Lee Marvin Goes Retro

by Kimberly Lindbergs | September 25, 2009

Categories | News, Actors, Cinema Retro, Lee Marvin

The latest issue of Cinema Retro arrived in my mailbox yesterday and it boasts a colorful picture of Lee Marvin during the making of Prime Cut (1972) that literally jumps right off the cover. As a long time Lee Marvin devotee I was thrilled to discover that the magazine had unearthed a lengthy interview with Marvin that had never been published before. The interview was conducted by writer Steve Mori during the making of The Klansman in 1974. Marvin offers up lots of insightful antidotes about his film career and it’s a pleasure to read. He was an incredibly smart man who lived a fascinating life and he obviously loved his job. Acting came naturally to Lee Marvin and he brought an honesty and edginess to his roles that is also on display during the interviews he did.

In Steve Mori ’s interview with Marvin the actor shares some great stories about working with other actors such as Toshiro Mifune on the set of the excellent WW2 drama Hell in the Pacific (1968). He also doesn’t shy away from discussing the disagreements he had with studios or other actors such as Paul Newman during the making of Pocket Money (1972). If you’re even the slightest bit interested in Lee Marvin the new issue of Cinema Retro is a must read!

Besides the interview with Lee Marvin, other highlights from the new issue of Cinema Retro include Steve Saragossi’s detailed look at the terrific Lee Marvin film Prime Cut, a nice overview of the Christopher Lee’s Fu Manchu films, an interview with British actress Shirley Anne Field, an interesting take on John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar (1962). It also features lots of film news, DVD and soundtrack reviews as well as many follow-up articles to pieces from previous issues such as the second part of Steve Saragossi’s interview with American actor James Caan and an ongoing look at The Man from U.N.C.L.E. films.

You can purchase the latest issue of Cinema Retro at their official website: cinemaretro.com

Lee Marvin fans might also enjoy checking out a new interview with director Jim Jarmusch that was recently posted at the Criterion Collection film site. In one of the clips Jarmusch humorously discusses his association with The Sons of Lee Marvin.

Recommended Read:
- Previous Lee Marvin coverage here at Cinebeats

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The Fool Killer (1965)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | September 2, 2009

Categories | Movie Reviews, Horror, American Cinema, Anthony Perkins, Lee Marvin, Drama, Mexican Cinema

I first saw Servando González’s 1965 film The Fool Killer (aka El asesino de tontos) almost twenty years ago and it’s haunted me ever since. The film features Anthony Perkins in one of his best roles and I got the urge to watch it again last year while I was obsessing over Perkins’ music career. For some unknown reason The Fool Killer isn’t available on DVD yet so I had to purchase a used VHS copy of the film to see it.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised that The Fool Killer was unavailable on DVD because Mexican director Servando González is almost unheard of in the United States. I haven’t had the opportunity to see any of the director’s other films myself so my own appreciation of his work revolves around my deep affection for The Fool Killer, but I was disappointed to learn that the director had passed away in October of last year. Servando González’s death appears to have gone almost completely unnoticed by the film community except in Latin America. This is really unfortunate because The Fool Killer clearly shows that González was a talented filmmaker with the ability to create wonderfully atmospheric films that could remain with viewers long after they had ended. Trying to find any noteworthy information about The Fool Killer is nearly impossible, but I thought I’d share some of my own thoughts about Servando González’s exceptional film in an effort to broaden appreciation of his work.

The Fool Killer is an extremely dark and ominous film starring thirteen year-old actor Edward Albert as a deeply troubled young orphan named George. After a brief opening montage filled with idyllic images of the American countryside, the film begins with George receiving a nasty beating from his foster parents while they recite Bible verses at him in an effort to soften the blows. Poor George blames himself for the beatings he receives because he thinks that the “foolish things” he’s done shouldn’t go unpunished. But dropping a butter churn and playing with dandelions are clearly not acts worthy of the beatings he gets. After the physical pain wears off, the emotional scars become evident when young George decides that he’s had enough abuse and heads out into the world on his own. His odyssey will take him through the dusty back roads of rural Tennessee where he’ll encounter an unusual cast of characters who consciously and unconsciously guide him on his journey.

