Modern Mondays: The Quiet American (2001)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | July 14, 2009

Categories | Movie Reviews, War, Modern Mondays

A day late, a bit slime on content, but not forgotten…

Since the death of Robert McNamara last week I’ve been thinking a lot about the man who was often called the “Architect of the Vietnam War.” And I was reminded of one of my favorite films of the last decade that explored the American involvement that led to the war in Vietnam, Phillip Noyce’s excellent 2001 adaptation of Graham Greene classic novel The Quiet American.

Phillip Noyce isn’t a director who I’m particularly fond of. I’ve sat though five or six of his films, but the only two that left any kind of impression on me were his terrific thriller Dead Calm (1989) and The Quiet American. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was the first director to turn Graham Greene’s novel into a film, but Phillip Noyce’s 2001 remake of The Quiet American is not only a better movie than the original, but I also think it’s one of the best adaptations of Graham Greene’s work that I’ve seen.

The film stars Michael Caine in what is arguably one of his finest roles. In the film Caine plays a married British journalist named Thomas Fowler who is living in Vietnam and having an affair with a young Vietnamese woman called Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). After Thomas meets an idealistic American by the name of Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) and introduces him to Phoung, the stage is set for a complicated love triangle that plays out against the backdrop of the escalating political situation in Vietnam. The plot may sound a bit dry, but The Quiet American is actually a very suspenseful film that is filled with political intrigue and beautifully shot by the incredibly talented cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

Miramax shelved the film for more than a year because producers were concerned that it would be seen as anti-American after the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Thankfully Michael Caine was able to persuade the studio to screen the film at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival where it received great reviews and afterward it was finally released into theaters. The film went on to win many awards and Michael Caine was even nominated for an Oscar for his performance. If you haven’t had an opportunity to see the film yet, now might be an appropriate time.

READ MORE

Comments (6)

The Terrorists Are Coming, the Terrorists Are Coming!

by Kimberly Lindbergs | November 12, 2007

Categories | Movie Reviews, American Cinema, Comedies, War, Norman Jewison, John Phillip Law

I recently had the opportunity to see Norman Jewison’s extremely silly and sometimes smart 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming for the first time in about 20 years when it played on TCM. When I was a kid The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming was one of my favorite comedies for reasons I can’t really explain, except it seemed to portray adults as I saw them then - easily frightened big kids who projected their fears onto their children and conformed to every bad idea that society and the government tossed their way.

I was afraid the film wouldn’t hold up after such a long period of time between my last viewing so my expectations were extremely low going into the movie but once it ended my appreciation for it remained. It’s no longer one of my favorite comedies but I really admire its undeniable charm and the way it manages to cram complex ideas into easily digested entertainment that the whole family can enjoy. Simply put, it’s a lightweight version of Kubrick’s brilliant Dr. Strangelove (1964) and it works.

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming opens with a Russian sub running aground in a small New England coastal town. Naturally chaos erupts because the U.S. is in the middle of the cold war and only four years have passed since the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis. The Americans think the Russians are invading and the whole town pulls out their guns and comes together to form a modern day militia in an effort to stop them. Of course things aren’t exactly what they seem since the Russians in the sub are merely trying to get back home. After bouts of hysteria and plenty of violent outbursts, the panicky town’s folk and the frazzled Russian soldiers manage to come together to save the life of a young child in peril and the sub returns home.

There are some standout performances in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, including Carl Reiner’s terrific turn as a comedy writer trying to calm the paranoid town and the very funny Alan Arkin playing a smart Russian Lieutenant who’s trying to get a handle on the slowly escalating events all around him. Brian Keith is also very good as the town Sheriff who can’t believe the situation he’s found himself in. Arkin’s Russian Lieutenant and Keith’s small town Sheriff could have been roles written purely for easy laughs but they’re not. Viewers are asked to sympathize with both men in some ways and we do. The gorgeous John Philip Law also shows up as a Russian solider who speaks a little bit of English and ends up falling for a perky American blond played by Andrea Dromm. The two young lovebirds make a cute couple and their romance echoes themes found in Shakespeare’s classic play Romeo and Juliet, which gives the film an emotional core that I personally found rather sweet and appealing.

The beauty of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming seems perfectly clear today as we deal with some vaguely defined idea of an enemy we’re supposed to fear enough to give up our Constitutional Freedoms and basic human compassion for. The film has often been unfairly criticized for its dated jokes, simple plot and silly slapstick style humor. But if the ideas presented in Norman Jewison’s film are so dated, simple and silly, why are people still making the same absurd mistakes outlined in a movie made some 40 years ago? If anything, the film’s basic premise and themes are as pertinent as ever. Underneath all the movie’s jokes and gentleness, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming knows that war is a nasty business and there are rarely any victors.

