The Shooting

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warren Oates

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SHOOTING               B                                                                                                           USA  (82 mi)  1966  d:  Monte Hellman

The one thing that’s purposely ambiguous is what it’s all about, why all this is happening, and that’s built into the story and the reasons for the story.                                                               —Monte Hellman

An existential exercise in futility, a minimalist road movie, and an abstract, theater-of-the-absurd essay made during the gloom of the post Kennedy assassination, along with the rampant fear and anxiety from the build-up of nuclear weapons by the two superpowers, this feels like a doomsday scenario, taking westerns into a bleak nihilistic void where there is no way out, a predecessor to Peckingpah’s fatalistic The Wild Bunch (1969), and a model for Jim Jarmusch’s acid western Dead Man (1995), representing a moody yet pensively expansive style firmly rooted in the mid-60’s.   Made on a budget of just $75,000, with a crew of just seven people, shot in three weeks in the Utah desert back-to-back in a six-week shooting with RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966), a package deal, both written by Carole Eastman (aka Adrien Joyce), who also wrote Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970), which captured the 60’s counterculture mood of rebellion and alienation, and the film that turned Jack Nicholson into a household name.  But these earlier films came out of the Roger Corman B-movie school, with Jack Nicholson as a co-producer and actor, released straight to television, as no domestic distributor took any interest, playing only in selected film festivals around the world, including out of competition at Cannes, endorsed by the editorial staff of Cahiers du Cinéma, the film developed a reputation for being scarcely ever seen, with most initially being introduced to it on television, where it wasn’t like anything else in the medium.  If anything, the only comparable viewing might have been Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959 – 64), as it has a near science fiction feel, audaciously subverting the Western genre.  What stands out in the film is lack of expository information, only a looming sense of dread, driven by an overriding sense of paranoia, with Hellman ripping up the first ten pages of the script and starting midstream, leaving viewers to fend for themselves in this mind-altering wasteland, as no one’s aims or motivations are ever revealed, leaving one questioning everything that’s happening, as it’s absent significant facts and story elements.  While there are plenty of clues offered, there is no real payoff, where you may end up scratching your head wondering just what happened, as the film is ambiguous enough that there is no certain answer.  The true joy of watching this film is having the privilege to view Warren Oates in a starring role, as he developed a reputation for being one of the greatest character actors in secondary roles.  Listing 124 credits throughout his career, only five are in starring roles, with this being the first.  The others are playing a private eye in CHANDLER (1971), a notorious bank robber in DILLINGER (1973), a trainer of birds in the illegal “sport” of cockfighting in Monte Hellman’s COCKFIGHTER (1974), and a piano playing bar owner turned bounty hunter in Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).  He plays a bounty hunter here as well, but refuses the label, preferring the term professional tracker, which is more in line with what he does, as in this film he’s after someone, but doesn’t really know who he’s following.  According to Danny Peary in his 1986 recommendation of more than 1500 must-see films, The Guide for the Film Fanatic, Hellman’s is an “unusual, interesting West, ugly, barren and godforsaken…a lonely, cruel world,” where “the good guys find themselves in a predicament beyond their comprehension.”   

After an extended absence, one-time bounty hunter Willet Grashade (Warren Oates) returns to a remote mining camp that he operates with his brother Coigne, seemingly deserted until a bullet buzzes by his ear coming from his overly jittery friend Coley (Will Hutchens), scared out of his wits, but with a story to tell, as his partner Leland Drum is recently buried while Coigne is nowhere to be seen.  Both recently visited the town of Winslow where Coigne got wildly drunk, inadvertently trampling a young boy to death.  The two got to arguing upon their return to camp, with Coigne taking off after Drum was gunned down by an unknown assailant, leaving Coley holed up in his tent panicked and petrified, afraid of anything that moved.  After hearing a hysterical version of the story that probably no one but Willet could understand, his response is priceless, delivered as only Warren Oates can deliver a line, “My mind’s all unsatisfied with it.”  The next day, a mysterious woman arrives unexpectedly on foot, Millie Perkins (Hellman’s next door neighbor), dressed in bad guy wardrobe, black boots, black gloves, and black hat, unlikeable right away, claiming her horse broke a leg so she was forced to shoot it, offering $1000 dollars to escort her to the town of Kingsley.  A close examination of her horse, however, reveals no injuries or broken bones, so Willet is immediately suspicious, not the kind of woman to trust, even more so when she refuses to provide her name or her intentions, a female counterpart to Clint Eastwood’s A MAN WITH NO NAME (1964), so initially he refuses her offer.  But thinking his brother Coigne is likely mixed up in this, he gives it some second thoughts, changing his mind in the hopes he can find out what happened to him, as clearly he is on the run.   Bringing the childlike Coley along, who is something of an innocent half-wit, he lags behind, struggling with a mule for food and provisions, continually criticized by the woman for slowing them down.  Almost immediately the mule is stolen in the night.  Nonetheless, Coley is sweet on the woman, while Willet senses danger, warning Coley not to trust her, finding her demanding, overly manipulative, and cold-hearted, while complaining all the time, as she purpously changes course, forcing them off their initial path, following the tracks of a rider a day or so ahead of them, refusing to rest, increasing their pace, with designs on catching him.  She also has a nasty habit of shooting her guns off, as if issuing warning signs of some kind, marking their position.  Sure enough, in no time they are joined by a sinister Billy Spears (Jack Nicholson), initially introduced with just a close-up on his eyes, a taunting and cocky man also dressed in black who is a hired gun with some past connection to the woman, as they seem to be in cahoots together, both thoroughly unlikeable, bordering on psychopathic, feeling no remorse, completely altering the dynamic, as Spears collects Willet’s gun, effectively making the other two men prisoners.  Production values are so slight, at times it resembles watching an early Star Trek (1966–69) television episode, especially when they were running low on money, as there are few props, minimal conversation, and lengthy shots of riders traveling through a barren desert landscape under relentess heat, where there are few, if any spots to find shade.  Nonetheless, the woman rides her horse hard, offering little rest or water, and with little thought about it, singlemindedly pursuing her target. 

