U.S. border, the rest of this vast country north of the 49th parallel is not unlike the world of the Australian outback. (To all non-Canadians: just think of a land populated by SCTV’s hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie – seemingly benign, but below the simpleton surface, a roiling, frustrated, angry, bitter nation of moose-hunting psychopaths.)

As well, it is no surprise that it was Anthony Buckley, the editor of the film, who searched high and low for the lost negative elements, since the cutting in this picture has few equals. For the most part, things are delivered at a steady, unobtrusive pace, but when we’re in the territory of dreams or overtly physical action, the editing veers from measured to positively Eisensteinian. At times, the action borders on the hypnotic, while at other points, it’s as jarring and disturbing as the images and action engaged in by the characters.

This action, as designed by director Kotcheff, is expertly blocked. His shot choices are impeccable and most importantly, he seems perfectly at home in capturing the claustrophobic nature of both barren exteriors and interiors – where the only way to break free is to rage against the dying of the light that has, for the characters who populate this world, become life itself.

This picture rages, alright!

It’s one hell of a ride and we’re all the better for it.

"WAKE IN FRIGHT" is currently playing in Toronto at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX. Please do yourself a favour and see it on a BIG SCREEN. For tickets and further information, please visit the TIFF website HERE.

Then buy the Drafthouse Films Blu-Ray, or if you must, DVD.

THE ROLLER DERBY CHRONICLES: ROLLING THUNDER, DERBY, ROLLER DERBY MATCHES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - KLYMKIW CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FOR 2012 #5

For the MAN in your Life.
For Christmas.

Here's your Greg Klymkiw Christmas Gift Suggestion #5 for 2012. "The Roller Derby Chronicles" is a must for all the menfolk nearest and dearest to you. From VSC (Video Service Corp) this is a 3-disc derby delight that features two documentaries (one contemporary, one a near-classic from 1971) and a whole mess of vintage Roller Derby matches from the late 40s to mid 70s. The discs come in a cool package that includes a mini-replica of a roller derby rink on the cover.

The Immortal Francine Kochu

The Roller Derby Chronicles: Rolling Thunder (2009) *** dir. Larry Gitnick
Starring: Donald Drewry, Gwen "Skinny Mini" Miller, Charlie O'Connell, Francine Kochu, Jerry Seltzer, Leo Seltzer

This 48-minute (standard television one-hour) documentary is a fast-paced, but informative and entertaining introduction to the strange "sport" of roller derby that for a 30-year period took America by storm. We see the early beginnings of roller derby as launched, invented and promoted by Leo Seltzer, its life, trajectory and near-death due to television in the 50s (they made more money on live shows than on TV licence fees and royalties). The film show the rebirth of roller derby under the guidance of Seltzer's son Jerry up to the pinnacle of its popularity in the 70s until it's death in the same decade due to the fuel crisis in America.

The doc is replete with lots of great roller derby footage from a variety of periods and deftly presents the rules of the game in addition to the various modifications over the years. The "action" is supported with new and period interviews with Roller Derby stars like Skinny Mini Miller, Charlie O'Connell and the lovely Francine Kochu.

Introduced and occasionally narrated by the delightfully cheesy dulcet tones of sports announcer Donald Drewry, Rolling Thunder is a terrific primer for anyone not familiar with roller derby and a wonderful walk (or roll) down memory lane for those of us who religiously watched Roller Derby on television and saw it live whenever we could. (As a kid I used to see Roller Derby in the old, packed-to-the-rafters 10,000-seat Winnipeg Arena.)

All in all, Rolling Thunder (obviously not to be confused with the great 70s post-Vietnam vigilante thriller with William Devane) is a terrific appetizer to the buffet dinner to come.

Cinema Verite Meets Roller Derby

The Roller Derby Chronicles: Derby (1971) ***1/2 dir. Robert Kaylor
Starring: Mike Snell, Charlie O'Connell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If one looks at Rolling Thunder as a starter course and the two discs of actual Roller Derby matches as dessert, then 1971's Derby is a full-on gourmet main course.

Initially financed by the Roller Derby moguls to promote the sport and to focus on its biggest star Charlie O'Connell, the dream team of Derby's key creatives came up with something far more fascinating. While following the affable O'Connell around, the filmmakers are presented with a very happy accident. A young Mike Snell showed up whilst the cameras were rolling on O'Connell in the dressing room. Snell wants to play roller derby and zeroes in immediately upon the reigning star to get advice.

