Don't Bother To Knock(Roy Ward Baker, 1952)The McKinley Hotel in New York is apparently not what it used to be. For example, there's no baby-sitting service, and that vexes the Joneses (Lurene Tuttle and Jim Backus), who are attending a soiree in the joint's ballroom. But, elevator operator Eddie Forbes (Elisha Cook Jr.) has a neat solution: his niece, Nell (Marilyn Monroe) has just come into town and needs a job. Eddie asks her to look after the Jones' kid, Bunny (Donna Corcoran) and she shows up to look after the kid while Mom and Dad are downstairs.
That's all neat and tidy...seemingly. What isn't neat and tidy is the on-going non-relationship between Skyways airline pilot Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) and a singer employed at the hotel, Lyn Lesly (Anne Bancroft, in her screen debut). Lyn had sent Jed a "Dear John" letter ending their six month relationship, sending him into a tail-spin. He's checked into the McKinley to confront her about it and doesn't like it when she tells him that he doesn't "have an understanding heart." Of course, he doesn't understand, so he goes back to his room to sulk ("The female race is always cheesing up my life!").
Across the way is the Jones' apartment, where Nell is baby-sitting, and makes herself at home. That means different things to different people, but to Nell it means trying on Mrs. Jones' negligee and earrings, lipstick, and shpritzing the woman's perfume. It's clear that Nell may not be the best sitter that could have been hired, and might actually need a sitter herself, given her disregard for the personal property of the folks who hired her. Dolling herself up, whatever her reasons, is enough to attract the interest of Jed, who's nursing the earlier break-up and a bottle of whiskey.
When Nell catches him peeping, she draws the blinds, which only amuses Jed. This being the 1950's and Jed being a "man's man" pilot and all, he calls her up on the house phone and tries to talk his way over for a night-cap, but Nell, after initially being interested, hangs up on him.
Meanwhile Eddie (because he knows "her history") stops by to check up on her and is shocked to find her in Mrs. Jones' "things" and tells her that she has to put everything back—he's had his job 14 years and he doesn't want her to do anything to risk it. Besides, if she wants the finer things in life she should stop mooning over her dead boyfriend and move on. She changes, but when Eddie leaves, she puts everything back on.
Then, she calls Jed and invites him over.
Even though the film is 70 years old, we'll stop there for spoilers because it's the surprises that make Don't Bother To Knock an interesting see. Nell is such a mystery with hair-pin turns that you wonder what could possibly happen next...and then you get jolted again. "I can't figure you out! You're silk on one side and sandpaper on the other!" Jed yammers in frustration. The truth is he won't figure her out, even Nell can't figure herself out. She's stuck in a loop and all people can do is follow her down her rabbit-holes.
Which is why it's amazing that it's Marilyn Monroe playing Nell. Monroe performances you always take with a grain of salt—at least a grain of sympathy or empathy—and not to make a pun of it but she's graded on the curve, allowances are made. And just as frustrated directors found out the hard way, Monroe knew that the camera loved her and knew how to use it. The camera was the one thing in Hollywood she could trust. With the bar of excellence seemingly lowered, you come away more than a little impressed.
What had she done before? Cameo's basically. In The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, she'd had scenes where she made an impression when she was on the screen, which was minimally. And the parts called for sexy but not voraciously so. Her dramatic role in Fritz Lang's Clash By Night was small, but Don't Bother to Knock, despite its pulp origins and low budget was a huge...if somewhat daunting... role—play "crazy" but sympathetic.
And she's pretty amazing at it. Even with sympathy filters up, there's a lot of work here that tosses the control that she maintained in most of her performances and you're struck by how genuinely alarming it is. Even on-set Bancroft was impressed: "It was a remarkable experience. Because it was one of those very few
times in all my experiences in Hollywood when I felt that give and take
that can only happen when you are working with good actors. There was
just this scene of one woman seeing another woman who was helpless and
in pain, and [Marilyn] was helpless and in pain. It was so real, I
responded. I really reacted to her. She moved me so that tears came into
my eyes."
