AFI #4: Raging Bull (1980)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 1, 2020 and ABC Radio Central Victoria on August 24, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as updated in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(M) ★★★½

Director: Martin Scorsese.

Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty, Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, Frank Vincent, Lori Anne Flax, Johnny Barnes.

Some truly amazing films aren't enjoyable to watch. I know Requiem For A Dream is incredible, but I have no plans to watch it again. And I'm not sure I could ever sit through Grave Of The Fireflies  again, despite it being truly remarkable.

Raging Bull is not enjoyable to watch. It's about a horrible person; a violent, misogynistic bastard with no redeemable qualities. Jake LaMotta is a real piece of shit, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about Raging Bull is that the real life LaMotta was a consultant on the film. Either he has no self-awareness or an incredible amount of self-awareness - I can't tell which.

LaMotta was a boxer - a pretty good one too, it seems. He had a head like brick and would never go down in a fight. Raging Bull tracks his career from hard-to-beat hopeful to champion to washed-up entertainer.

Within the first 15 minutes of the film, we understand that La Motta is insane and detestable. By the end, nothing has changed. We've watched a real shit bloke continue to be a shit bloke, and look where he ends up? Still a shit bloke, and with nothing to show for it.

Maybe that's the point. Some critics argue that part of Raging Bull's triumph is that we actually end up caring for this piece of shit by film's end (it's right at the end of the article). I say that's a pile of raging bullshit. At no point do I care about Jake LaMotta, and maybe that's why I struggle to rate this as one of the best films of all time. But maybe that is indeed the point.

So here goes, I'm going to say some controversial things. Raging Bull is beautifully filmed, magnificently edited, and features a remarkable performance from one of the greatest actors of all time. But I don't think it should be #4 on the AFI list. For mine, it's not even Scorsese's best film. Give me Taxi Driver or The King Of Comedy or The Wolf Of Wall Street or Goodfellas or The Irishman or even Hugo (don't tell anyone, but I fucking love Hugo).

The lack of empathy is its undoing for me. This unsympathetic character doesn't illuminate anything for me. What is the film trying to say? I don't know what to take away from it. LaMotta doesn't learn anything, and it doesn't feel like the film is saying anything beyond it's surface level of "violent man bad" or "don't be a cunt". As everyone in his life slowly leaves LaMotta, I wanted to cheer. Am I the arsehole? Or did Raging Bull miss its mark in the sympathy department? Or is that the point? Is the fact that LaMotta is a shit bloke the be-all-and-end-all of the film? If so, that's not enough in my book.

The difficult part of reviewing classic films that are put up on pedestals is that if you disagree with their perceived greatness, it feels like you're missing something. One of my favourite film reviewers, The Incredible Suit, ranked Raging Bull as the greatest Scorsese film of all time. So what am I missing?

The great Roger Ebert said "Raging Bull is the most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema... it's the best film I've seen about the low self-esteem, sexual inadequacy and fear that lead some men to abuse women". I can't argue with that, but what is it really saying about all these aspects? Is that it?

Having said all that, its artistry is amazing. The editing by Thelma Schoonmaker is outstanding, and the way she and Scorsese edit the fight sequences and brisk mid-film montage is genius and unlike anything I've seen before. Michael Chapman's cinematography, in crisp black and white, is gorgeous. The staging of the fights is brutal, and Chapman captures it in all its visceral, blood-spurting glory,

It's obvious Scorsese has no love for the sport (neither do I to be honest). Somewhat like LaMotta, Scorsese sees it as punching and not falling down, unlike other boxing films with more passion for its finer qualities, like say Rocky or Ali or The Fighter. As a result, LaMotta rarely comes off as a sportsman - we see him training once and all he does is try to beat the shit out of his brother. Raging Bull offers no insight into what boxing means to those who adore the sport, and indeed makes no real comment about it. This makes it hard to see how or why it's often held up as the pinnacle of boxing movies.

