The Conversation

When one thinks of the great movies of the seventies and there were many The Conversation does not often come to mind. In fact this was not even a movie I was aware of until recently when it appeared in reference to a few other movies that I have watched.

The Conversation was the baby of Francis Ford Coppola. Fresh off his Godfather success Coppola wrote, produced, and directed this psychological thriller starring Gene Hackman.

Hackman plays Harry Caul a surveillance expert who according to one of his peers is " the best bugger on the West Coast." Through the movie we learn that a recording that Caul did years ago led the deaths of a rat in the Teamsters union as well as that mans family. He lives with that guilt. Most of what he does in his career are of the typical insurance scam, cheating spouses sort of thing but as the movie begins we see Caul and his crew performing a unique surveillance.

Two people Bernie Moran, played by Frederic Forest and a woman known only as Ann, played by Cindy Williams, yes that Cindy Williams of Laverne and Shirley fame, are walking around a public square having a conversation. The Conversation is about that conversation and it's effects on all the people. John Cazale plays Caul's assistant. Cazale soon on his way to dieing of cancer and fresh off his role as Frodo in The Godfather was, even in a small role, magnificent.

Hackman again plays an everyman. This is not some suave, debonair, spy. This is a rumpled, balding, eyeglass wearing, everyman who lives in a small nondescript apartment, obsessed with privacy and security and who when he gets home the first thing he does is take off his pants and spend his evening in his boxers. No Harry Caul will never be confused with James Bond.


When preparing the tapes for his buyer Caul becomes concerned that these tapes may lead to someone's murder. Hearing Bernie say to Laurie as they walk around the square that " he would kill us if he could" he becomes sure that his client might do just that. With his past experience this sends Harry into a state of controlled panic. What we learn as the movie progresses is that what you think you hear is often not what you hear and the results of misinterpretation are sometimes much more severe than one might think.

Also starring in this movie are a young Terri Carr and an even younger Harrison Ford along with an uncredited performance by Robert Duvall. Still the movie is Hackman's from beginning to end, a tour de force performance, with Hackman a little more out there than his normal role.


Not quite the movie I expected but certainly one that I would reccomend.

The Rain People

The Rain People is a 1969 movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Perhaps best known as a vehicle for future superstars James Caan, Robert Duvall, and as assistant director George Lucas the movie was a moderate success.

Starring Shirley Knight as Natalie Ravenna a young housewife unsure of what she wants in life. Upon finding out that she is pregnant she takes off on a trip, one that soon becomes a cross country trek. Her husband is none too pleased.

Along the way she picks up a hitchhiker named Jimmy Kilgannon. Nicknamed Killer, Jimmy is an ex college football player who has been injured and suffered brain damamge from repeated blows to the head. Played effectively by Caan he has been given a thousand dollars and told to leave school. We never learn the real specifics of what happened to Jimmy but from the flashbacks in his memory ( that we see ) it appears that he stayed on at school, doing odd jobs, raking leaves and such but eventually has been asked to leave.

Soon after she picks him up Natalie realizes that Jimmy, " Killer", cannot take care of himself. She is struggling with her own identity issues however and does not feel like she can or frankly wants to take care of him. After attempting to find him a job as a laborer for an odd pet shop she realizes she cannot leave him, the man only want to take the boys money and use him for slave wages.

Eventually Natalie runs afoul of a local law officer and things get even stranger. Robert Duvall plays a police officer that has his whole own set of issues.

How these people, connect, interconnect and affect each other's lives makes for an interesting movie. Not much more. It is not a great movie, it struggles to be good but Caan and Duvall are interesting in these early roles.

Hemingway and Gellhorn

This HBO biopoc centers on the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn was a magazine writer for Collier's in the late thirties and early forties, this being the time when magazine writers for these magazines were well known.

Meeting in Spain during the Spanish Civil War when she was writing for Colliers and Hemingway was gaining inspiration for what became his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway at the time was married but that did not prevent them from falling together. Over the next few years there relationship was one of fire. They covered the war in Spain, then the war in China. Later after they were married and with their relationship fracturing Hemingway got himself hired with Collier's, essentially taking his wife, Gellhorn's, job. Eventually Gellhorn stowed away on a medical ship and beat Hemingway to the front.

The relationship between the two is interesting, and I clearly love the writing of Hemingway but for me the stronger appeal of the movie was the scenes with the characters in Spain, China, the beaches of France and later in Germany.

Spain, always an interesting story for me. The communists were the freedom fighters, the fascists were helped by Franco and yet clearly the Americans were ambivalent at best about the outcome of the war. When Hemingway and Gellhorn met with Eleanor and later Franklin Roosevelt to extoll the cause of the freedom fighters they were believed to be fellow travelers.

The downside of this movie for me were the sex scenes. Clive Owen did a fine job as Hemingway. Nicole Kidman is attractive but some of these scenes were over the top. We are made to understand that the relationship is fiery and passionate, that they fight as hard as they love. I do not know that seeing Owen thrusting and Kidman naked is necessary. I am not a prude I just thought it was a little gratuitous.

