TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

CRITERION TOP TEN

Just for fun.  I included discs from all formats I've collected over the years and have included sentimental choices even though the quality may have been subsequently surpassed.  I wrote these down as they came to me and did not adjust rankings afterward.

08.  TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971) - Blu-Ray (and DVD)

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
Directed by Monte Hellman.  Written by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Cory.
Starring Warren Oates, James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird
1971, 102 minutes, Color, Rated R, 2.35:1

I saw this on television back in the 80's, or rather, since this is a widescreen film and it was shown panned and scanned, I only saw about half of it.  This is an elliptical movie that I find endlessly fascinating, for reasons I am usually unable to communicate.  Not much happens in the traditional movie story sense--it's about a cross-country race between rival drivers, which sounds like it should be reasonably exciting.  However, the film ignores the obvious and ultimately drops the race aspect completely to instead focus on the characters.  There are four characters in the film, and nowhere in the film is anyone named.  James Taylor plays the Driver, Dennis Wilson is the Mechanic, Warren Oates is GTO and Laurie Bird is the Girl.  Are they symbols, or is their anonymity an intentional statement by the writers on the universality of their experiences?   The film ostensibly ends like it begins with Taylor doing what he is best at--the only thing he is good at, perhaps.  Except whereas the race at the start opens up the possibilities of the characters and story, the race at the close ends with a freeze frame that then warps and distorts until the image burns away.  Just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?  For a film I love I am distressingly short on theories.

Monte Hellman made this film largely in order, only giving his non-actors a few pages of the script at a time.  He says he did this to try and preserve spontaneity with the largely untrained cast--Taylor, Wilson and Bird had never made a film before.  I haven't seen all of Hellman's films--and there really are not that many of them.  Aside from RIDE THE WHIRLWIND (1966) and THE SHOOTING (1966) I don't think I've seen any of his other films.  Both RIDE and THE SHOOTING are superior works and BLACKTOP feels like a natural progression.  Oates and Hellman worked together a total of 4 times together--this, THE SHOOTING, COCKFIGHTER (1974), and CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978).

Wilson was in The Beach Boys when he made this film, and Taylor was just about to release the album that would make him a superstar, SWEET BABY JAMES.  Taylor has gone on record saying that he hated Hellman's approach to making the movie and even wrote a song about it.¹  For someone who hated the experience, Taylor ultimately delivers a good performance.  What he may lack in technique he more than makes up for with charisma--he just looks good on screen and has a certain undefinable something that makes him consistently interesting to watch.  Bird was a model prior to this and subsequently acted in only two other films.²  She likewise gives a moving and effective performance.   Warren Oates is simply magnificent as GTO.  Truly, his performance is a thing of beauty, alternating between manic machismo and world-wearied self-reflection.  His nuanced, complicated performance contains much to study and ponder, just like the film overall.

I find myself playing the "guess the damage" game with the characters.  They are all reasonably damaged and none of it is explained so one is left to their own devices to try and determine motivation and history.  At one point, Oates' character tries to open up to Taylor's character, but he is cut off abruptly by Taylor.  "I don't want to hear about it", he says.  The audience may well be muttering to themselves, "well, I wanted to hear about it."  Oates comes the closest to being someone the audience can fully relate to.  Wilson, Bird and especially Taylor not so much.  This isn't to say that there aren't riches to mined in their performances.  Taylor vividly portrays a man not quite in touch with his feelings desperately trying to express something to Bird's character.  Bird is an enigma--does she care about anyone in the film or was it all simply a way to hitch a ride?

