Little Women (1933 and 2019)

For actors, there are certain roles (mostly courtesy of Shakespeare), that a new generation of men have the opportunity to perform again and again.  Think Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, or King Lear.  Numerous actors have played these roles both on stage and screen.  OCEAN'S 11 (1960) with a predominantly male cast including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr was remade with a superstar male cast at the start of this century in Steven Soderbergh's OCEAN'S ELEVEN (2001) starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Brad Pit among others.  For actresses, there are not as many of these perennial roles (both Desdemona and Ophelia are worthy but more supporting roles). But Louise May Alcott's 19th century novel Little Women is the noteworthy exception. LITTLE WOMEN has inspired not only two silent film adaptations of Alcott's novel but four versions in the talkie age starring some of the best and brightest young actresses of their generation starring as the four March sisters.

The first version of LITTLE WOMEN I saw was Gillian Armstrong's 1994 version starring Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, and Christian Bale. I can honestly say I do not remember a single thing about that film.  CrazyFilmGuy's mind set at that time was Spielberg and Schwarzenegger films, anything but a period piece about a New England family with four daughters. But as I have grown older and found a new appreciation for not only period films but films that are not male dominated, the most recent version of LITTLE WOMEN (2019) directed by up and coming Greta Gerwig (LADY BIRD) gave me another chance to appreciate Alcott's story. Gerwig's retelling of LITTLE WOMEN also came at an opportune time as female empowerment was on the rise nationally.

To watch LITTLE WOMEN you almost need a scorecard to remember the four Marchs sisters, their names, and their personalities.  CrazyFilmGuy is here to assist you.   There's the literary daughter Josephine (or Jo), the tomboy-ish Amy, the quiet Elizabeth (or Beth), and the prettiest Margaret (or Meg).  A very young Katherine Hepburn appeared in George Cukor's LITTLE WOMEN (1933), the very first talking version. Elizabeth Taylor and Janet Leigh were among the young actresses in the next version of  LITTLE WOMEN (1949) directed by Mervyn LeRoy.  The 1994 version of LITTLE WOMEN that I saw was the first version directed by a woman, Australian director Gillian Armstrong (MY BRILLIANT CAREER) starring Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, and Kirsten Dunst. And most recently, Greta Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN (2019) stars some of today's brightest young actresses including Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Emma Watson.  For sanity's sake, CrazyFilmGuy is going to review the 1933 and 2019 versions this time and will revisit the 1949 and 1994 versions in a year or two. 

The 1933 LITTLE WOMEN had the good fortune to have George Cukor (THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, A STAR IS BORN) as its director. Cukor was well known for his handling of actresses and female themed films and he doesn't disappoint.  With a screenplay by wife and husband team of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman based on Alcott's novel, LITTLE WOMEN chronicles the lives of the March sisters in 19th Century Concord, Massachusetts beginning on Christmas Eve as the Civil War rolls on. We meet Jo March (Katherine Hepburn), the most free-spirited sister, trying to sneak away from reading to her Aunt March (Edna May Oliver) so she can be with her sisters on Christmas Eve. Amy March (Joan Bennett) is the most rebellious and artistic, made an example by her teacher Mr. Davis (Olin Howland) for drawing a caricature of him in class. Beth March (Jean Parker) is shy but likes to play the clavichord (a type of piano). Meg March (Frances Dee) is the prettiest and works as a governess. The girls mother Marmee March (Spring Byington) arrives home from work and the girls all gather together as she reads a letter to them from their father Mr. March (Samuel Hinds) who's away serving as a colonel and chaplain on the Union side in the Civil War.

Jo wants to be a writer. She puts on her play The Witch's Curse for some school girls, she and her sisters playing the parts. But the set falls down. Upset, Jo goes outside and throws a snowball at the house next door where a handsome young man Theodore "Laurie" Laurence (Douglass Montgomery) has returned from Europe. Laurie lives with his rich grandfather Mr. Laurence (Henry Stephenson). Jo and Laurie hit it off, recreating the fight scene from Hamlet as they entertain each other during the winter. Mr. Laurence takes a liking to the March girls and invites them to a party at his home. Jo dismisses many would be suitors. Mr. Laurence invites Beth to play on his grand piano.  Meg is courted by the dashing Mr. John Brooke (John Davis Lodge), Laurie's tutor. Laurie rescues Jo from her doldrums as the party ends.

Jo secretly goes to the local newspaper and sells her first story for $1.50. Laurie spies her leaving the building. Jo and Laurie have a romp in the park and stumble across Meg and John on a date. Mr. Laurence buys Beth a piano.  Mrs. March gets word that her husband is in a hospital in Washington, D.C. Mrs. March goes to D.C. to care for Mr. March. The girls pray for their parents safe return.  Jo continues to sell more short stories to the newspaper. The sisters celebrate Jo's success but then Beth becomes ill with scarlet fever from a neighbor's child. Laurie sends word to Mrs. March to return home. Mrs. March comes home as Beth's fever breaks.  Mr. March is with her.  The March family is reunited.

Jo begins to realize that she and her sisters are growing up, growing apart as their lives take different directions. Meg and John Brooke are married, the ceremony conducted by Mr. March. The wedding saddens Jo. Laurie tries to console Jo who rejects Laurie's feelings toward her. Jo leaves for New York, looking for new inspiration for her writing. Jo finds a room at a boarding house where she meets another boarder, the kindly, older Professor Bhaer (Paul Lukas), a German linguist. Amy and Aunt March visit Jo before heading to Europe. Laurie's also in Europe but didn't stop in New York to see Jo. Jo finds success with her stories in New York with guidance (and some criticism) by Professor Bhaer.  Professor Bhaer begins to fall in love with Jo. But a letter from home sends Jo back to Concord where a death in the March family will bring Amy, Aunt March, Laurie and Mr. Laurence back from Europe.  Amy and Laurie are engaged, having met in Europe. Laurie and Jo remain friends.  As family and friends gather together once again, Professor Bhaer shows up from New York on a rainy night with Jo's manuscript for Little Women. He proposes to Jo who accepts his marriage offer. 

Of the four March sisters in LITTLE WOMEN, the character of Jo is the strongest.  Jo has the biggest arc from bubbly school girl to the dawning of a young woman. Jo is independent yet she's the one who strives to keep the family together. The other sisters represent pieces of Jo.  Amy is outgoing and rebellious. Beth melancholy and quiet.  Pretty Meg the most accepting of men and marriage offers. Jo experiences all of these characteristics during the film but follows her own path, taking her to a brand new world in the big city of New York. 

One of the strengths of LITTLE WOMEN is its theme of family.  It's tough times for the March family. Instead of a homemaker, the girls mother Marmee works in a store to provide for the family while Mr. March is away in the Civil War.  The sisters sing together on Christmas Eve and take their Christmas breakfast to a more needy family.  The sisters support each others hobbies whether it's acting in Jo's play, listening to Beth play the piano, or appreciating Amy's drawings. The love and support the four sisters have for each other is uplifting.  There's no family rivalry between them unlike Scarlet O'Hara (Vivian Leigh) and her cousin Melanie Hamilton (Olivia DeHavilland) in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939).

You can't tell the March girls without a scorecard. From left to right: Frances Dee, Joan Bennett, Katherine Hepburn, and Jean Parker.

All of the young actresses in LITTLE WOMEN would go on to fine film careers. For Katherine Hepburn, LITTLE WOMEN (only her fourth film) would be her first memorable performance in a string of acclaimed roles.  Hepburn would work with director Cukor again in SYLVIA SCARLETT (1935) co-starring Cary Grant, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940) with Grant and James Stewart and ADAM'S RIB (1949) one of many films Hepburn made with Spencer Tracy. Not surprisingly, Joan Bennett who plays the closest to a bad girl as Amy in LITTLE WOMEN would parlay that dark side into two femme fatale performances in two Fritz Lang films: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944) and SCARLET STREET (1945) both co-starring with Edward G. Robinson. 

Frances Dee, perhaps the prettiest of the group as Meg would mostly work in the 30s and 40s in films as diverse as OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934) with Bette Davis and Leslie Howard and Jacques Tourneur's I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943).  Her beauty cost her the role of Vivian Leigh's cousin in GONE WITH THE WIND (producer David Selznick went with Olivia DeHavilland instead). But don't feel bad for Frances Dee. Dee would marry actor Joel McCrea (SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT) who she met on the film THE SILVER CORD (1933) and they were married for fifty seven years until McCrea's death. Jean Parker who plays Beth March is probably the least well known of the group.  But like her costars, LITTLE WOMEN would propel Parker to a lengthy career with roles in Laurel & Hardy's THE FLYING DEUCES (1939), Edgar G. Ulmer's BLUEBEARD (1944) with John Carradine, and Henry King's western THE GUNFIGHTER (1950) with Gregory Peck. 

The men are periphery characters in this version of LITTLE WOMEN which is fine. Mr. March is almost like an extra. But Louise May Alcott did create two interesting men who support the March family in Mr. March's absence.  Douglas Montgomery as Laurie is an exuberant young man who seems to be there for each daughter whether in times of mirth or sadness. He's closest to Jo but will ultimately marry Amy. I had never seen Montgomery before but the handsome actor worked steadily from the 30s thru the 50s (MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, THE CAT AND THE CANARY) until he died at the relatively young age of 58 due to cancer.  And Henry Stephenson as Laurie's grandfather Mr. Laurence first appears as a stern, scary man who becomes a soothing benefactor to the March family during their ups and downs. If there was one creepy part in Cukor's LITTLE WOMEN, it would be Paul Lukas as Jo's German suitor Professor Bhaer.  Lukas is far too old to be the man that Jo falls in love with.  Lukas would go on to appear in Alfred Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES (1938) and win an Academy Award for Best Actor in WATCH ON THE RHINE (1943) with Bette Davis.  But Lukas is badly miscast in LITTLE WOMEN.

One person who would not make the mistake of miscasting is director Greta Gerwig in her 2019 retelling of LITTLE WOMEN.  Gerwig chose the perfect moment to revisit the March girls as the female empowerment movement was rising up in 2019 following the #metoo movement.  Gerwig not only directed LITTLE WOMEN but wrote the screenplay.  With the 1933 version and subsequent remakes following Alcott's narrative from beginning to end, Gerwig mixes things up with her LITTLE WOMEN by starting the film in the last act with Jo in New York and then juxtaposing flashbacks seven years earlier with where the March girls are presently in their lives.  I had seen the new LITTLE WOMEN about a year ago and didn't fully appreciate the storyline or the characters.  But now having watched Cukor's LITTLE WOMEN, everything made sense even if Gerwig chose to tell her version out of order.