The film is based on a novel of the same name written by Helen Eustis, but the legend of the “Fool Killer” was first written down by author O. Henry (aka William Sydney Porter). I’m not sure how much of the legend is based on fact or if the whole concept is a work of fiction conjured up by the author’s absinthe fueled imagination, but according to O. Henry his tale of the Fool Killer was based on an old southern myth, “like Santa Claus and Jack Frost and General Prosperity and all those concrete conceptions that are supposed to represent an idea that Nature has failed to embody.”

In his short tale O. Henry’s also tells us that the Fool Killer was a “terrible old man, in gray clothes, with a long, ragged, gray beard, and reddish, fierce eyes” who “come stumping up the road in a cloud of dust, with a white oak staff in his hand” and would “kill anyone who perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness.”

A similar tale is told to young George when he stumbles across a filthy shack inhabited by a hard drinking old man who calls himself Dirty Jim. Dirty Jim lives alone and when he meets George he invites the boy to live with him. These two unlikely companions develop a friendship that is occasionally disrupted by Dirty Jim’s drinking and unsanitary living habits. Dirty Jim is played brilliantly by actor Henry Hull who was 75 years old at the time. Hull was an accomplished stage actor but today he’s mostly remembered for his film work including the starring role in the first werewolf film made by Universal Studios, Werewolf of London (1935). Hull went on to appear in many memorable films such as Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944), Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra (1941) and William Dieterle exceptional Portrait of Jennie (1948), but The Fool Killer provided Henry Hull with a role that the 75-year-old actor could really sink his teeth into and he makes the most of his screen time.

After George suddenly becomes ill, Dirty Jim decides to leave him with a female neighbor and her daughter. George isn’t particularly happy about his circumstances and he becomes obsessed by the tale of the Fool Killer who Dirty Jim described as being tall and thin while “carrying a sharp chopper” (scythe). Like the monster in O’Henry’s tale, the Fool Killer in the film is said to wander the earth ridding the world of foolish people and George begins to fear that the Fool Killer will come for him some day.

When George sets out on his own again he meets up with a tall and lanky Civil War veteran named Milo (Anthony Perkins). In the dead of night George mistakes Milo’s menacing shadow for the dreaded Fool Killer, but after the two meet and get to know one another they quickly become friends. Unbeknownst to George, Milo is suffering from what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to the devastating and disturbing things he experienced during the Civil War. Anthony Perkins does an extraordinary job of making Milo a character who the audience both sympathizes with and fears. The actor was incredibly adapt at playing psychologically damaged young men and if you enjoy Perkins’ work in other films such as Fear Strikes Out (1956), Psycho (1960) and Pretty Poison (1968), you’ll find his performance in The Fool Killer just as impressive.

As the boy’s relationship with Milo deepens, it also begins to suffer due to the soldier’s troubled past and invisible war wounds. Milo is angry at the world and doesn’t suffer fools lightly. He finds fault in everything and seems to enjoy expressing his dissatisfaction, which is easy to understand, but makes young George uncomfortable and confused. George looks to everyone for acceptance and clearly wants to form some kind of family bond with anyone who will give him the time of day. The film hints at the abuse young George has obviously endured, but this aspect of the film is never exploited. We do sense that George’s guilty conscious over perceived wrongs (or “foolishness”) often gets the best of him and they seem to manifest in his own feelings of shame clearly rooted in the abuse he’s suffered. The complex dynamic between these two unlikely companions comes to a head in a beautifully shot scene that takes place inside a religious tent revival meeting that resembles a side show from some macabre circus. George insists that he and Milo attend the rival meeting and get “saved” but the situation only manages to stir up some deep sense of shame in George as well as seething resentment in Milo who finally becomes totally unhinged under all the strain. As Milo falls apart he begins to transform into the mythical Fool Killer that haunts George’s nightmares.

