Tag: 50th anniversary

Midnight Cowboy

Posted on by victorfraga

On May 12th 2019, the New Hollywood era – arguably the greatest epoch in cinematic history – categorically entered its fifties, for it was on this day in 1969 that Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider premiered at Cannes. Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) and The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) may have preceded it, but Easy Rider would become the initial bookend of the era.

However, just 13 days later, on May 25th 1969, John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy opened in New York City. It had neither the indie micro-budget nor the free-spirited zeitgeist of Dennis Hopper’s film, but it still seeped transgression from its every grimy pore. Five decades later, the BFI’s stunning 4K restoration reminds you that Midnight Cowboy’s coming-of-age story retains much of the wit, sadness and visceral squalor that makes it a foundational entry in the New Hollywood canon.

Very much a New York film, one is hard-pressed to remember a colder, bleaker depiction of the city, even after The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971), Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973) and Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). This is because Schlesinger took the stark realism of the kitchen sink movement and applied it to this decidedly American context. Indeed, it may not have captured the pan-cultural moment like Easy Rider, but Midnight Cowboy certainly preserved the zeitgeist of 42nd Street – a shifty, sleazy place before the gentrification of the early 1990s.

This gritty aesthetic, however, is also imbued with surreal dream sequences that are sometimes eerie, often ambiguous – always sad. We first see them as Joe Buck (Jon Voight) begins his cross-country trek; he brims with enthusiasm and ingenuousness, yet the recesses of his psyche reveal a sinister, withdrawn family and a terrible assault upon himself and a young girl – the consequences of which are unknown.

The best of these sequences occurs when Joe and Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) are established hustling partners dreaming of Florida – it’s a bittersweet joy. Their dank, desperate gamble in a New York hotel is juxtaposed with the ethereal Florida scene that they hope will result from it, but as Joe’s presence causes a ruckus in the hotel, the vision in Ratso’s head also tumbles in a crescendo of snappy edits aided by the quirky tempo of John Barry’s Florida Fantasy.

Indeed, it is John Barry’s hauntingly evocative score – along with Harry Nilsson’s wistful Everybody’s Talkin’– that leaves the largest impression on many viewers, and rightly so. However, I hope that the BFI’s deft re-mastering of Midnight Cowboy will remind audiences of just how absorbing Joe and Ratso’s relationship is, of how the layers of pathos and humour pepper their abject condition with hope, albeit a mere semblance. After all, Voight and Hoffman deliver some of their finest work here, and Waldo Salt’s screenplay is laced with wit and free of narrative baggage. This, teamed with Schlesinger’s realist yet experimental style, causes Midnight Cowboy to be a defining, resonant classic of the New Hollywood period.

The 50th anniversary 4k re-edition of Midnight Cowboy is in cinemas Friday, September 13th. Below is the original film trailer from 1969:

Still riding fast half a century on!!!

Posted on by victorfraga

No movie crystallises the time and place in which it was made quite like Dennis Hopper’s 1969 road odyssey, Easy Rider. The film reflects on the schism of war and peace that permeated America in the 1960s. Watching it today, the stench of reefer smoke, stale sweat, beer and the boiling asphalt of the long highway linger on as the film’s two heros Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda) drift across the American landscape, chasing down the American Dream on their custom-built motorcycles. There only goal is to get rich, get loaded, hit the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and as Billy exclaims, “retire in Florida”. They call this land home, but the county, at least the mainstream aspects of society, is done with them and their kind. They are the US’s lost sons, rebellious, done with the hokey past and waiting for the future to be born, whilst not actively participating in it.

For the most part, one could watch Easy Rider today through the prism of nostalgia for a more innocent time, one that most viewers of the film would not have even lived through. An almost hopeful and naive optimism runs through the narrative of the film. The optimism is obviously misplaced and its makers know this for the film offers an underlying sadness, a futility in existence, and the improbability of ever living in a truly free society. For example, when Billy and Wyatt encounter a hippy commune basking in the hot desert and watch as they plant there seeds into a rugged dry hilltop, Wyatt declares that their harvest will be successful and they will prevail, even though the odds are stacked high against them. Billy, ever the pessimist, knows they are doomed to starvation and failure.

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Oblique criticism

Easy Rider never directly comments on the true-life circumstances the country was facing at the time; the Vietnam War, the Cold War, riots in the streets of every major city, a President shot dead at the start of the decade.