But the one aspect of the film that is truly outstanding is De Niro. An argument could be made that Raging Bull deserves its place at #4 purely on De Niro's back alone. He perfectly captures the insanity, the paranoia, the toxic masculinity, and the insecurities of LaMotta. De Niro himself is invisible and in his place is a man who is as dumb as a box of hammers and who complains he gets no respect from anyone, yet never offers any respect to anyone. A lot is made of De Niro's physical transformation, which is stunning (and disturbing), but really it's the cherry on the top of the performance.

Less is said about Pesci, who is outstanding in the film, and even less (unfortunately) is said about Moriarty, who is out-of-this-world as LaMotta's wife Vikki, earning an Oscar nomination in her film debut.

While Raging Bull is not enjoyable, that doesn't mean it's bad, and by no means is it a bad film. It's a meditation on violence and the fragility that births it, and as such it's incredibly effective, although this meditation is limited and limiting. Some critics highlight the influence Scorsese's Catholic guilt has on the story, and the nature of sin, but I don't see that in the film. It's a contextual reading that, while potentially important, doesn't ring true in the film, which has very little in the way of religion.

Raging Bull is wonderfully made and features one of the all-time greatest performances, but I feel like I'm missing the point, or that there isn't a grand point to be made outside the bleedingly obvious - that being a violent jealous piece of shit gets you nowhere.

Or is that the point?

(If you love Raging Bull, tell me what I'm missing in the comments. Be kind, and I'll be willing to listen.)

AFI #3: Casablanca (1942)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on April 17, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as updated in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Michael Curtiz.

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson, S. Z. Sakall, Leonid Kinskey, Madeliene Lebeau, Curt Bois, Joy Page, John Qualen.

"Play it, Sam. Play Wynona's Big Brown Beaver."

Casablanca is a war movie unlike any other, partly because it's also a romance, a drama, a comedy, and a film noir. Oh, and it's set almost entirely in a bar, which is novel for a war movie, but it also helps make the film as cool as hell, breezing through its often heavy material like James Bond dusting the dirt off his suit sleeve after a close call. How can one film do so much, and be so effortlessly suave while doing it?

The answer to this question (and much of Casablanca's greatness) is in the script. Unlike, say, such classic "auteur" films like Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey, where so much of the esteem is connected to what the director was doing and their over-arching vision, Casablanca's brilliance is largely there on the paper.

It's central idea is overly simple on the surface - use a bar as a microcosm for the diaspora and desperation created by WWII. But the depth of the characters and the razor-sharp hard-boiled dialogue give it an edge that defies any potential simplicity. The people who drink at Rick's Café Américain are neither heroes nor villains - they do bad things to survive and good things against their better judgement. Some of them wrestle with the devils and angels on their shoulders, some of them just do what they do. The only truly good character is Victor Laszlo (Henreid), the resistance leader the plot revolves around, and the only truly bad character is Major Heinrich Strasser (Veidt), a typically punchable Nazi. It's no surprise these are the two least interesting characters in the film. Everyone else sits in the grey zone of morality that lies between them, and are all the more enthralling for it.

These internal struggles give the plot its push-and-pull dynamic, its will-they-won't-they mystery that drives the film. Who will Ilsa choose? What will Rick do? Whose orders will Renault follow? These questions keep you guessing right up to its perfect finale.

Casablanca is based on a then-unproduced play called Everybody Comes To Rick's, written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Some credit must go to Warner Bros employees Stephen Karnot and Irene Diamond for discovering and championing an unknown script from an unperformed play. From there, twins Julius and Philip Epstein (who would later write the classic black comedy Arsenic & Old Lace) started a screenplay before Howard Koch took over, only for the Epsteins to return for the finishing touches while the film was already in production.

Others contributed to the screenplay too, including producers Hal Wallis and Casey Robinson, and this kind of "too many cooks" approach can either lead to a shambolic mess or the type of screenplay where only the best lines make the final cut. Casablanca is definitely the latter. There are iconic lines all over the place, with Bogart's Rick getting the lion's share, and the dialogue is imbued with that great mix of melodrama and poetry favoured by hardboiled detectives and noir novelists.

Take for example these absolute pearls, that no one would say in real life, but holy shit they're magical:

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine…”
“What is your nationality?” “…I’m a drunkard.”
“I like to think you killed a man. It’s the romantic in me…”

All gold, and all contribute to the film's noir undertones.