Snell has quit his back-breaking proletarian unskilled labour job, saved up three years worth of wages to learn the art of roller derby and with his wife's support, he's going to seek stardom in Roller Derby. To the filmmakers, this was too good to be true and we bounce back and forth between the grounded O'Connell and the live-wired irresponsibility of Snell. This guy is also a major cocksman and the film focuses on his philandering and even follows Snell's wife as she confronts one of his many lovers.

Yes, the movie is about Roller Derby, but it's also about the American Dream gone completely awry and though the picture peters out in its final minutes, it is, for the most part one of the most fascinating cinema verite documentaries of the period.

To anyone following this sort of thing, this should come as no surprise. The director is Robert Kaylor who went on to direct the flawed, but strangely compelling feature length drama Carny with Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson and Jodie Foster. The producer is William Richert who went on to direct one of the best political thriller satires of the 70s, Winter Kills with Jeff Bridges and John Huston. And last, but not least, Derby's editor is Anthony Potenza who'd go on to direct the famed rock-doc No Nukes, some of Bruce Springsteen's best videos as well as the epic Springsteen video anthology.

Derby is a winner all the way and a documentary that demands re-discovery!!!

Z.P.G. - ZERO POPULATION GROWTH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 70s Dystopian Sci-Fi

Geraldin Chaplin & Oliver Reed will CONCEIVE!!!

Why give birth? Get one of these!

Z.P.G.
Zero Population Growth (1971) ***
dir. Michael Campus
Starring: Oliver Reed, Geraldine Chaplin, Diane Cilento, Don Borden

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There is a special brand of bleakness that no decade before or since the 70s managed to bring to the big screen in the genre of dystopian science fiction. Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006) comes close and it’s perhaps the best contemporary example of a film that creates a world so mired in hopelessness that simple acts of humanity, while seeming to be extraordinarily noble, also feel utterly and resolutely futile.

Cuaron’s picture also feels like a perfect companion piece to Michael Campus’s Z.P.G., a forgotten (albeit flawed) minor gem from 1971 that has managed to sneak its way onto the DVD shelves via Legend Films ongoing series of neglected Paramount Pictures releases.

The major difference between the two (aside from obvious production value and budget) is that the central issue of population control in one is by decree whereas in the other, it is due to the forces of nature. In Z.P.G., a world as polluted and ruled by martial law as in Cuaron’s film, people do want to have children, but are outlawed by Big Brother against doing so to keep the ever-increasing world numbers down.

The central characters Russ and Carol McNeil (Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin respectively) are a childless couple working as performers in a live museum installation piece devoted to presenting typical domestic situations from the past. They work opposite another couple, George and Edna Borden (Don Gordon and Diane Cilento). The scenarios these two couples engage in for the edification of museum goers reflect a past that was the swinging late-60s and as such, they present a tale of wife swapping which is meant to be as titillating as it is a morality play.

Both couples are childless, but within the world of Z.P.G., all couples are allowed to “adopt” cyber children. These are not the almost-human Haley Joel Osments of Spielberg’s A.I., but are creepy, mannequin-like dolls. The Bordens are perfectly content with their doll-child, but the McNeils are unable to succumb to the status quo and are not only childless, but sans the aforementioned creepy doll-child. When the McNeils decide to have a real baby in secret, they risk their lives. Eerie scenes of pod-like citizens ratting out families with real babies have a strange power to disturb, but nothing is more disturbing in this movie than when the McNeils inadvertently let the Bordens in on their secret and the childless couple demands private face time with the real child.

Critics who dismiss it on the basis of the picture’s obvious script contrivances and the low budget production value have unfairly maligned Z.P.G.. It’s not a perfect picture by any means, but it also has a strange, obsessive quality. The stolid performances of both Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin are just the right pitch for their characters and Diane Cilento’s truly insane performance as the “Mrs. Perfect” side of the equation gets weirder and creepier as the movie progresses.

Director Michael Campus is an odd duck. His output has been almost non-existent since this film was made in 1972, yet he did direct two of the coolest blaxpoitation pictures of the 70s, The Mack and The Education of Sonny Carson. He’s no hack and obviously has both talent and taste.