The cast is stellar. Robert Duvall gives a magnificent performance as a Russian General, and Parker Posey plays Hemingway's soon to be divorced wife.

Watching the movie, one of Hemingway's cronies, Joris reminded me of the drummer from Metallica. That is what I said to myself, the dog, whoever was in the room. After the movie I looked it up and saw that it was Lars Ulrich. I had no idea that he acted.

Other notables in the movie Tony Shalhoub, Joan Chen As Madame Chiang ( a small but stunning performance) and Peter Coyote.

Worth ones time, wonderfully filmed. The problem is not with the movie, it was what it purported to be, I wanted it to be less about the relationship and more about the life and history they touched. Still a good movie

Bullitt

This iconic movie is well known for it's car chase scene. Considered one of the , if not the best, car chase scene ever placed on film it has out shined what was a very good movie.

Steve McQueen was known as The King of Cool. The title may have changed hands in the decades since his death but he still is one of the leading contenders. When I was a young boy, still in the single digit years I had no real knowledge of who Steve McQueen was, I certainly had not seen his movies. I did know though that he made movies and he was cool. His spot in the culture was so big that somehow it drifted down to a young boy like me, perhaps from my older brother, perhaps from other sources. Steve McQueen was a cultural icon.

In this movie he plays Frank Bullitt, a San Fransisco police lieutenant given the task of protecting a mob informant the weekend before he testifies. Nothing goes as planned, the police officer protecting him is overpowered, the witness is shot and eventually dies but all is not as it seems. Frank Bullitt over the course of the movie solves the case but not before several people are dead. The movie has several actors that we came to know later. Norman Fell, who long before being Mr. Roper was a well known character actor in many films. Vic Tayback, later well known as Mel in the Alice movie and television series also appears.

I pointed out to my sons that the actor playing Senator Chalmers the ambitious politician driving the case against the witness was played by Robert Vaughn. For the current generation at least here in Maine, Robert Vaughn shills for Joe Bornstein advising us to tell our potential plaintiffs that we mean business. Most notably appearing beside McQueen is a young Robert Duvall in a small role as a cab driver who provides some information to the Lieutenant. From small parts big careers develop.

The movie is all McQueen however. His ability to express himself with a look or a stare and usually with as few words as possible was well honed by this time. His collarless shirts with a nice jacket were a style that he put in place and that was copied not just by hipsters but suburban Dads trying to be cool. McQueen's image has lasted for several reasons. He was cool. He died young so we never saw him grow old and he in the sixties, a very culturally crazy time, was one of the few entertainment icons who could appeal to both sides of the emerging divide between young and old.

The car chase is great, the movie is good, but McQueen was immense. He filled the screen. He was The King of Cool.

Apocalypse Now

I have heard many references to this 1979 film by Francis Ford Coppola. The story tells of Special Operations Agent Willard played by Martin Sheen. Willard is assigned the job of journeying up river into Cambodia, not a war zone at the time, and terminating a renegade Colonel who has established his own independent fighting unit of native tribesman.Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, hovers over the movie.

As the story is set in Vietnam I was not aware that the film is based on the Conrad novel Heart of Darkness. Certainly however it does fit, the scene and century is different but the tail of going up river in a hostile area to find a white man gone power mad with locals as his army is one that transfers.

As Willard starts on his mission he meets interesting characters played by Robert Duvall and others including a very young Laurence Fishburne.

When he arrives far enough into Cambodia to reach the Colonel's stronghold he is allowed entry. There he meets a hopped up photographer played by Dennis Hopper, played very authentically I might add and eventually is brought into the presence of Kurtz.

Brando first appears on screen with his face hidden. His impact on the movie is severe. Though he appears in a limited way over the last quarter of the movie only, knowing that he will be in the movie makes one wait for the moment. Head shaved, voice a rasp Kurtz spins tales and lessons, soliloquy's only he understands.

At the movie's climax Sheen and the one survivor of his crew leave the village with Kurtz last words of " The horror, the horror" ringing in their ears.

I thought this was a good movie, but not a great one. Still some of the scenes are iconic and deservedly so. Brando was an amazing actor and Sheen does not overact in his role, in many ways his voice is in the narration advances the story as much as his actions on the screen.

Tender Mercies

Being a big fan of Robert Duvall I was glad to Tivo this. My wife and I watched this early one morning. Duvall who won Best Actor plays Mac Sledge a former Country Singer who wakes up in a small room at a gas station/hotel and finds his partner has left him behind. He eventually convinces the owner a young widow named Rosa Lee to let him work for his keep and as time passes they slowly develop a relationship that leads to his asking her to marry him.

Being fifteen years her junior she has a young son and the two develop a relationship. Eventually his ex wife a still successful country singer and her agent played by Betty Buckley and Wilford Brimley as well as his eighteen year old daughter played by Ellen Barkin.

I told my wife that not much happened in the movie but it was very enjoyable. One of the qualities of the movies was its strong sense of time and place, you feel like you are in Texas in the hill country perhaps best described by Robert Caro in his descriptions of the youth of LBJ.

A very good movie. Duvall is one of our better actors.