Everything you need to know about Gerwig's take on LITTLE WOMEN can be found in the first and last scene of the film.  Jo (Saoirse Ronan) visits newspaper editor Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) in New York and pretends she's selling a short story for a friend even when it's really her short story. Dashwood agrees to buy the story but with some edits.  He pretty much tells Jo what she's going to get paid.  By the end of LITTLE WOMEN, Jo has her manuscript Little Women ready to be published.  Dashwood's daughters have read it and Dashwood knows he has a best seller in his hands.  But this time, it's Jo who does the negotiating, demanding a higher percentage and ownership of the copyright for her book.  She's not pushed around by Dashwood this time.  She's in control. 

Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN kicks off with Amy March (Florence Pugh) in Paris with her Aunt March (Meryl Streep).  While out on a carriage ride, Amy runs into her old neighbor Laurie (Timothy Chalamet) walking in the park. Meg March (Emma Watson) is married to Laurie's old tutor John Brooke (James Norton) and lives in Concord, Massachusetts, close to where she and her family grew up.  And Josephine "Jo" March lives in a boarding house in New York, looking for inspiration for her stories. A young German professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel) befriends Jo and will critique her stories and help her to become a better writer. But a letter arrives from home for Jo.  Her youngest sister Beth (Eliza Scanlen) has taken ill back in Concord.

We flashback seven years earlier.  The March family bond together on Christmas morning in the absence of their father Mr. March (Bob Odenkirk) who's away fighting in the Civil War. Their mother Marmee Match (Laura Dern) asks the girls if they can donate their Christmas breakfast to a needy family. Next door, young Theodore "Laurie" Laurence sees their generosity. When the March family return home, a lavish breakfast awaits them, courtesy of Laurie's rich grandfather Mr. Laurence (Chris Cooper). Laurie and Mr. Laurence will become friends with the March ladies. The March sisters will invite Laurie to join their theater group.  Mr. Laurence will take a shine to Beth who plays the piano and reminds him of his deceased daughter. Jo and Laurie will have a special relationship that makes Amy jealous. Meg will be the belle of the group, adored by many young men at social parties. Jo flees the suitors, hiding and dancing with Laurie outside, away from all the prying eyes. 

Back in the present, Jo returns to Concord to find Beth very sick (Beth earlier had scarlet fever but pulled through).  Beth doesn't want Amy to know about her illness and ruin her overseas trip. In Europe, Aunt March tells Amy she needs to marry someone wealthy like Fred Vaughn (Dash Barber) as she's her family's last hope for prosperity.  Laurie teases Amy for considering marrying for money over love. Gerwig flashes back to a Cape Cod beach picnic for the sisters, happier times. Beth tells Jo to keep writing. Meg and John are engaged.  Jo tries to talk Meg out of marriage but Meg wants to settle down. Marmee receives a letter from Washington D.C. that Mr. March is in the hospital and leaves to visit him. Aunt March invites Amy rather than Jo to Europe, devastating Jo. Laurie professes his love to Jo but she rejects his intimations. "Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty," she says. "I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for." Marmee returns with Mr. March, briefly reuniting the family.  Mr. March presides over Meg and John's marriage. But then life changed for the March family.

The film finishes up in the present with Beth passing away.  Amy, Laurie, and  Aunt March return from Europe upon hearing of Beth's death. Jo is ready to give her love to Laurie but learns Amy and Laurie are engaged. Aunt March passes away, leaving her house to Jo who plans to turn it into a school for boys and girls. The young Professor Friedrich Bhaer shows up in Concord to visit Jo who left unexpectedly and without saying goodbye to him in New York. Friedrich charms the March family but not Jo. Friedrich tells Jo he's headed to California to teach.  Jo wishes him well. As Friedrich heads to the train station, the March family and the Laurence's make Jo realize Friedrich's in love with her. Jo races off in the Laurence's carriage to catch Friedrich before his train departs.  LITTLE WOMEN ends with everyone helping out at the new school: Jo with Friedrich, Amy with Laurie, Meg with John, and Mr. and Mrs. March all together.

Give credit to writer/director Gerwig for breathing new life into LITTLE WOMEN.  All of the characters, whether leading or supporting roles, have greater layers of depth revealed than the 1933 version was able to show. The March girls all have more spunk, even the dour Beth who lives vicariously through her sisters. And we discover that the March girls do not all get along.  Amy is jealous of her siblings.  When Jo and Meg go on a double date with Laurie and John, Amy is so furious that she burns Jo's early version of her novel. Amy's near drowning in a nearby icy pond while following Jo and Laurie and her rescue by them will patch up their differences.  We discover in this version Laurie is both charming and rude (unlike Douglas Montgomery's Laurie who's all charming). Laurie insults Meg at a prestigious Boston coming out party.  In Europe, Laurie blows off Amy at a party, embarrassing her by showing up with two other dates. Laurie's not perfect but he's smart enough to realize his mistakes and make amends, becoming a trusted friend and confidant.

Timothee Chalemet is a smart casting choice as Laurie to counter the strong female cast. Chalemet is the hottest young dramatic actor right now, appearing with Ronan in Gerwig's LADY BIRD (2017) and receiving acclaim for his performance in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017). Laurie touches each of the March girls in some way. He's a sounding board for Jo and an irritant to Amy and Meg. Even minor characters are more interesting in Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN.  If you're going to have Meryl Steep (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) play Aunt March, you need a few juicy scenes for Meryl to chew up the scenery which she does in fine fashion.  Aunt March is lovable, cantankerous, and honest.  Mr. March who we barely see in the 1933 version is given new life by Bob Odenkirk (TVs BREAKING BAD). He's only in a few scenes but Odenkirk lends warmth and love to the role.  We understand why the girls miss him so much.  "My little women," he proudly beams at his daughters.  Chris Cooper (AMERICAN BEAUTY) shines as Mr. Laurence, Laurie's grandfather. Mr. Laurence's role is more pronounced as he becomes a sort of surrogate father to the March sisters in their father's absence. Even the March's maid Hannah (Jayne Houdyshell) stands out more than the same character in Cukor's version.

Director Gerwig and her editor Nick Houy adroitly weave back and forth between flashbacks and the present story, highlighting important elements in the March sisters past and present lives.  When Beth is first sick, Jo goes to her room the next morning to find her bed empty.  Jo rushes downstairs believing she's dead and at first finds only Mr. March and Marmee at the kitchen table before revealing Beth alive when Marmee leans back.  Beth becomes seriously ill a second time a few years later. Gerwig repeats the same sequence: empty bed, run downstairs, Marmee and Mr. March at the table only this time there's no reveal of Beth.  She's died.  By putting the sequences, past and present, one after another, Gerwig makes the passing of a sister more profound.

LITTLE WOMEN benefits from actual locations for this version.  Gerwig filmed the entire film in Massachusetts where Louise May Alcott set the story.  Gerwig and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux capture the classic nostalgic New England town of Concord and its countryside in all its fall and wintery glory as well as Cape Cod and the red brick houses of Beacon Street in Boston. It feels good to see LITTLE WOMEN in real locations and not so studio set bound as the 1933 version.

Saoirse Ronan as Jo is not as physically tall as Katherine Hepburn was as Jo but Ronan balances Jo's independence and strength with a hidden vulnerability. Ronan has grown up before our eyes from a little assassin in Joe Wright's HANNA (2011) to a young Irish immigrant in BROOKLYN (2015). Florence Pugh might be the surprise casting in LITTLE WOMEN as Amy.  Pugh is better known as a more physical actress in films like FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY (2019) and BLACK WIDOW (2021). But Pugh can play child-like and jealous sister with equal aplomb. Emma Watson is a nice choice as Meg, the beauty of the March girls. Watson's role was originally to be played by Emma Stone but Stone had to bow out due to prior commitments. Meg may be the prettiest but she's also the most down to earth, sacrificing perhaps a better life with someone wealthier for genuine love for a regular teacher. We all know Watson has Hermione Granger in the HARRY POTTER films but Watson showed she could play a princess like character as Belle in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017). Australian actress Eliza Scanlen (HBO's SHARP OBJECTS) is the least well know of the group. Scanlen's Beth is the shyest of the four girls but Beth develops a deep friendship with Mr. Laurence who Beth reminds him of his deceased daughter. 

Both these versions of LITTLE WOMEN are classics in their own right.  Cukor's 1933 LITTLE WOMEN version tells Alcott's story in broader strokes (even though it's a pre-code Hollywood film before censorship was introduced with the Hays code) but captures all the key points from the novel. It's the perfect primer before watching Gerwig's latest version of LITTLE WOMEN where the director assumes the audience is familiar enough with the story to tell it out of order (and if you're not familiar enough with the story, Gerwig does a nice job of laying it out for you). LITTLE WOMEN offers four distinct female roles that each new generation of young actresses can sink their teeth into.  It will be interesting to see in the next twenty five years who the next promising young actresses will be who step up to play Jo,  Amy, Meg, and Beth March. 

Badlands (1973)

The word "badlands" is such a great word. It conjures up in the mind mysterious topographical images of a land that may not be hospitable.  My young family and I stopped at Badlands National Park in 1993 on our way from Boston, Massachusetts to Portland, Oregon. We were transfixed by the stark rust colored buttes, spires, hoodoos, and pinnacles that made up "the badlands." For many folks including CrazyFilmGuy, the word "badlands" reminds us of Bruce Springsteen's rock song Badlands from his Darkness on the Edge of Town album released in 1978.  I have to think that Springsteen may have been inspired by the title of director Terrence Malick's 1973 film BADLANDS loosely based on the true murderous crime spree of Charles Starkweather and his teenage girlfriend in Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958. 

