The Drowning Pool

 

Director Stuart Rosenberg

Rosenberg with Paul Newman

THE DROWNING POOL           B                                                                                                USA  (108 mi)  1975  ‘Scope  d: Stuart Rosenberg

You have no talent for surrender.                                                                                                    —Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward)

It’s always a treat to see Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward work together, having met in 1953 while both were working in the Broadway production of Picnic, making their first film together in Martin Ritt’s THE LONG, HOT SUMMER (1958), an adaptation of three William Faulkner stories, where the two got married in Las Vegas during the production, also working together in Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961), a tribute to jazz, with Newman directing her in Rachel, Rachel (1968), an extremely quiet and unassuming film that is completely devoted to Woodward, as it showcases her extraordinary talent.  They were a romantic Hollywood couple that left Hollywood to remain a couple, sharing a love unlike any other Hollywood couple, remaining together from the time they were married in 1958 until the day Newman died in 2008, spanning fifty years, with three children, eloquently described by Newman, “I don’t like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true.  I have steak at home.  Why should I go out for hamburger?”  All told they made 10 films together, none of which are household names, which suggests they were willing to take chances with more off-beat material, like Stuart Rosenberg’s WUSA (1970), a confounding yet fascinating character study that was decimated by critics, a discussion on race relations and political hypocrisy, made during the heyday of those 70’s paranoid political conspiracy thrillers.  Both that film and this one were both shot in New Orleans, but this doesn’t utilize the uniqueness of the culture or the setting, which are largely overlooked, written by a successive trio of writers, Walter Hill, Lorenzo Semple, and Tracy Keenan Wynn, transporting the seedy world of an LA private eye to Louisiana, conceived as a loose sequel to Harper (1966), the only sequel Newman ever appeared in, reviving his role as a quick-witted detective becoming embroiled in a treacherous murder mystery at the behest of an old flame in Woodward.  An early scene, shot in the shadows of chandeliers from an antique store, has a rare intimacy between the two of them that the rest of the film never lives up to, but those captured moments together add to the allure of the picture.  Adapting the second of Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald’s 18 novels of private detective Lew Archer, the author offers a panoramic tour of Southern California in the 1950’s, even prowling the suburbs, in particular his home of Santa Barbara (renamed to Santa Teresa), corresponding to the rapid postwar growth of the valleys and coastal communities, yet some of that is lost in this new landscape, which is given a contemporary setting with considerably more action added, as the mood switches quickly from contemplative to grimly active.  Before the story is finished, characters will be shot, drowned, drugged, beaten, and tortured, all in the name of greed and vanity, as it feels like something Oedipal in a classical Greek tragedy style happening here.  

Newman also worked with Rosenberg in the zany and quirky existential road movie/western Pocket Money (1972) shot in Mexico with Lee Marvin, a small gem of a film written by none other than Terrence Malick, and before that they made the extremely popular COOL HAND LUKE (1967), where the outcast individualism struck a chord with mainstream America.  Newman was nominated for an Oscar in five different decades, including three nominations, and a win, after he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985.  An enticing quote from the novel that is not in the movie:

I turned on my back and floated, looking up at the sky, nothing around me but cool clear Pacific, nothing in my eyes but long blue space.  It was as close as I ever got to cleanliness and freedom, as far as I ever got from all the people.  They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert.  They couldn’t touch the ocean.  They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn’t be tainted.