The screenplay for Z.P.G. is often annoyingly full of convenient devices to keep the story moving, but for every one of these devices, the writing reveals an equal number of twists, turns and plot points of downright kick-ass sci-fi cleverness and creepiness. Co-writers Frank DeFelita and Max Ehrlich were certainly no slouches as genre hacks. Separately and together they are responsible for such solid genre material as Audrey Rose and The Entity and the totally oddball George C. Scott directed incest potboiler The Savage is Loose.

At the end of the day, this feels like a movie that was made with compromises – not the sorts that are studio imposed, but rather, the kinds that are forced by an incredibly low budget. In spite of this, there is both a charm and effectiveness to the use of retro models and glass paintings and cold interiors to reflect the world of the movie.

Z.P.G. is a movie I have always wanted to see. It eluded me back in 1972 as it played for only one week at a strange little independent grindhouse on the opposite side of the city I grew up in. I’m glad I finally got the chance. It’s not great sci-fi, but it’s certainly both solid and thought provoking and like a lot of retro sci-fi it has a lot more similarities to our modern world than differences. This is especially cool.

Z.P.G. is available on the Legend Films DVD label devoted to a variety of Paramount Pictures releases that Paramount had no interest in distributing themselves.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - An inconsequential Bresson film. It had to happen sooner or later. "Four Nights of a Dreamer" is screening as part of the TIFF Cinematheque's major retrospective organized and curated by the legendary programmer James Quandt.

Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) dir. Robert Bresson
Starring: Isabelle Weingarten, Guillaume des Forêts, Maurice Monnoyer

**1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, but I have to admit I'm less than pleased to discover that there exists a Robert Bresson film I don't much care for. It's not that the movie is bad, but it feels both inconsequential AND pretentious.

Based loosely on Dostoyevsky's "White Nights", the movie tells the extremely uninteresting tale of Jacques (Guillaume des Forêts), a good-looking mopey-dopey dreamy-pants who wanders Paris seeking the woman of his dreams and to find inspiration for his art - which frankly, is not very good.

One evening he spies a gorgeous young thing on the verge of taking a dive off a bridge. Jacques convinces the lovely Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten) to live. Besides, her reason for wanting to die is rather foolish. Her erstwhile lover promised to meet her and didn't show up and she's beginning to suspect he doesn't love her.

The couple spend the next three nights wandering around Paris as we get flashbacks via their conversation about their backstories - which also aren't all that interesting. Marthe comes from a lower class family and her Mom is hoping to marry her off to a rich man. Jacques, on the other hand, spends most of his time stalking beautiful young women. Jacques's activities are certainly not without merit since Bresson has wisely chosen to populate the movies with mega-babes as the objects of his ocular attention.

The couple eventually falls in love, but do not adequately express their feelings to one another and eventually, they run into Marthe's wayward lover and she dumps Jacques in favour of the rich boy.

Bresson has always focused up characters of considerable complexity and in some cases, they're downright detestable. In spite of the latter, all the characters engender empathy. Neither of the characters in this movie seem especially worth following for 90 minutes.

On the plus side, the movie is extremely well shot and I love Bresson's vibrant colour palette - especially in the nighttime scenes in Paris.

At some point, I plan to re-read "White Nights" and watch Four Nights of a Dreamer again.

It's Bresson, after all. And thankfully, it isn't a stinker.

I'm hoping I'll be more positively disposed at a later juncture, but for now, it merits mild interest. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but they all can't be masterpieces.

"Four Nights of a Dreamer" is screening as part of the TIFF Cinemtheque's major retrospective organized and curated by the legendary programmer James Quandt. Aptly titled "The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson", this and every other Bresson film is unspooling at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto and over a dozen cinemas across North America. The film is screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox Sunday March 11 at 5PM and Wednesday April 4 at 6:30PM. Tickets are available HERE. "Four Nights of a Dreamer" is also available on DVD.

FACE OFF - Review By Greg Klymkiw - An important restoration of the historic 1971 Canadian Hockey Picture by Video Service Corp. (VSC) and the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Film Reference Library yields opportunities for new generations to experience this portrait of the NHL Glory Days at dawn of indigenous Canuck movie culture.

