Reviews

Prisoner-fans take note, if you haven't already. This film reunites Prisoner star Patrick McGoohan with frequent Prisoner player Alexis Kanner. This undoubtedly started as one of those "concept movie projects". Get a load of this story: Charismatic, histrionic ex-actor turned Montreal radio talk-show host John Kingsley (Patrick McGoohan) is held hostage in his own private luxury radio-studio by a group of crusaders who want an on-the-air retrial of a man they feel was wrongly convicted and oversentenced at that, kidnapping the original judge who tried the first trial and detaining him elsewhere, then designating the listening audience as the phone-in jury. When I first read this description on the back of the video cover at a Pittsburgh flea-market circa 2001, I put down my two dollars because I was instantly hooked and intrigued. McGoohan's involvement certainly didn't hurt the prospect of my purchase...and, hey hey hey, it was obscure! Just my cup of tea! Ha ha! So, I popped the tape into the VCR and the movie underwent the customary Hidden-Gem Test (the GHTs...funner than the SATs and GREs, and more efficient!). It passed in flying colors, but not in the way I would have ever predicted. Its execution was almost...otherworldly. The camera placement is sometimes highly unorthodox, the sound design highly experimental, the acting decidedly stylized, the editing complexly fragmentary and elliptical, the politics offbeat even in the left-wing sense of the word, the narrative progression delightfully perplexing. What an interesting, strange creature this film was to me...and still is! This is one of those movies that, as a cinephile, I became obsessed with for years after first seeing, and it was a mighty quest to learn as much as I could about it inception, conception and reception. It plays out like an experimental film in some stretches, and renders its hook/reel-in of a plot summary a curiously distinctive thriller with a nearly inimitable sense of voice. By voice, I mean camera voice, montage voice, narrative voice and even soundscape voice. That's a lot of voices there, and a lot of films do not even have one type of those uniquenesses. This is a motion picture that is difficult to describe to the fullest using just words. Kings and Desperate Men is definitively a thriller, without question. It uses the conventions and the narrative traditions of genre (e.g. the unstable captor, periodic showdowns between captor and captive, etc) but uses a flamboyant, barbed cinema language and a twisting dialogic verbiage, courtesy mostly of McGoohan's purposefully melodramatic portrayal of the lead, and elaborate use of the film-making's "plastic" elements to deliver to its audience something completely in opposition to other offerings of its genre.

The film had a scattered release. It was shot in the winter of late 1977, was screened once in Montreal in late 1978, was widely released in its native Canada three years later in 1981 after its struggle to find additional completion funds, was later re-released only in Canada in 1983, premiered at the London Film Festival in 1985 and then finally hit the United States over a full decade later in 1989. That is quite a history. The film was met with accolades at the London Film Festival, but only The Los Angeles Times gave the film good reviews in the U.S. In point of fact, The Los Angeles Times gave it glowing reviews. Most critics obtusely complained of McGoohan's overacting, and every major U.S. review I read was facile, fast and artless. It definitely says something when a critic's dismissals are coy and mirthless. Vis a vis McGoohan's so-called "overacting," that's the point, folks! It's not hard to get! The story itself unfolds by sheer virtue of his character's history as an ex-actor and the writer-director's statement is made via McGoohan's character's titanic "emceeing" of the events at hand. Look at the art direction. Theater posters from the character's past are prominently on display. The film, when all is said and done, has a bold and (believe it or not) original message about media treatment of exploitable circumstance. I mean, the subject has been done before, but never like this. Again, all more I can really say is do your best to see it. It is only on VHS, but if you still have your VCR (if you are a real film fan and ditched yours, you are doing yourself no favors), I recommend tracking it down. In a post scriptum, I gave my copy to a friend to borrow. He definitely joined the film's micro-cult after seeing it. Rise to the occasion and join us!

