1980 Week: American Gigolo

          American Gigolo represents an important bridge between the anything-goes ethos of the ’70s and the style-over-substance extremes of the ’80s. Written and directed by Paul Schrader, whose crucially important contributions to the groundbreaking aesthetics of the New Hollywood include scripting Taxi Driver (1976), this sleek but slow-moving crime drama is half character study and half murder mystery. The former aspect of the picture is infinitely more interesting than the latter. By depicting and dissecting the life of high-priced male prostitute Julian Kaye (Richard Gere), Schrader explores male fantasies of conquest, power, and virility while also illustrating the ways that seeking social status and wealth can drive people to compromise—or even abandon—principles. There’s a certain electric charge to watching Gere, at the apex of his youthful handsomeness, cruising around the chicest neighborhoods of Los Angeles in an expensive convertible while decked out in perfectly tailored Giorgio Armani ensembles as he moves from one surreptitious tryst to another. Julian isn’t some brainless stud, after all; quite to the contrary, he’s a sophisticate with an ear for language and an eye for art. Seeing as how Julian also finds time for a personal love affair with the beautiful wife of a powerful politician, his life has more than a little bit of forbidden-fruit appeal, and that’s just the effect Schrader obviously wants.

          The structure of the film tracks a slow unraveling of Julian’s façade, because once Julian becomes a suspect in the murder of one of his clients, the speed with which colleagues and friends and abandon him is alarming. Turns out the only thing holding Julian’s life together was his ability to avoid unwanted attention from authorities. Alas, while there’s a powerful melodrama buried somewhere inside American Gigolo, Schrader becomes his own worst enemy, both as writer and director. In terms of narrative, Schrader smothers the story with murky subplots. Among other things, the movie explores the power struggle between a madam for whom Julian works regularly and a pimp for whom Julian periodically “tricks.” Additionally, the film explores lurid fringes of Julian’s world by depicting S&M-infused encounters and by dramatizing the availability of quick cash for servicing male clients, a challenge for the heterosexual Julian. By the end of American Gigolo, the story has become convoluted and episodic, a problem exacerbated by the underdeveloped characterization of Julian’s lover.

          In terms of filmmaking, Schrader lets the surfaces of the movie do s lot of the heavy lifting. From Armani’s clothes to John Bailey’s stylized photography to Giorgio Moroder’s disco/New Wave score, American Gigolo anticipates the superficiality of the MTV era. Even the leading performances are plasticine. Gere tries to hit angsty notes but ends up doing more posing than performing, and Hutton is little more than a well-groomed mannequin. (On the plus side, Bill Duke is formidable as Julian’s scheming pimp, and Hector Elizondo is amusing as a dogged police detective.) Still, there’s no question that American Gigolo left a mark on popular culture, elevating Armani and Gere to stardom and giving Blondie a No. 1 hit with the film’s theme song, “Call Me.”

American Gigolo: FUNKY

Hardcore (1979)

          There are some deeply flawed movies whose intentions I admire so much that I view the pictures more favorably than I probably should. Paul Schrader’s sophomore directorial effort, Hardcore, is one such film. A tough exploration of horrific subject matter that Schrader approaches with intellectual rigor and moral complexity, Hardcore is frequently sublime. However, Schrader writes himself into several corners, and the second half of the picture meanders on the way toward an unsatisfying final scene. Yet even in its murkiest stretches, the film has instants of tremendous power—so, for instance, the finale is disturbing and exciting until the movie falls apart its final frames. Plus, the overall story is enough to turn even the strongest stomach. After his teenaged daughter disappears from a church trip to California, a Midwestern father hires a private detective, who discovers the young woman has become an actress in grimy underground porno films; once the detective’s efforts flounder, the father goes undercover in the porno world, posing as a producer, in order to find someone who knows his daughter’s whereabouts.