Face Off (U.S. Title: Winter Comes Early) (1971)
dir. George McCowan
Starring: Art Hindle, Trudy Young, Frank Moore, John Vernon, Vivian Reis, Derek Sanderson, Austin Willis, Sean Sullivan, George Armstrong, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Darryl Sittler, Harold Ballard, Paul Henderson, Jean Beliveau, Scott Young

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"It takes a lot of courage to watch a man out there night after night. I know the players get most of the glory, but I think the women who wait at home for them at night deserve most of the credit. They must have to love the game as much as the man does." - Austin Willis as the silver-domed owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs to Trudy Young, the young singer who falls in love with the team's new star player.

Hockey is Canada's national sport. End of story. No arguments are necessary. They will not be considered, so just keep 'em to yourself, please. Unbelievably though, until 1994, our national sport was officially Lacrosse. I kid you not. Lacrosse! Lacrosse? Give me a break. When finally, this wrong had been rendered right, it was done so in that annoyingly moderate Canadian fashion wherein Hockey had to officially share the distinction with Lacrosse, to appease only those of the politically correct persuasion. But, no matter. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. Hockey is as Canadian as Maple Syrup, peameal bacon, Canadian geese, pouding chômeur and Norman Jewison. As such, one can only wonder why the most Canadian movie NEVER made by Canadians was Slap Shot, George Roy Hill's hilarious hockey satire with Paul Newman. But hold the phone! Many years before everyone's favourite salad dressing magnate and the Hanson Brothers cracked heads like so many eggs, yielding runny crimson yolk matter upon the fresh, white ice, Canada did indeed generate a terrific piss and vinegar hockey picture - Face Off .

Written by George Robertson (based on written materials by Neil Young's Dad, sports writer Scott Young), directed by stalwart TV helmer George McCowan (who would happily go on to direct the utterly insane 70s horror thriller Frogs) and starring a very handsome Art Hindle (who went on to scare the shit out of movie audiences as Brooke Adams's pod-victim hubby in Phil Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake) and the delectable Trudy Young (former childstar and every young Canadian boy's wet dream from the long-running kids show Razzle Dazzle), Face Off blazed onto Canadian screens in the 70s and played premiere first run theatres all across the country. (I first saw the picture with my Dad in Winnipeg in a huge old picture palace.)

This was truly a movie by Canadians, for Canadians. They embraced it wholeheartedly - not just because it was a genuinely good picture, but the amazing on-ice action. Without question, Face Off is historically significant for a number of reasons, but most importantly, it contains the only existing 35mm film footage of actual NHL hockey action. In spite of this, the original elements to generate new prints went missing and it's suspected the negative had been thrown out by mistake after producer John F. Bassett's untimely death from brain cancer in 1985. With one decent existing print left in the whole world at the Toronto International Film Festival's Film Reference Library, the visionary Canadian home entertainment company Video Service Corporation (VSC) undertook the painstaking, expensive and worthwhile toil of restoring the film - frame by frame - to high definition.


The movie itself straddles the best of both worlds; that amazing early period of Canuck features that not only reflected English Canadian culture, but did so with that distinctive 70s darkness so prevalent in the work of the country's neighbours south of the 49th parallel. On the surface, Face Off is a simple, oft-told tale of star-crossed lovers; doomed from the start. the movie is all the more melancholy as we experience WHY they should be together, but also get a God's-eye perspective of WHY they won't be together. As the narrative unspools, we hope against all hope that things will work out for the best, but anyone who knows and loves the best movies from the 70s will realize it's a done deal - the relationship will be thwarted.

The emphasis on darkness was not only the 70s way, but the Canadian Way. Canuck pictures from this period shared the zeitgeist of tone so apparent in the work of Scorsese, Schrader, Toback, Reizs, Lumet and others. Where the movies differed was in "production value" (ugh - I hate that phrase). Naturally lower budgets as well as the huge National Film Board influence resulted in films that blended traditional, classical storytelling with an almost Neo-realist approach - less razzle-dazzle, more dour-dazzle.

The movie begins, however, with a narrative that in and of itself, is pure fairy tale. Billy Duke (Art Hindle), a fresh-faced young demon on ice from Northern Ontario scores a spectacular winning goal and luckily for him, a Maple Leafs scout is in the crowd and offers him a spot with the once-gloried, but now beleagured NHL team - they need a star and they need wins. Celebrating at the local bar with his team mates, Billy is hit with Cupid's arrow when he locks eyes with the beautiful songstress Sherri Lee Nelson (Trudy Young) who is playing in the band Winter Comes Early, an up and coming group led by the talented songwriter-musician Barney (Frank Moore). Barney clearly carries a torch for Sherri, but she's dazzled by the aw-shucks down-home charm of Billy.

