Every Corner Boy’s Dream, Getting Out From Under The Sign Of “From Hunger”-The Big Score -With Sterling Hayden’s “The Killing” In Mind

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A Very Look At The Native American (Indigenous People, If You Prefer) Experience In America-The Film Adaptation Of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last Of The Mohicans: A Narrative Of 1757 ” (1992)

A Very Look At The Native American (Indigenous People, If You Prefer) Experience In America-The Film Adaptation Of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last Of The Mohicans: A Narrative Of 1757 ” (1992)

DVD Review

By Alex Radley

The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis,  Madeleine Stowe, based loosely on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826 and an earlier film adaptation in 1936, 1992

I am grateful to Greg Green the site manager at this publication for giving me, a stringer, a chance to break into the film review department which these days according to him drives a lot of what goes on here. Greg approached me about doing a review of the film adaptation of James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last Of The Mohican since I was the only one he contacted that had not read the book and he did not want the political types around here like Frank Jackman, Seth Garth and Josh Breslin to get their hands on the thing and go on and on about the screwing of the Native Americans, the indigenous peoples who populated this continent way before the Spanish, English, French and who knows maybe the Russians staked claims to land not their own. To speak nothing of the later decimation once those bloody English colonists got their independence and went after those peoples hammer and tong. Didn’t want (and he told me to make sure I go this into the review) to hear about the destruction of the land, the trail of tears and the contemporary situation with the plight of the indigenous population although he was painfully aware since his ex-wife was part Lakota Sioux (the guys who gave General Custer all he could handle and more at Little Big Horn) that some terrible injustices have been done to those peoples. Also Greg did not want to hear (although he did not ask me to make a point of saying this so I am doing this on my own hook) about how James Fennimore Cooper knew nothing about Native Americans in upstate New York, except  maybe what he heard around the taverns that he reportedly frequented where he got whatever he knew about anything and used that to run the rack on a bunch of woodland gothic romance novels which would have embarrassed any Harlequin Publications romance novelist.

Since I qualified on all counts I got the nod, got the nod too when after viewing the film I mentioned to Greg (and to Sandy Salmon who I assume told Greg that I had not read the book because I don’t recall telling anybody else here that information when the question came up around the water cooler one morning) that I liked the film very much even if there was more gore and off-hand violence than necessary. He asked me to skip that observation but when I said it would be hard to write the review without mentioning that violence he said put it here before I got to give the reader the skinny and forget about it later. (I admit I am a rookie but I never heard the word “skinny” as a way to say tell the story before I landed here and I kept hearing an old guy, a bent over old guy who looked about one hundred years old named Sam Lowell, telling everybody he ran into about making sure that they did a good job on the “skinny.”)    

   

The whole film hinges on Hawkeye, played by versatile Daniel Day-Lewis, a white guy adopted by the last of the Mohicans, or who would become the last after his biological son was killed in a confrontation with another tribe, a tribal warrior, and Hawkeye’s abilities to keep a couple of daughters of the British commander at Fort William Henry alive during a year, 1757, of the big showdown between the French and English over who would control the continent. As we know it was touch and go between the two enemies, no quarter given. No quarter given especially by the French who outnumbered in the area of conflict upstate New York made alliances with some of the tribes in the area. Of course in the film there are the good Indians, the Mohicans even if destined to wither away, aiding the British and bad Indians, headed by ruthless savage Huron warrior prince Magua, a real bastard who I would not want to run into in a dark alley or out in the wilderness either.  

Leslie Dumont who knows some stuff told me that I should play this film up on the big romance between frontiersman Hawkeye and the older daughter, Cora, played by what Leslie called fetching Madeleine Stow, who despite about seven battles, a couple of massacres and plenty of blood wind up giving each other meaningful glances no matter what the situation (much to the chagrin of her main British officer suitor who will go to his death on the fire rack cursing her name-in French). I suppose you could see the film that way, a frontier, when the frontier was upstate New York not the West of later times, romance in the well-worn, according to Leslie, Hollywood trope of running a “boy meets girl” angle wherever possible to draw on the sympathies of the majority female audiences for such films while the blood is being spilled all around by ghastly tomahawks, knives, spears, guns, cannons and every other munition of war.

But to me what makes the film interesting is that thing that Greg warned me away from, the struggle for control of the continent up close and personal between the commander of the garrison, Colonel Munro, Cora’s father and French General Montcalm who would get his comeuppance on the Plains of Abraham up in Quebec and the English would win the big prize, and the hell with the Indians. I think maybe Frank and Seth, I don’t know Josh yet but I hear he is a character who has been around a while too were on to something trying to go with the “stolen land” angle I hope Greg doesn’t get too ticked off about that and I wind up sucking wind re-writing Sam’s pieces which they say is the “kiss of death” around here.      