          Schrader pulled many elements of the story from his own life, making the picture feel deeply personal. Like Schrader, the family at the center of the movie is from the Calvinist community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a milieu defined by hard work, stringent religious practice, and the repression of primal urges. Schrader’s protagonist, Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott), runs a successful manufacturing business, so he has the resources to mount an intensive search. Jake is presented as a walking embodiment of rectitude, his properness manifesting in everything from crisp diction to natty clothing. The contrast between Jake and scumbag PI Andy Mast (Peter Boyle) is bracing, but that’s only the start of Jake’s trip down the rabbit hole. Eventually, this devout man finds himself wearing gold chains, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and a wig while “auditioning” male porn actors who insist on showing him their equipment.

          The most impressive aspect of Hardcore is Schrader’s depiction of Jake’s skin-trade education; in the course of learning what he needs to pursue his investigation, Jake encounters every ugly thing about humanity from which his religion previously shielded him. Thanks to Scott’s precisely modulated performance, it’s sickening to watch this virtuous man slip into a quagmire of exploitation. Considerably less effective is the relationship Schrader creates between Jake and Niki (Season Hubley), a prostitute who serves as his guide through the porn world. The pointed exchanges these characters have about relative morality slow the movie down—even though, on a thematic level, these scenes represent the core of Schrader’s narrative. Working with cinematographer Michael Chapman, a master at creating eerily atmospheric lighting, and composer Jack Nitzsche, whose powerful score features everything from the ethereal sound of the saw to the thumping grooves of seedy funk, Schrader creates vivid worlds with every frame of Hardcore. Even at this early stage of his directorial career, one could see the tendency of the director to reach beyond his grasp, but it’s hard to criticize an artist for aspiring to greatness.

Hardcore: GROOVY

The Yakuza (1974)

          Director Sydney Pollack took a lot of critical flack for shoehorning love stories into movies that couldn’t organically contain them, as if he wanted to sprinkle the fairy dust of his breakthrough hit The Way We Were (1973) onto every subsequent project. It’s a fair complaint, especially when one considers a Pollack film such as The Yakuza, which suffers from narrative bloat—the film’s romantic subplots are handled with intelligence and taste, but they’re borderline superfluous. That said, it seems ungallant to gripe about a director who endeavored to invest all of his pictures with as much grown-up human feeling as possible. So perhaps it’s best to regard The Yakuza as an embarrassment of riches: Nearly everything in the movie is interesting, even though Pollack regularly forgets what sort of film he’s trying to make.

          At its best, the picture is a tough gangster story with an exotic setting; at its worst, The Yakuza is a sensitive drama about a man in late life reconnecting with a lost love. So while action funs may find the touchy-feely stuff dull, and while viewers more interested in the heartfelt material may be turned off by the bloody bits, watching the disparate elements fight for dominance is fascinating.

          Based on an original script by Leonard Schrader, who lived in Japan for some time, and his celebrated brother, Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader, The Yakuza went through the usual Pollack-supervised rewrite routine, getting a credited overhaul from A-lister Robert Towne (as well as, presumably, uncredited tinkering by others). The convoluted story revolves around Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum), an aging WWII vet asked to perform a favor for his old friend, George Tanner (Brian Keith). George has gotten into trouble with the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), so he needs Harry, who knows Japanese culture, to smooth out relations. Harry travels to Japan with George’s hotheaded young associate, Dusty (Richard Jordan), and coordinates with a former Yakuza member, Ken Tanaka (Ken Takakura). Harry’s crew stumbles into a complicated war between American and Japanese criminals, and also between various Yakuza factions. Meanwhile, Harry reconnects with Eiko (Keiko Kishi), the Japanese woman he loved while he was stationed in Japan during WWII. Both obviously want to pick up where they left off, but their relationship is complicated by ancient traditions and surprising family ties.