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming has often been compared to It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) due to it’s title, characters and a large cast that happens to have some similar actors including Jonathan Winters, but I think The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming is a much stronger film that is willing to explore big ideas that were not very popular at the time that the movie was made, while keeping its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. Apparently the movie was banned in the USSR after its release, but it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1966.

The script is based on a novel called The Off-Islanders by the American author Nathaniel Benchley who happens to be the father of Jaws author Peter Benchley. I find it amusing that both men wrote books set in small New England towns where they were raised. And both stories focus on a town being terrorized by some unknown scary “other.” It’s also worth noting that one of my favorite American filmmakers, the great Hal Ashby, also acted as an editor on the movie.

These days it can be hard to find anything worth smiling about but if you haven’t seen The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming I recommend giving it a look. It just might make you laugh. The movie is available on DVD from Amazon and it’s playing again on Turner Movie Classics Nov. 28th when the great actor Brian Dennehy hosts four of his favorite films. I really like Brian Dennehy so I was happy to discover that he selected the film to play with two other films from the sixties, Karel Reisz‘s gritty British drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Bryan Forbes‘s British comedy The Wrong Box (1966). I’ve wanted to see The Wrong Box for years, but it isn’t available on DVD yet so I’ll be watching it on TCM Nov. 28th.

Comments (9)

Overlord & The Futility of War

by Kimberly Lindbergs | April 19, 2007

Categories | Movie Reviews, War, Criterion

There’s not a lot of serious war films that I like. So many of them are badly put together propaganda filled with ridiculous ideas about heroism and patriotism that have very little basis in the reality of war and rarely convey the true horrors of it.

Oddly enough I’m also fascinated with WW1 and WW2. I tend to devour history programs about the topics and have plenty of books about both wars in my personal library, so it was with great reluctance and much curiosity that I dropped the new Criterion DVD of director Stuart Cooper’s film Overlord (1975) into my DVD player last night.

Stuart Cooper’s low-budget feature offers a fascinating blend of historic footage from The Imperial War Museum weaved throughout an original and lyrical tale about a young man named Tom (Brian Stirner) who’s been “called up” by the British military to take part in the infamous D-Day battle a.k.a. Operation Overlord.

In Overlord, Tom is a reluctant hero who carries a copy of Dickens’ David Copperfield with him into war and like many young soldiers he really has no idea why he’s been called up or what he’s fighting for, but he doesn’t question his duty to king and country. After making a long train journey he finally arrives at camp and is called “skinny” right before he faints while getting a shot in the arm from a military doctor. Tom is clearly not your typical solider, whatever that may be, and this point is driven home again and again in Overlord but never played for sympathy.

Tom develops casual relations with a few other soldiers, but Overlord doesn’t try and pretend that war is some kind of buddy bonding experience. It’s clear to the soldiers that not all of them are going to survive the event that they are preparing for. The young men remain friendly but naturally keep a safe distance from one another so any future losses they might face will be easier to handle.

There are also no great leaders anywhere to be found in Overlord. Guys like John Wayne and George C. Scott don’t exist in Stuart Cooper’s realistic version of war. The soldiers for the most part are confused throughout the course of the film. They don’t know where they are or what kind of mission they’ve been sent on, but like most good soldiers they don’t ask any questions. They just carry on and follow orders.

Towards the end of Overlord Tom meets a young woman who he seems to develop deep feelings for, but they’re never fully expressed. Instead Tom talks to her in dreams and their relationship comes to life in his imagination. Tom’s dreams and visions fill the film and give the talented cinematographer John Alcott (A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, etc.) ample opportunity to create some of the most beautiful imagery I’ve seen in any war film.

The director Stuart Cooper was heavily influenced by the renowned war photographer Robert Capa while making Overlord and he used Capa’s photographs as well as his journals as inspiration for his film. This odd blending of art and war, which photographers like Capa mastered, is perfectly captured in Overlord. As viewers we are stunned by the beauty found in the haunting imagery of Cooper’s impressive film just as we are repelled by the horror and devastation that it highlights.

I also think Cooper may have been inspired by another great war film from the 1970s, Dalton Trumbo’s brilliant Johnny Got His Gun (1971), which I was reminded of while watching Overlord.