These events are not witnessed nor spoken of. And the film does not comment on the positive aspects of 1960s’ America; the women’s liberation movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending racial segregation and discrimination. Not only this, but the cultural shifts and events that were peppered throughout the decade that would come to fruition in the following decade (I’m thinking here of Woodstock, Roe v Wade). In Easy Rider’s worldview they did and didn’t happen, or perhaps it just doesn’t matter either way.

At least on the surface, the visual beauty and vibrant colour of Easy Rider did not portray a country in turmoil. Cinematographer László Kovács is perhaps the unsung hero of the piece, effortlessly opening up the spaces and letting the film draw in huge lungfuls of air and lingering on bright and vibrant colours. This is what separates Easy Rider from its biker-movie brethren; the sense of space and time spent rambling down empty freeways gives the film an expanse that engulfs all. Yet underneath this bright and shiny veneer the rot is clearly setting in, as witnessed by the opposition that Billy and Wyatt encounter on their travels. When they pull up to a motel on the freeway, the sign suddenly changes from ‘Vacancies’ to ‘No Vacancies’. They are not welcome. When they enter a roadside cafe, they are faced with a torrent of vulgar abuse concerning their ‘hippie’ appearance and attire. Only in New Orleans are they welcomed and this possibly has a lot to with the expenditure of cash stolen from George Hansen’s battered body (the hicks from the diner extract their revenge) on drinking and dining in a New Orleans pleasure palace.

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Riding into the 1970s

Easy Rider makes it very clear that our heroes are a part of a demonised and unwelcome tribe. It was a monumental little movie that generated enough heat, vision and revenue to change the direction of Hollywood, and independent movies alike, for the foreseeable future anyway. The film allowed the New Hollywood ethos to fully engage and for small auteur movies to be made in the early 1970s, such as Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970) , Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop (1971), and, of course, Dennis Hopper’s own ill-fated Easy Rider follow-up, The Last Movie (1971). The influence would also reverberate into the 1980s and beyond as smaller movies were steamrolled by the Sci-fi mega-blockbusters of Lucas and Spielberg and their ilk. Oddly enough, students of the New Hollywood themselves. Filmmakers such as David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino would look to Easy Rider’s DIY ethos, if not its exact content, to find success in making independent movies in this era.

For example: the film’s all-conquering soundtracking signalled a new and dynamic approach by incorporating already known and popular rock and folk songs into the mix. Tarantino obviously took extensive notes from Easy Rider when soundtracking his own movies in the early 1990s.

The songs included on the soundtrack to Easy Rider lighten and darken the mood where appropriate with songs such as Steppenwolf’s The Pusher and Bob Dylan’s It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding) casting a grim, deathly shadow over the narrative, whilst Fraternity of Man’s reefer anthem Don’t Bogart Me and The Holy Modal Rounders’ bizarre and joyous If You Want To Be A Bird allow for humorous moments to unfold.

Although in their early-to-mid-thirties, Hopper and his cohorts understanding of youth culture was clear in the choice of music. Every song in some way corresponds with the visual elements. It’s now impossible to hear Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild or The Byrds’ I Wasn’t Born to Follow without envisioning Billy and Wyatt rambling across the American landscape.

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The summary of an era

With all the weight of trying to define the era, it is easy to forget that it is often the improvised campfire interactions of Hopper and Fonda, and later, when they are joined on the road by Jack Nicholson’s George Hanson, which drive the loosely tied plot together. The ad hoc conversations provide some invigorating black humour and insightful, if slightly undeveloped, observations (“I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace”). Without this content Easy Rider could have easily become another exploitation biker movie, it is credit to Hopper and Fonda that they saw an opportunity to use this tried and tested format to also summarise an era.

Following the success of Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda began to distance themselves, both personally and professionally, from one another. A disagreement with screenwriter Terry Southern and between themselves over the authorship of Easy Rider’s screenplay was never fully resolved and fractured the relationship and artistic partnership. Fonda showed up fleetingly in the background of Hopper’s The Last Movie, but after that film, their on-screen alliance was severed forever. A shame as their onscreen partnership and offscreen friendship seemed genuine and relaxed and might have produced more films.

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Make America racist again

Easy Rider is far from perfect. Fifty years on from its release, what has changed? In fact not much at all and Easy Rider, and its director are partly responsible for this sense of stuckism. In the US, President Donald Trump is by and large a broadened out version of the small-town hicks Billy, Wyatt and George encounter at the roadside cafe. No prejudice is left behind. Immigrants, refugees, feminists, the poor, the political left, the unions. Anything ‘other’ is ridiculed as inauthentic and unAmerican to the proposed progress of American might.