          Describing the plot doesn’t do The Yakuza any favors, since the story doesn’t “work” in a conventional sense; the narrative is far too muddled and tonally inconsistent. Nonetheless, The Yakuza offers rewards for patient viewers. The performances are uniformly poignant, with Mitchum’s world-weariness setting the downbeat tone. Jordan and Keith complement him with macho brashness; Kishi and Takakura are quietly soulful; and Herb Edelman, playing an old friend of Harry’s, offers a sweet quality of peacenik anguish. James Shigeta is terrific, too, in a handful of scenes as Ken’s tightly wound brother. Melding his signature classicism with uniquely Japanese textures, such as highly formalized framing, Pollack and cinematographer Kôzô Okazaki fill the screen with artistry and color. Plus, the movie introduced America viewers to a bloody Yakuza ritual that will linger with you long after the movie ends—ouch!

The Yakuza: GROOVY

Old Boyfriends (1979)

Old Boyfriends is a painfully dull movie made by a number of people who should have known better. Screenwriting brothers Leonard Schrader and Paul Schrader, who are best known separately and apart for making dark dramas with complicated male protagonists, ventured way outside their comfort zones to create this unconvincing story about a troubled young woman working through an identity crisis by tracking down her exes. Talia Shire, who was at this point in her career embarking on a series of shockingly unsuccessful star vehicles in between appearing in Rocky sequels, delivers what can only be described as a non-performance. Bland to the extreme of barely registering on camera, she alternates between moping, whining, and fading into the woodwork while other actors do all the heavy lifting. Also, there’s a reason first-time director Joan Tewksbury, best known as the screenwriter of Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), gravitated to television after this movie tanked; her inability to generate and sustain interest is stunning. Even the movie’s score is misguided, because composer David Shire contributes music so gloomy and overwrought you’d think he was generating accompaniment for a Holocaust saga. What little notoriety Old Boyfriends has probably stems from John Belushi’s appearance in a supporting role. (Shire’s character visits two exes, played by Richard Jordan and Belushi, before visiting the younger brother, played by Keith Carradine, of a third ex.) Belushi incarnates a dramatic riff on his Animal House character of an obnoxious man-child, and the meanness he channels into his performance almost brings the movie to life for a while. He also sings “Jailhouse Rock,” just a year before he performed the same song in The Blues Brothers. Alas, Shire’s vapidity and the script’s contrived rhythms prevent even the Belushi scenes from soaring. In fact, nearly the only segment of movie that really works is a fun but peripheral bit with Buck Henry as a laconic private eye.

Old Boyfriends: LAME

Obsession (1976)

          Director Brian De Palma borrowed heavily from Alfred Hitchcock’s filmmaking style for Sisters (1973), a perverse story about murderous twins that featured a score by Hitchcock’s best composer, Bernard Hermann. So it was no surprise that a few years later, after the box-office failure of De Palma’s audacious musical fantasy Phantom of the Paradise, the director returned to the crowd-pleasing milieu of Hitchcockian suspense. In fact, De Palma took homage even further with Obsession, which borrows key themes from the Hitchcock masterpiece Vertigo (1958). So, by the time De Palma layered in old-school glamour photography (by the great Vilmos Zsigmond) and another moody score by Hermann, Obsession became a virtual copy of Hitchcock’s style, updated for the ’70s with a heightened level of sexual transgression and technical sophistication. Thus, while Obsession is an arresting movie, any appraisal must be somewhat muted given its overtly derivative nature—it’s merely a fine achievement in emulation.