Viewing a Terrence Malick film is an acquired taste and not for everyone.  His films are always beautiful to look at. At times he seems more interested in the flora and fauna (he studied as a biologist) then his characters.  He uses narration to great effect as we listen to his characters inner thoughts.  His camera often just follows actors walking instead of having dialogue which has been known to infuriate some actors.  Malick burst on the film scene with his first film BADLANDS and then DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) with Richard Gere.  Then, Malick dropped off the film map for about twenty years until I stumbled across him with his World War II comeback THE THIN RED LINE (1998) based on the James Jones novel. I fell in love with his style.  He followed up with the historical drama THE NEW WORLD (2005) with Colin Farrell that I liked as well But then he let style get in the way of story and some of his later works like TO THE WONDER (2012), KNIGHT OF CUPS (2015), and SONG TO SONG (2017) are maddeningly beautiful with great actors in them but stories that fall short. 

BADLANDS is pretty straightforward storytelling for Malick but with a lyrical pace and flourishes of his trademark interest in nature, landscapes, and all creatures great and small. Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is a restless, impulsive Korean War veteran now garbageman who one morning while collecting garbage in the sleepy town of Fort Dupree, South Dakota with his coworker Cato (Ramon Bieri) takes the rest of the day off.  As he walks through the neighborhood, he comes across a young bored teenager Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) twirling a baton on her front lawn. Kit strikes up a conversation with her. She thinks he looks like James Dean. He becomes smitten with her. Kit returns home and finds out he's been fired from his garbage collecting job.  He returns to see Holly, taking her into town. They begin dating, much to the chagrin of Holly's father (Warren Oates), a sign painter. 

When her father discovers she's still seeing Kit behind his back, the father shoots Holly's dog as punishment.  Kit visits Holly's father on a painting job to ease tensions but the father wants the wrong side of the tracks Kit to stop seeing his daughter.  Kit sneaks into their house, begins packing up Holly's clothes when Holly and her father return.  Kit shoots and kills Holly's father in cold blood.  Kit briefly leaves Holly at home but returns with gasoline and burns Holly's house down with her father's body inside. Kit and Holly hide out in some dense woods outside of town. Kit uses his army training to build an elaborate tree house. He sets traps and builds tunnels to hide in.  Kit and Holly live off the land, catching fish and stealing chickens. Holly narrates like it's a fantasy life, like they're married. 

Three bounty hunters show up.  Kit catches them by surprise, shooting two of the three in the back.  Kit and Holly head out for the open road.  Kit and Holly visit Kit's garbageman friend Cato who's house sitting for a friend way out in the middle of nowhere.  But when Cato acts like he's trying to alert the authorities, Kit shoots Cato.  Some friends of Cato's show up. Kit forces them into a storm cellar. We're not sure if Kit shoots them or not. When Kit and Holly return to the house, Cato is dead.  Kit and Holly hit the road again.

Kit picks a nice wealthy looking home to stop at for supplies. They force their way in past the deaf Maid (Dona Baldwin) and the Rich Man (John Carter) who owns the lavish home allows them to stay. Kit and Holly inhabit the house for a few days, pretending like it's their home.  But a salesman shows up (played by of all people the later reclusive director Terrence Malick) and Kit gets anxious. Kit suggests they go to Montana then make a run for Canada. Running on empty in their car, Kit tries to steal some gas.  A police helicopter shows up. Kit races off but Holly turns herself in.  A Sheriff (Gary Littlejohn) and his Deputy (Alan Vint) chases after Kit who finally turns himself in.  Kit acts like a celebrity as he's hauled away.  Thru narration, Holly tells us that she ends up marrying the son of her lawyer.  Kit, on the other hand, is sent to the electric chair six months later.  The End. 

BADLANDS is usually compared to Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967). Both films are about two young couples who turn to a life of crime and murder.  The young female leads (Sissy Spacek in BADLANDS; Faye Dunaway in BONNIE AND CLYDE) are bored with their humdrum lives.  The men who lead them into a life of crime (Sheen and Warren Beatty respectively) feel trapped by society.  They're as deadly as they are handsome.  On the surface, BADLANDS and BONNIE AND CLYDE seem similar but they have their differences.

Bonnie and Clyde held up banks because it was the Depression circa 1930s.  Clyde was from a poor family. He was just trying to feed his family by sticking it to affluent banks.  Kit in BADLANDS is a Korean War veteran in the late 1950s.  He should be appreciated as a war hero.  He looks like a matinee idol. Instead, he's got a dead end job as a garbageman.  He's got no purpose in life.  Holly is from a middle class family (raised mostly by her father when her mother died of pneumonia). She's just a teenager.  Kit isn't interested in robbing banks or liquor stores.  He just wants to be with Holly.  When Holly's father forbids it, Kit kills him in cold blood, no remorse. Holly, naive and now alone without family, chooses to follow Kit. Bonnie became a bank robber.  Holly's just along for the ride with Kit. She's no criminal. Bonnie and Clyde had somewhat of a plan.  They knew which banks they wanted to knock off.  Kit has lots of ideas but no real plan. Kit's impulsive. He's good with his hands and a rifle (his military training). But Kit and Holly are just running with no clear destination.

Although BADLANDS takes place in the late 50s, Kit Carruthers and his attitude and actions fit nicely with the anti-authority vibe of 1973 when BADLANDS was released. The army might have owned Kit during the Korean War but he answers to no authority (the garbage company or Holly's father) post war. Kit wants to be important, taken seriously, be somebody (like his idol James Dean). He has opinions and thinks he knows everything but no one takes him very seriously.  He discovers the one thing he's good at is killing people who get in his way. Is Kit a villain or an anti-hero? Malick's take on Kit is ambiguous. The first people he murders is a man who killed his girlfriend's dog and three greedy bounty hunters. We should hate Kit but we don't initially. But then he shoots his only friend Cato in the back. And when it looks like Kit shoots two friends of Cato's after forcing them into a storm cellar, Malick doesn't use any sound.  Did Kit shoot them or not? He pointed the rifle into the cellar but there's no sound of gunshot. 

For director Terrence Malick, BADLANDS is his most routine film (although I haven't seen DAYS OF HEAVEN). He hadn't discovered his free flowing, non-linear style yet. It's his first feature film and if he wants to make more, Malick needs to make a film that audiences will go to. But Malick does begin to explore his eye for nature and landscapes. When Kit and Holly hideout in the woods, Malick (and his cameramen Tak Fujimoto, Stevan Larner, and Brian Probyn) give us shots of a beetle, flowers, a swollen river with huge trees floating down it, deer grazing, and tall grasses blowing in the wind.  And he uses long lenses as Kit's Cadillac cruises across wide open and flat landscapes during their getaway.  Ironically, Kit and Holly never do drive through any badlands in South Dakota or anywhere else. My guess is Malick chose the title more as a metaphor for bad things that happen in the film and that it takes place in South Dakota (home of Badlands National Park). The film was actually made in Colorado. 

For Martin Sheen, BADLANDS was a breakout film for a young actor who had appeared in every cool TV show in the early 70s from HAWAII FIVE-O to MANNIX to LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE. Sheen's Kit is a difficult character to judge.  He's a bit of prick but he can also be charming with a deadpan sense of humor.  "I'll try anything once, " Kit tells Holly. It's only when we see his reaction to killing Holly's father and later his only friend Cato, no remorse or guilt at all, that we realize Kit is also a sociopath.  Sheen plays him with a cool demeanor. Kit rarely loses his temper until near the end of the film. Kit wants to die in a blaze of glory like Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde. But when law enforcement closes in on him, he changes his tune and turns on the charm, basking in his brief celebrity, giving away his personal possessions to police officers, hoping for leniency. "I always wanted to be a criminal, I guess, "Kit reflects.  "Just not this big of one."

Sheen would follow up BADLANDS with a critically acclaimed performance as another doomed character in the TV movie THE EXECUTION OF PRIVATE SLOVIK (1974).  Sheen would end the best decade of his career playing Captain Willard sent to terminate the rogue Colonel Kurtz played by Marlon Brando in Francis Coppola's Vietnam epic APOCALYSPE NOW (1979). Other fine movies starring Sheen include David Cronenberg's THE DEAD ZONE (1983), Oliver Stone's WALL STREET (1987), and Martin Scorsese's THE DEPARTED (2006).

For Sissy Spacek, BADLANDS was only her second film as a young actress following her debut in Michael Ritchie's PRIME CUT (1972) with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. Sissy's Holly Sargis is your typical shy, bored teenager. Her father makes her take piano lessons. She loves her dog. When Kit shows some attention to her when no one else does, she's quietly interested. She's unassuming in her world that's shattered by Kit's act of violence. Holly narrates throughout the film as if she and Kit are living a fantasy life, like they're a young, married couple on the run.  "My destiny lays with Kit. For better or worse," she says. Holly's narration is one of the best parts of BADLANDS. 

But as the film progresses, Holly grows up before our eyes.  She begins to realize Kit is a bit crazy and he doesn't have an ultimate plan.  The murders she's witnessed including her father have become real to her. When the police start to close in, Kit makes a run for it but Holly gives herself up.  It's time to rediscover her real life, not the fantasy one. Spacek would play the telekinetic title role teenager in Brian DePalma's CARRIE (1976) and work with esteemed directors Alan Rudolph (WELCOME TO L.A.) and Robert Altman (3 WOMEN).  In 1980, she would win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of country music singer Loretta Lynn in Michael Apted's COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER. Not a bad start for the young actress from Texas. 

Sheen and Spacek were unknowns in BADLANDS so Malick cast a more famous name in Warren Oates as Holly's sign painter father.  It's a brief, understated role by Oates who was normally playing more outlandish characters in films like Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969) and John Milius's DILLINGER (1973). One of Malick's strengths as a director besides narration and nature visuals is his use of music. Musica Poetica by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman is a whimsical melody that doesn't seem right for two people on a murder spree but it captures how Kit and Holly feel when they're hiding out in the woods. When Kit burns down Holly's house with her father's body inside, the fire montage is accompanied by another, more haunting piece of music by Orff and Keetman called Passion. The dichotomy between the European sounding music and a South Dakota murderer is striking. Malick tosses in a couple of 50s songs including Nat King Cole A Blossom Fell and Mickey & Sylvia's Love is Strange to make the entire soundtrack eclectic and unique. 