Released on DVD first by Anchor Bay in an edition that featured a 5.1 remix and a commentary by director Monte Hellman and Producer Gary Kurtz.  It also came in a spiffy tin box with an oversize booklet of groovy pictures of an impossibly young and coifed James Taylor.  That commentary was actually very good.  When Criterion released the film on DVD it featured the same 5.1 remix but dropped the commentary in favor of an all-new commentary by Hellman alone.  I've still never listened to it.  The Criterion DVD release also featured the original shooting script as a DVD-sized book.  (Some of Criterion's more recent releases have also included books like this, namely PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and RED RIVER.) The Blu-Ray release features a noticeably improved image transfer, lossless sound, and new supplements including a great hour long conversation between James Taylor and Hellman.  The screenplay was not included with the Blu-Ray, which is a shame because it is fascinating.  Hellman claims in the intro for it that he shot the entire script and that seems accurate, as everything in the film is there in the script.   There is more detail in the script, but it tells the same story, so it doesn't change the story as much as make it somewhat clearer what is happening..

1. "Riding On a Railroad", Mud Slide Slim and Blue Horizon, 1971, Warner Records.

There's a man up here who claims to have his hands upon the reins.
There are chains upon his hands and he's riding upon a train.
We are riding on a railroad, singing some else's song

EDIT:  It's since been clarified that Taylor had written this song prior to his experience making the film.  Still, the lyrics parallel the filmmaking experience pretty closely.

2. Bird had a reasonably unhappy life.  She died in 1979 while romantically involved with Art Garfunkel, possibly as a suicide, possibly accidentally.

THE HOSPITAL (1971)

Directed by Arthur Hiller.  Written by Paddy Chayefsky

Starring George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, Barnard Hughes, Richard Dysart, Katherine Helmond, Frances Sternhagen,
1971, 103 minutes, Color, Rated R, 1.85:1

Spoiler Alert!

George C. Scott is great in this, and any movie that features a young(ish) Diana Rigg is good with me.  This movie is about bureaucracy and the cheapening of human life inherent when hospitals become more concerned about profits than saving lives.  Although now more than 40 years old it hasn't lost any of its punch.  Actually, it may be more relevant than ever, which is a testament to the writing and our dysfunctional United States health care system.   It is a DARK movie, with dark grungy visuals and an even darker sense of humor.

The film is rated PG, but ideally should have been an 'R' as it is too constrained by having to hold back at various points. There's an obvious re-looping of the word 'fuck' at one point by a VERY young Stockard Channing, for instance, and some optical zooming to avoid nudity in another.  Do either of these things cause irreparable harm to the story?  Not at all, but the optical zooming occurs on Diana Rigg so the logical conclusion is that if the movie was rated 'R' we would have seen her or parts of her naked.  Case closed.

The movie ends with Scott's character not running away with Rigg, choosing to stay to try and fix the system. That ending wouldn't happen today.  Today, it simply wouldn't be believable that some would believe in the system that much so as to deny themselves the pleasure of being with a young Diana Rigg.  For that matter, the film's casting wouldn't happen today--just look at ARTICLE 99 (1992) which aspires to be similar in tone and concept but is populated by actors in their early 30's instead of their 50's.  THE HOSPITAL is staffed realistically and this ultimately dates it more than anything else in the movie.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977)

A BRIDGE TOO FAR
Directed by Richard Attenborough.  Written by William Goldman
Starring Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximillian Schell, Liv Ullmann.
1977, 175 minutes, Color, Rated PG, 2.35:1

A BRIDGE TOO FAR tells the story of operation "Market Garden", an audacious plan devised by Montgomery to end the war with Germany quickly and decisively.  The plan involved parachuting a large number of Allied troops behind enemy lines, securing a number of bridges, and then ramming a large task force over all of the bridges right into Berlin (eventually).  It was 90% successful in that they captured and held all but one of the bridges.  The last bridge—in the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands—was not captured and that negated the entire operation.  The operation was planned in merely seven days and depended on nothing going wrong, but of course things did go wrong.  Some of the things that went wrong were outside of anyone's control--like the weather--but other things were the fault of the short turnaround time and a willingness by the planners to overlook anything that might call into question starting the assault.  A prime example of this is the decision to ignore evidence of a stronger German presence around Arhem that older intelligence didn't show.  Ultimately, not only did it not help end the war more quickly, it has been argued that it may have in fact helped prolong the war. More than 15,000 Allied troops lost their lives in the operation; the exact number varies depending on which source you look at.  However, it still remains the largest airborne assault ever carried out.