When The World Was Fresh And Young And All Things Were Possible (Or So We Thought)-Ah, To Be Young Was Very Heaven-Ans Cat Steven’s Soundtrack Too-Ruth Gordon And Bud Cort’s “Harold And Maude” (1971)-A Film Review

When The World Was Fresh And Young And All Things Were Possible (Or So We Thought)-Ah, To Be Young Was Very Heaven-Ans Cat Steven’s Soundtrack Too-Ruth Gordon And Bud Cort’s “Harold And Maude” (1971)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

Harold and Maude, starring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, 1971

I have commented in the past, and a number of other commentators have as well most notably or publicly the late great Gonzo journalist Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, on when the 1960s ended. Meaning not 1969 or 1970 however you count decade-endings but the spirit, the wildness ride of the 1960s, the time when we variously sought a “newer world” in the expression of poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and “to be young was very heaven” in the words of poet William Wordsworth. Thompson himself put it at 1968 and the Democratic National Convention in bloody Chicago and I, for one, and I am not alone on this, called May Day, 1971, the day we tried, and failed, to shut down the government if it would not shut down the Vietnam War the ebb tide. Others have picked the horrific Rolling Stones concert at Altamont as the low tide and others have expressed other lesser events at the touchstone of the night of the long knives, the long night of fighting, these days seemingly daily rear-guard actions in the cultural wars burning a hole in this country, in America. All of this to say that the film under review, the now classic Harold and Maude, upon re-watching (after having seen it several times when it was a cheap no dough for big dinners date night ritual to go watch and re-watch the film when it first came out in 1971) seems very much a product of those times, a moment in those times and therefore dated. Dated not in a negative sense necessarily although some of the dialogue seems that way but very much rooted in the dying embers of the 1960s, the ebb tide previously mentioned.

       

I noted recently in a rare film review of the anti-fascist classic from 1945 starring Dick Powell Cornered, previously rare apparently since under the new Greg Green regime since here I am again, reviewing a classic of another sort, that generally I had been concerned with other types of commentary, mostly political and social, cultural if you will. Greg “drafted” me for this assignment with the understanding that since I had already seen the film when it came out and he wanted somebody to do a “then and now” piece as he called it, and as it is called in the business, in the film review business at least at his previous job as editor at American Film Gazette I was the logical choice. Neglecting the real logical choice Sam who actually reviewed the film in 1971 but who these days is in a knock down, drag out fight with young up and coming reviewer Sarah Lemoyne over a series of issues that need not detain us here. So I am second logical choice not only because I had seen (and re-seen) the film but because I have some comments about the times centered on that ebb tide business mentioned above.     

The premise of Harold and Maude is fairly simple, a benighted young rich kid, Harold, played by Bud Cort who I don’t recall having done anything much of anything on screen after this performance which may tell us something as well about the film or the times since it was not well-regarded except in the rarified air of Cambridge and such alternative life-style havens and as well the extremely rarified air around Sam Lowell in those day for he prophetically was one of the few who reviewed the film positively. Harold had, rich or poor then, two things many of the young could relate to a deep-seeded if comically portrayed hatred for his well-heeled but indifferent mother who controlled lots of his life’s decisions and too much time on his hands waiting to break out in the world. That former may seem strange today but during the 1960s a common slogan was “don’t trust anybody over 30” which meant every freaking parent of the baby-boomer generation was in our cross-hairs. The latter as well since we were caught in a world we didn’t create, a war we could not comprehend while being caught up in its throes and no constructive way to make ourselves heard without going to the barricades.    

Harold, an odd-ball and a loner, although nobody would have cared much one way or the other about his idiosyncrasies then, beside staging about twenty-seven fake suicide attempts for his mother’s “benefit” attended funerals, became on the surface at least comforted by that attendance. As part of that ritual he eventually meets the Maude of the title, played by energetic Ruth Gordon, a woman almost eighty and still going strong, still full of spunk. She attends the funerals for a very different reason, a reason having to do with coming to terms with her own mortality, not an unimportant concern given her age. Harold, after umpteen attempts by his mother to get him married to an assortment of young women, gravitates toward, well toward a grandmother figure. Maybe we all hated our parents then but we gave grandparents a pass. I know my own grandmother saved my young ass from many a home life wrangle with my own mother.

Once you get past the extreme age difference between the pair they are kind of an interesting couple. Maude has, as I said, her own agenda, but while they interact she is a positive influence on Harold breaking out of his self-imposed shell. His affect, his clothing, his interest shift as he becomes more in thrall of Maude. The dicey part, or rather the two dicey parts which may have accounted for the negative reviews back in the day, was that relationship leading to a romance, leading to sexual intercourse between the two. These days you can love who you want, or at least that is the thought of many people on the question of gender identification but the area of intergenerational sex still has some distance to go. Who the hell would go to bed with their grandmother after all. More pressing was that Maude agenda item. She held firm to the notion that at a certain age, eighty, she would have had enough of life. And she acted on it, took her own life when the deal went down leaving Harold bereft. But not paralyzed for knowing Maude Harold was able to break out of death door’s grasp. Like I said dated, but not necessarily in a negative way given our social identity issues today.