Outlaws on the run was a popular genre in the 1970s following BONNIE AND CLYDE in 1967.  Sam Peckinpah kicked it off with THE GETAWAY (1972) starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw as bank robbers fleeing their crooked partners.  Malick would make his debut with BADLANDS in 1973 and the following year a young up and coming director named Steven Spielberg would direct his first feature THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974) starring Goldie Hawn as a young wife who breaks her husband out of prison to rescue their young son from child welfare. Add in police rule breaker Clint Eastwood in Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY (1971); a Sicilian crime family in Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER (1972); husband turned vigilante Charles Bronson in Michael Winner's DEATH WISH (1974); and stupid, sympathetic bank robbers Al Pacino and John Cazale in Sidney Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) and the first half of the 1970s was a hotbed for anti-heroes sticking it to the status quo as well.

Some fun facts about BADLANDS.  Martin Sheen's two young sons Emilio Estavez and Charlie Sheen (who would themselves become well known actors) have small cameos in BADLANDS.  They play two neighborhood boys playing on a street corner when Holly gazes down at them from her bedroom window.  Jack Fisk, an art director on BADLANDS who would work on many of Terrence Malik's films as a production designer including THE NEW WORLD and TREE OF LIFE, would fall in love and marry Sissy Spacek after they met on the set of BADLANDS.  Fisk would even direct his wife Spacek in RAGGEDY MAN (1981) co-starring Eric Roberts and Sam Shepard.

The real Charles Starkweather (the inspiration for Kit Carruthers in BADLANDS) murdered eleven people with his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in 1958. Starkweather was nineteen. Fugate fourteen. Malick doesn't have his characters Kit and Holly go on quite as murderous a rampage. Malick's more interested in his two characters relationship before and after the murders as well as the landscape around them.  BADLANDS is a great example of taking a real life story and turning it into something poetic and beautiful despite its horrific back story. 

Sophie's Choice (1982)

As I prepared to blog this month about SOPHIE'S CHOICE, I tried to recall when I first became aware of the Holocaust and concentration camps. I thought we must have covered it in history class during high school. Then, I stared at the word "holocaust" and it came back to me.  It was a TV mini-series on NBC called HOLOCAUST (1978) that showed over four nights and almost eight hours the plight of a Jewish family during the Nazis reign of terror culminating in their attempt to exterminate the Jews. The mini-series provided roles for future stars James Woods and a young actress named Meryl Streep. It must have had a profound effect on me. When I traveled through Europe after college, in between visits to castles and museums and Roman arenas, I made it a point to visit a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, just outside of Munich. I wanted to see where these atrocities were committed and be reminded that as civilized as we think we are, mankind could be terribly barbaric and cruel.  Like one of the monuments built at Dachau says, "Never Again."

Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) is the most well known and acclaimed film about the Holocaust.  Before SCHINDLER'S LIST there weren't many films that tackled the subject.  But there were a few. THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959) based on Frank's actual diary and directed by George Stevens (GIANT) showed us the face and life of a young Jewish girl before she was caught and sent to a concentration camp. Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE (1980) based on Fuller's experiences in World War II in an army infantry unit from D-Day to Germany has a few scenes at the end of the film with soldiers encountering concentration camps and its horrors.  But there's another film that had a concentration camp subplot wrapped around a love triangle in New York in the late 1940's after World War II. It was SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982) written and directed by Alan J. Pakula based on the novel by William Styron. And starring in it was that young actress who appeared in HOLOCAUST.  Meryl Streep. 

My interest in SOPHIE'S CHOICE stems from one of my favorite people that I worked with in the film business. His name was Branko Lustig. He was a Croatian assistant director/production manager when I met him working on an NBC mini-series called DRUG WARS: THE KIKI CAMERENA STORY (1990). Branko had survived the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp as a young boy.  He showed us his concentration camp number tattooed on his arm by the Nazis.  One night when we complained about how cold it was during filming, Branko reminded us that on a cold night in Auschwitz, fleas would jump from cold dead corpses to warm live bodies. We never complained again. Branko would go on to become a producer and win an Academy Award with Steven Spielberg and Gerald Molen for producing SCHINDLER'S LIST.  Later, he was one of the producers on Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR (2000). Not bad for a survivor of one of the worst concentration camps during World War II. One of Branko's earliest film credits was as production supervisor for the concentration camp scenes shot in Yugoslavia for SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  I imagine the filmmakers leaned on Branko's personal experiences for the realism in those sequences.  Branko Lustig recently passed away in 2019 in his home country of Croatia at the age of 87.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is a hard film to pin down.  It's a love story. It's a drama. It's a mystery. It's a tragedy. Set in New York in 1947, young aspiring writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) arrives on a bus from the South and moves into a Brooklyn boarding house known as "the Pink Palace",  intent on writing his first novel.  He becomes acquainted with his neighbors above him: Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), a research biologist prone to mood swings and his Polish girlfriend, the beautiful but fragile Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep). Stingo first meets them when Nathan and Sophie have a fight. But they soon become friends, having dinner together and even taking an excursion to Coney Island. Stingo begins to learn more about his new friends. Sophie came to America after the war. Pale and anemic, trying to learn English at a night school, Sophie fainted in a library. Nathan came to her rescue, nursed her back to health and they fell in love.

Interested in meeting the fairer sex, Nathan introduces Stingo to Leslie Lapidus (Greta Turken), who appears to be as voracious for sex as Stingo but turns out to be a prude. Stingo returns to the boarding home and finds Sophie alone.  She invites Stingo to her room and reveals more of her past. She was married to an associate of her father in Krakow.  She was sent to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp for stealing a ham. Sophie's actually Catholic not Jewish. And from the cuts on her wrist, Sophie has attempted suicide. Stingo tells Sophie she can trust him with her secrets.  Nathan returns and borrows Stingo's manuscript to read. Nathan loves the manuscript. They take a walk out on the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate. Later, they celebrate Nathan's breakthrough at his research job. But Nathan's mood turns mecurial again. He rails at Sophia on why she survived the Holocaust and six million Jews died.  Sophie disappears from the house.

Searching for Sophie, Stingo visits her employer Dr. Blackstock (Joseph Leon).  Stingo discovers from Blackstock that Sophie's father was not a champion to Jews like she had told him but an anti-semitic who was friends with the Nazis. Sophie returns to the Pink Palace. When Stingo asks why Sophie lied to him about her father, Sophie reveals her darkest secrets.  We flashback to Krakow in 1938. Sophie hates her father who espouses extermination of the Polish Jews. She's arrested as a collaborator after her resistance lover is murdered and sent to Auschwitz with her two children who are separated from her upon arriving at the camp. For her language skills, she's chosen as a translator/secretary for the camp commandant Commander Rudolf Hoess (Gunther Maria Halmer). Sophie tries to win her son's freedom and almost sleeps with Hoess but she's sent back to the barracks in Block Three.

Nathan asks Stingo to meet his brother Larry (Stephen D. Newman) who Nathan says liked Stingo's manuscript. Larry reveals to Stingo that his brother Nathan is not what he seems and asks Stingo to keep tabs on Nathan. Nathan proposes to Sophie but then has a breakdown. He later calls Sophie, threatening to kill both Sophie and Stingo. Stingo and Sophie flee the Pink Palace, hiding in a cheap hotel room on the outskirts of New York. Stingo offers to marry Sophie, take her to his uncle's farm in Virginia where they could raise a family.  But Sophie tells Nathan her final secret.  When she was sent to Auschwitz with her two children, a guard told Sophie only one of her kids could stay in the camp.  The other would be sent to the gas chamber. Sophie had to make a choice. Sophie and Stingo share a night of passion but Sophie returns to Nathan and their doomed romance. 

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is about dealing with life after witnessing so much death. Sophie is like a ghost after the horrors she experienced at Auschwitz. She tries to live again, immigrating to America, learning English, attending night school to forge a new life.  Sophie was forced to make an unimaginable choice in the concentration camp that haunts her.  She's cursed in making choices.  She unwittingly chooses to become lovers with the unhinged Nathan which will lead her to more despair. She has a choice to leave Nathan for Stingo but she doesn't. Sophie grapples with the guilt of a survivor.  Why did she survive the Holocaust and millions of others including her children did not?  Nathan makes her feel alive and sexy, a temporary distraction from a past she cannot escape. Nathan has as many skeletons in his closet as Sophie has in hers.  Their passionate love affair will end in a perverse way no one could imagine.

Stingo is our guide in SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  Like Stingo arriving in the big city from his southern roots, we the audience are naive to what we are going to learn about Sophie and Nathan.  Director Pakula reveals bits of information carefully, slowly, building tension as the film goes on. Pakula doesn't play his hand too early.  We observe the events unfolding at the same time as Stingo. We never learn any information sooner than Stingo. We are on this dark journey of discovery together. 

At first, director Alan J. Pakula seems an odd choice to have directed SOPHIE'S CHOICE. Pakula had made a name for himself directing paranoid thrillers like KLUTE (1971) starring Jane Fonda, THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) with Warren Beatty, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. All modern stories.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE is a period drama film and a love triangle. But SOPHIE'S CHOICE has an aura of paranoid to it as well as mystery. We know something's up with Nathan and his mood swings but we're not exactly sure what his story is.  We know Sophie carries a tremendous guilt but we're not sure what the cause of her guilt is. Pakula builds this paranoia we feel incrementally, just slightly gnawing at the back of our minds until Nathan and Sophie's secrets are revealed. Pakula would not be a prolific director and he did make other dramas after SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  But he's better know for his thrillers. In later years, he would direct THE DEVIL'S OWN (1987) with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt and PRESUMED INNOCENT (1990) also with Harrison Ford. 

The three actors at the heart of SOPHIE'S CHOICE are the key to the film's success or failure.  Pakula hits it out of the ballpark with Meryl Streep. Streep was a rising star who had already won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in Robert Benton's KRAMER VS KRAMER (1979). But Sophie in SOPHIE'S CHOICE was one of her first full fledged leading roles and a chance to show off her skill with languages as she has to carry a Polish accent throughout the movie.  Streep's Sophie is fragile and beautiful, a survivor who's trying to move on in the world and live after the terrible horrors she experienced in a Nazi concentration camp. Like fellow actor Robert De Niro, Streep is a chameleon, willing to do anything for the part.  Her transformation between Sophie after the war and her concentration camp scenes in flashbacks are chilling.  Streep would win the 1982 Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Sophie in SOPHIE'S CHOICE.