In dialogue set round the campfire, George Hanson recalls that “this used to be one helluva good country,” and then goes on to talk about personal freedom. Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” and Hanson’s point evokes the same principle of looking backwards to a time when America was prosperous and in control of its own destiny. On reflection it’s still almost impossible to decipher what era of American greatness Hanson and Trump are trying to evoke. The assumption is that any era they are discussing is romanticised and vague, at best, and is not any version of America that they ever actually lived through, perhaps never even existed in the first place.

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Pushing the envelope?

Easy Rider was a fair stab at societal commentary for the time, but despite its gallant efforts in attempting to explain that money does not equal personal freedom and anyone who follows that path is doomed, it’s also a deeply flawed film in that it ignored the plight of anyone other than the white hippy and the professional beatnik. Afro-Americans play no role in the film. They are only seen in passing and marginalised to the side of a road in shacks and shanties.

Despite pushing the boundaries, and in fact breaking some (smoking real joints on camera), there were many more that would have made Easy Rider a more inclusive film and a genuine article of the era of liberation.

To take it on face value, Easy Rider still resonates 50 years on. The content may have dated (though capitalism is an issue that so far has never gone away and still plagues us), but its value as an extraordinary piece of independent filmmaking and game changing use of music and visuals, the incorporation of political and societal commentary, and of course the iconic motorcycles and attire means that its place is firmly held as one of the most important and vital films to be made in the short history of film.

As the tagline for the movie stated: “A man went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere.” Fifty years on we’re still looking.

This is an edited and expanded extract from Create or Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper

Elvis: ’68 Comeback Special

Posted on by victorfraga

It all starts out like a live intro in a cinema theatre with the director and a very special guest sitting comfortably right in front of the audiences. The 50th anniversary edition of Elvis: ’68 Comeback Special opens with approximately 15 minutes of brand new commentary by 85-year-old-director Steve Binder and Elvis’s 73-year-old widow Priscilla Ann Presley (who looks as young as her daughter Lisa-Marie). They sit and share thoughts, memories and anecdotes from half a century ago with a very attentive audience.

Steve Binder reminisces about the challenges of making the television show, how Elvis hesitated but finally delivered a confident performance. “He almost forgot he was on television. I watched him rediscover himself. He was really special”, the director recalls. The two guests also recall the origin of the black leather outfit, as Priscilla swoons over her late husband: “He was so stylish, just so in”. Binder wraps it up with a very bold – if a little presumptuous – statement: “50 years later, there is not one thing in the show that’s out of date, it’s as fresh now as it was then”. They provide virtually no background as to why this was such an important comeback, why Elvis did not conduct any public performances for seven years, and instead shifted his career to low-budget, formulaic comedies throughout most of the 1960s.

The 15 minutes of adulation are followed by the very television show from 1968 in its integrity, which is far more exciting. Producer Bob Finkel hired Steve Binder in order to create something that would appeal to a younger audience. The outcome is a colourful and vibrant 90-minute show taking place across several intimate environments, often surrounded by an audience of screaming queens, combined with musical-like renditions supported dancers an actors ahoy. The show, which was showered with positive reviews and was also the most viewed tv programme of the season, would provide the blueprint for music specials for decades to come. It also served to relaunch Elvis’s career and to give him enough vim and confidence to return to live performance (at the expense of the saccharine comedies he has been making).

Highlights of this television show/film include Elvis dancing in front of his name written in the iconic dotted red lights, black dancers displaying their nimble movements and talents (many would argue that Elvis seized/borrowed his movements from black music), a little bit of street dancing and the singer consoling a beautiful woman: “”It hurts me to see him treat you the way that he does, it hurts me to see you sit and cry”. Stay put for 10 minutes of “Having Fun with Elvis in Burbank” after the film credits roll.

The 50th anniversary edition of Elvis: ’68 Comeback Special shows in 250 cinemas across the UK on Thursday, August 16th for one evening only. In reality, August 16th is the date of Elvis Presley’s death in 1977. The television show was originally planned as a Christmas special and aired on December 3th, 1968. Perhaps a good reason for further screenings in December?

Expect a very hot Summer night, with temperatures rising even further than usual.