Lured into a stately antebellum mansion with servants galore and Spanish moss dripping from the old oak trees (reportedly filmed at Oaklawn Manor, a famous historical plantation built in the early 1800’s located near Franklin), Harper is hired by Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), having had a brief yet torrid affair with her six years earlier but she disappeared without a trace, the wife of an emasculated old-money Louisiana aristocrat, James Devereaux (Richard Derr), who idles away his time as an alcoholic, unpublished playwright.  It’s his mother, however, Olivia Devereaux (Coral Browne), who runs the place with an iron fist, tightly controlling the family purse strings, while the family lineage in Beau Rivage has been intact for 175 years, where “the abolition of slavery was viewed as a mild agitation for them.”  Exploring the Southern Gothic theme of dysfunctional family dynamics, with disturbing suggestions of incest, Iris wants him to find out who’s blackmailing her about her extramarital dalliances, suspecting it may be the chauffeur she fired a few days ago, Pat Reavis (Andy Robinson), whose current whereabouts are unknown.  Iris has an enterprising young daughter, Schuyler (Melanie Griffith, just 17 when the film was shot), fresh off her teenage temptress role in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975) released a month earlier, playing a similarly spoiled and sexually precocious role here, meeting Harper coming out of the shower in his motel room with designs on seducing him, but he doesn’t play along.  When asked about Reavis, she responds with a bemused smile, “He was fun.  Mild psychopaths often are if you don’t cross them.”  Nonetheless, having been seen in her company, he’s rounded up by the overzealous police on child molestation and statutory rape charges, specifically by overenthusiastic Lieutenant Franks (Richard Jaeckel), where he’s warned by Police Chief Broussard (Anthony Franciosa) that he’s in over his head, as the Devereaux’s are a highly influential family in Louisiana.  It’s soon clear that it’s much more than a simple case of blackmail, as Harper is whisked off the street at gunpoint and brought to the home of millionaire oil tycoon J. Hugh Kilbourne (Murray Hamilton), where the brutality is immediately evident, as he trains pit bulls for mortal combat, something he enjoys for fun and leisure, The Drowning Pool (1975) - Lew Harper meets J.J. Kilbourne YouTube (6:56).  What he’s really interested in is the land owned by the Devereaux family, claiming it is oil-rich and worth more than $100 million, so anyone who comes in contact with the family is on his radar.  By nightfall, Olivia Devereaux is discovered dead in the bayou, having been struck in the head with a rake and dropped into the swamp.  Immediately suspecting Reavis, Harper goes searching for him at a roadside bar, hooking up with Gretchen (Linda Haynes), his suspected prostitute girlfriend, and through her he uncovers a lead. 

As he was in Harper, Newman is utterly appealing as the cool-as-ice investigator, while Woodward is quietly introverted and refined, Franciosa puts his spin on the Cajun dialect, while Hamilton is almost leisurely in his enjoyably quirky spin on a villainous role, with Gail Strickland as Kilbourne’s terrified yet deplorably conniving trophy wife Mavis.  Griffith’s character knows no bounds when it comes to moral turpitude, figuring prominently in the outcome, a poisonous “Bad Seed,” while Browne commands great authority in her brief appearance as Woodward’s domineering mother-in-law, her first film after her marriage to actor Vincent Price in 1974.  The plot is extremely convoluted and risks losing all sense at times, but what it really lacks is that tightly cohesive yet snide edge of William Goldman’s screenplay in the first film, where this follow-up is just not in the same class, yet the markedly downbeat and pessimistic tone is fairly typical for 70’s private-eye thrillers, yet here self-interest borders on murderous psychopathy.  It attempts to pay homage to the original with a cutely facetious opening sequence, and a surprise freeze frame finale, but in between there’s a sadistic edge of cruelty and double cross that may not sit well with viewers, with suggestions that for the right price anything can happen, as the stalwarts of the law will turn a blind eye.  The same can’t be said for Harper, as he turns down a highly lucrative, life-altering offer and gets very little in return except the satisfaction that he’s nobody’s patsy.  Nonetheless, things take a dark turn for him as well, as some people refuse to take no for an answer, where it can cost you your life.  The most protracted action sequence takes place in an abandoned sanitarium, where the film’s title refers to some excessive water therapy, as patients would be dressed down with a fire hose.  Things get a little out of whack, getting into the extreme, yet the camera work by Gordon Willis is a definite plus, offering a masterclass on neo-noir color cinematography, taking us right up to the edge, even verging on exploitation while nearly drowning in the murky waters of this treacherous murder mystery, Paul Newman, Gail Strickland in 1975's The Drowning Pool | 4K YouTube (5:28).  All revolving around the secrecy of a little black book, which documents the extent of the fraud and corruption, it ends up in an unexpected place, with Harper simply shrugging his shoulders at the end, as if life never makes sense, until it does, The Drowning Pool | Last Scene & Funny Freeze-Frame Ending YouTube (2:49).  The 70’s was a classic decade for crime flicks, including THE GODFATHER saga, but also Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971), William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), Don Siegel’s DIRTY HARRY (1971), Peter Yates’ The Hot Rock (1972), Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), John Huston’s CHINATOWN (1974), Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), Joseph Sargent’s THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974), Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (1975), Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sidney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), Robert Aldrich’s HUSTLE (1975), John Frankenheimer’s FRENCH CONNECTION II (1975), and Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), among others.