Kevin Kline as the enigmatic Nathan is hit and miss.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE would be Kline's first feature film (although he made THE PIRATE OF PENZANCE first but it was released after SOPHIE'S CHOICE). He's charismatic and charming when Nathan's in a happier state of mind.  But when Nathan turns darker and violent, Kline doesn't quite have the dramatic weight yet to make Nathan out and out frightening. Ironically, John Cleese would select Kline to play the buffoonish Otto in Cleese's hit comedy A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988) because of Kline's performance in SOPHIE'S CHOICE. You can see some similarities in the two roles but Kline's Otto is clearly more humorous (and would win Kline an Academy Award for Best Support Actor for FISH). But SOPHIE'S CHOICE was the beginning of a long, illustrious career for Kline in films like Lawrence Kasdan's THE BIG CHILL (1983), Kasdan's SILVERADO (1985), another film with Pakula in CONSENTING ADULTS (1992), and Ang Lee's THE ICE STORM (1997).

Peter MacNicol as Stingo is probably the weakest of the three characters. Stingo should be more handsome, a real threat to Nathan for Sophie's attention.  But MacNicol is short of stature and not necessarily a matinee idol.  He does resemble a writer and he's a good listener for Sophie.  Stingo seems like a third wheel in many of the scenes with Sophie and Nathan. But don't fret for MacNicol.  He would get a chance to show off his language (and comedy) skills playing a creepy Carpathian professor trying to lure Sigourney Weaver to his supernatural master in Ivan Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS II.  And MacNicol would star in the hit Fox TV series ALLY MCBEAL (1997 - 2002) playing an eccentric lawyer in a law firm. 

It's ironic that Stingo is the least interesting character as Stingo is based on SOPHIE'S CHOICE author  William Styron. Styron came to New York from the Virginia to become a writer and Styron met a young Polish woman at the boarding house he lived in. He only knew her for a couple of weeks but as Styron tells it in a special feature about the film, there was something about her that felt doomed. That encounter would be the inspiration for Styron to write his novel Sophie's Choice.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is an unsettling film that will stay with you hours after you watch it whether you liked the film or not.  It's subject matter of survivor's guilt and it's flashbacks to Sophie's horror in the concentration camp make it unique. Director Pakula treats the subject matter and the source novel with great seriousness and unfolds the story like a novel, taking his time to reveal the film's most powerful sequences.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE made a star out of Meryl Streep  who has become one of our greatest actresses of all time.  Pakula's casting of Kline and MacNicol to round out the triangle is daring but slightly off the mark as a whole. SOPHIE'S CHOICE is an important film of the 80s, worth checking out.

Brief Encounter (1945)

I would imagine everyone has had some kind of brief encounter in their lifetime.  I don't necessarily mean an affair.  But a time where you met someone and hit it off and wondered what if I had chosen that person instead of the person I'm currently with. Two brief encounters I recall were when I was back packing through Europe after college in 1987. I had a girlfriend (now my wife) back in the United States.  But I was traveling alone.  I would meet fellow backpackers at hostels and in trains and at tourist destinations.  There were times where I would feel a bit lonely for the opposite sex.  I met a young Australian woman at a hostel in Switzerland and we spent the day walking around the Lauterbrunnen Valley and taking a gondola to the top of the Schilthorn, a Swiss Alp.  I met another young South African woman at a hostel in Salzburg, Austria.  She was with a local girlfriend and I was with a gent from Detroit.  I like to think we hit it off.  She wanted me to stay another night at the hostel but I had my itinerary and Venice was my next stop.  In both occasions, they were nice attractive women and we seemed to hit it off.  But nothing occurred from it.  No indiscretion was pursued.  It was just companionship for a day in a foreign country.  My brief encounters would not make an interesting subject for a film.

But I was reminded of these brief encounters when director Richard Linklater came out with his BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (and two subsequent sequels).  Similar to my experiences backpacking in Europe, Hawke meets Delpy on a train from Budapest to Vienna and they strike up a conversation.  Hawke convinces Delpy to spend the day with him walking around Vienna until late in the morning where they have to decide whether they want to spend more time with each other or not. It's a great premise which had me thinking, "Why didn't I think of that for a film idea?" Well, another filmmaker and playwright had.  The great David Lean, usually associated with epic films like THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (1957) and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) began his career with small films, often based on plays by Noel Coward like BLITHE SPIRIT (1945) and BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945), one of the first important films of the post-war cinema.

Directed by David Lean with a screenplay by Noel Coward (with input by director Lean and producer Ronald Neame) based on Coward's one act play Still Life, BRIEF ENCOUNTER begins at the end of the story with our two tragic middle aged lovers housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) final goodbye after a month long affair at the Milford Junction train station interrupted by Laura's gossipy friend Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg).  Alec rushes off to catch his train. Laura rides the train home with Dolly and returns to her comfortable but bland house where her husband Fred Jesson (Cyril Raymond) waits for her while working on a crossword puzzle. As she sits in her chair by a fire, Laura's voice over remembers back on how she and Alec first met.  Every Thursday, Laura takes the train to Milford to shop, dine, and catch a movie.  While waiting to catch her train back home one Thursday evening, she gets some dust in her eye from a passing train. Alec, a general practicioner, offers to help and relieves her discomfort. It's a harmless first encounter.

The following week, they bump into each other on the street.   A week later, Laura  has one of the last seats at a diner for lunch.  Alec walks in and sees her. He sits down with her and they chat, get to know each other a little better.  The two of them end up going to catch a movie together at the cinema and then have tea at the Milford Train Tea Room before going home to their families. Alec asks if he can meet her again next Thursday. Laura excitedly agrees then feels guilty on the ride home, positive everyone can read her thoughts. She even tells Fred she met a nice doctor during her day but Fred barely listens. And so begins a series of brief encounters.

The next Thursday, Laura goes to the diner and walks by the hospital Alec works at but there's no sign of him. Only at the train station does he hurriedly show up, apologizing that  he was tied up at work all day.  But the next week, he's waiting for her.  They take a walk at a botanical garden and rent a row boat. Alec professes his love to her. The two lovers even steal a kiss on the train platform before they part. On the way home, Laura fantasizes about a different life with Alec, full of fancy dinners and elegant dress wear and ballroom dances.  But she snaps out of her fantasy as the train pulls into her station and she returns to Fred and her children.

The next time they meet, they run into a friend of Laura's Mary Norton (Marjorie Mars) who has observed them at the diner they both ate at. Laura lies again about her relationship with Alec, further adding to her guilt. Alec takes her on a car ride then back to a friend's flat he's borrowing for the night, a chance to consummate their love. But Alec's friend Stephen (Valentine Dyall) returns unexpectedly, scaring Laura who flees into the rain.  She calls Fred again and lies about her delay home. Waiting for the last train home, she tries to write a goodbye note to Alec.  Alec arrives and reaffirms his love for her but realizes that it's the beginning of the end of their affair. Alec reveals he's been offered a job in South Africa. They forgive each other for their indiscretion but agree to meet the following week one last time. On their last date, Laura and Alec take one final car ride, walk over their favorite stone bridge in the country, and sit in the train station's cafe a final time before they're interrupted by Dolly. Alec hastily leaves, Laura's last vision of the handsome doctor. When Dolly steps away for a moment, Laura almost throws herself in front of a passing train. But she resists and returns to Fred and her family.  Fred notices she's not herself and thanks her for coming back to him.

The train platform is a perfect setting for this doomed love affair in BRIEF ENCOUNTER.  Affairs, like a passing train, can be fleeting.  The steam emitting from the train's engines symbolize the growing passion these two strangers Laura and Alec begin to feel for one another. But other train sounds represent the hopelessness of this liaison.  A little bell rings in the cafe alerting that a train is pulling into the station, maybe Laura's or Alec's, signaling their blissful day or few hours of quiet romance must come to an end until next time. The train's whistle blows at dramatic moments. cutting short Alec and Laura's first kiss as if the train whistle is screaming to them stop this charade, it can never last. And yes, trains can represent a phallic symbol (see Alfred Hitchcock's last shot in NORTH BY NORTHWEST) but Laura and Alec's brief dalliance never becomes sexual although they come close when Alec brings Laura back to a friend's empty apartment.

Laura and Alec are not the only couple in love in BRIEF ENCOUNTER.  Writer Coward smartly offsets some of the sadness of Laura and Alec's affair with a comic parallel flirtation between train porter Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway) and train station cafe manager Myrtle Bagot (Joyce Carey). Albert and Myrtle are the flip side of Laura and Alec.  They flirt openly in front of everyone including Myrtle's Tea Room Assistant Beryl Walters (Margaret Barton). Albert asks her for a kiss in public and even playfully slaps her derriere. Albert and Myrtle are as public with their courting as Laura and Alec are private with their feelings for each other. The one thing the two couples have in common is they don't end up with one another at the end. But we don't feel so much anguish for Albert and Myrtle. They may come around eventually.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER would not be director David Lean's last film that involved trains. In THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, Lean blows up a bridge with a huge locomotive on it. Lean will blow up another train, this time in the desert, in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.  And a train will take Omar Sharif and Julie Christie out of Moscow to Siberia in DR. ZHIVAGO (1965). BRIEF ENCOUNTER would not be Lean's last film about infidelity either.  Ten years later, Lean would direct SUMMERTIME (1955) starring Katherine Hepburn as a single American tourist who falls in love with the handsome but married Rossano Brazzi while vacationing in Venice, Italy. And it's a train that brings and takes Hepburn out of Venice. After SUMMERTIME, Lean would move on to epic films although some would have love stories within them. 

What makes BRIEF ENCOUNTER real are the two lead actors, neither of who were outwardly famous like a Bogart and Bacall or Gable and Leigh. Both Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard seem like ordinary middle aged people.  BRIEF ENCOUNTER is told from Laura's point of view. We see her situation, stuck in a rut with her nice but passive husband and two precocious kids.  But there's no fire in her marriage.  But Celia Johnson's big eyes come to life when a handsome doctor takes an interest in her.  Johnson's eyes reveal a new spark in her personality as she embarks on this illicit affair but her eyes will also reveal sadness and pain as she and Alec know their relationship will not last.  Celia Johnson was not well known to American audiences and had done more British theater than films. Besides BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Johnson also made THIS HAPPY BREED (1944) the previous year with David Lean and was a favorite actress of playwright Noel Coward. She's not a movie star beauty but Johnson is pretty with her vivacious face and those luminous eyes.