When The Bad Guys Danced (And The Dance Was No Foxtrot, Brother) -James Cagney’s “Lady Killer” (1933)-A Film Review

When The Bad Guys Danced (And The Dance Was No Foxtrot, Brother) -James Cagney’s “Lady Killer” (1933)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Alex Radley

Lady Killer, starring James Cagney, 1933 

Everybody in the old neighborhood, the Atlantic section of Carville, the used to be “capital” of the cranberry world now pushed west to Wisconsin and places like that, knew a guy like Dan Quigley, the role that legendary actor James Cagney plays in the film under review Lady Killer. Well, maybe not everyone, but close, a guy who knows, or thinks he knows all the angles, has the angels on his side too no matter what. A Teflon-type guy who might be put in a spot but comes up smelling like roses.

I’ll get to Dana’s moves, good and bad, in a moment but the character of Dana Quigley, including the lady’s man, aspect reminded very much of Lenny Logan from down in that Atlantic section of Carville where I grew up and who was if not my closest friend, or me his, then we never crossed each other, and I was never directly the butt of one of his scams, cons, brainstorms. Lenny, good-looking Lenny, also a lady’s man was as much from what other older guys who write for this site have called “from hunger” in declining market seasonal cranberry country. But he always had dough from early on when he would con guys out of their milk money by flipping “fixed” baseball cards against the schoolyard wall (until some parents complained to the teachers and it stopped-or rather he stopped on those particular kids). That deeply larcenous scheming heart would parlay that kind of scam all through school including plenty of serious housebreaks which he would plan-and others would carry out. He would, for lack of a better word, be the “finger” man with plausible deniability in case things did not work out. Sent more than one young woman off to “Aunt Emma” as writer Sam Lowell would have called it in any earlier time and we said rolling our eyes “in the family way.” Lenny, wouldn’t you know, eventually broke that bad streak by becoming a very successful local lawyer (including being mine on a couple of occasions) but it was, as always with guys like Lenny, a close thing.

With that kind of character in mind let’s see what made Dana Quigley tick, how he passed his time. Part of the problem with this particular film is that the producers or somebody wasn’t sure which James Cagney they wanted to use. The notorious 1930s headliner gangster from films like White Heat in the classic age of that genre of which audiences in Great Depression ate up like crazy or the dandy song and dance Yankee Doodle Dandy man. As usual they went for the great test audience muddle. So they kind of put them together and added in that street wise kick. Yeah Dana was always hustling, nickel and dime stuff mostly until he almost drew a sucker punch when he got conned by a dame, by a moll, twist, frail whatever you want to call a girl ringer playing the old lost pocketbook gag luring guys in and set them up for a beating of their worldly goods at the poker table.

But our boy Dana got wised up quick, and despite a roomful of thugs against his small stature he made those low-rung gangsters cry uncle-and make them plenty of dough. Of course guys like Dana are always thinking about the next best thing which is to make a big score-here doing cagey burglaries in Mayfair swell houses. Made a nice racket as the pretty boy finger-man until the beef went too far and conked too many heads, too many deaths and the future looking like the big step for everybody unless they blow town.

That blowing town begins the shift to the pretty boy part, to Dana’s rise as an actor out in Tinseltown, out in Ed Rushca’s big Hollywood sign hills. While there he takes up with a different kind of frill, a big- time movie actress. Wouldn’t you know it though that old gang of his from back east wound up in LA, including that former love interest moll he had been running around with and who left him high and dry when the deal went down. The old gang figured to work that high- end burglary scam of old with Dana in the lead. Problem: the gang, now the gang that couldn’t shoot straight if you ask me robbed his movie star honey. Bad move. Maybe bad move both ways. The gang sensing Dana was the weak link wanted to waste him, put him out in the Pacific deep heading to the China seas maybe.  Dana in turn, turned copper –a no-no in our old neighborhood and by general consensus a “fink,” “rat,” “stoolie” better left six feet under. Even Lenny understood that, maybe Lenny better than anybody since he knew he could do whatever he wanted, whatever larceny, sex acts, etc. he wanted and the Omerta oath of the corner boy neighborhood would protect his young. But this is Dana remember, shades of Lenny, and so he lands on his feet. I don’t know what to make of this film but one thing I do know I kept thinking about Lenny all the way through the film.  You probably have your own Lenny and will too.