I often have trouble relating to child actors, but Edward Albert is extremely believable as little George. Albert made his acting debut in The Fool Killer and many of his scenes are surprisingly authentic. He is often forgotten today, but Edward Albert appeared in some interesting films throughout his career such as Butterflies Are Free (1972), Midway (1976), The Greek Tycoon (1978), The Squeeze (1978), Galaxy of Terror (1981) and Butterfly (1982). His role in The Fool Killer is especially noteworthy because of the range and depth of emotion he was able to convey at such a young age.

Servando González really does an incredible job of evoking the rural south in his film. He was able to capture the undeniable beauty of the pastoral countryside as well as the eccentricities of the people who inhabit it, but he doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of the South that often take the shape of religious zealots nor does he ignore the deep scars left in that part of the country from the hard fought Civil War. Like Charles Laughton’s magnificent Night of the Hunter (1955), which The Fool Killer undoubtedly took inspiration from, González’s film is drenched in American Gothic imagery and he was able to convey an almost suffocating sense of dread that’s not easy to forget.

Anyone familiar with Mark Twains’ stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn will also immediately recognize some of their classic character traits in young George. In many ways George seems to be a composite of both Tom and Huck. George even narrates a good portion of the film and I find it impossible to shake the image of Huck Finn that thirteen year-old actor Edward Albert’ invokes. The original author of The Fool Killer as well as script writers Morton Fine and David Friedkin undoubtedly owe a bit of debt to Mark Twain as well as, but it’s interesting to note that Helen Eustis published her original novel in 1954. An entire year before Laughton’s Night of the Hunter was released.

Besides Servando González’s impressive direction and Álex Phillips Jr.’s beautiful cinematography, The Fool Killer also features a memorable score by award winning Mexican composer Gustavo César Carrión. Outside of the typical musical cues usually found in Hollywood films of the same period, the music in The Fool Killer is often eerie, rustic and unsettling. The discordant sounds that permeate the soundtrack perfectly express the dark and grungy tone of the film. After watching The Fool Killer a second time I was occasionally reminded of Neil Young’s effective score for Jim Jarmusch’s impressive 1995 film Dead Man. I suspect that Neil Young may have been inspired by some of Gustavo César Carrión’s score for The Fool Killer when he was composing the music for Jarmusch’s movie.

In a strange coincidence (or is it?), it’s worth noting that Lee Marvin starred in a televised version of The Fool Killer in 1956 for Kraft Television Theatre. I was unable to find any substantial information about the televised adaptation that featured Lee Marvin, but hopefully it will surface someday. Since Jim Jarmusch’s appreciation of Lee Marvin is well known I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also aware of Marvin’s television role in The Fool Killer along with Servando González’s film of the same name.

Currently The Fool Killer is only available on VHS and used copies can be found selling at Amazon for about $22, but I’d love to see Servando González’s film get restored and released on DVD since the quality of the Republic Pictures video is abysmal. Unfortunately most of the cast and crew of the film are dead so information about the movie will continue to be hard to come by, but The Fool Killer would be a wonderful addition to Criterion’s DVD library. Considering the limited amount of films made by Mexican directors that are available on Criterion DVD, I think The Fool Killer would be a worthy candidate for the Criterion treatment.

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The 2008 Woodstock Film Festival

by Kimberly Lindbergs | October 3, 2008

Categories | News, Actors, Lee Marvin

I’ve been so busy and distracted lately that I neglected to mention my minor contribution to The 9th Annual Woodtsock Film Festival that is currently taking place in Woodstock, New York October 1-5.

Most people are familiar with Woodstock thanks to the infamous music festival that was held there in 1969. The 3 day concert featured live performances by artists such as The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, Santana, Crosby Stills & Nash and Sly and the Family Stone. This historic event was made into an award winning film by Michael Wadleigh in 1970.