The disdainful attitude of the woman is clear right from the beginning, where she apparently likes telling others what to do, showing no regard whatsoever for their safety.  Willet has ample opportunity to escape, but sticks around to protect Coley, who is continually bated by Spears, as if goading him for a fight, while remaining intently curious how things will play out.  The woman is completely underestimated throughout the journey, perhaps best expressed by a moment when Coley finds a bluejay, a colorful sign of life in the middle of nowhere, which he detects as a positive omen, until the woman blows it away, using it for target practice, revealing just how utterly ruthless she can be.  When the woman rides her horse to exhaustion, she takes Coley’s horse, forcing him to ride with Willet, placing a terrible strain on that horse as well, so he is ordered to stay behind on foot under the inescapable hot sun, with Willett promising to come back for him.  By this time, Spiers collects all that remains of the dwindling water, not particularly interested in sharing.  The landscape gets more desolate while the behavior gets more and more threatening, revealing a surrealist moment of discovering another stranger in distress left out into the open to die (Charles Eastman, brother of the screenwriter), apparently with a leg broke, unable to move (only God knows how he ended up there), with Coley able to corral his horse, making a beeline straight to Spears who shoots him dead on the spot, no questions asked, one of many dumb things happening throughout this film, as no one seems prepared for the actual journey they are taking, but they plunge forward anyway, motivated by greed or revenge, soon completely out of water with horses dying or growing lame right out from under them, left to pursue their victim on foot.  What follows is a road to nowhere, becoming a death drive, where there is no exit and no escape, a kind of Hell on earth where nothing can survive, shot by Gregory Sandor using natural light, recreating the blazing hot desert sun conditions of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924), where all rationality is replaced by a sun-baked delirium, and all that’s left is madness, as humans are reduced to a Zombie-like state.  Willett knows the journey will end in doom, but he is somehow compelled to see how it plays out, driven by undefinable forces, as if embracing oblivion, first realizing Spears is suffering the effects of heatstroke, then jumping on him, finding a rock, and breaking the bones in his shooting hand, before running ahead to the woman who finds herself in a shooting spree, eying her target just as he eyes her, both wiping each other out in a nonsensical moment of absurdity, where meaning and reason have left the earth, replaced solely by primal instinct which has its way.  In the background, Spears rises, as if from the dead, but wobbles and stumbles off-balance, still delirious under the hot sun.  The film is more a cautionary tale or a morality parable than a narrative thriller or Western, absent all coherency, kind of an oldie but goodie, yet frustrating and creepy don’t even begin to describe the meandering quality of this experience, reflecting the mindset of those living off the fringe, outsiders in complete isolation, seemingly existing in the deep recesses of the subconsciousness, like a mythical tale of old. 

Puzzle of a Downfall Child

 

Director Jerry Schatzberg

PUZZLE OF A DOWNFALL CHILD                     B                    

USA  (105 mi)  1970  d:  Jerry Schatzberg

Schatzberg’s greatest unseen film remains SCARECROW (1973), a brilliant character study that evolves into an endlessly free-wheeling road movie with Gene Hackman and Al Pacino that simply goes places most films don’t dare to go, with superb cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond, featuring overpowering performances that are among the best in their respective careers, winner of the top prize at Cannes when the Grand Prix Award temporarily replaced the Palme d’Or from 1964 – 74.  His first film, on the other hand, is a bit of a train wreck, though perhaps intentionally so, where it is beloved by the French, where the only available DVD is a Region 2 European edition, but has never developed much of an audience in the United States, despite a dizzyingly charismatic performance by Faye Dunaway.  While this allowed Dunaway remarkable dramatic range, playing an haute couture fashion model that descends into the depths of madness, it in no way rivals her astonishing work three years earlier in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967).  Prior to being a filmmaker, Schatzberg, a native New Yorker, began his career as an assistant fashion photographer to Bill Helburn in the mid 50’s before branching out on his own, doing spreads in Vogue, Glamour, Esquire, and Elle magazines, where he eventually garnered fame by taking edgy portraits of 60’s icons like Bob Dylan (slightly blurred cover image of Blonde on Blonde, http://www.redbrick.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/dylan.jpg), Jimi Hendrix, Catherine Deneuve, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, and Frank Zappa, among others.  The film is inspired by the life of 1950’s fashion model Anne Saint-Marie, listed in the credits as a technical consultant, with Schatzberg taping a series of interviews with her on the downward slide of her career, by then addled by pills and alcohol, and then sent the tapes to Carole Eastman who wrote the screenplay, also the writer of Five Easy Pieces (1970), both released the same year, with the interviews forming the narrative for the film.  Coming at the end of a personal relationship with Dunaway, Schatzberg’s first film represents the director’s exit from his former profession, though it embodies the fashion industry, becoming a searingly intimate portrait of a model that suffers a nervous breakdown, told with a European sensibility that features minimalist story lines, lengthy monologues, fractured imagery, languid pacing, and often painterly-like vistas.  