The Unloved - The Drowning Pool on Vimeo  video essay by Scout Tafoya, YouTube (10:16)

Paris Blues

PARIS BLUES            B+                  

USA  (98 mi)  1961  d:  Martin Ritt

An interesting match up here featuring Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as Ram and Eddie, two rising star American jazz musicians trying to make it in Paris, joined by two vacationing American girls in town for a couple weeks, Joanne Woodward as Lillian and Diahann Carroll, looking positively stunning as Connie, also starring trumpeter non pareil Louis Armstrong with a musical soundtrack written by none other than Duke Ellington and the uncredited Billy Strayhorn, including passages of “Mood Indigo” and “Sophisticated Lady,” along with a wild jazz session called “Battle Royal” near the end with Armstrong.  Wow—that sounds pretty much like royalty, especially considering the timing of this film, made between some of Newman’s greatest roles, THE HUSTLER (1961), SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (1962), and HUD (1963), while for Poitier, this film came between A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961) and LILLIES OF THE FIELD (1963).  Add to this Italian actor turned French citizen Serge Reggiani, from Max Ophuls’ LA RONDE (1950) and Jacques Becker’s CASQUE D’OR (1952) as a drug-addicted guitar player.  Despite the all star lineup, the film is weakened by a somewhat predictable script about Poitier escaping from America’s racism (never developed) and Newman’s desire to become a “serious” composer (never in doubt when we hear his jazz compositions, but there are serious doubts if he wishes to make a leap to classical, which is not made clear in the film, and frankly is not really inherent in the film’s character, where “Paris Blues,” the titled piece featured in the film that he spends all night working on is a jazz composition), where even though told in a realist style coinciding with the outbreak of the French New Wave, the frenetic energy exhibited in the musical nightclub sequences puts any storyline to shame considering the jazz authenticity on display throughout.  It’s impossible not to be a bit overwhelmed by all the talent here which is kept to a cool simmer, with plenty of picture postcard shots of Paris and an outstanding musical soundtrack that provides what the film was really looking for, the love of jazz, where the somewhat contrived romance angle is purely secondary.  Newman and Poitier play trombone and saxophone, actually performed by Murray McEachern and Paul Gonsalves from Duke’s orchestra, dubbed afterwards in American studios.  

A rare treat here is also watching Newman and Woodward, who was pregnant here, married just three years earlier, working together in this their 4th of ten films together, where they display a rare intimacy, much like John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands working together, even though Newman plays something of a heel, a two-timing, egocentric musician wrapped up in his music and his career, where he always seems to have a chip on his shoulder.  In a composite of several of their scenes together Paris Blues (1961) - Paul Newman - Joanne Woodward YouTube (10:30), including one of the scenes of the film, her “You’re never gonna forget me” speech coming just before the 9-minute mark of the clip, where she displays that irresistible smalltown charm where he lets down his guard momentarily before reasserting his self-centered demeanor.  Poitier and Carroll are also wonderful together YouTube - Clips from Paris Blues YouTube (2:22), both in their prime, where Carroll never looked so dazzlingly beautiful, while also offering a piece of her mind as well, claiming it’s time for Eddie to stop running away and come back home.  Both were romantically linked during the filming of PORGY AND BESS (1959), but because both were married with families, they tried to stay apart, brought together as onscreen lovers again, which was an excruciating ordeal for Poitier, whose wife and family were present for part of the shooting.  Playing music until dawn, the two couples walk during the day through the streets of Paris, see the sights, take a river cruise, and fall in love in the City of Lights, where the picturesque backdrop couldn’t be more appealing, beautifully shot in Black and White by Christian Matras.  One of the interesting aspects is how they met by chance, as Ram initially meets Connie on their incoming train.  In something of a daring display of interracial romance, he’s actually more attracted to her, as expressed after their nightclub set when he ignores Lillian in favor of Connie.  Coming from America, Connie’s not used to this display of racial openness and is taken aback, even as she sees couples embraced on the streets everywhere throughout the city, and the nightclub has several mixed couples as well.  Given the time period, well before the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, two years before the killing of Medgar Evers, this is a major social statement in an American film, even if it is only suggested and remains undeveloped.       

Ram is also carrying on an affair with the nightclub owner, Barbara Laage as Marie Séoul, who also interestingly sings a musical number.  But Ram is the star of the show, as seen taking the lead solo on “Mood Indigo” Paris Blues "Mood Indigo" (1961) (3:30), where the subterranean nightclub atmosphere is filled with bohemian culture, almost always a packed house.  The sequence of the film is the extraordinary appearance of Louis Armstrong, where the mood turns electric PARIS BLUES (1961) - Battle Royal (6:02), jamming with each member of the band.  You can’t write this kind of exhilaration, it just happens, creating an explosive feeling within the club itself, a magical moment where everything is right in the world, exactly how Eddie feels when he realizes his true feelings for Connie.  There’s an unfortunate storyline thread about birds, where we see them on rooftops, and in cages for sale on the streets, an all too obvious metaphor for the free spirit of a jazz musician, where being caged, unable to fly is paramount to death.  This segment seems more appropriate for Ram, as he’s the one attempting to break through a barrier of free spirited jazz improvisation to composition, not at all an easy transformation, where Lillian’s affections feel like a cage for him, a stifling suffocation just when he needs to learn the art of writing arrangements.  The wall to wall jazz music is simply extraordinary, as are the two couples in a rare display of realism instead of an overblown Hollywood romance.  John Cassavetes was up for the Paul Newman role and was familiar with the script, attempting to match the music and spontaneity of this film with one of his own, released at the same time, Too Late Blues (1961), where Cassavetes wanted to throw in 17 new jazz pieces into his film, shot entirely in New York City’s Greenwich Village jazz scene, but the studio blocked his requests, forcing him instead to shoot almost entirely inside the studio.  That film feels more reserved and suffocating, while Ritt’s film lives and breathes the streets of Paris, featuring the music of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, where the feverish intensity of live music in jammed nightclubs couldn’t be more exhilarating.

 