The stock footage used in the movie is seamlessly edited into the film and given life with voice overs. This original footage from WW2 offers an honest look at war without special effects and it’s easily one of the most creative uses of stock footage that I’ve ever come across. Filmmakers who want to know how to do amazing things with a low-budget would benefit greatly from studying Overlord.

The film offers viewers a fascinating look at the futility of war that I won’t soon forget. The incredible imagery conjured up by Stuart Cooper and John Alcott in Overlord has been seared into my mind and will remain there forever.

Comments (15)

“Dead man coming through!”

by Kimberly Lindbergs | May 20, 2006

Categories | Movie Reviews, Directors, Japanese Cinema, War, Joe Shishido, Seijun Suzuki, Criterion, Nikkatsu

Seijun Suzuki on the set of Gate of Flesh (a.k.a. Nikutai no mon), 1964
To put things simply, Gate of Flesh is one of Seijun Suzuki’s greatest films and without a doubt one of the best films produced in Japan in 1964.

Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill, Tokyo Drifter, Youth of the Beast, etc.) shot Gate of Flesh for the Japanese Nikkatsu studios at the time as an “adult film” which would later be called “Roman Porno” a.k.a. pink movies, but in usual Suzuki style the great director makes it much more than just a standard adult film. Like many Japanese filmmakers and actors from the same era, Suzuki had survived WW2 and as a soldier he had experienced firsthand the devastation that the war had brought to Japan. The director brilliantly uses his own anti-American sentiments at the time, as well as his obvious resentment against his own country in Gate of Flesh, to tell a a haunting story about damaged people and missed opportunities.

Besides being a thoughtful social commentary about WW2, Gate of Flesh is also filled with amazing imagery and stunning set designs. Suzuki knows how to make the most of creative color photography, stylish framing, a great soundtrack and his minimal budget. His impressive eye for pulp style drama, as well as detail, is on full display here. He also doesn’t shy away from using plenty of symbolism and iconographic imagery that is hard to miss. A few critics have called his work heavy-handed, but I find it breathtakingly modern.

The talented actor Jo Shishido (Youth of the Beast, Branded to Kill, Bloody Territories, etc.) gives what could be his greatest performance in Gate of Flesh as a broken Japanese solider running from the law and longing for the past. He soon meets his match in a band of prostitutes who all vie for his attentions in the hopes that he’ll somehow redeem their shattered lives. All the actresses in the movie are marvelous in their roles, but little known Satoko Kasai really stands out as the sensitive and smart, tough prostitute Sen and Yumiko Nogawa (Story of a Prostitute, Zatoichi and the Fugitives, Band of Assassins, etc.) does a great job of transforming from good girl to wicked woman in her extremely demanding role as Maya.

Also worth a mention is the wonderful soundtrack by Naozumi Yamamoto that makes great use of authentic Japanese instruments and driving rhythms. Yamamoto’s music really helps to evoke a mood of stifling doom throughout the entire movie.

I think Gate of Flesh is easily one of Criterion’s most interesting releases and considering the size and scope of their release catalog that’s saying a lot. The quality of the DVD is amazing and the widescreen print transfer looks and sounds terrific. The DVD also contains a beautiful still gallery and insightful interviews with director Seijun Suzuki as well as art director/production designer Takeo Kimura. Seijun Suzuki is a man of his times with an unusual sense of humor and he tends to be a lot more humble and soft spoken than most modern Japanese directors, but the interviews are really interesting and shed a lot of light on this fascinating 1964 production. I think the quality as well as the extras on the DVD make this Criterion release well worth owning if you’re a fan of Japanese postwar cinema.

At the time that Seijun Suzuki made Gate of Flesh and many of his other films, his work was often dismissed by critics inside and outside Japan, who considered him a minor director reduced to making what they considered second rate movies. Thankfully stylish genre pictures such as the Roman Porno films of Japan as well as the Pinky Violence movies and Yakuza Crime pictures have been given a second life on DVD recently. Modern critics around the world with an appreciation and understanding of genre cinema have been able to reevaluate the important work of Japanese New Wave directors like Seijun Suzuki, Kinji Fukasaku and Yasuzo Masumura, with a much more sympathetic eye and offer them the long overdue critical praise that had previously only been heaped on directors like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu.

With the growing interest in Japanese genre cinema and the release of many previously unreleased films to DVD by companies like Criterion and Panik House, Japanese film fans can look forward to even more critical attention being given to films often ignored or dismissed. Suzuki’s Gate of Flesh should be appreciated for what it is, an astonishing, thought-provoking and creative film made for a studio that only wanted him to deliver cheaply made entertainment.

(Originally written Aug. 2005)

Comments (4)