Almost immediately, she would use her energies for the artifice of star performances that would turn Elton John's "candle-in-the-wind" into kleig lights.
"Karma is the Ultimate Bitch in this One" or, If You Can't Stand the Hot-Flash, Get Out of the Kitchen.
It's refreshing to see a movie about a mature couple of advanced age—mine—dealing with post break-up issues. I just wish they weren't being so immature while doing it.
Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) is reaching a transition point in her life—approaching "empty nester" age: her oldest daughter Lauren (Caitlin Fitzgerald) is engaged to Harley (John Krasinski), middle daughter Gabby (Zoe Kazan) is moving out of the house, and youngest, Luke (Hunter Parrish) is graduating from college. Her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin) is now married to young "Ms. Thang" Agness (Lake Bell), with an inherited son (from her last affair), Pedro (Emjay Anthony). She has decided that she's going to expand her nest...er, house so she can have "the kitchen she's always dreamed of;" she runs a salonish bakery, and she can cook (second movie this year—Julie & Julia from Nora Ephron, this one from Nancy Meyers, both of whom seem to be trying to keep Streep in the kitchen). Youngest son's graduation pulls the whole family together in New York, with Jake "flying solo" due to family illness. Once there, the two old marrieds hook up, and once Jane is tanked, there occurs a "once more for old times' sake" canoodling that leaves him satisfied and her vomiting.
Most guys would take that as a sign, but not Jake. Soon, he's spending too much time at Jane's, telling his ex-wife that his current wife doesn't understand him, and while it may seem like sweet revenge for Jane, she's also creeped out by it, so much so that she won't tell the kids, and allows it to interfere with a budding romance with her architect (Steve Martin). Now, maybe I've been watching too many "Nature" shows on elephants lately, but I could have used David Attenboroughto explain this mating ritual to me.
Maybe it's that Martin and Baldwin are playing the roles the other should have taken: Martin's love interest is a deferential, shell-shocked divorcee with a manner that reminded me of Charlie Ruggles, and Baldwin's in full pursed lips obnoxious priss mode (without the "30 Rock" irony) that makes his character not so much funny as alarming. And Streep, consummate pro that she is, works the material for all its worth, fluttering and kvelling and kvetching, making Jane seem two pastries shy of a brunch. There are times when there seems to be some acknowledgment of time—Jane is constantly fanning herself, as if caught in a hot-flash, but the next instant she's giggling likeJuno.
The one guy who seems to be doing something interesting is John Krasinski, as the not-yet husband who finds he's baby-sitting his future in-laws, and is the only one who seems to rise above the material to be doing something interesting—interesting and funny. As the only fully-informed character in the cast, he manages to convey the screwball nature of the situation, acting as the surrogate audience, eyes widening with each embarrassing compromise. He makes Meyers the director—with her sledge-hammer reaction shots and uneven pacing seem far more successful than she is.
The Story: "I wanted a mission...and for my sins, they gave me one."
Apocalypse Now lurches like a drunken bear between realism and surrealism. Of course, it originated with John Milius (maybe more so, than even Joseph Conrad). Told by one of his film instructors at USC that Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" had even challenged adaptation by Orson Welles, Milius made it his own personal mission to scale that mountain, bring down that beast, and conquer that wave by making his own adaptation, setting it during the Vietnam War and titling it (satirically) "Apocalypse Now"—after seeing hippies (whom he loathed) wearing pins that said "Nirvana Now." His treatment was part of the American Zoetrope package that Francis Ford Coppola sold to Warner Brothers, which was cancelled after the lackluster box-office of its first released film, George Lucas' THX-1138—the result of which led to Coppola taking "a job" to save the studio—a little gangster movie that Paramount was about to produce into the ground called The Godfather.
It's a quite often-told tale, that.
But, as austere as "Heart of Darkness" is, Milius' "Apocalypse Now" is flamboyant, taking the particular eccentricities of the Vietnam war—the drugs, the music, the racial mix, the mechanization vs. guerilla fighting, and blowing them up in vast neon gouts of napalm. It can be accused of reveling in the very things it's trying to abhor, but that's a symptom of so many "high concept" films.
