Capra's Old Cinematic Christmas Chestnut, Redux

By Steve Evans

It’s a Wonderful Life remains the greatest of Christmas films. If this seems like a predictable choice, that’s only because it’s the correct choice, though not for the reasons most people might consider.

I don't accept the widely-held criticism of this 1946 Frank Capra film as sentimental, feel-good “Capra-corn,” as his films were so often dismissed. Sure, there’s a (relatively) happy ending. George Bailey learns what life would have been like if he had never been born. He finds salvation in the form of a kindly angel and neighbors who come forward to pay it back. George reunites with his children and his impossibly patient wife, the luminous Donna Reed.

Cue: church bells and Auld Lang Syne.

Most viewers remember and cherish this happy, populist ending, and with good reason: it follows a long middle act of crushed dreams, financial ruination and attempted suicide. It’s a Wonderful Life is a dark film, as bleak as any noir, redeemed only by the artificiality of that famous ending. I admire Capra for clinging to such a kindly philosophy, but I respect the film for putting George Bailey into a crucible of life lessons from which there are no easy answers – even if Capra provides one, anyway, at the conclusion. That ending is essential. Whether we believe it is another matter. More on that in a moment.

It’s a Wonderful Life is a great film and a classic Christmas movie because of the little grace notes we can discover if we read between the lines.

Bailey is a man whose dreams are systematically shut down through his own efforts to do the right thing as evolving circumstances demand. There is no chance for college, world travel, a brilliant career in architecture. There is only the little world of Bedford Falls. Even if George decides that his small town is good enough, that can scarcely reconcile a life of struggle against big business, as exemplified by the bitter and utterly vile Mr. Potter, who goes unpunished.

I believe George and Mr. Potter are two sides of the same coin. Potter represents what George might have become had his better nature not prevailed. Potter’s scheming ways provide the catalyst that enables George to emerge as a decent man concerned for his community, even at the expense of his own life’s dreams. A hero needs a worthy villain. That’s part of the basic equilibrium of the universe. George might have even defeated Potter (although we would have had no movie) if absentminded Uncle Billy had not been such a schmuck.

Like George himself, It’s a Wonderful Life encourages us to embrace our better nature, to place the needs of the many before the needs of the few, or the one. This was the essence of Capra’s politics. To convey this message to a nation returning from the horrors of World War II forced the director to craft a Machiavellian screenplay that would compel his characters to move in the precise directions he wanted them to take. This story is coiled as tightly as a steel spring. A whiff of inevitability, of fate, hangs over It’s a Wonderful Life. The omniscient narrator, God Himself, tells us as much near the beginning of the picture.

Capra crafted a message movie for the ages, so carefully constructed that the mechanism reveals itself only after many viewings. It is this:

Like the observation of Christmas itself, the climax of his movie is not at all about life as it is, but the way many people desperately want it to be. Without that sweet, romanticized ending, It’s a Wonderful Life would be unbearable -- though it would more closely approximate the truth. So, can we believe it?

In the end, if we choose to accept Capra's message, we do so purely on the basis of faith. If that's not in the spirit of Christmas, then no other film ever could be.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2013 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Howling hurrah for Wolf of Wall Street

By Steve Evans

Martin Scorsese's new film The Wolf of Wall Street is getting some serious love on the cusp of awards season. Variety reports audiences howling with approval during early screenings.

Lotsa talk of probable Academy Award nominations for best pic, director and actor (Leo DiCaprio), as well as supporting actor Jonah Hill (!) and possibly adapted screenplay.

Wolf of Wall Street tells the more-or-less true story of disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who ran a pump and dump scheme in the 1990s to inflate the value of securities and sell them before the market got wise. He was indicted in 1998 on securities fraud, among other charges. After cooperating with the FBI, he served 22 months in a federal prison for his boiler room schemes, which resulted in investor losses of approximately $200 million.

Scorsese reportedly plays the material as comedy, which may be the best way to comment upon and perhaps ridicule the money-obsessed. Here's the second trailer:



Notice the trailer has the same jittery, machine-gun pacing as GoodFellas, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Scorsese's classic gangster film riffed on all the stylistic techniques pioneered by the Nouvelle Vague, then beat the French at their own game. Contemporary cinema could survive another blast of comparable exuberance. In the United States, only Scorsese (and maybe Quentin Tarantino) can convey the wild joy of making movies and telling stories of life lived on the edge through sheer bravado and consummate filmmaking skill.

As per my tradition with Scorsese films, I will be there for Wolf of Wall Street on opening night with a bag of roasted macadamias and a smile. Maybe two bags; the film clocks in a minute shy of three hours, making this Scorsese's longest picture after Casino.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2013 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Condoms & Killings: Celebrating Old-School F/X

By Steve Evans

Before computer-generated imagery turned most modern movies into digital cartoons, film craftsmen were forced to come up with clever special effects solutions using old-fashioned (but arguably more convincing) methods than what we see onscreen today.

In 1972, when you wanted to show a ketchup-spattered Mafioso at a toll booth, you hired a make-up guy named Dick Smith, who also engineered all the mayhem on display at the climax of Taxi Driver and eventually won an Oscar for turning F. Murray Abraham into an ancient Salieri in Amadeus.