          Written by the formidable Paul Schrader (from an original story he and De Palma concocted together), Obsession tells the tragic tale of New Orleans businessman Michael Courtland (Cliff Roberts0n). During a harrowing prologue set in 1958, Courtland’s wife and daughter are kidnapped and held for ransom. Bending to advice from police, Courtland delivers blank paper instead of the cash the kidnappers requested, so the kidnappers flee with Courtland’s loved ones. A police chase ensues, at the end of which the hostages and the kidnappers are killed. The story then cuts to the present day, when Courtland has rebuilt his life but never forgotten the traumas of the past—quite to the contrary, as the movie’s title suggests, Courtland is preoccupied with his dead wife and child. So when he encounters a young woman named Sandra (Geneviève Bujold) who is a living replica of his dead wife, Courtland seizes a chance at reclaiming happiness—he woos Sandra and tries to mold her in the image of the wife he lost. Alas, history repeats when Sandra is kidnapped under circumstances recalling the earlier crime. How Courtland responds to this crisis, and what he discovers while doing so, takes the story down a path only De Palma and Schrader would be nervy enough to explore.

          As in most twisty thrillers, the plotting of Obsession isn’t necessarily the strong suit—the storyline is predicated on people making foolish decisions, after all—so what makes the picture effective is its insidious mood. Zsigmond imbues images with haze and shadows that embody the story’s psychological implications, and nobody uses music to create a menacing environment better than Hermann. De Palma contributes elements including elegantly probing camera moves and an appropriately suffocating degree of nonstop intensity. (De Palma also showcases supporting player John Lithgow, in one of his first major film roles.) Bujold and Robertson wisely underplay early scenes depicting their characters’ modern-day courtship, since each character hides dark secrets, and later, they both do well portraying people subject to the cruel vicissitudes of fate. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

Obsession: GROOVY

Rolling Thunder (1977)

          Based one of the many violent scripts Paul Schrader penned during his breakthrough period (Heywood Gould rewrote the screenplay), Rolling Thunder concerns Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane), a Vietnam vet who returns home to Texas after years in P.O.W. captivity. Numbed by torture, Rane has difficulty reintegrating into normal life, a problem exacerbated by the fact that his son doesn’t remember him and by the fact that his wife, who thought Rane was dead, is now engaged to another man. Thus, when thugs murder Rane’s family and mutilate him, Rane focuses his anger into a bloody revenge mission. Considering that Rane also has a hook for a hand throughout most of the movie, this is awfully pulpy stuff. Had Rolling Thunder been produced by, say, Roger Corman instead of Lawrence Gordon—who was just beginning a long career making smart, big-budget action flicks—the film could have become gruesome and sleazy.

          Instead, Gordon recruited sophisticated collaborators including director John Flynn, cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, and composer Barry DeVorzon, and the team created a thriller of unusual restraint. Rolling Thunder is a character-driven slow burn, because the film spends as much time depicting the hero’s devastated mental state as it does showcasing his lethal force. So, while generating tension is always the priority—witness several bloody brawls, as well as the unforgettable scene in which bad guys jam Rane’s hand into a kitchen-sink garbage disposal—Gordon’s team also makes room for nuance.

          For instance, the visual style that Cronenweth employs, which anticipates the tasty mixture of deep shadows and piercing beams of light that he later brought to Blade Runner (1982), is a strong presence—it’s as if the movie’s characters swim through an ocean of danger and menace. Furthermore, the Gould/Schrader script features terse dialogue exchanges that reflect Rane’s anguished mindset.

          Playing one of his few leading roles in a big theatrical feature, Devane is perfect casting. With his downturned mouth and heavy brow, he looks bitter even when he’s smiling, so once his eyes are hidden behind the aviator glasses he wears in many scenes, he seems believably dangerous; the sight of him in full bloodthirsty flight, a sawed-off shotgun in one hand and a hook in place of the other, is hard to shake.