2001: A Space Odyssey (50th anniversary, 70mm)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is back in a brand new 70mm print struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. Like known champion of physical celluloid over digital print Christopher Nolan who was involved in the process, I saw the film in a cinema as a boy with my father, although in my case I saw one of its many reruns in the seventies. Nevertheless, I relish the chance to go back and see this brand new ‘unrestored’ 70mm print because it recreates what audiences saw on release, no remastering, re-edits or redone effects.

The film absolutely holds up against present day efforts (one of the few remotely like it is Nolan’s Interstellar/2014). In its day, 2001’s visual effects were far superior to anything previously seen in science fiction and although cinema effects technology has moved on considerably, this aspect of the film remains convincing.

However, the visual effects are far from being the strongest aspect of the film which was conceived by director Kubrick with SF author Arthur C.Clarke. The plot is deceptively simple. (Skip the rest of this paragraph to avoid spoilers if you’ve never seen the film.) A monolith (sides ratio: 1:4:9) appears on Earth and inspires primitive apes to make weapons, it reappears thousands of years later in the Tycho crater on the Moon and after being excavated unexpectedly sends a one-off transmission to Jupiter. So mankind sends a space mission to Jupiter, but the ship’s on board computer malfunctions and attempts to kill the crew. The one surviving astronaut undergoes a journey which culminates in his going through the door of the monolith and emerging as a gigantic star child.

Considering the magnitude of the themes involved here, it’s surprising how dull or banal much of the movie is. If this sounds like negative criticism, I don’t mean it in that sense. The film’s execution is never dull or banal, rather much of its subject matter is dullness or banality. Hitchcock once described drama as “life with the dull bits cut out”; Kubrick’s genius in 2001 is that he forces us to watch these dull bits. And they make for compelling viewing.

Thus there are scenes of apes gathering at a watering hole or huddling underneath rock ledges at night against the cold. There are scenes of a flight to the moon via an intermediary space station when a jump cut could have taken us straight there in terms of plot. There’s a briefing in a conference room at Tycho where Dr Haywood Floyd (William Sylvester) addresses fellow scientists about cover stories and the need for secrecy from which the film cuts away just before telling us (a scene we never see) what he knows about the object excavated in the crater. There are hours of the two man crew Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) – there are actually five crew, but three are in hibernation – and the HAL 9000 computer (voice: Douglas Rain) going about their daily routines aboard the Discovery One spaceship to Jupiter. There is the weird interstellar journey which plays out like an incomprehensible drug trip and, finally, the surviving astronaut’s emergence into a world of rooms in which eighteenth century furniture sits upon a grid of white squares lit up from below. It’s hard to find anything like any of this elsewhere in cinema, science fiction or otherwise.

Set against these scenes are moments of great import: an ape trying out as a club a bone found on the ground, a group of spacesuited astronauts on the moon overcome by sudden, unbearable noise from the monolith, a spacewalking Jupiter Mission astronaut struggling frantically after his breathing line has been cut and the heartbreaking disconnection of HAL one memory terminal at a time.

The wider panorama here contains unforgettable moments predicting the minutiae of space travel which may not have come true in the year 2001 but still feel like they could be just around the corner in 2018, the date of the film’s title notwithstanding. Take the celebrated sequence travelling to the space station. A sleeping Pan Am passenger’s pen floats in zero gravity, an air-hostess (or space-hostess) enters shot right way up and walks in a circle until her feet are above and her head below to walk out of shot upside-down, a rotating space ship slowly docks with a space station with which its rotation is in sync – all to the strains of Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz. And as testament to the incredible detail in the notoriously obsessive Kubrick’s intensive research, widescreen TVs on the backs of the seats inside the passenger cabin. Unremarkable today, but possibly little more than an idea on a drawing board somewhere in the TV manufacturing industry when the director built them into his film as something of a major coup.

If 2001 remains unchallenged as the greatest SF film of all time, there is however one aspect in which it has aged badly overall. Aside from the group of four Russian scientists with whom Dr. Floyd has a conversation, three of whom are women, it’s notable that women aren’t given any real position of prominence in 2001 – hostesses and receptionists plus a handful of minor/secondary scientists characters – and that’s it. If Kubrick and Clarke were alive and writing the film today, I’d like to think that’s something they might change. Otherwise, though, 2001 could have been made yesterday and seeing it in this brand new 70mm print is a real treat.

2001: A Space Odyssey (70mm) is back out in the UK on Friday, May 18th. Watch the film trailer below: