Douglas Skelton
27Sep

My favourite films

Posted by: douglasskelton3 Categories: blog entry
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  • What’s your favourite movie?

    It’s one of those questions we can all be asked from time to time, especially if – like me – you are friendly with people who love films.

    My response is generally ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’ I saw it first when it came out. I was a teenager and it introduced me to the work of screenwriter and author William Goldman. I’ve been a fan ever since.

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  • Certainly, my affection for the film has dimmed slightly now I know there was a cruel horse stunt involved. It’s during the final shoot-out and the Flying W rig was used to bring the animal down as if it had been shot. It entails pulling the front legs from under it with wires. I can’t watch that now without wincing and I wish they hadn’t done it.However, it made me a fan of Newman and Redford. And every time I see it I fall in love with Katherine Ross all over again. And it introduced me to the cinematography of Conrad Hall.

    And it has Strother Martin in a supporting role.

    You may not know his name but you should know his face. He was never a huge star but he was always good.

    He was the horse trader who verbally sparred with Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) in the original – and best – version of ‘True Grit.’ He was the train driver in ‘Shenandoah’ who pleads with James Stewart to spare his train. He was one of Lee Marvin’s sidekicks n ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance.’ He was the prison camp governor who realised they had a failure to communicate in ‘Cool Hand Luke.’

    In ‘Butch Cassidy’ he’s Percy Garris, the colourful mine boss who hires the heroes as payroll guards while they’re trying to go straight. And he has a line I love – ‘Morons! I’ve got morons on my team!’ Doesn’t seem much when you read it but when he says it, it’s like Shakespeare to my ear.

  • I’m a huge film fan so there are many, MANY titles I love. But if you were to ask me right now what my top ten would be, this is what I’d say.

    If you ask me again tomorrow, it would be different.

    These are in no particular order of preference, despite what I’ve put first.

    1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – Smart script, great acting, superb photography. Burt Bacharach’s shining moment in movies. Shame about that horse stunt.

     

    1. Dirty Harry – I’ve mentioned before how much I like this movie. Clint has never been better. Director Don Siegel knew how to tell a story. Andrew Robinson was chilling as Scorpio. And Lalo Schifrin’s score was cool and highly effective.

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    1. To Kill a Mockingbird – Adapting a book for the screen is a real skill and Horton Foote’s screenplay for this was simply magical. It’s one of my favourite books but I never feel cheated if some part of it was missed out. And Elmer Bernstein’s music is wonderful. I read recently that it was John Williams played the piano. Don’t know if it’s true, but wouldn’t it be great if it was?

     

    1. The Magnificent Seven – Speaking of Elmer Bernstein. I mean, what a score! And that cast! Brynner, McQueen, Bronson, Vaughn, Coburn, bad guy Wallach, the other two who everyone forgets (I haven’t – it’s Dexter and Buchholz). The film’s never been bettered. I hear they are due to remake it. I’ll approach with caution.

     

    1. Angels With Dirty Faces – I like a black and white movie and I like James Cagney. These Warner Brothers gangster flicks had a look all of their own. And this one has the most talked about ending in the genre. Was Rocky Sullivan granting the wish of his old pal and pretending to be craven as he walked to the chair? Or did he really lose his bottle?

     

    1. The Godfather – Not really a surprise, is it? Again, another superb adaptation, losing all the Hollywood bollocks about Johnny Fontane and his pal, the Dean Martin soundalike, and concentrating on the Family. I also love Godfather two and even three.

     

    1. The Adventures of Robin Hood – Errol Flynn. Basil Rathbone. Olivia de Havilland (be still my beating heart). And a cracking score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. I wonder how it would’ve turned out if James Cagney had played the title role? Oh – and the horse Maid Marion rides in Sherwood Forest was later bought by Roy Rogers and renamed Trigger. Just thought you’d like to know.

     

    1. Legends of the Fall – Not many laughs but my God, feel the emotion. Aided greatly by James Horner’s magnificent score, this is big Hollywood – a sweeping storyline with high drama, tragedy and Julia Ormond weeping.

     

    1. Rocky – I love an underdog story and I love a sporting underdog story. Stallone is under-rated in many ways. He’s a better actor than people give him credit for and his script for this is masterful. I like most of the Rocky movies – 3 and 4 are my least favourites – and I thought Rocky Balboa was a fitting end to the series. Even though Apollo Creed is due out.

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    1. Shane  – What can I say? Great source material in Jack Schaefer’s book, an excellent adaptation by AB Guthrie, scenery I could look at all day, music by Victor Herbert that just soars and pounds in equal measure, and director George Stevens at the top of his game. If there is one book/film which has influenced me more than any other, it’s this. In many ways, the character of Davie McCall is nothing more than Shane comes to Glasgow.

     

    So there we are. As I said, ask me tomorrow and it’ll be different.

    Tomorrow, hell. Ask me in half an hour….I’ve already thought of more…

     

 

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28Apr

How Harry made Clint’s Day

Posted by: douglasskelton3 Categories: blog entry
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The other night, while at a loose end telly-watching wise, I stuck the DVD of ‘Dirty Harry’ on.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it since 1971/2 when I caught it for the first time in the ABC Sauchiehall Street. Back then it was a maligned piece of trash cinema, violent, reactionary, a contributor to the downfall of western civilisation. Naturally, I loved it. Now, of course, it’s a classic. And rightly so.

It made a superstar out of Clint Eastwood. He’d been around for a while, right enough. First as a contract player with Universal in the 50s before he achieved small screen stardom as Rowdy Yates on ‘Rawhide.’ Then Sergio Leone came knocking (when he couldn’t get Henry Fonda). His three Man With No Name westerns, even though the character did have names – or at least nicknames – were successes in Europe then, eventually, in the States. If you’re interested those names were respectively Joe, Manquo and Blondie. Even if you’re not, I’ve already typed them.

On his return to the land of the free he made ‘Hang ‘em High’ and ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ before going all big budget with ‘Where Eagles Dare’, ‘Paint Your Wagon’ and ‘Kelly’s Heroes.’

The original ‘Dirty Harry’ script, by Harry and Rita Fink, had been kicking around since the 60s and was originally designed as a vehicle for John Wayne. Naturally, the character of Harry Callahan was a bit different – certainly older. Wayne passed, although he did eventually play a brace of Harry-esque cops in ‘McQ’ and ‘Brannigan.’ Robert Mitchum declined, although his brother John made appearances in the series as DiGiorgio. Steve McQueen, hot from ‘Bullitt’, also turned it down.

Then it was all set to go with Frank Sinatra, who had scored a big hit in ‘The Detective.’ Yes, Frank Sinatra was going to play the cop who does it his way. However, a hand injury forced him to drop out and director Don Siegel found himself reunited with Clint Eastwood. Sinatra flashed the badge later in ‘The First Deadly Sin’ and ‘Contract on Cherry Street.’

I shoot the bastard, that’s my policy

Eastwood and Siegel were old friends, having already made ‘Coogan’s Bluff’, ‘Two Mules for Sister Sara’ and the unsettling ‘The Beguiled.’ Siegel also popped up in Eastwood’s directorial debut ‘Play Misty for Me’ as a bartender. Incidentally, if you look closely in ‘Dirty Harry’, you can spot a cinema hoarding advertising that film.

Eastwood made the part his own and, as we know, the character stayed with him for a further four films. None of them, however, had the quality of the first. And that is down to Siegel.

He’d been around for years as a director for hire. He helped make science fiction paranoid with ‘Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’. He helped Elvis Presley act with ‘Flaming Star’. He gave us a classic in ‘Riot in Cell Block H’. He also helped kickstart the new trend of cop movies in the late 60s with ‘Madigan’, starring Richard Widmark. And if ‘Dirty Harry’ made Clint Eastwood a force to be reckoned with, then it also made Hollywood realise that Don Siegel was more than just a jobbing director, although with the exception of ‘Charley Varrick’, he never again achieved anything as visceral, as compelling or as influential.Image (8)

They were all aided by the script, which by the time of shooting had been worked over by Dean Riesner, a former child actor who had scripting duties on both ‘Coogan’s’ and ‘Play Misty’. He also contributed scripts to ‘Rawhide.’ His collaboration with Eastwood, although often uncredited, continued. Riesner went on to help create the first full-blown TV mini-series by adapting Irwin Shaw’s ‘Rich Man, Poor Man.’

Maverick writer/director John Milius also took a pass at the script, although his name does not appear in the credits. He did receive onscreen credit for the sequel ‘Magnum Force’ along with Eastwood protégé Michael Cimino.

I have no idea who came up with the line ‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’, although the extended speech about the lethal capacity of the Magnum.44, the most powerful handgun in the world, does have the feel of Milius. Callahan’s catchphrase became iconic, as did the later ‘Make my day,’ which I believe Milius did contribute. Other would-be memorable phrases like ‘A man should know his limitations’ and ‘You’re shit out of luck’ just didn’t have the same ring to them.

Harry, you owe it to yourself to live a little

Siegel adopted an almost documentary approach to filming. The camera is handheld much of the time while the city of San Francisco is much more than a backdrop, it’s more like a character in its own right. It begins almost immediately, during the dizzying opening credits as Eastwood hunts for clues on a rooftop. We are treated to the entire the city vista in glorious widescreen – the bay, the bridge, Alcatraz, the lot. Rooftop and aerial shots of the city are a recurring theme in the movie. The skyline becomes the canyons and deserts of Eastwood’s westerns, which mirrors Callahan’s own frontier approach to justice.

When Siegel took ill during filming, Eastwood took over and maintained the rough and ready approach. He filmed the suicide sequence, which sees Harry talking down a potential jumper, in one night.

Mention has to be made of actor Andrew Robinson, whose portrayal of the deranged killer Scorpio pushes the story forward like a punch to the gut. There is no attempt made to understand him, to give him a backstory, and the talented Robinson laps up the opportunity to go larger than life without actually taking a knife and fork to the scenery – although it’s a close-run thing. His electric performance overshadows everything he’s done since, from ‘Charley Varrick’ to ‘Deadly Pursuit’ to ‘Hellraiser’ to a recurring role on TV’s ‘Deep Space 9’.

There is similarly little attempt to explain Harry’s uncompromising stance on his city’s scumbags, killers and assorted scallywags. A couple of throwaway lines about a wife killed by a drunk driver does not explain his, shall we say, direct approach to crime fighting, although it was probably a half-hearted bid to humanise him. It’s interesting that the Mel Gibson starrer ‘Lethal Weapon’ uses a similar device and has a unique way of dealing with a would-be high rise suicide.

I’m all broken up about that man’s rights

And then there’s the violence, some of which is as gruelling today as it was then, particularly the beating the killer takes in order to discredit Callahan. Another sequence, in which Scorpio hauls a knife blade from his leg, still makes me wince. For its day, the film was pretty tough. Callahan, while not a vigilante per se, is prone to shooting first and thinking about asking questions later. He is, though, motivated by the sure knowledge that his prey is guilty, which is fine in fiction but not so much in real life. The sequence in which he first wounds then tortures the killer in order to find out where he’s buried a young girl alive is unsettling – and was edited on its first showing on TV, rendering the scene unintelligible. These days, thanks to the likes of the various ‘Saw’ movies, standing on a bleeding leg does seem pretty tame.

Finally, special mention must be made of Lalo Schifrin’s score, which catches the rhythms of the city and the period while a haunting series of female voices perfectly capture Scorpio’s madness. Schifrin was one of the busiest composers of the 60s and 70s, who already had attention grabbing scores for ‘Bullitt’ and ‘Cool Hand Luke’ to his credit. He’d previously worked with Siegel and Eastwood on ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ and on Eastwood’s ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ and would go on to score ‘MagnumForce’, ‘Sudden Impact’ and ‘Joe Kidd.’ He is perhaps most famous for his theme to ‘Mission:Impossible’, easily one of the ten best TV themes ever written.

‘Dirty Harry’ is a film which has been much-maligned and often copied, even by its own star, but it has never been bettered.

 

 

 

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