For The Godfather, Smith designed little blister packs filled with fake blood, glued them to an actor with attached monofilaments (fishing line), then obscured the whole setup with pancake makeup. Check out that rare still from the Godfather's toll booth shooting location, above right, as Jimmy Caan waits for his big death scene.

Caan was instructed to stand still between takes and not rupture his rigging, otherwise the laborious process of applying bullet wounds would have to start over from the beginning. Reportedly, each setup took hours. If a shot was unsatisfactory, the wardrobe department would have to dress Caan in a clean suit and get the actor back into position. Note his left arm extended through the broken window of the car door in the image above, then compare it to the finished film. Continuity is an important cinematic element, so if the character is hanging onto the car door as he's eviscerated by machine-gun fire, his arm needs to be in the same position for retakes.  

When Director Francis Ford Coppola called action, Caan began thrashing about and the crew yanked the fishing lines, which were artfully concealed by camera placement and lighting. As the blisters tore open, rivulets of fake blood poured out and Caan cried “ouch!” in Italian. Similar setups were used for the scene where Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) guns down Sollozzo and Capt. McCluskey with headshots from a .38 snub in that cozy Italian restaurant in the Bronx.

Now back to the toll booth. For body shots, the Godfather crew rigged small explosive charges known as squibs beneath Caan’s double-breasted pinstripes. The traditional method called for condoms filled with stage blood to be placed over the charges, which were wired down the leg of his pants to a control panel out of sight. On cue, Caan would do his little dance of death while a crewman raked the contact wire across a series of terminals, setting off the sequence of small charges concealed under the actor’s suit. Voila! Sonny Corleone meets a gruesome end from a dozen Tommy guns.

Rapid-fire editing and some seriously convincing sound effects complete the illusion:



The dedicated do-it-yourself filmmaker can achieve approximate results today with a basic laptop, digital camcorder and off-the-shelf software, but it won’t look nearly as good as Smith’s 40-year-old effects. And you won’t get James Caan to dance for you, either.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2013 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Room 237: Living la Vida Loca

By Steve Evans

Room 237 is a documentary that tells us what some people think Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) is really about. This is not as interesting as it sounds.

Over the course of a long 143 minutes, I was subjected to one insanely crackpot theory after another. It took me three days spread over two weeks to slog through this documentary, in which I am supposed to believe, variously, that The Shining is actually about the Holocaust, the plight of Native Americans at the hands of settlers, or that it is, instead, Kubrick’s public apology for faking the footage of the Apollo moon landing (my personal favorite), or that it is a dialectical exercise in the deconstruction of American capitalism. Oh, and running The Shining backwards supposedly reveals hidden meanings, too, although I’ll be damned if the documentary explains them.

For those who need a refresher, The Shining takes place in Colorado at the fictional Overlook Hotel, where extremely unpleasant things happen in Room 237. The room number was changed for the film from Stephen King's novel, in which the action occurs in Room 217. That's because the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, where the hotel exteriors were filmed, actually had a Room 217 and the owners didn't want guests to be afraid of staying there. This simple explanation for the alteration in room numbers from novel to film further undercuts many of the more salacious theories put forth in the documentary.

Kubrick, who died in 1999, was famously elusive and loathe to discuss his films once they were released. He preferred to let the films speak for themselves, leaving audiences free to interpret them as they wish. Ironically, it is Kubrick's own elliptical stance toward his work that encourages the fans interviewed in Room 237 -- let's charitably call them eccentrics -- to come up with their own goofy explanations. If Kubrick could see Room 237 he might well make an exception to his no-comment policy.

One theorist who claims The Shining is a veiled reference to the Holocaust holds up such proof as the numbers of the film's title, Room 237. When multiplied thus: 2 x 3 x 7 = 42, the Holocaust-theory guy claims that this represents the year 1942, which is when Hitler and Nazi Germany accelerated the Final Solution. The man says he is shocked no one else has noticed this hidden mathematical clue.

In other words, Room 237 is a hoot.

Seldom in my life have I heard so much amazing bullshit spewed with such utter conviction. This documentary is proof that some people will twist and contort anything to fit a thesis. Some of this stuff is fascinating. Just about all of it is gibberish.

For these reasons alone, the documentary is worth watching. Call it a meta-film best enjoyed by diehard film buffs and perhaps clinical psychiatrists. I don’t deny The Shining is a multi-textured film that rewards repeat viewings, but you won't learn anything about it from watching Room 237. The documentary succeeds mainly in tracking down the sort of people you wouldn’t want to be alone with, then letting them expound at length on their wild ideas. That they actually seem to believe their own nonsense is just precious.

It's probably pointless to review a film based on what I wish had been included rather than what is actually there. But I think the makers of Room 237 missed a prime opportunity to consider why The Shining continues to fascinate people 33 years after its release. Instead, they focus on the side show, the lunatic fringe who can be found lurking on the edges of just about any cultural ephemera that generates obsessive interest. That's too easy. Instead of crafting a challenging documentary, they've produced the year's best comedy.

Room 237 could never have been made during Stanley Kubrick’s lifetime. Even a recluse like Kubrick would probably be compelled to ridicule every whacked-out theory put forward in the film – even if he would not discuss his own intentions. Actually, he already did. A few years after the film was released Kubrick in an interview said The Shining is about "a family going insane together.”

Just like the people in this documentary.

Room 237 is available on Netflix.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2013 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.