          Flynn surrounds Devane with equally well-chosen supporting players. Linda Haynes is naturalistic and tough as a waitress who becomes Rane’s travelling companion; reliable figures including Luke Askew, James Best, and Dabney Coleman infuse small roles with texture; and Tommy Lee Jones nearly steals the movie with his icy performance as Rane’s trigger-happy sidekick. In fact, Jones’ chilling delivery of the line “I’m going to kill a bunch of people” epitomizes the film’s clinical aesthetic, just like the priceless scene of Jones enduring inane family-room chatter crystallizes why some vets find it impossible to adjust once they’re “back in the world.” (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Rolling Thunder: GROOVY

Blue Collar (1978)

          After making his name with the incendiary screenplay for Taxi Driver (1976), Paul Schrader capitalized on his Hollywood heat by setting up his directorial debut, Blue Collar. (Schrader co-wrote the script with his brother, Leonard, from source material by Sydney A. Glass.) A tough morality play about corruption worming its way through an auto company and the labor union supposedly protecting the company’s workers, Blue Collar echoes the 1954 classic On the Waterfront, but it has an unmistakably ’70s patina of drugs, racial tension, sex, and vulgarity.

          The story follows three friends whose frustration with their working conditions at an auto plant reaches a boiling point when they realize their disreputable union reps are making side deals with management. The trio breaks into the union office, hoping to steal several thousand dollars they believe is hidden there, but all they get is petty cash. And that’s when the story gets really interesting: Union officials claim tens of thousands of dollars were stolen, setting an insurance-settlement scam in motion, so the workers-turned-thieves realize they have an opportunity to blackmail their oppressors. How this bold maneuver affects the three men leads to a climax of unusual complexity and intensity.

          Considering this was his first movie, Schrader is remarkably assured behind the camera, using a classical camera style that’s neither showy nor timid; abetted by cinematographer Bobby Byrne, Schrader gives the picture a look as gritty as the assembly line on which the main characters labor every day. The blues-inflected soundtrack, including original music by the great Jack Nitzsche, suits the material perfectly, and in fact the whole movie feels like a raw soul record come to life: When characters sit around a local dive, swigging beer and bitching about their troubles, Blue Collar offers a window into a secret world.

          Yet Schrader’s two-fisted storytelling would be for naught if the movie lacked powerhouse performances, and, luckily, the three leads deliver. Yaphet Kotto, working his singular mix of blazing anger and world-weary sarcasm, is compelling in every scene. Harvey Keitel, slickly translating his Noo Yawk edge to a volatile Midwestern vibe, is equally potent as the conscience of the group. And Richard Pryor is explosive, leaving any idea that he’s merely a funnyman in the dust. Never this good in a movie before or afterward, he channels deep veins of indignation and resentment into an unforgettable characterization. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

Blue Collar: RIGHT ON

Taxi Driver (1976)

          “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” That snippet of voiceover, an excerpt from the apocalyptic interior monologue of New York City cabbie Travis Bickle, gets to the heart of what makes Taxi Driver so intense: Instead of simply throwing a monster onscreen for lurid spectacle, the psychologically provocative drama takes us deep inside a man who does monstrous things for reasons he considers unassailably virtuous. As brilliantly realized by director Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader’s astonishing script introduces viewers to Vietnam vet Travis (Robert De Niro), an insomniac loner cruising the nighttime streets of the city within the self-imposed prison of a metal coffin on four wheels. His unique vantage point exposes him to the worst the city has to offer, the junkies and pimps and psychos, so his PTSD and whatever else is cooking inside his troubled brain compel him toward a “righteous” mission with a body count. Disturbing but mesmerizing, Travis’ journey is a profound exploration of the ennui chewing at the outer edges of America’s collective unconscious.
          The story elements are simple but audacious. Travis becomes preoccupied with two women, a polished campaign worker named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and an underage prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster). So disassociated that he can’t remember how to relate to people normally, Travis takes Betsy on an excruciatingly awful date to a low-rent porno movie, and presents himself as Iris’ savior even though she doesn’t believe she needs to be saved. Zeroing in on men he perceives as enemies, Travis targets Betsy’s politician boss and Iris’ pimp, leading our “hero” to arm himself for battle with an arsenal of illegal handguns. By the time Travis sits alone in his apartment, practicing his quick-draw with a cannon-sized pistol and a shoulder holster while delivering his infamous “You talkin’ to me?” soliloquy, viewers know they’ve been drawn into a nightmare.
          Scorsese’s camerawork and dramaturgy are extraordinary, infusing scenes with lived-in reality while never departing from the dreamlike stylization that makes Taxi Driver feel like a horrific fable; with the heavy shadows of Michael Chapman’s photography and the pulsing waves of Bernard Hermann’s insidious score, Scorsese achieves something like cinematic alchemy. In front of the camera, De Niro gives a selfless performance that channels Schrader’s vision of a lost soul who can’t differentiate idealism from insanity, becoming a figure of almost otherworldly menace. As the opposite ends of Travis’ imagined romantic spectrum, Foster nails the ephemeral idea of a jaded innocent, while Shepherd’s chilly inaccessibility is perfectly fitting. Comedian Albert Brooks provides helpful levity as Betsy’s coworker, Peter Boyle adds worldliness as one of Travis’ fellow cabbies, Harvey Keitel lends seedy color as Iris’ pimp, and Scorsese appears in a startling cameo that illustrates how deeply he saw into the meaning of this allegorical phantasmagoria.
          A breakthrough for everyone involved, Taxi Driver plays out like the anguished cry of a society in need of deliverance, filtered through the twisted worldview of someone damaged and discarded by that very society.