The participation of Ellington (behind the camera) and Louis Armstrong onscreen is itself significant.  The film effectively begins when Wild Man Moore (Armstrong, one of the few times in a film where he’s not playing himself), arrives in Paris, and it ends as he departs.  Cheering throngs greet him at the train station when he arrives, where a band plays for him, leading Armstrong to join in an impromptu jazz moment.  Ellington’s first musical soundtrack was Otto Preminger’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), where only part of what Ellington and Strayhorn wrote together was actually used in the film, but he had the most control over the musical soundtrack in this film, where what one hears onscreen is exactly as they intended.  Despite the overlapping careers of such great jazz legends as Duke Ellington (1899 – 1974) and Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971), the two rarely encountered one another, but they stayed in the same hotel during the shooting of the film, discussing the possibilities of working together.  They met again upon returning back home and arranged an RCA recording session on April 3 and 4th, 1961, leading to an album released as The Great Summit, where the band was Armstrong’s, but the music was written by Ellington.  A list of some of the great Ellington musicians heard in the film:  pianist/composer Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, trumpeter Louis Armstrong and Clark Terry, saxophonist Oliver Nelson and Paul Gonsalves, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, drummer Max Roach, Sonny Greer, and Philly Joe Jones, trombonists Juan Tizol, Britt Woodman, Billy Byers, and Murray McEachern.  Paris pianist Aaron Bridgers, the house pianist of the Mars Club, a tiny cabaret with an openly gay clientele, which may have been a model for the club in the film, appears as the pianist in Ram Bowen’s band, though the only piano heard on the soundtrack is either Ellington or Strayhorn.  Strayhorn stuck around Paris and recorded an album with a string quartet of Parisian musicians, one of the few albums released under his own name, entitled The Peaceful Side.  Strayhorn actually arrived in Paris a month before Ellington, directing the music in earlier rehearsals, largely for the benefit of the actors who play musicians, where the musical scores used in the film are in the Smithsonian Institute.  

The film is based on a 1957 novel by Harold Flender, following the exploits of a black American saxophonist Eddie Jones in Paris who plays Dixieland or mainstream jazz, happy just to be working, appreciating the tolerance for blacks in Paris.  He meets a black American schoolteacher on vacation, Connie, and falls in love.  The novel introduces trumpet player Wild Man Moore, already based upon Louis Armstrong, who offers him a job that he at first refuses, but when he realizes he’ll be returning to America with Connie, he can hook up with the band in the States.  The Ram Bowen character, the name a variation on the French poet Rimbaud, was originally based upon Benny, a pianist in Eddie’s band, who hooks up with Connie’s roommate Lillian so Eddie and his girl can be alone together.  Benny shows Lillian the wilder side of Paris, including an all night nudist swimming club, which she finds teasingly provocative, but also crudely offensive, returning home alone.  Lulla Adler adapted the novel, while Jack Sher, Irene Kamp, and Walter Bernstein provided a screenplay for the film, changing the leader of the band to Ram, including his desire to become a serious composer, receiving arrangement assistance from Eddie.  Ellington was not aware of these script changes from the novel when he started working, believing the romantic couples would be Paul Newman and Diahann Carroll, and Sidney Poitier with Joanne Woodward, where the opening scene seems to be preparing the audience for a range of relationships from gay to interracial, a milieu intimately understood by the openly gay Strayhorn.  In a similar scene twenty minutes into the film, a pan of the club audience couldn’t be more different, as gone are the same sex and mixed race couples, as by then the United Artist Studio executives lost their nerve and decided to drop the interracial angle.  It wasn’t until 1967, well after Sidney Poitier was an established star, that Hollywood romantically linked a major black star with a white girlfriend in Stanley Kramer’s GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.  The mix of black and white in PARIS BLUES may as well be jazz and classical, as in a late scene with a musical publisher (arranged by Wild Man Moore), Ram’s music is not accepted as “serious” enough, suggesting it needs conservatory training, a typical and somewhat condescending view of those in the (white European) classical music community, which interestingly suggests (American black) jazz is not a “serious” art form, even if written by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, a question they attempted to overcome their entire lives, though both Armstrong and Ellington’s entire discography would refute such a claim. 

Rachel, Rachel

 

 

RACHEL, RACHEL          B+

USA  (101 mi)  1968  d: Paul Newman

 

One of the hard to find missing gems of the 60’s, a film that shows great insight into America’s greatest thespian marriage, where at the peak of his popularity, after making Hud (1963), HARPER (1966), HOMBRE (1967) and COOL HAND LUKE (1967), Paul Newman went behind the camera to direct his first film, a showpiece for his wife, easily the better half of the marriage on stage, Joanne Woodward, who simply nails this role as a lonely spinster in a small Southern town.  Adapted from a Canadian novel set in Manitoba outside Winnipeg, Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God, the film has the meticulous detail and feel of a short story set in the American South, where Rachel has done all the right things dedicating her life for others, teaching second graders, taking care of her elderly mother, and is seen as a model citizen, but for the life of her can’t find happiness.  Nothing changes in her rural environment, where the rhythm of life is pretty much the same as when she was a child, seen in flashbacks, played by the Newman’s own blond-haired daughter, Nell Potts, where by middle age it appears life is passing her by, looking after her invalid mother (Kate Harrington), realizing she’s not the person she imagines herself to be and feels inadequate in every way.  When a childhood friend wanders back into town, Nick (James Olson), the son of a farmer who never much cared for cows, he asks her out on a date which has reverberations, as we suspect it’s the first in perhaps decades.  All she’s had is best friend Calla, Estelle Parsons, a fellow teacher, an actress who just a year earlier won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and who perfectly matches Woodward in every frame.  Parsons is not over the top hysterical in this film, but bravely offers Woodward a kiss in a private moment, which speaks more to the acute loneliness of the individual than any sexual interest.  Be that as it may, it’s an astounding moment having profound impact into their friendship, which is perhaps the most carefully nuanced relationship in the film, as they are alike, like sisters. 

Much is made of the date sequence, where one’s first impression is to think of Nick as a cad, a callous hipster who simply plays it as it lays, never realizing until the moment at hand that she’s a virgin, and then, since the entire film is seen through her perspective, her inner narration, her flashbacks, he’s continually pulling back from anything more serious.  Her intensity is overwhelming, where her view of herself is undergoing a complete transformation, but he’s barely interested and tries to remove himself from the situation as much as possible.  After all, he barely knows her.  In hindsight, however, he doesn’t come across so poorly, as he’s just a guy that was passing through town and never had any intentions of staying or taking root.  She, on the other hand, can’t wait for the opportunity to seek more out of life and feels driven to demand more out of herself than to continue to accept the monotonous rhythm that has been her routine.  Woodward is brilliant as a woman in a state of flux, who is no surer of herself than she is of what matters in life.  All her life she’s lived in fear, fear of her father, mother, authority, God, where she’s continually sacrificed her own choices for the betterment of others.  Interestingly, her father was a mortician who ran a funeral home on the premises, but his work area was off limits, forbidden, keeping him emotionally off limits both as a child but continuing into adulthood, never allowing herself to express how she feels.  All bottled up inside, it’s like she’s led the life of a stranger who barely knows the world around her, even her own environment or her own body. 

A small slice of life film that today would be called an indie film, shot for $700,000 dollars, as the focus is on tiny details and the exquisite performances, one of Woodward’s best in her entire career, nominated for an Academy Award, but losing out to Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) and Katharine Hepburn (THE LION IN WINTER) in a tie for Best Actress.  Newman directs a quiet and introspective film, recognized as a 60’s film from his use of flashbacks, as they dominate the interior landscape, which was a quite trendy trademark of the times, especially prevalent in European films.  What’s unique is the shortness and lack of development of the flashback sequences, which always interrupt the present like a brief daydream, whimsical, colorful, following the actions of a curious and precocious young girl, leaving the audience wondering about that earlier childhood, which at times feels more interesting than her present life.  While we might like to learn more, the details are etched in the present, where to the sound of a ticking clock, we hear Rachel whispering to herself as her mother sits transfixed by the front window:  “She watches the street like a captain watches the sea, praying for a funeral to come by to cheer her up.”  Much of the dialogue is witty and quite literary, which gives the film a timeless feel.  Newman’s style is to continually enhance the interior state of mind, so that by the end, the ambiguity of the compliant past mixing with the stifling suffocation of the present becomes synonymous with the possibilities of her own future, where the final images, supposedly shot in Connecticut, but bearing a startling resemblance to Mendocino, California, offer a hauntingly poetic mirror reflection.