When these lines are delivered by the likes of Humphrey Bogart (in probably his best performance), Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet, you can't lose, and that's the other weapon Casablanca has in its holster - its cast. Everyone rises to the occasion, sinking their teeth into the lines, relishing the opportunity to create such rich characters.

Lorre, despite being dispatched early, is his usual superb self as the "cut-rate parasite" Ugarte, while Greenstreet is great as the jolly amoral rival club owner Ferrari. Both men would be typecast in these kind of roles, but for good reason - they're so good in them.

Bogart and Bergman are outstanding of course, and plenty of words have been written about their chemistry and charms, but the secret stars of the show are Dooley Wilson as Sam the piano player and Rains as corrupt cop Renault.

Wilson is the quiet moral heart in the certain of Rick's Americain Cafe; he's the stoic goodness in the middle of the bar that Rick is seemingly tethered to. His only flaws are his inaction, and his unfailing commitment to Rick. (Also it bears mentioning that the moment Sam first recognise Ilsa in the bar is gold - the look on Wilson's face is perfection.)

But Rains' comic timing as Renault is something special. He's a truly despicable character who blackmails female refugees into exchanging sex for transit papers, yet Rains makes the bastard likeable and hilarious. He's a prime example of the good/evil mix that runs through every soul that lands in Casablanca, making them so fascinating.

Director Michael Curtiz's role in all this is often downplayed - critic Andrew Sarris famously offered the film the backhanded praise of being "the most decisive exception to the auteur theory". But Curtiz puts his camera in the right places, cruising around Rick's Cafe like a member of the nightly crowd. He overcooks the soft focus on Bergman and some of the rear projection is hokey, even for the time, but in the grand scheme of things Curtiz does nothing wrong. He's like a good bass player - he never stands out but he holds it all together.

Released in a time of turmoil, Casablanca is a genius blend of the macro and the micro. It's unapologetically geopolitical yet its also a small story of a broken heart. It's about what war does to people but it's also about a good old-fashioned love triangle. And through it all, the film has a noir-ish edge and a layer of cool that few films of that time had, and that many films have tried to emulate.

AFI #2: The Godfather (1972)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on April 3, 2020 and ABC Radio Central Victoria on July 27, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(MA15+) ★★★★★

Director: Francis Ford Coppola.

Cast: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Al Lettieri, Diane Keaton, Abe Vigoda, Talia Shire, Gianni Russo, John Cazale, Rudy Bond, Al Martino, Morgana King, Lenny Montana, Johnny Martino, Salvatore Corsitto.

"I don't know how to break this to you Al, but I'm not wearing any pants."

There's one thing The Godfather does better than any other film - it makes you happily watch the ultimate corruption of a decent human being, and makes you cheer him along on his downward journey.

It's different to other "bad guy"-focused films. This is not the society-crushes-spirit of Joker, where we pity Arthur Fleck and what the world has turned him into. Nor is it the over-the-top satires of the villain-centric American Psycho or A Clockwork Orange, or the good-guy-does-bad-things-for-good-reasons story of Taxi Driver. The Godfather's "hero" Michael Corleone chooses to do the things he does. He never has to do them, and as much as he is fuelled by revenge, that revenge is fuelled by his own willingness for said revenge, and by his willingness to accept the blood that flows through his veins. At the start of the film, he makes it clear he has rejected his family's lifestyle - by the end he epitomises it.

The Godfather leaves you confused and dirty, yet fulfilled and satisfied, kind of like having great sex with someone you definitely shouldn't sleep with.

The film invites you into bad places you've never been and makes it all seem okay. This complicitness with the dark side starts with its portentous opening shot. It's a three-minute-long tracking shot of a shadowy, serious figure in a dimly lit room, pleading for a special kind of justice unavailable outside this nondescript location. It is beautifully filmed, intricately lit, and features a stirring monologue by Salvatore Corsitto (who appeared in just one other movie outside of The Godfather).

As Corsitto intones his horrifying tale, we are immediately drawn into a secret world with its warped views of respect, honour and family. The craft of Coppola's three-hour opus about an Italian-American crime syndicate is perfect, but it's the way it lets us into a hitherto-unseen world of deals and deaths that keeps us spellbound.