With this, two important love triangles emerge.

While Barney pines for Sherri, Sherri pines for Billy. The Dukester's mistress is not flesh and blood, but rather, the Bitch-Goddess that is pro-hockey. Billy and Sherri have everything going for them - both are rising stars and ascending the heights with speeding bullet velocity and yet, as their love deepens, so do the pressures of their respective lifestyles. Billy's first true love is hockey and his relationship with the peace loving hippie chick songstress is strained to say the least because of it. Billy's game is also off due to the real-world realities of l'amour and even Sherri threatens her commitment to music due to the same.

Add to this, as one must do in tales of star-crossed lovers, the outside forces which toss an unwanted spanner in the works. Sherri's are both Barney, who offers stability, commitment and friendship, and her need for a family (Mom was a single parent AND drunken floozy - this in sharp contrast to the down home hearth she experiences in Billy's familial Shagrila in Northern Ontario.) The primary outside force wreaking havoc with Billy's love life is the male patriarchy of the sports world. It's a man's world and his iron-fisted Coach (the late, great John Vernon) does everything in his power to let Billy know that hockey comes before everything. This is more than ably demonstrated in the Coach's relationship with his own wife, a lonely, clinging, drunken floozy. This is not lost on Sherri - Lord knows she doesn't want to become anything like her own Mom, nor does she envision the love of her life being an absentee-husband.

One of the best scenes in the movie is a New Year 's Eve party hosted by the team. Naturally, Billy brings Sherri and naturally, every male in some position of power, subtly and not-so-subtly, put the necessary bugs in her ears that being a hockey wife requires sacrifice. The writing here is first rate as Sherri is tossed, almost La Ronde-like about the room while McCowan's expert direction captures the rhythm of the patriarchal rotisserie with consummate camera-jockeying.


Later in the film, the Coach has a chilling conversation with Billy wherein he opines with the force of fact: "Kid, everything in life has to be in its proper place. Even the wife, eh." Billy regards this with a mixture of skepticism and acceptance. He responds in a poker face with: "Something to think about." The Coach delivers the final knockout verbal blow: "Just don't think about it. DECIDE!!!"

For Billy, it IS a tough decision. He's not only being seduced by the game, his teammates, his bosses, but by fame itself. At one point, Billy and Sherri clash when he gloats over his "bad boy" press in the sports pages. When she accuses him of being "just like the rest of them" (the patriarchal world that has attempted to put HER in her place), Billy responds, "No I'm not." And here is where Hindle and Young really break hearts - thanks to their fresh, meaningful performances and the great 70s-style dialogue. Billy brashly, directly and romantically takes the bull by the horns, looks Sherri in the eyes and says, "I'm younger, stronger and tougher and that's why you dig me. You know that's right. We both know it, eh." And here, for me is the clincher where I fell in love all over again with this movie. Billy adds: "So dry your eyes and put on something warm. I think we both could use some fresh air."

Ah, young love in Canada.

A stroll through sub-zero winter snow and all will be well.


And, like the name of Sherri's band and the U.S. title of the film, winter does indeed come early, and this tale of star-crossed lovers against the backdrop of Canada's national sport races to a tragic and moving finish.

What a terrific movie!

On and off the ice, Face Off captures the world of pro-hockey with a considerable degree of reality. Even when it might not be to the letter, the world, the atmosphere, the locker room camaraderie, the wood paneled smoky taverns, the cheap suits adorning the men, the clutches of sports reporters, the parties and, as detailed above, the place of women in this world of gladiators on the ice and their masters in the back rooms. Even as a kid, so much of the movie resonated for me on this level. Having a father who played pro-hockey, did post-game radio analysis and in his later years, promoted pro-hockey in his position as a marketing man with a major league sponsor, I was surrounded by so much of the atmosphere that when Dad took me to see the movie in 1971, I was totally enamoured with it.

I'm also pleased to say that seeing the movie forty years later, those days came alive again and, I might add, in deeper ways - especially in the film's examination of men and women and their, respective places in that world.

The other important aspect of the film is just how Canadian it is - not just stylistically, but in how it so effortlessly captures Canada's unique indigenous culture. Like all good things Canadian, it doesn't do this in obvious flag waving ways, but with a subtle matter-of-factness. For example, one (of many) terrific cuts in the picture, occurs at the small town railway station as Billy is about to leave for Toronto. A nice close up on a metal footstool placed in front of the train's passenger doorway leads us simply into a "goodbye" scene and emblazoned upon it are the immortal words: "Canadian Pacific".

For all the film's melodrama and simple classical story structure, McCowan happily embraces the Neo-realist approach to much of the action. Montage sequences in the streets pulsate with life, the bars are replete with background extras who look like they've lived there forever - puffing on cigarettes and sucking back beer in the distinctive Canadian stubby bottles, the on-ice action of real NHL hockey games is expertly matched with recreations of said matches using Hindle himself or his stand-ins. The professional actors handle their roles with the requisite dollops of naturalism so they blend beautifully with the numerous appearances of non-actors. (One of the best performances comes from NHL bad boy Derek Sanderson in a small, but important role in which he plays himself. The other comes from Leafs' captain George "Chief" Armstrong who delivers a speech to Billy that is so bursting-at-the-seams with hockey wisdom, fans will feel they've died and gone to Heaven.)


Art Hindle and Trudy Young as the love-struck couple are a marvel to behold. The camera loves them and their chemistry is natural. Given how popular the movie was in Canada, I remember thinking - even as a kid - why neither of them became stars. Hindle, of course, went on to make a long and successful career as a "working actor" and is now one of our country's finest character actors.

The immortal John Vernon, always a treat to watch in any movie, had a long career in character roles on both sides of the 49th parallel. His performance here as the coach is ice personified. (Though for me, nothing will ever match the scene in the classic Linda Blair women-in-prison picture Caged Heat where Vernon, as the warden, sat back in a hot tub full of naked women whilst puffing a cigar. I'm sure this was far more edifying than a scene in Mob Story where, in my sporadic acting career doing cameos for friends, I was accosted by Mr. Vernon who played a gangster whilst adorned in stereotypical Canadian-hoser garb, I suffered the indignity of being interrupted during a leisurely dump as Mr. Vernon tore the door off the frame of a cubicle in an airport john.) Vivian Reis as Vernon's beleagured wife delivers an absolutely heartbreaking performance while Austin Willis renders a more than creepy paternalistic tone as the hockey team's owner. The real revelation here is Frank Moore as Barney. Moore has become a great character actor, but in this film, his soulful eyes betray his poker face. His presence lends the film both pathos and humour while many of the songs sung by the group in the picture, "Winter Comes Early", are genuine top-tappers. Here's yet another example of a tremendous Canadian actor who has star written all over him, but for whatever reason, neither he nor the system ever adequately let him take that path.

And yes, let us pause again to mention that director McCowan rendered the cult classic Frogs. While this may seem a dubious achievement to some, it's one of my favourite 70s horror pictures and the images of Ray Milland being attacked by frogs and resulting in his death by heart attack is as indelibly etched upon my mind as the shot of Trudy Young and Art Hindle in Face Off jumping joyfully upon a liquid-filled mattress in a Yorkville waterbed store.


Face Off is classic Canadian cinema. To think it was almost lost forever is sickening and VSC deserves huge kudos for taking this on. The results of the restoration are spectacular - the film is now available to all its original fans in a brand spanking new 40th Anniversary DVD/Bluray Combo edition. This edition will also serve new generations of Canadian audiences and hockey nuts; the high definition work is superb, maintaining grain and the distinctive colour palette and the sound work is superb with a cleaner version of the mono mix on the optical and occasionally with bits and pieces of the original optical "sound" (or if, you will, "hiss"). For me, this always gives older films a lot more warmth than the idiotic overkill sometimes performed by over-zealous audio technical artists on mono mixes.


The package includes the original SCTV parody of Face Off, a trailer and commentary track. I personally don't much like commentary tracks - I find them meandering and almost pointless. Luckily, stars Art Hindle and Trudy Young share a few cool stories, but what this really needed was a moderator who could have guided the conversation in more practical fashion. I also think the expense of doing a short video documentary on the film's history and subsequent restoration might have been a worthy addition. These quibbles aside, it's a great home entertainment release and VSC proves once more it's one of the most original and committed companies generating important product for the home market in North America.