Living as a recluse in a beach cottage on Long Island, Lou Andreas Sand (Dunaway) remains the central focus of the entire film, with the camera never taking its eye off her, all but ignoring the peripheral players, instead consumed by a psychological obsession with her character, freely intermingling Buñuelian flashbacks and fantasies with her tenuous hold on the present, where they are intermixed with her own delusions and lies, creating a shattering experience of disorientation.  This couldn’t have been an easy role to play, much like Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence  (1974), where underneath the appearance of calm lies a restless anxiety that erupts in giant mood swings, where her insecurity is off the charts.  Even when working at the height of her career, she needs constant reinforcement, being told that she was good, where it’s an almost childlike need for approval, an obvious crying out for love and attention. Under the guise of making a film, she is visited in her home by a former friend and associate, Aaron Reinhardt (Barry Primus), who records interview sessions that allows her to revert into flashback mode and relive various episodes in her life.  But her reliability for accuracy falters, as she continuously gets memories mixed up, confusing them with other incidents in her life, where there is plenty of toxic residue from earlier incidents of sexual abuse.  Her stream-of-conscience recollection allows for a cinematic sleight of hand, replacing the present with traumatic incidents from her past, all seamlessly playing out where it’s difficult to tell fantasy from reality.  This jumbled method has a way of distancing viewers from what we see onscreen, where certainly part of the problem is there are no likeable characters in the film.  Sand herself is so far removed from reality that it’s nearly impossible to identify with her.  While Reinhardt may seem sympathetic, this never feels genuine, as he is simply using her to get what he wants out of her, which seems to be the plight of every model, as they are treated like valued commodities that need to be treated with care, but are exploited, where there is very little support or personal interaction.  Friendships are nearly non-existent as it’s such a cutthroat and competitive business. 

Few other characters stand out in this film, but one who does is Pauline (Swedish stage actress Viveca Lindfors), a very strong and aggressive (butch) female photographer who tries to protect Sand from the wolves, knowing the business, fully aware that models are easy prey for alluring men of all ages with money in their pocket, all promising to introduce them to a life of luxury and comfort.  While her intentions are good, Sand refuses her guidance and protection and instead goes out with one of the predators, Mark (Roy Scheider), a successful advertising executive who flirts with the models, appreciating a beautiful woman on his arm, and is even engaged to marry him but instead flees the scene on her wedding day.  Like a recurring nightmare from the men in her life, always choosing the wrong guys, Mark repays her with slaps and a black eye, which once again sends her over the edge.   As if to recover from an existing trauma, she recreates fictional scenarios in her mind where some other man adores her and would love to be with her, inventing a feeling of love in the air that doesn’t exist, but she uses this as leverage against men who are threatening or demeaning her.  This is all traced back to an early experience of sex abuse, where men’s faces at times are interchangeable, as they all end up abandoning her, where this feeling of being hurt follows her throughout her life and is something she can never escape.  Lost behind a paranoid world of fear and deception, she flounders in the dark, afraid to be alone, making late night telephone calls, inventing panic stricken suicide scenarios, and then if someone actually responds to help, she cozies up next to them in a seductive dance for sex, completely oblivious of what brought them there.  Descending into a world of drugs and suicidal inclinations, she is left to fend for herself, where at one point she is hospitalized, offering a fairly gruesome depiction of institutional care, which is viewed as a neverending sequence of trauma and pain, an explosion of raw emotion that can only be suppressed by recurring sedation, where there is never anyone who seems to have her best interests at heart.  One of the more telling scenes is when she arrives on a shoot, with hair and makeup in place before anyone else arrives, hoping to surprise the photographer, only to overhear she’s become yesterday’s news, already a has-been, washed up in an industry that constantly renews itself with newer and younger faces.  When a young fashion model (a gorgeous Barbara Carrera) struts into the changing room and confidently picks out what she intends to wear, Sand is completely ignored, like a ghost from the past whose reality has been sucked out of her.  The confounding structure of the film left American critics befuddled, unable to appreciate the puzzling aspects of the interior cinematic language, yet it made a name for Schatzberg in Paris, bringing a restored cut to Cannes in 2011 for a tribute screening.  Part of its mystique is that it has been out of circulation for so long that viewing the film is a real treat.