In the almost 50 years since its release, The Godfather has become the gold standard in mob movies; so much so, some mobsters used it as "how to" guide while others claimed it was like looking in a mirror. Regardless, The Godfather's reputation for greatness in part comes not from its veracity of the mafia lifestyle, but from a perceived authenticity. Most of us have no idea what mob life in the '40s and '50s was like, but The Godfather makes it seem like it was exactly like The Godfather says it was. And this stems from the perfection in its production design, and the truth that rings through the characters and their stories.

(Sidenote: there are children everywhere in The Godfather, but not in prominent roles. They're just there, like they are in real life. This goes a long way towards subtly and subconsciously selling the realism of the movie.)

Stanley Kubrick once said The Godfather "was possibly the greatest movie ever made and certainly the best cast". On that last note, he's spot on. Remarkably, Pacino, Caan and Duvall were all nominated for best supporting actor at the 1972 Oscars. Perhaps even more remarkably, they lost out to Joel Grey, who won for his incandescent turn as the MC in Bob Fosse's Cabaret.

(Fosse also edged out Coppola for best director, and Cabaret won eight out of its 10 nominations. But The Godfather managed to win best film and best screenplay, as well as best actor for Brando, who famously refused the award, sending indigenous American rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather in his place.)

Awards aside, its two key performances are lightning in a bottle. It reveals relative newcomer Pacino as an incredible talent (in only his third film) and captures Brando's last truly great turn (even though he had nearly three decades of film-making ahead of him). Individually they're stunning; together they elevate the film to somewhere special. Capturing Pacino on the ascent and final peak from Brando is the kind of unforeseeable magic that helps make a movie a classic.

Much like Scorsese's recent epic The Irishman, Coppola's The Godfather is riveting and perfectly paced across its 180 minutes. It never feels overlong or rushed, and it's regularly punctuated by shocking moments that floor you. It's tempo is old-school, but its first half an hour or so introduces so much - the threat of violence, the large cast, the themes of family and respect, and the wealth and reach of the Godfather's enterprise, all via a grand wedding. Within this time frame we also get two iconic moments - the horrific use of a horse's head, and the first of many variations on the signature line "I'll make him an offer he can’t refuse".

These now-oft-parodied elements have helped sustain the film's legacy, along with the likes of "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes", the gunning-down of Tommy, Brando's voice and bulldog jowls, and Nino Rota's score. Even the title card's font is memorable. All these things are iconic for a reason - they stand out, while still serving their purpose in the end product.

"Godfather... where is the bathroom?"

Another sustaining factor of the film's legacy over the past 50 years is its symbolism. Oranges signify impending doom, Michael's facial wounds make him look like his father, a baptism juxtaposed with assassinations - these are elements that have drawn people back again and again, seeking greater depth.

But, as with so many American films, The Godfather also has profound things to say about America; in this case as viewed through the prism of Italian-Americans and, more broadly, criminals who would do anything to achieve the so-called American Dream. The film's opening line is "I believe in America" but later, we view a murder that takes place with the Statue of Liberty off in the distance, its back turned on the events. Smarter people than I have written about this theme in great depth, including Lena-Marie Lannutti, Tom Breihan from AV Club, Sterling Farrance, and dozens of academics (seriously, just Google "The Godfather and The American Dream").

This is the kind of deep film reading that turns many people off, but it helps preserve the film's legacy, and elevate it to high art. And The Godfather is high art, but it's that rarest of beasts - a film that is both exalted by critics and was a box-office smash (it was the highest-grossing film in US cinemas in 1972).

There's not many other films that can boast that double of critical and popular acclaim, but The Godfather is indeed the kind of the film that seemingly does it all on its way to merging art and entertainment.

AFI #1: Citizen Kane (1941)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on April 3, 2020 and ABC Central Victoria on June 7, 2021.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, William Alland, George Coulouris, Fortunio Bonanova, Paul Stewart.

"Presenting... me!"

Citizen Kane is the ultimate American film for highlighting the difference between students of cinema and the majority of the general movie-going public.