Currently Woodstock is home to the annual Woodstock Film Festival that brings together “film and music lovers from around the world.” So they can enjoy a “variety of films, first-class concerts, workshops, celebrity-led panels, an awards ceremony, and fantastic parties.” This year renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler (The Thomas Crown Affair, The Loved One, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of the Night, Medium Cool, Faces, Coming Home, Bound for Glory, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, etc.) and director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc.) will be receiving awards and musical artists Donovan and Bela Fleck will be performing live.

Recently The Woodstock Film Festival renamed their Maverick Award for Best Narrative Feature to the Lee Marvin Award for Best Feature Narrative. According to the festival’s executive director Meira Blaustein, the name change was brought about by Lee Marvin’s iconic status in the Woodstock community. From the film festival’s website:

“Lee Marvin, a decorated U.S. combat marine in World War II, moved to Woodstock at war’s end in 1945. By 1947 he had discovered what he wanted to do; become an actor. Mr. Marvin’s first professional appearance was at the summer stock theater on the outskirts of Woodstock, at the Maverick Playhouse. His celebrated Hollywood career began in 1951, with films such as Eight Iron Men, The Big Heat and The Wild One. In 1965 Mr. Marvin received an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual role as a drunken gunfighter and his evil, nose less brother in the western comedy Cat Ballou, which placed him in the upper tiers of Hollywood leading men. Many more leading roles followed in films such as Point Blank, The Dirty Dozen, and Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One. Throughout, Mr. Marvin’s ties to Woodstock remained constant for the rest of his life. ”

This year the festival will be showing a special screening of John Boorman’s 1967 film Point Blank in honor of the newly named Lee Marvin Best Feature Narrative Award and the actor’s wife Pamela Marvin will be announcing the prize in person during the October 4th Awards Ceremony. Pamela Marvin has said that “I know Lee would be happy and very honored to have this award for Best Feature Narrative in the Woodstock Film Festival be given in his name”

I’m personally honored that The Woodtsock Film Festival contacted me about using a piece that I wrote last year about Point Blank called Lee Marvin: A Sensitive 17-Year-Old Boy as part of the festival program. The festival coordinators were very kind and I was truly humbled by their compliments about my article on the film and its star. It meant a lot to me because this year the festival was organizing the event with the approval of Marvin’s family.

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the festival myself, but if you’re on the East Coast, please consider attending The Woodstock Film Festival this weekend. For the first time in the festival’s 9 year history, the Awards Ceremony will be open to the public.

Links:
- The Woodstock Film Festival
- Information about the Lee Marvin Best Feature Narrative Award
- Lee Marvin Articles at Cinebeats

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Lee Marvin: A Sensitive 17-Year-Old Boy

by Kimberly Lindbergs | August 29, 2007

Categories | Actors, American Cinema, Crime, Blogathons, Lee Marvin, TCM

“This film is really in one sense about Lee Marvin. It’s about him as a character. He went out to the war and he was a sensitive 17-year-old boy and you know, he was brutalized and in a way he was expressing himself through violence. He was always trying to recapture his humanity that he felt he had lost and that’s really what the story is about. It’s about a man who comes back from the dead and tries to find his humanity.”
- Director John Boorman on Point Blank (DVD commentary)

After appearing in countless war films, westerns and crime dramas, Lee Marvin won his first Oscar in 1965 for Cat Ballou and followed it up with a starring role in the extremely successful action-packed movie The Dirty Dozen. Hollywood was impressed with Marvin’s success and they offered the actor complete creative control over his next film. That film would be the stylish 1967 Neo-noir crime thriller Point Blank.

The film was directed by the talented British filmmaker John Boorman who Lee Marvin had met in London while filming The Dirty Dozen. Boorman approached Marvin with a poorly adapted script of a pulp novel called The Hunter written by Richard Stark (pen name for Donald E. Westlake) and expressed interest in making a film with him. Marvin hated the original script but he wanted to make the film with Boorman so the two men spent many long evenings in London working out the details and exploring creative concepts before finally plunging ahead with their proposal.