 

The film is based on a book by Cornelius Ryan of the same name, which was published in 1974.  Ryan had previously written the definitive story of D-Day called The Longest Day which was released as a film in 1965.   It was produced by Sam Levine and financed out of his own pocket, and it proved to be a safe bet because distribution deals put in place prior to the movie's start covered the cost of the film.   This was done by securing an international cast.  And truly, this movie has an impressive cast.  To be truthful, most of the cast qualify as supporting roles and a couple qualify as cameos. With the possible exception of Olivier and Ulmann, however, I have always felt that the cast is well-used.  For so many people being involved the majority get at least one moment in which to leave their mark.  This is both a testament to the writing, direction and acting, of course.

This movie was made solely because Levine wanted to make it. He put up his own money to get it started, he hired all of the principal talent, he secured distribution deals, and perhaps most importantly he wanted to make the film in the first place. BRIDGE was Levine's biggest film by far, both from a logistical and budget standpoint.  To direct it he chose Richard Attenborough, a man who had made only two other films, and both of those were small scale in nature.  The book was adapted by William Goldman who was reasonably busy as a screenwriter in this time period--MARATHON MAN and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN were also written and released in the same time period.
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I've always thought highly of A BRIDGE TOO FAR, which is not a popular opinion.  It's reputation is slowly becoming more positive as the years pass, but much of the critical literature out there is still pretty dismissive of it.  Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide¹, for instance, gives it two stars out of four and says it is "lifeless and dull".  Roger Ebert likewise gives it two stars, although this time out of a possible five stars.  His review refers to the movie as an example of "wretched excess"².  Time Magazine suggested that the filmmakers were in the wrong line of business³. Vincent Canby in the New York Times concedes that it has some powerful scenes, but that it is also shapeless and confusing⁴.  The Economist called it a "costly mistake"⁵.  New York Magazine called it "an all-star martial disaster, and almost an insult to the dead."⁶ As recently as 2009 Goldman was still saying that he was puzzled by the film's failure⁷, though to be clear he is talking more about the critical failure rather than the financial failure--the film grossed $50 million dollars against a budget of $26 million⁸.  Not a runaway hit but not embarrassing either.  In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, Goldman says that "Until the reviews came out, A Bridge Too Far was probably the best experience I've had in films."  Once the reviews came out he found himself blindsided by criticism that the film was hard to believe.  He was surprised by this because he had worked very hard to present the story as truthfully as was possible in a movie.

It helps, I suppose, that I am not at all disinclined to liking depressing movies, for if BRIDGE is anything it is certainly depressing.  However, the story depicted in the film is based on fact, and just because the real-life events are somewhat depressing I see no reason to hold it against the film.  Aside from some narrative condensation, it is one of the more accurate films ever made about World War Two.  It does a very good job telling a complicated story clearly, although many period reviews claim to have been confused on what was happening.

So, what's to like in the film?  It has the feel of an epic, gorgeously photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth and scored by the reliably British John Addison.  It tells its story in a clear and direct manner.  There are no subtexts to consider, only the effects of what we see and hear.  It tells a depressing story but does so in an honest manner.  There is no pandering to the audience, and the whole thing reeks of an intellectual approach--rather than playing up the emotional nature of some of the more harrowing scenes the film plays them out matter of factly.  This emotional distance is more than likely the reason critics were less than kind to it.  Could a different director have done a better job with the material?  Perhaps, but who?  John Sturgess made THE EAGLE HAS LANDED at roughly the same time and arguably did a worse job than Attenborough.  For my money, I like Attenborough's approach just fine.  It tells the story it means to, and if you can go along with it you will find it a rich and rewarding film that stays with you for quite some time afterwards.