Taxi Driver: OUTTA SIGHT

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

          Steven Spielberg’s second career-defining megahit in a row, following 1975’s Jaws, is in some ways an even more extraordinary demonstration of his gifts than its predecessor, because for much of the film Spielberg has to create excitement around unseen phenomena. Utilizing an arsenal of camera tricks, sophisticated special effects, and pure storytelling wizardry, Spielberg manufactures a vivid sensation that something unprecedented is unfolding, which generates relentless tension as viewers wait for the payoff. And then, in the jaw-dropping finale, he unleashes an onslaught of visual spectacle so overpowering that it justifies all the intense foreshadowing. One of the few films for which Spielberg received sole screenwriting credit, Close Encounters grew out of the director’s fascination with the idea of extraterrestrial life, and more specifically the idea of what might happen upon first contact between humankind and beings from another world.

          Although this subject had already been explored in countless films and TV shows, Spielberg approached the concept with such reverence that Close Encounters remains the definitive movie of its type, even though it’s really just a feature-length prelude to an unknown adventure that happens after the closing credits. Abetted by a masterful production team, Spielberg shapes the story (to which writers including Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, and Paul Schrader made significant but uncredited contributions) to include meticulous detail extrapolated from reports of real-life UFO sightings, as well as a plausible illustration of how the world’s military and scientific communities might react in the event of “close encounter,” to say nothing of imaginative depictions of how aircraft flown by outer-space visitors might manifest.

          Tying the film together is the character of Roy Neary (Schrader’s invention, according to some reports), an everyman who becomes obsessed with finding the truth after his pickup truck has an astonishing run-in with an alien craft. Richard Dreyfuss plays Neary to wrenching effect, depicting how the character’s quest for facts is a desperate need to prove he hasn’t gone insane—and a search for personal identity greater than that of an anonymous working stiff. Melinda Dillon and Teri Garr, as the two women in his life, provide earnest counterpoint and sharp comic relief, respectively, while Bob Balaban and iconic French filmmaker Francois Truffaut stand out among the scientific types who cross Neary’s path. Close Encounters includes some of the most exciting scenes Spielberg ever filmed, like Dillon and Dreyfuss busting through a military barrier to reach the natural wonder of Devils Tower in Wyoming, and it also features some of the funniest, like Dreyfuss’ experiments with a mound of mashed potatoes. So while Close Encounters is not for every taste (some fret the ending doesn’t go far enough, others complain it goes way too far), it’s a remarkable experience for those who, like Neary, want to believe.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: OUTTA SIGHT