During this process Point Blank became a very personal project for Lee Marvin. He was involved in almost all aspects of the film including the movie’s development, story, staging, sound effects and stunts. Besides just making an entertaining film, Marvin wanted to use various metaphors within the movie to explore his deep-seated feelings about a career spent playing violent killers and a lifetime trying to come to terms with the horrible things he had experienced during WWII where he had served as a sniper for the U.S. Marines.

In Point Blank Lee Marvin plays Walker, a reluctant criminal who stumbles into a bad situation and pays dearly for it. After being convinced to join in a criminal heist with an old friend and his wife that takes place in San Francisco at Alcatraz Prison, Walker is shot “point-blank” by his friend who wants the money and Walker’s wife all for himself. Walker seems to recover quickly and afterward he decides to go after the $93,000 he is still owed from the job. As the film progresses we follow Walker on his quest to confront his would-be killer and recover his money while leaving a trail of dead and beaten bodies behind him. Of course there’s much more to this crime film once you start scratching at its stylish surface.

Lee Marvin has an incredible screen presence that can easily intimidate an audience with its animal intensity. In Point Blank the actor literally jumps off the screen at times but some of the films most poignant moments are its quieter ones, which critics rarely mention. Before Lee Marvin is transformed into the angry gun carrying Walker who dominates most of Point Blank he’s shown as a sweet love struck man. He enjoys romancing his wife and seems willing to do anything to help out a friend. We also see him nervously contemplating his crimes before and after they take place. Walker might be tough and dangerous but he’s also a thoughtful and sensitive guy with a big heart.

I think it’s obvious that John Boorman and Lee Marvin wanted to present Walker as a man who was transformed by violence and disappointment. Much like the innocent 17-year-old Lee Marvin who naively went off to war and was deeply effected by what he experienced there, Marvin’s character in Point Blank is not a naturally violent man. But he has no problem committing acts of violence once he experiences it first hand. Marvin’s Walker seems to rise from the dead as an angry angel of vengeance to pursue the money that’s owed him. But this vengeance is tempered by Walker’s complicated interior-life and throughout the course of Point Blank Lee Marvin’s character never actually kills anyone. Walker beats a few men senseless and threatens them with violence but he often acts more like an angel of mercy who has the ability to kill and chooses to offer people his understanding and a chance for redemption instead. Thanks to Lee Marvin’s powerful screen presence these gentler aspects of his character in Point Blank are continually overlooked by critics in their reviews of the film. They only seem capable of seeing Marvin’s character as a merciless and destructive man, willing to do anything to get back the money that’s owed him.

As we follow Walker on his violent odyssey the film often veers off in abstract directions that follow no clear narrative structure but there are plenty of visual and verbal clues that tell us a lot about the journey Marvin’s character is undertaking and his real goals. And what are these goals? If we take Boorman’s comments about the film at face value it’s clear that the money Walker is hunting for is actually a metaphor for his lost humanity, which seems forever trapped in a sort of prison of his own making. Like Lee Marvin himself, the character of Walker has been transformed by the violence and disappointment that he has suffered in his life. Unfortunately he discovers throughout the course of the film that nothing, including the love of a beautiful woman and the destruction of his enemies, can return his innocence and restore his humanity. Walker can only accept his transformation and imprisonment, and learn to live with it.

Point Blank is an incredible looking film that uses bold color schemes and creative camera work in ways similar to Antonioni’s arthouse dramas Red Desert (1964) and Blowup (1966), as well as Seijun Suzuki’s neo-noir crime thrillers Youth of the Beast (1964), Kanto Wanderer (1964) and Tokyo Drifter (1966). John Boorman has expressed that Antonioni’s films and classic noir inspired the overall look and feel of Point Blank, but I haven’t come across any indication that the director or Lee Marvin were aware of Seijun Suzuki’s early films before making their movie. Much like Suzuki, as well as the French director Jean-Pierre Melville, John Boorman injects his crime film with an overall sense of malaise and turns Lee Marvin’s Walker into one of cinema’s greatest existential anti-heroes alongside Jo Shishido’s Jo Mizuno in Youth of the Beast and Alain Delon’s Frank Costello in Le Samourai.