I made a list on my blog of Hidden Gems, more obscure films that shouldn't fallen between the cracks. Dear Mr. Wonderful was #1 on that list. A rather unpredictable #1 pick, ay? Why does it occupy such an esteemed place on this list? Simple...because every time I see it, I am profoundly affected in every way: emotionally, intellectually and even spiritually, and without even a single sign of manipulation or pandering from the creators. Peter Lilienthal, one of the more low-key directors of the New German Cinema movement who helmed the highly regarded Holocaust film David (1979), is one of many mid-to-high profile European directors who came to the United States to direct a film about the American experience from an "outsider's perspective". Others who have attempted this include Wenders (with Paris, Texas), Herzog (with Stroszek), Antonioni (with Zabriskie Point) and Renoir (with The Southerner). What distinguishes this one from most of the others? Lilienthal, it would seem, is more of a humanist than a pedagogue or a weary romanticist, which were both traps many of the other directors had succumbed to. In effect, many of these "outsider films" ultimately become ponderous novelties and/or analytically specious.

Dear Mr. Wonderful is an exquisitely simple film, deliberately paced, more generous with thorough character development than most any other element, although Michael Ballhaus' camera-work, even in its shoddy video pan-and-scan, is certainly handsome. Pesci, in his first starring role after his success in Raging Bull, stars as Ruby Dennis, a Jewish working-class dreamer who owns a bowling alley where he croons Rat Pack-style songs in a lounge area adjacent to where people bowl. He writes and composes his own songs, then belts out old Sammy Cahn tunes with a drink in one hand and a cigarette he doesn't smoke in the other, and dreams of hitting the big-time as a Las Vegas headliner, which he seems to know down deep is a major pipe dream. Pesci's singing voice leaves something to be desired (that is certainly the point of it, however, although his songs are catchy and some like New York Times critic Janet Maslin have actually complemented Pesci's singing voice, so maybe I am the one who is off). It should be noted that Pesci, in real life, was a child singing star who released an album called "Little Joey Sings" (you can't make this stuff up). Ruby lives with his sister Paula (Karen Ludwig, who played Meryl Streep's partner in Manhattan) and her son Raymond (Evan Handler). He spends a great deal of screen time wooing a promising aspiring singer named Sharon (Ivy Ray Browning, who has a lovely voice). His bowling alley is in danger of closing. Credit is being withdrawn and equipment is being slowly taken away by loan sharks (led by Scorsese regular Frank Vincent) who have a very apparent distaste for the "singing kike" Ruby who is more consumed with his lounge-singing than concerned with running a business ("Tell them not to bowl in the outer lanes when I'm singing. Just tell them nicely, 'The man is singing.'") This is something else worthy of mention. Dear Mr. Wonderful has an unabashedly Jewish flavor, which is something to notice because of how refreshingly anomalous it seems, particularly in a day when explicitly Jewish voices were customarily being downplayed or downright eliminated in cinema here and abroad, lest there was a megastar involved or the Jewishness was the driving force or the subject of the given film. Here, in this film, it is part of a much broader canvas, a richer and more encompassing one. The film opens with a simultaneously good-humored and tense Passover seder sequence which rather immediately immerses and absorbs the viewer in the world of the movie. A fish swims around in a shallow bathtub and Pesci kills it with a baseball bat (offscreen) for dinner. In keeping with the alleged Jewish subtext, ultimately the film is also, unequivocally, a thoughtful, complex meditation on a Talmudic precept which states, "A rich man is he who is content with what he has" (which makes sense considering director Lilienthal's Orthodox Jewish background). This meditation is not simply on Ruby's character, but also on the character of Ruby's sister, who leaves her family behind to "save the world" through an underprivileged co-worker of hers, and through Ruby's nephew, who turns to snatching gold necklaces right off of the necks of ladies in the street. The film possesses that quiet kitchen-sink flavor, and the humor of the scenes always keeps you rooting for everyone, despite themselves. The New York City of the film, which I discuss in the respective blog entry, is one that is lost today (it should be noted that while there are plenty of NYC exteriors, a great deal of the interiors were shot in Germany).

One of the most heartbreaking movie scenes of the 1980's, in my opinion, and one where you can almost physically feel the character's humiliation, comes in Tony Martin's cameo. Real-life singer/actor Tony Martin comes to visit Ruby's Palace to listen to him sing, after his nephew Ray invites him via a letter earlier in the movie. I won't spoil the scene, but it's almost gut-wrenching, and the character's arc comes at such a moment of profound humiliation, followed by insult, followed by the most naked vulnerability. Every critic who reviewed the film mentions this scene as being among the most memorable of its era. And the film's ending...perfect understatement and a perfect open ending! I am not going to say any more about this film other than to see it and get back to me when you do. I have been dying to talk to someone about this one!