Even this scene, which is, ostensibly, "by the book," has its flashes of weirdness—Marlon Brando's disembodied voice, the cut to a close-up of the shrimp entree just as he says the words "crawling, slithering" (enough to put you off your "surf and turf"), the whole vibe of a business luncheon while talking about a murder that "doesn't exist, and never will exist." The distaste that the uniforms feel in ordering the killing of one of their own (G.D. Spadlin's general has a general look of dyspepsia while Harrison's Ford's colonel seems to be fighting his own rising bile), while the civilian—who knows who HE is?—is as perfunctory as if he was a business man fulfilling an order.
And he's the only one who comes out and says, basically, "kill the colonel" (and with "extreme prejudice") in the veiled argot of non-accountability (as composed by Milius and Coppola).
But, it's those moments of Martin Sheen...looking directly at the camera...that truly haunt. By the time they occur, we're well acquainted with the askance sight-lines he has of the other characters in the scene, so when he's looking at us in those dark moments of dialogue ("Sometimes, the dark side overcomes
what Lincoln called the better
angels of our nature"), what is he looking at? Is he looking for answers? Is he looking for approval or acknowledgment (we are, after all, the recipient of his inner-most thoughts)? Is he looking to let us know he's in a trap? Is he looking into his possible future of the choices he'll be forced to make (there IS a lot of fore-shadowing in this movie, with cross-faded images of idols and such)?
Maybe it's the only place he can look in a room full of implied threats and unspoken deadly intent...and feel safe? Feel like Himself?
It's just another one of those mysteries that flit in and out of the Big Ideas and Big Set-pieces like shrapnel and chaos trying to be contained...and never can be.
Also, it should be noted with regret that Eleanor Coppola died Friday—she accompanied her husband, with their family, on the arduous journey to make Apocalypse Now, where she filmed extensive back-stage material, which was incorporated into the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (which I've embedded below, but Lord knows how long it will stay available), one of the best documentaries about film-making, obsession, and might even be closer in spirit to the themes of Joseph Conrad's source material than previous adaptations. Her book on the experience, "Notes," is an amazing read.
Ci mancherà moltissimo
The Set-Up: Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) is "still" in Vietnam. He'd done his tour and returned home, got divorced and re-enlisted. An Army assassin with Special Forces, he has been languishing in a Saigon hotel, drinking, smoking, "getting softer" (in his words) when he is recruited for a mission quite unlike any other in his known experience. He has been called to meet General R. Corman (G.D. Spradlin), Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford), and a civilian he does not know (Jerry Ziesmer)
Action.
EXT. MILITARY COMPOUND - DAY
A darkly painted Huey lands in a guarded military compound
somewhere in Nah Trang. The two enlisted men jump out of
the helicopter, leading Willard, who seems in much better
shape. As he gets out he sees a platoon of new men drilling
in the hot hazy sun. They are clean and pale.
MEN (Chanting)
I wanna go to Vietnam.
I wanna kill a Vietcong-
WILLARD (V.O.)
I was going to the worst place in
the world, and I didn't even know
it yet.
WILLARD (V.O.)Weeks away and hundreds
of miles up river that snaked
through the war like a circuit
cable...plugged straight into Kurtz.
He follows the escort across the fields as the platoon
drills.
WILLARD (V.O.)
It was no accident that I got to
be the caretaker of Colonel Walter
E. Kurtz's memory,
WILLARD (V.O.)...any more that
being back in Saigon was an
accident.
WILLARD (V.O.)There was no way to
tell his story without telling my
own.
They approach a civilian-type luxury trailer. It is
surrounded by concertina wire, and its windows have grenade
protection, but it still seems out of place in this austere
military base.
CLOSER ON WILLARD
He stands before the door for a moment, as the M.P.s
guarding the trailer check his papers.
INT. TRAILER - DAY
WILLARD (V.O.) And if his story is really a
confession....
Cool and comfortable, furnished like home. Pictures on
the walls, certificates, photos of Presidents Kennedy,
Johnson and Nixon and other mementos decorating the room.
A small table is covered with linen and place settings for
three.
Willard enters.
He salutes, and the COLONEL salutes him
back.
WILLARD Captain Willard reporting, sir.
WILLARD(V.O.)then so is mine.
COLONEL
(to Willard)
Captain. Good. Come on in.
WILLARD
Thank you, sir.
COLONEL
Stand at ease.
Willard notices somebody O.S. and reacts.
WILLARD
General.
The General crosses over to a cabinet and picks up a pack
of cigarettes, as the CAMERA REVEALS a CIVILIAN; probably
with the Department of Defense, sitting at the bar, and a
GENERAL sitting on a sofa.
The colonel turns and offers Willard a cigarette from the
pack.
COLONEL
(to Willard)
Do you want a cigarette?
WILLARD
No thank you, sir.
COLONEL
(indicating civilian)
Captain, have you ever seen this
gentleman before?
WILLARD
No, sir.
COLONEL You ever met the general or myself?
WILLARD
No, sir. Not personally.
COLONEL
You've worked a lot on your own,
haven't you, Captain?
WILLARD
Yes, sir, I have.
COLONEL
Your report specifies intelligence,
counter-intelligence with Com-Sec,
I Corps.
WILLARD
I'm not presently disposed to
discuss those operations, sir.
There is a pause as the colonel lights his cigarette,
then
moves to the sofa.
He bends down and picks up a dossier,
looks at it.
COLONEL
Did you not work for the CIA in I
Corps?
WILLARD
(pause)
No, sir.
COLONEL
Did you not assassinate...
COLONEL...a government
tax collector...Quang Tri province
June 18, 1968?
Willard doesn't answer.
COLONEL
Captain?
WILLARD
Sir, I am unaware of any such
activity or operation,
WILLARD
...nor would I
be disposed to discuss an operation,
if it did in fact exist, sir.
A pause.
Willard is tired and confused and hung over, but
he is handling himself well.
The general rises.
GENERAL
I thought we'd have a bit of lunch
while we talked.
GENERAL
I hope you brought
a good appetite, Captain.
Willard gets up and moves towards the dining table with
the general and the civilian.
They sit down.
GENERAL
I noticed that you have a bad hand
there. Are you wounded?
WILLARD
Had a little fishing accident on R
and R, sir.
GENERAL
Fishing on R and R?
WILLARD
Yes, sir.
GENERAL
But you're feeling fit? You're
ready for duty?
WILLARD
Yes, General. Very much so, sir.
The food is being passed around.
GENERAL
Well, let's see...
GENERAL
...what we have here.
Roast beef, and usually it's not
bad.
GENERAL(to civilian)
Try some, Jerry. Pass it around.
GENERAL
To save a little time, we might
pass both ways.
(to Willard)
GENERALCaptain, I don't know how you feel
about this shrimp, but if you eat
it, you'll never have...
GENERAL...to prove
your courage in any other way.
GENERAL Well, why don't I just take a piece here...
The colonel, who is not eating with them, walks to the
table, holding a small photo.
COLONEL
(to Willard)
Captain, you've heard of...
COLONEL
...Captain
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz?
He shows the photo to Willard.
INSERT THE PHOTO
It's an eight-by-ten black-and-white portrait of an army
officer wearing a beret.
WILLARD Um...
WILLARDYes, sir. I've heard the name.
The Colonel accidentally drops the dossier. Papers, photos,
etc., scatter all over the floor.
He stoops down to pick
them up.
COLONEL
Jesus...
COLONELOperations officer, Fifth
Special Forces.
GENERAL
Luke, would you play that tape,
for the captain, please? COLONELYes sir. I'm sorry, sir.
GENERAL(to Willard)
Listen to it carefully, Captain.
The Colonel moves to a tape recorder and turns it on.
MALE VOICE (ON TAPE) (V.O.)
"October 9, 04:30 hours, Sector
Peter, Victor, King."
GENERAL
These were monitored out of
Cambodia.
GENERALIt's been verified as
Colonel Kurtz's voice.
All the men, including Willard, listen in wonder.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) (V.O.)
"I watched...
KURTZ (ON TAPE) ...a small snail, crawling
on the edge
KURTZ (ON TAPE) of a straight razor.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) That's my dream.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) It's my nightmare.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) Crawling, slithering,
KURTZ (ON TAPE) along the
edge of
KURTZ (ON TAPE) a straight razor,
KURTZ (ON TAPE) and
surviving."
MALE VOICE (ON TAPE) (V.O.)
"Transmission 11, received '68,
December 30, 05:00 hours, Sector
King, Zulu, King".
KURTZ (ON TAPE) (V.O.)
"But we must kill them. We must
incinerate...
KURTZ (ON TAPE) ...them. Pig after pig.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) Cow after cow.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) Village after
village. Army after army.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) And
they call me an assassin. What do
you call it, when the assassins
accuse the assassin?
KURTZ (ON TAPE) They lie.
They lie...
KURTZ (ON TAPE) ...and we have to be merciful,
for those who lie.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) Those nabobs.
KURTZ (ON TAPE) I hate them. I really do hate them."
The TAPE is TURNED OFF.
GENERAL
Walter Kurtz was one of the most outstanding officers this
GENERAL
...country's
ever produced.
GENERALHe was brilliant.
He was outstanding in every way.
And he was a good man, too.
GENERALA
humanitarian man. A man of wit
and humor.
GENERALHe joined the Special
Forces,
GENERALand after that, his ideas,
methods, became...
GENERAL
...unsound.
GENERALUnsound.
COLONEL
Now he's crossed into Cambodia
with this...
COLONEL...Montagnard army of his,
that worship the man like a god,
and...
COLONEL...follow him every order,
COLONELhowever
ridiculous.
GENERALWell, I have some
other shocking news to tell you.
GENERALColonel Kurtz was about to be
arrested for murder.
WILLARD
I don't follow sir. Murdered who?
COLONEL
Kurtz had ordered the execution...
COLONEL...of
some Vietnamese intelligence agents.
COLONELMen he believed were double agents.
COLONELSo he took matters...
COLONEL...into his own
hands.
GENERAL
Well,
GENERAL...you see, Willard, in this
war, things get confused out there.
GENERALPower, ideals,
GENERALthe old morality,
and...
GENERAL...practical military necessity.
But out there with these natives,
it must be a temptation to...
GENERAL...be God.
GENERALBecause there's a conflict in every human heart.
GENERALBetween the rational and the
irrational, between good and evil.
GENERALAnd good does not always triumph.
GENERALSometimes, the dark side overcomes
what Lincoln called the better
angels of our nature.
GENERALEvery man
has got a breaking point.
GENERALYou
have and I have them.
GENERALWalter Kurtz
has reached his.
GENERALAnd, very
obviously, he has gone insane.
Willard looks from the colonel to the general to the
civilian.
They are intensely interested in his response,
which they want to be "yes."
WILLARD
(carefully)
Yes, sir. Very much so, sir.
Obviously insane.
The three men pull back, satisfied.
COLONEL
Your mission is to proceed up the
Nung...
COLONEL...River in a navy patrol boat,
(clears throat)
COLONELpick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu
Mung Ba,
COLONELfollow it, learn what you
can along the way. When you find
COLONELthe colonel, infiltrate his team
by...
clears throat)
COLONEL...whatever means available, and...
COLONEL...terminate the colonel's command.
WILLARD
(to General)
Terminate...the colonel?
GENERAL
He's out there operating without
any decent restraint, totally beyond
the pale of any acceptable...
GENERAL...human
conduct. And he is still on the
field commanding troops.
CIVILIAN
Terminate with extreme prejudice.
The civilian hands Willard a cigarette, and lights it for
him.
COLONEL
You understand, Captain, that this
mission does not exist,
COLONEL
...nor will
it ever exist.
CLOSE ON WILLARD
Smoking the cigarette, thinking about the mission.