There is very little dialogue in Point Blank,but what is extremely powerful and often very telling. Even Walker’s one word name tells the audience a lot about his character. One of the films most important moments comes towards the end when Walker finally confronts the man who seems to hold the key to his fortune.

Brewster: You’re a very bad man, Walker, a very destructive man! Why do you run around doing things like this?
Walker: I want my money. I want my $93,000.
Brewster: $93,000? You threaten a financial structure like this for $93,000? No, Walker, I don’t believe you. What do you really want?
Walker: I - I really want my money.
Brewster: Well, I’m not going to give you any money and nobody else is. Don’t you understand that?
Walker: Who runs things?
Brewster: Carter and I run things. I run things.
Walker: What about Fairfax? Will he pay me?
Brewster: Fairfax is a man who signs checks.
Walker: No, cash.
Brewster: Fairfax isn’t going to give you anything. He’s finished. Fairfax is dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.

20 years ago today on August 29, 1987, Lee Marvin left this earth. Unfortunately like many young men who find themselves on bloody foreign battlefields far from home, a part of Lee Marvin had died many years before. Through countless roles as a ruthless killer and movie heavy, Marvin had expressed the violence that had eaten away at him in various creative ways. Point Blank was an accumulation of Marvin’s previous roles held up to a prism and projected back to the audience in a kaleidoscope of colors and action. Underlying that is the echoing silence that permeates Point Blank and seems to cut right to the very core of Lee Marvin’s character.

I personally think Point Blank is one of the greatest American films produced during the sixties but it received a cold critical reception when it was originally released. American critics weren’t ready to see Lee Marvin as an existential anti-hero and the film’s themes and creative ideas were just too complex for many viewers who preferred to see the actor in simpler action films like The Dirty Dozen. The movie has slowly gained a cult following over the years thanks to numerous theatrical re-releases in Europe and its DVD release, which has allowed critics of Point Blank the opportunity to re-examine the film. If you want to see a terrific film and experience one of Lee Marvin’s best and most important performances, do yourself a favor and watch the brilliant Point Blank.

If you’d like to see more screen shots from the film please visit my Point Blank Gallery at Flickr.

You can also read a bit more about Lee Marvin and his film work with John Ford in a previous post I made earlier this year.

Point Blank is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

Richard Harland Smith is commemorating the 20th anniversary of Lee Marvin’s death over at TCM’s Movie Moorlocks blog today with a Blog-a-thon. Since Lee Marvin is one of my favorite American actors I couldn’t resist contributing to his terrific tribute with some thoughts on Marvin’s pivotal role in Point Blank.

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Lee Marvin on John Ford

by Kimberly Lindbergs | July 3, 2007

Categories | Actors, American Cinema, Blogathons, Lee Marvin, Jim Jarmusch

Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance (1962)

Vincent has kick-started his ongoing John Ford Blog-a-thon which lasts all week and ends July 9th. His blog is French, but he welcomes readers and blog-a-thon contributors from around the globe.

In all honesty I haven’t seen a lot of John Ford’s films myself but my favorites are Mogambo (1953), The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Donovan’s Reef (1963). A lot has been written about Ford and his contributions to American cinema and I’m not sure what I could bring to the topic, but I did want to spread the word about the John Ford Blog-a-thon so others could participate if they were so inclined and in the process share a little Lee Marvin goodness with you all. I really love tough guy Lee Marvin and I wish women were allowed to join The Sons of Lee Marvin. Maybe someone needs to start a semi-secret society called The Daughters of Lee Marvin?

Below is a terrific & insightful interview clip of Lee Marvin talking about his work with John Ford:

You can also find the rest of this interesting interview with Lee Marvin at this great YouTube channel.

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