The film industry players who voted for the American Film Institute lists of 1998 and 2007, as well as the decennial Sight & Sound lists between 1962 and 2002 deemed Citizen Kane the best film ever.

But public-voted lists have been less generous over the years - for example, the IMDb's top 250 has it at #95, while Empire Magazine's most recent reader's vote put the film at #46. This is partly because so much of Citizen Kane's esteem is wrapped up in its film-making wizardry, as opposed to its sheer entertainment value.

As the BBC's Nick Barber wrote "Citizen Kane is an encyclopedia of techniques: a 114-minute film school which provides lesson after lesson in deep focus and rear projection, extreme close-ups and overlapping dialogue".

James Monaco, writing in his 1977 text book How To Read A Film called Citizen Kane "a singular phenomenon" that "Welles never again matched".

"(It's) possibly the most important American movie ever made," Monaco wrote. "Welles - with the aplomb of a master - shapes his narrative in sublimely cinematic terms. It was as if the stranger to Hollywood, child of New York theatre and radio, had viewed objectively all the various strands of film technique of thirties Hollywood and woven them all together."

Your average punter doesn't give two shits about Citizen Kane's use of deep focus, adventurous cross fades, debonair dolly moves, focus-pulling edits, overlapping dialogue, and roaming camera. Most people couldn't care less about the fact Welles was bringing together every trick in the pre-'40s film-making book and applying them to one grand tale of one grandly flawed man.

It's this marriage of cutting edge techniques that earned Kane its perch atop the film tree, but there is so much more to admire, appreciate and, yes, enjoy about this cinematic edifice. Its storytelling is second-to-none, plus it's regularly funny (particularly in the first half), and continually entertaining. The script (pieced together by Welles from versions written by himself and co-credited screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz) tells the story of wealthy newspaper tycoon and presidential-wannabe Charles Foster Kane in a fashion as fascinating as the film-making techniques.

(How great is this trailer by the way? They should make modern trailers like this.)

Opening with a wordless, gothic horror montage of Kane's decaying mansion that culminates with his snowglobe-shattering death, the film then dives into a newsreel epitaph that helps build the myth of Kane before we even meet Kane. But a smoking room filled with reporters could care less about this potted obituary - they want to know why Kane's final dying word was "Rosebud". What does it mean?

From there, we revisit the life and times of Kane via one reporter's interviews with those who knew him best. The journalist's ambitions are singular - what/who is "Rosebud"? - but this steady stream of flashbacks show us the real Kane. It's a neat trick, and although the film was not the first to use extensive flashbacks, it was yet another fledgling technique used to dazzling effect in Welles' overflowing opus. As Slate's Nigel Andrews wrote of Citizen Kane's technical wizardry, "Kane got there first nearly every time (and) when it didn’t, its brilliance destroyed the memory of predecessors".

Welles' and Mankiewicz's script, along with Gregg Toland's cinematography, are rightly lauded, as is Welles' ballsy, freshman auteurship of it all - his incredible camera dive through a neon sign and then through a skylight (via some editing trickery) is outstanding and worthy of attention on its own.

But oft-forgotten in all this is Welles' performance, which is towering. Alongside the also-great Cotten and Welles' talented suite of Mercury Theatre players, Welles makes Kane a human - a deeply flawed, egocentric and eventually megalomaniacal human, but a human no less. He does all this with some of the best hair and make-up work of the time. Indeed, I've seen worse hair and make-up in contemporary films.

"Rosebud" itself is one of the great symbols in cinema, despite being dismissed by some (Welles himself included) as shallow pop-philosophy. But with that single word (and a single item revealed in an all-time-great twist), Citizen Kane drives home its surprisingly anti-capitalist message - that money can't buy love or happiness. That all the worldly possessions can't fill certain holes in one's soul. That money isn't everything. And that, ultimately, maybe the American dream of having it all isn't all it's cracked up to be.

This may be a film for the buffs, but it has more heart and soul than a lot of people give it credit. It's a tale of a fall from grace, told with good humour and a keen eye, that also happens to be one of the best examples of film-making techniques you can find.