We know Trevor Howard now as one of Britain's dependable actors from the mid 40s thru the 80s appearing in films like Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN (1949), as Captain Bligh in Lewis Milestone's MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962), and co-starring with Frank Sinatra in Mark Robson's VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965).  But BRIEF ENCOUNTER was only Howard's third film and his first and possibly only role as a leading man.  Movie fans will never think of Trevor Howard as a romantic lead like Cary Grant but that's the point.  Like Celia Johnson, Howard's Dr. Alec Harvey is a more realistic, modest example of a perfectly married every day man who falls in love with a married woman. We see Laura's family life helping us to emphasize with her struggle to engage and maintain an affair. We never see Alec's wife or children, making him more of a mystery.  Is his marriage so horrible that he was driven to seek out an affair.  Or was it just by chance that he encounters Laura with accidental meetings at first and slowly falls in love with this very human, flawed woman. Howard's performance as Alec is restrained, gentle, and giddy at times (ironically the two lovers see a film called FLAMES OF PASSION, an in-joke by the filmmakers). 

The other notable supporting actors are British stalwart Stanley Holloway as train porter Albert Godby and Noel Coward favorite Joyce Carey as Myrtle Bagot, our comic diversions from the serious affair between Laura and Alec going on right next to them at the train station. Holloway was a singer and comic who played the gravedigger in Laurence Olivier's HAMLET (1948) then had a nice stretch of comic performances in Ealing Studio films like THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951) and THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT (1953). In BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Holloway plays a playful foil to Carey's Myrtle, flirting with her outrageously.  Holloway's most famous role would be as Alfred P. Doolittle (a role he performed first on the stage) in George Cukor's MY FAIR LADY (1964). 

Joyce Carey who plays Myrtle Bagot was actually a close friend of playwright Noel Coward and appeared in many of his plays as well as films he wrote including BLITHE SPIRIT and THE ASTONISHED HEART (1950) co-starring Celia Johnson. In BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Carey plays a comic busy body who manages the train station cafe, playfully bantering with porter Holloway as the films real love story unfolds around them.  A special mention should go to Cyril Raymond as Laura's nice but dull husband Fred Jesson. Fred could be portrayed as a horrible husband making it easier for the audience to understand Laura entering into an affair. But Fred is sympathetic, kind, just not particularly attune to his wife mid-life malaise.  In BRIEF ENCOUNTER'S last scene, Fred finally awakens to wife's pain, a moment almost as moving as Laura and Alec's final moments together.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER is considered one of the first and best post-war films.  Surprisingly, it was made while World War II was just winding down yet the war is never mentioned throughout the film. BRIEF ENCOUNTER is a realistic view of the highs and lows of the human heart as portrayed by two normal, every day English people.  It's a love story not often shown on the movie screen where the love is mercurial and cannot be sustained. Not all love stories have happy endings.  As in real life.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

The Hollywood western has mostly been dominated by male actors. John Wayne, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood all became major stars in part from their leading roles in western films. Actresses in westerns, on the other hand, were relegated to dutiful wives, daughters of the richest man in town, or prostitutes and dance hall girls. But a couple of independent minded directors in the 1950s saw the potential for a tough, independent female protagonist as the lead in the western genre.  Samuel Fuller's FORTY GUNS (1957) starred Barbara Stanwyck as a female rancher butting heads with an ambitious U.S. Marshal and his brothers.  But Fuller's female centric western owes a debt to Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) starring Joan Crawford as a strong willed business woman fighting off rivals and a bloodthirsty posse trying to take what she's earned.

Directed by Nicholas Ray (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) with a screenplay by Philip Yordan based on a novel by Roy Chanslor, JOHNNY GUITAR flips the western genre on its head.  Instead of a male good guy and bad guy, Joan Crawford plays the lead female good protagonist clashing with a female bad protagonist Mercedes McCambridge (both women have short, boyish haircuts). And instead of a female saloon hall entertainer ala Marlene Dietrich teaming up with good guy male lead James Stewart in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939), Crawford teams up with male guitar strumming ex-gunslinger, ex-lover Sterling Hayden (THE KILLING). The main hero is a woman. The good guys wear black.  What's going on with JOHNNY GUITAR?

Director Ray reveals more exposition in the first twenty minutes of JOHNNY GUITAR than most films do in their entirety. The film opens with Johnny "Guitar" Logan (Sterling Hayden) riding alone on a ridge, a guitar strapped to his back.  In the first few minutes, Johnny will see two events vital to the film's plot: 1) a stagecoach robbery from a distance where one of the drivers is shot and killed and 2) a hill side blown up by dynamite. Johnny rides to a saloon seemingly in the middle of nowhere called Vienna's. The saloon is empty except for a few idle casino workers waiting for customers and Old Tom (John Carradine), a handyman.  Johnny's here to meet with the proprietor of Vienna's, Vienna herself (Joan Crawford). She's hired Johnny to play music at her gambling hall. But Vienna is busy meeting with Mr. Andrews (Rhys Williams). Andrews is the foreman for the railroad who's blasting the nearby hills to make way for the railroad which will come right by Vienna's establishment.  A windstorm kicks up just as posse of men and one woman show up with a dead body in their wagon.  The woman is rancher Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge). It's her brother who lays dead, killed by the stagecoach gunmen earlier. 

Emma wants justice and believes she knows who the killers are.  Right on cue, the Dancing Kid (Scott Brady) and his gang consisting of Bart Lonergan (Ernest Borgnine), the sickly Corey (Royal Dano), and the young emotionally fragile Turkey Ralston (Ben Cooper) show up. It was four men who robbed the stagecoach. Emma demands Marshal Williams (Frank Ferguson) arrest them. But the Marshal has no proof. Emma's business partner in town is John McIvers (Ward Bond). Emma and McIvers want to shut down Vienna's saloon. Emma hates Vienna and they both have a past with the Dancing Kid. It's a tense situation that Johnny Guitar defuses with a little music.  McIvers gives the Dancing Kid, his gang, and Vienna twenty four hours to get out of town.

We learn that Johnny and Vienna had a relationship five years ago but their love fell apart. Johnny used to be a gunslinger but he doesn't carry a gun anymore. Just his guitar. After Johnny and Bart take care of some aggression outside (with Johnny licking Bart), the Dancing Kid and his gang ride back thru a waterfall which obscures the trail on the other side to their hideout called "the Lair." The Dancing Kid decides maybe it's time for them to relocate to California. But he wants to stick it to McIvers and Emma before they depart. Unable to sleep, Vienna and Johnny patch up their differences.  The next day, Vienna goes into town to withdraw money to pay her employees including Johnny before closing down. The Dancing Kid takes advantage of most of the town attending Emma's brother's funeral to rob the bank. Vienna begs them to stop but they don't. The Kid and his gang try to flee with the stolen money through the pass but the railroad's dynamiting prevents them.  The Kid and his gang return to the Lair except Turkey who tumbles off his horse into the brush, injured from the blast.

Vienna returns to her saloon and pays her employees.  Johnny bids Vienna farewell and rides off.  After Johnny leaves, the injured Turkey shows up.  Vienna hides Turkey just as Emma, McIvers, and their 30 hired guns show up that night. Emma accuses Vienna of staging the bank robbery with the Kid.  The posse discover Turkey hiding under a table.  Emma shoots down Vienna's candle lit chandelier, igniting the saloon on fire. They take Vienna and Turkey to a nearby bridge for a lynching. Turkey is hanged but Johnny shows up and rescues Vienna. Johnny and Vienna return to the burning saloon and escape through a mine shaft underneath the saloon.  They find their way to the Lair where Corey lets them thru.  The Dancing Kid is jealous that Johnny and Vienna are together.  Emma and McIvers stumble upon the secret waterfall. Bart, on guard duty, makes a deal with them.  As Emma, McIvers, and their posse move on the hideout, each character will have a final showdown with their nemesis. 

JOHNNY GUITAR was not a hit when it was first released but modern audiences (and French film critics) rediscovered it. JOHNNY GUITAR has a little bit of everything in it.  It's one part opera with Vienna's brightly colored outfits and the ornate interior of Vienna's saloon, lots of deep browns and oranges. Another part is sexual. Many of the characters (Emma, McIvers, Turkey) seem sexually repressed while Vienna uses her sex to acquire secrets and allies. The exploding hillsides seem to symbolize the angst and sexual frustration that almost every character carries. Although a western, JOHNNY GUITAR touches on the paranoia and witch hunt mentality of McCarthyism which was rearing its ugly head in the 1950s when the film came out. Emma accusing the Dancing Kid of killing her brother or Vienna assisting with the bank robbery with no evidence and eyewitnesses telling her it's not true yet Emma believes what she wants to believe. JOHNNY GUITAR is also an amazing adventure with a secret hideout behind a waterfall, windstorms, and mine shafts that lay hidden underneath the saloon.  Oh, and did I mention the exploding hillsides? 

The best part of JOHNNY GUITAR is how it subverts what we normally expect in a western. The supposed good guys made up of the town's leaders (McIvers, Emma, the Marshal) and their hired guns wear that symbol of evil -- black (although to be fair they were coming from a funeral. But they still act like bad guys).  The outcasts who we root for (Vienna, Johnny, the Dancing Kid) do not wear white (for good and purity) but are dressed in bright, colorful outfits (check out Vienna's lavender night gown or the Dancing Kid's green cowboy shirt).  We expect every male cowboy to carry a gun.  Johnny only carries his guitar. We're accustomed to a duel between two men in most westerns often over a woman. In JOHNNY GUITAR, the key duel will be between Emma and Vienna. Emma loathes Vienna, her jealousy of the saloon owner oozing from every pore of her body. Emma may have had a crush on the Dancing Kid. Emma must have been young, immature, and head over heels in love. Vienna seduced the Kid and stole him from Emma (or so she thinks), igniting a hatred for Vienna that fuels her bloodlust to exterminate Vienna and her saloon. We know Vienna and Emma will have to face each other with guns before JOHNNY GUITAR is over.

Movies are often remembered because of one scene or sequence. Cary Grant chased by a crop dusting plane in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) or Al Pacino disposing of his enemies at the end of Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER (1972). JOHNNY GUITAR has a 10 minute sequence early in the film that sets in motion both the plot and every character's motivation. It's an extraordinary sequence with riveting dialogue, edited with great precision. Emma, McIvers, and their posse drag Emma's dead brother into Vienna's saloon.  Emma seeks vengeance, accusing the Dancing Kid and indirectly Vienna for her brother's demise. Vienna addresses the posse from the second floor. Emma and Vienna lock eyes and throw verbal daggers at each other. Vienna gets Emma to reveal her hate/love relationship with the Kid. McIvers and Emma reveal their opposition with Vienna's power move to build a train depot on her land and not in their town. On cue, the windstorm blows in the Dancing Kid and his gang into this maelstrom of venom. A gun battle inside the saloon seems inevitable until Johnny Guitar reveals himself, a stranger to both sides except Vienna. Johnny plays a little traditional guitar lick to soften the tension and the Dancing Kid grabs Emma for a quick dance, Emma both repulsed and excited by the Kid's audacity ("he makes her feel like a woman and that frightens her").  McIvers gives Vienna and the Kid twenty four hours to get out of town. Those ten minutes sets in motion the rest of JOHNNY GUITAR and makes us excited to see how this story will play out.

There's a reason they call them actors.  Even though Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden look like a couple that has rekindled their love during these turbulent events, in reality Crawford and Hayden didn't really like each other during the filming of JOHNNY GUITAR. But they convince us they're in love. Crawford's Vienna is tougher mentally than most of the men.  She's used her charm and guile and sexuality to build her saloon and future empire. She's not going to go quietly. Her power and sex make men like McIvers and the Marshal uncomfortable. As one of  Vienna's employees Sam (Robert Osterloh) tells his fellow co-workers, "Never seen a woman who was more of a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not." But Vienna's a mother figure as well to her employees like Tom, Sam, and later Turkey who appears to have a crush on her (but surprise, Vienna shoots down Turkey's enthusiastic advances).  Joan Crawford is best known for her role in Michael Curtiz's MILDRED PIERCE (1945) and other melodramas but JOHNNY GUITAR seems to be the only western she made. Rumor has it Crawford was having an affair with director Nicholas Ray as they made JOHNNY GUITAR. 

I'll say it again. There's a reason they call them actors. Sterling Hayden who plays Johnny "Guitar" Logan is quoted that he couldn't play the guitar or ride a horse.  Yet his character has to do both in JOHNNY GUITAR and Hayden pulls it off convincingly.  Hayden was more familiar to movie fans in film noir films like Andre De Toth's CRIME WAVE (1953) and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING (1956) but he seems perfectly cast as the ex-gunslinger and ex-love interest of Vienna. Hayden's Johnny Guitar is the middle ground between the boyish Dancing Kid and the seething, weary Bart Lonergan.  Hayden plays Johnny as laconic, world weary, and thoughtful. Hayden would have some memorable supporting roles later in his career in Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE (1963) as General Jack D. Ripper, in Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER as a corrupt police chief and in Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE (1974) as a reclusive millionaire.

As good as Crawford and Hayden are as the leads, JOHNNY GUITAR is stolen by two supporting actors who play the rivals of Vienna and Johnny Guitar.  Mercedes McCambridge who plays Vienna's nemesis Emma Small is the most complex character in the film and steals every scene she's in with either her curt voice or sexually repressed demeanor (her green attire in her first scene even suggests the Wicked Witch of the East). Emma is both ambitious and suffers from an inferiority complex. Although never implicitly explained (but conveyed convincingly on McCambridge's face), Emma either had a crush on the Dancing Kid or imagined that the Kid was sweet for her. Maybe the Kid played on her vulnerability. Whether the Kid really liked Emma or not, we'll never know.  He broke her heart whether he meant to or not. But Emma is positive that Vienna stole the Dancing Kid from her. Emma despises Vienna, calling her, "nothing but a railroad tramp!" Emma (along with McIvers) symbolize McCarthyism. They want Vienna and the Kid hung just by association, without any proof. She preys on the posse's fears of change and progress. McCambridge started her film career out with a bang, winning the Best Support Actress Academy Award in 1949 for ALL THE KING'S MEN.  Other credits include George Stevens GIANT (1956) and she would provide the voice over for the devil's voice possessing Linda Blair in William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973). 

In the role of his lifetime, Scott Brady as the Dancing Kid is incredible and brilliant, reminding me of a young Kevin Costner in one of his first roles in Lawrence Kasdan's SILVERADO (1984). Brady's the Dancing Kid is a ball of energy, testosterone, and boyish charm.  He shows hints of menace but the Kid is a good person deep down, loyal to his gang (even the irascible Bart).  Although a leader, the Kid will make some bad decisions. As the Kid laments, "I never do what I should." If Scott Brady looks like another actor from the 1940s named Lawrence Tierney, that's because they were brothers.  Brady changes his last name (perhaps because Lawrence was often a handful for directors and producers).  I remember Brady from television appearances in the 70s.  His later movie credits include THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) and Joe Dante's GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990).  But Brady's deliciously likeable the Dancing Kid is a performance for the ages. 

JOHNNY GUITAR has an amazing supporting cast. Director Ray provides each of them with at least one good dramatic moment. Ward Bond appeared in almost every great western (THE SEARCHERS, RIO BRAVO). In JOHNNY GUITAR, Bond's McIvers is an ambiguous character. He starts out the film hell bent on kicking Vienna and the Kid out of their territory but by the end, the lies and killing have worn him down. Ernest Borgnine as the untrusting Bart Lonergan began his career playing heavies in films like FROM HERE ETERNITY (1953) and JOHNNY GUITAR but would later play more likable characters in Robert Aldrich's THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) and try comedy on the television show MCHALE'S NAVY (1962 - 1966).  Ben Cooper (THE ROSE TATOO) who plays Turkey Ralston was a new face for me.  Cooper's Turkey is an emasculated young man with an Oedipus complex, taken under the Dancing Kid's wing. He wants to be a man, wants to sleep with the older Vienna to show her he's a man but it's all false bravado. Turkey is one of many tragic characters in JOHNNY GUITAR.  Cooper would work mostly in television after an early stint in films.

Rounding out the stellar supporting cast of JOHNNY GUITAR are screen veterans Royal Dano as Corey, the conscience of the Dancing Kid's gang and John Carradine, veteran of over 200 screen credits, as Vienna's handyman Old Tom. Dano just had one of those weathered, craggy faces meant to appear in westerns both on screen and television. In GUITAR, Dano's Corey is one of the few sympathetic characters in the film, partly because he appears to be dying from lung cancer or some awful illness. The other sympathetic character is Old Tom played by John Carradine.  It's not a showy role but Old Tom brings some humor to the film at key junctures. Carradine would work with many great film directors besides JOHNY GUITAR'S Nicholas Ray in his lengthy career from John Ford (THE GRAPES OF WRATH) to Rouben Mamoulian (BLOOD AND SAND) to Fritz Lang (MAN HUNT). And a shout out to Frank Ferguson as Marshal Williams, another emasculated man who's caught between the fury of Emma and Vienna. He's the law but he's pushed around by both sides.

Director Nicholas Ray would not have a prolific film career (cut short by bad health although he lived to be 67) but he was an auteur who's best work was in the late 40s and 1950s.  Besides JOHNNY GUITAR, his best know films include THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948), IN A LONELY PLACE (1950), and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955). In JOHNNY GUITAR, Ray uses space extremely well with Cinemascope whether juxtaposing his characters within the frame in psychologically interesting ways or taking advantage of the barren landscapes to place his characters in.  The use of space should not be surprising as Ray studied under famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright before starting his film career. Ray's use of color plays a big part in the film especially the colorful outfits that many of the characters wear. Most westerns were in black and white so why not take advantage of color. 

Some final tidbits on JOHNNY GUITAR.  The beautiful locations for the film are courtesy of Sedona, Arizona with its orange and red hues highlighted by veteran director of photography Harry Stradling (GUYS AND DOLLS).  The musical score is by Victor Young who also co-wrote the film's title song Johnny Guitar which is sung briefly at the end of the film by Peggy Lee.

Moviegoers had not seen many or any stylized westerns up to when JOHNNY GUITAR came out which may explain it's initial lackluster performance both commercially and critically.  More modern directors like Sergio Leone (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY) or Sam Raimi (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD) would take stylized westerns to a different level with extreme close ups and iconographic performances.  JOHNNY GUITAR led the way.  It's a western but also a psychological/sexual drama, an allegory on McCarthyism, and a good old rousing adventure. 

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)

The music world lost an iconic rock legend in 2016 when singer David Bowie died at the age of 69. But people may forget that Bowie was also an accomplished actor who appeared in an eclectic array of films, both in lead and supporting roles and sometimes in fun or bizarre cameos (see David Lynch's 1992 TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME for the bizarre cameo). Rock stars in a way are already movie actors. Every night on stage in a music hall or packed football stadium, they give a performance, each one unique and different. Bowie first hit the big screen in Nicolas Roeg's sci-fi THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976).  He would go on to appear in Tony Scott's vampire film THE HUNGER (1983) with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon; LABYRINTH (1986) directed by Muppets creator Jim Henson; Julien Temple's ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS (1986); as Andy Warhol in Julian Schnabel's BASQUIAT (1996); and in one of his last big screen appearances as inventor Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's THE PRESTIGE (2006). 

But Bowie would also pop up in small roles or cameos like John Landis's INTO THE NIGHT (1985) as a sleazy hit man or as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988) or as himself in ZOOLANDER (2001) with Ben Stiller. Bowie would also appear in countless music videos during the MTV craze and beyond, promoting and singing his songs, playing characters like Ziggy Stardust, a medium he was well equipped for with his sense of visuals to go with his music.

One of  Bowie's films that stands out from the horror, sci-fi and music genre films he made is a World War II prison camp drama called MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (1983). I have chosen it as my Christmas film this year even though there's nothing Christmas-y about the film except the title. It seems like an odd choice for Bowie yet what better challenge for a rock singer seeking recognition as an actor then to try a role that's out of his comfort zone.