What else is there to like?  Edward Fox has a rousing speech right before the attack commences that really gets the blood pumping--it's really perhaps the best "rally the troops" kind of speech ever committed to film--outside of STRIPES, of course.  It's such a great dramatic moment that it doesn't really matter that it's one of the film's few pure inventions.  Gene Hackman, for the most part, pulls off a Polish accent, Sean Connery is charming and commanding as always, but it is his characters admission that he is afraid to jump out of an airplane that is his best moment.  Schell invests his German officer with a humanity not typically seen in war films, and Redford is solid as an American Major ordered to cross a river in the daytime in manually rowed boats (it goes about as well as expected).  If the movie is "stolen" you could make an argument that it's stolen by James Caan.  He plays an American sergeant who goes back to a battlefield to get his Captain who was left for dead.  This is complicated by the fact that the Germans have re-taken the battlefield.   In a film full of effective vignettes, this 20-minute sequence is superior filmmaking and culminates with Caan ordering a surgeon at gunpoint to look at the Captain.  A close second might be Eliot Gould who plays a profane engineer.  Dirk Bogarde and Michael Caine also register strongly.

The idea of a large cast of stars in a war film was not new, of course, as THE LONGEST DAY famously did the same thing.  THE LONGEST DAY is a more “Hollywood” war film than A BRIDGE TOO FAR and doesn't feel quite so realistic as a result.  BRIDGE strives for realism and showing the horrors of war, and tries to do this not through gore but by concentrating on the emotions of the people involved.  Given the cast and scope of the film, it's commendable how "small" it feels at times.  Of course, at other times it is as huge as a David Lean picture.  The parachute drop sequence is very impressive with a seemingly impossible number of people being dropped at the same time.   As the operation was comprised of multiple small, strategic battles there is not really an opportunity for huge scenes of battle, but we do get some large explosions.  The only sequence that feels like a "war" movie is the assault on the second to last bridge, where we get Robert Redford running around and shooting Germans with aplomb.  Shortly after this, we treated to a somber scene where we find out just how much of a failure the operation was.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR was photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth and the film bears his trademark filtered look that usually looked horrible in NTSC.  It was released on laserdisc in the early 1990's in a widescreen edition that preserved the scope of the film, but largely missed the subtleties inherent in the soft photography.  It subsequently appeared in a special edition DVD that featured a better image transfer and loads of historical features, such as interviews with actual participants of Operation Market Garden, a commentary by William Goldman, and a trivia track that gives further detail on the events in the film.  The special features really enhance the movie--of course, when the film was released on Blu-Ray it included none of them.  The Blu-Ray was released in the early days of Blu-Ray and as was the case for most of the early MGM/UA Blu-Rays uses the MPEG2 codec.  Now, technically MPEG2 can handle 1080P but from a compression standpoint other codecs (AVC, VC-1) usually produce better results.  That said, the Blu-Ray is clearly the best the film has ever looked on home video and one can't really complain about any aspect of the image.   The laserdisc referenced above was missing the on-screen text that established settings, which was disconcerting.  The special edition DVD added the text back, and I am happy to report that they are likewise back on the Blu-Ray.   The sound is a rousing 5.1 mix that presents John Addison's rousing score to great effect. Battle scenes likewise have plenty of surround activity.

Notes:
1. Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin's 2015 Movie Guide (New York, Signet, 2014)
2.http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-bridge-too-far-1977 (originally published June 17, 1977)
3. Time Magazine, Monday, Nov. 27, 1978
4. New York Times, June 16, 1977
5. A Budget Too Big, The Economist, 29 May 1976, 96.
6. Movies Around Town, New York Magazine, July 18, 1977, 12
7. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/apr/25/william-goldman-screenwriter-interview
8. A. T. McKenna (2011): Joseph E. Levine and A Bridge Too Far (1977): A Producer's Labour of Love, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:2, 211-227