Directed by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima with a screenplay by Oshima with Paul Meyersberg and based on the novel The Seed and the Sower by Sir Laurens van der Post (based on his experiences as a POW), MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is set in a Japanese POW camp in 1942 Java (now Indonesia) during World War II. The film opens (and ends) on the face of Sergeant Gengo Hara (Takeshi "Beat" Kitano), a brutal but pragmatic prison guard.  He wakes up British Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti) from the barracks to show him a scandal he's uncovered.  Hara has caught a Korean prison guard Kanemoto (Johnny Ohkura) raping a Dutch prisoner De Jong (Alistair Browning). Hara is about to execute Kanemoto when the camp's commandant Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) shows up wanting answers. Yonoi is a rising star in the Japanese military. Hara's explanation will have to wait as Yonoi heads off to a military trial run by the President of the Court (Ryunosute Kaneda) and Lieutenant Iwata (Takashi Naito).  The defendant is Major Jack "Straffer" Celliers (David Bowie), a captured Brit who surrendered after a series of raids on the Japanese.  Jack is found guilty of crimes against Japan but something about Jack fascinates Yonoi. About to face a firing squad, Yonoi intervenes, finding a technicality to save the Brit, whisking Jack to the POW camp instead. 

Jack arrives at the camp only to faint from beatings by his previous captors and the heat. Yonoi inquires about Jack's past but Lawrence only knows him casually. Yonoi wants to make Jack POW Commander much to the chagrin of the current, old school Group Captain Hicksley (Jack Thompson). Yonoi forces the camp to watch Kanemoto commit seppuku (suicide). Hicksley is replaced as commander not by Jack but Lawrence.  During a roll call, Jack is discovered missing.  But he shows up soon after with food for the men and flowers for De Jong who has died after biting his tongue off during Kanemoto's suicide. The guards believe Jack is an evil spirit. Sergeant Hara discovers a radio in the barracks, accusing Jack and Lawrence of smuggling it in. As punishment, Jack is locked up and Lawrence put in bondage. That night, Yonoi's butler tries to kill Jack but Jack overpowers him and frees Lawrence. Jack wants to escape and take Lawrence with him but they're quickly caught again by Yonoi before they can even leave the camp. Yonoi wants to fight Jack. Jack knows his knife is no match for Yonoi's sword. Jack refuses further enraging Yonoi.

Both Jack and Lawrence are to be executed for trying to escape and the forbidden radio. Jack and Lawrence are placed in confinement separated by a wall where they can still converse. Jack reveals to Lawrence in flashback his betrayal of his younger brother (James Malcolm) during a hazing incident at their English boarding school that haunts him. Suddenly, guards come in and lead Lawrence and Jack to a room where Sergeant Hara waits. Hara's a little drunk. It's Christmas Eve and Hara wants to be Father Christmas to them. Hara turns Lawrence and Jack back over to Hicksley who's been reinstated as Commander of the POWs. 

Hara's disobedience enrages Yonoi.  Hara explains that he was wrong about the prisoners smuggling in the radio.  It was another prisoner who had smuggled in the radio (and Hara has executed the prisoner already). Lawrence and Jack were innocent. Yonoi orders the entire camp and even those prisoners who are sick and injured in the infirmary to stand on parade in the hot Java sun. It's a tense situation. The guards are all armed and a machine gun is ominously cocked and aimed at the prisoners.  Yonoi's about to lose control. He orders Hicksley to kneel before him.  Yonoi draws his sword, ready to execute Hicksley as an example when Jack steps up and kisses Yonoi on each cheek.  Yonoi collapses. A new Commandant of Camp (Hideo Murata) takes over.  A large group of prisoners including Hara march off to build an airstrip.  Jack's sacrifice saved the other prisoners but he pays a price for his act.  And in a touching epilogue, four years after the war, Lawrence and Hara are briefly reunited. Only their situations are drastically different.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is the classic World War II prisoner of war tale in the tradition of Billy Wilder's STALAG 17 (1953), David Lean's THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (1957), and John Sturges THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) but it's a WW II POW story made as an art film. There are no prison breakouts or the blowing up of a bridge. The biggest action in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is when Jack enrages his captors by eating some flowers he picked for a dead prisoner. But MERRY CHRISTMAS has all the elements of the POW film. David  Bowie's character Jack Celliers is like Steve McQueen's Hilts in THE GREAT ESCAPE.   He's the provocateur. Bowie's Jack gets under the skin of the Japanese authority just like McQueen got under the German brass's skin.  Only Jack kisses the Japanese Commandant Yonoi on the cheek to save his fellow prisoners. There's no digging of an escape tunnel or last minute air raid. 

Tom Conti's Col. Lawrence has the role of mediator between the Japanese guards and his fellow POWs like Alec Guinness in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVE KWAI or Richard Attenborough in THE GREAT ESCAPE.  Lawrence has an uneasy alliance with the head guard Sgt. Hara. Lawrence even speaks Japanese, acting as translator for the camp. Hara's not afraid to beat Lawrence when ordered by Yonoi or to show his dominance. But Hara is fascinated by the English and their customs. Hara believes suicide is honorable. Lawrence disagrees. But Hara thinks surrender is shameful.  Lawrence feels otherwise.  The relationship between Lawrence and Hara is one of the most fascinating parts of MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE. In fact, MR. LAWRENCE is the tale of two relationships between men. Yonoi's strange fascination/admiration for Jack and the uneasy partnership between Lawrence and Hara as captor and captive.

One theme that MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE explores that you won't find in the studio made POW war films is a gay subtext.  The film opens with two men caught having sex.  But was it rape or just a prisoner and a guard lonely and seeking companionship?  The filmmakers leave it somewhat vague but both the Japanese and the Allied prisoners look unfavorably on both men, the consequences leading to death for both guard and prisoner.  Then, there's Yonoi's obsession with the blue eyed, blonde haired Jack Celliers.  Yonoi is the typical Japanese commander who believes in duty, honor, and discipline. But does he fall in love with Jack in that court room? Does he see Jack as his kindred spirit, a shining young officer like Yonoi? Jack stands up for his honor and country while on trial. He surrendered but only because the Japanese threatened to kill everyone in the village he was hiding in. When Jack is caught after freeing Lawrence, Yonoi wants Jack to fight him.  Is this Yonoi's substitute for physical contact?  Jack refuses to fight and Yonoi acts like a spurned lover. But Jack plays on Yonoi's infatuation with him at the end, publicly kissing Yonoi on both cheeks in front of his men to diffuse a tense situation.  Yonoi collapses, perhaps from ecstasy or in shock, unable to grasp the moment.  Jack has signed his death warrant but he's saved the prisoners from a possible massacre.

Bowie's Jack Celliers in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is a Christ like figure (JC - Jack Celliers; Jesus Christ), not the typical heroic adventure character of a POW war film. Traumatized by his lack of action in protecting his younger brother from bullying in boarding school, Jack repeatedly sacrifices himself to protect his fellow countrymen and comrades in the prison camp. Jack won't end up on a cross but his outcome is just as powerful. Bowie is such a striking figure with his blonde hair and angelic looks, it's easy to see why director Oshima cast him. Oshima saw Bowie not at a concert or in a film but on Broadway appearing in the play The Elephant Man that convinced him Bowie was the right person to play the physically demanding role of Celliers.

The other actor that filmgoers will recognize besides Bowie (and perhaps Australian actor Jack Thompson from 1982's THE MAN SNOWY RIVER who plays Hicksley) is Tom Conti as interpreter/liaison Col. Lawrence. Conti's actually in the film more than Bowie and as Lawrence has the unenviable task of trying to appease their captors while keeping his men alive. Conti has the perfect temperament, a calm voice amongst the insanity, only occasionally raising his voice when the situation needs it.  Lawrence's whimper when he's struck by the guards is chilling and reminds us that as good a person as Lawrence is, his life hangs by a thread like the other prisoners. Although he's had a prolific career, Conti's other best known film is probably Robert Ellis Miller's REUBEN, REUBEN (also 1983) where Conti plays a drunk Scottish poet and sports much shaggier hair than in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE.

Surprisingly, there's another musician acting in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE besides Bowie. Believe it or not, Ryuichi Sakamoto who plays the tightly wound Captain Yonoi not only composed the haunting music for MR. LAWRENCE but also co-starred and composed the music for Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR (1987) and provided the film score for Alejandro G. Inarritu's THE REVENANT (2015) starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy. 

Bowie and Conti are the most familiar faces to western audiences in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE but Takeshi "Beat" Kitano who plays Sgt. Hara steals the film for me. In the tradition of Sig Ruman's German Sergeant Schultz in STALAG 17, Kitano's Hara is the head prison guard that the POWs want to stay on the right side of.  But unlike Schultz's friendly demeanor, Hara can be brutal and cold. Yet Hara and Lawrence form an uneasy alliance when Hara isn't beating Lawrence and others with his long stick. Although they don't always see eye to eye, they respect one another. Hara seems fascinated by the English.  After he falsely accuses Jack and Lawrence of smuggling in a radio, he staves off their execution by acting as one of the West's favorite symbols -- Father Christmas. Their present from him is life. 

I want to give a shout out to an unsung hero of MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE and that would be producer Jeremy Thomas. Thomas is a champion of producing interesting films by some of the most independent directors from 1980s to 2020 including Bernardo Bertolucci (THE LAST EMPEROR and THE SHELTERING SKY), David Cronenberg (NAKED LUNCH and CRASH), Terry Gilliam (TIDELAND), and Nicolas Roeg (BAD TIMING and EUREKA). Except for THE LAST EMPEROR, none of these films were especially commercial but Thomas believed in these iconoclastic directors and their vision. MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE director Nagisa Oshima had directed the art house favorite IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES in 1976 about a sexually obsessive relationship.  It's no wonder that Oshima and Thomas would team up to make MR. LAWRENCE and also the samurai film TABOO (1999). MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE was filmed in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific and New Zealand.

Singers trying their hand at acting is nothing new.  From Bing Crosby in the 40s, Frank Sinatra in the 50s, and Elvis Presley in the 60s, movies were just a natural progression for entertainers.  This tradition has continued with newer generations of artists appearing in films including Mick Jagger in Donald Cammell's PERFORMANCE (1970), Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan in Sam Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973), Cher in Norman Jewison's MOONSTRUCK (1987), Whitney Houston in Mick Jackson's THE BODYGUARD (1992) and even Bono in Julie Taymor's ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007).  But David Bowie probably has one of the most diverse film resumes and MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is a most unexpected role from a man we're more accustomed to singing Rebel Rebel or Heroes than playing a prisoner of war in a Japanese POW camp. It shows that Bowie was not afraid to take chances and try different mediums.  He was both a rebel and a hero to generations of music and film fans.