Similarity and Disparity Never Being Obvious in American Film

One of the qualities of American film that obsesses me is finding out something on one’s own that has never been mentioned in film scholarship or the history books; in finding connections that no one ever thought of on their own or never wanted to find on their own. It’s much easier to let history do all the talking, but I find that hard to do considering that the film medium is still a very new art form. Therefore, in my opinion, similarities and disparities can never easily be found in American film.
Two conspiracy suspense thrillers that deal with all the ambivalences of paranoia are The Conversation and Blow Out. Even though both films deal with men ensnared in a conspiracy who entangle themselves more and more in danger because of their obsession with that conspiracy, there is a major difference between both films and that is that The Conversation represents the beginning period of paranoia mounting in America during the 70’s, while Blow Out represents the end of that period. That doesn’t mean that Blow Out is a less complex or less disturbing film than The Conversation; I’d actually argue that Brian DePalma’s film is more disturbing than Coppola’s film because Blow Out represents the end of a period that Coppola obviously felt disdain towards and that De Palma revered.
For De Palma, the 70’s was a period where it was right and just for people to feel paranoid; for him this was a form of inquisitiveness on the part of the American people, in terms of distrusting their government, and who could blame them after Watergate? It’s because of the paranoia felt by reporters like Woodward and Bernstein that crooks like Nixon were held accountable for their actions. (Actually, the paranoia felt by the American people was justified considering that Nixon was pardoned by Ford.) For Coppola, the paranoia felt in the 70’s creates creeps like Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who is obsessed with paranoia only for his own personal satisfaction; he gets off of surveilling others, and the feeling that he himself is being surveilled; he could care less about the victims of his obsessions. For Jack Terry (John Travolta), he becomes obsessed with the conspiracy that he’s entrenched in for the simple reason that he feels that what has been done (a governor running for president was murdered, and the murder was made to look like an accident) is morally repulsive. Therefore, something needs to be done to rectify the situation. Fortunately, Jack recorded the “accident”, so therefore he can hold those responsible accountable. However, Jack didn’t realize that the era where citizens were willing to stick their necks out on the line for the sake of liberty has passed. No one believes his theory and by the time the film ends Jack goes powerlessly mad; reduced to forever being the sound man on schlocky Horror films. (Caul works in a line of work where everyone’s a paranoid bugman-in Blow Out Jack is the lone wolf. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if movie technicians started turning on the government?)
This is a brilliant metaphor on De Palma’s part considering that he has often been accused of making schlocky Horror films, but more to the point De Palma’s belief in this film is that empty headed films serve as a distraction away from the grave reality of what’s going on in the real world-which is that everyone is apathetic towards real causes that matter and that society post the 70’s simply loves window dressing. By the end of Blow Out Jack has gone back to the role that society has relegated for him-it’s De Palma’s stating that audiences in the future will keep him away from making another Blow Out, and he was right. Even though by the end of both films both characters end up totally disgruntled and destroyed, in The Conversation Harry brought this onto himself, while in Blow Out society has created another Harry Caul in Jack.
What I find interesting about both films is the casting of the leading men. In The Conversation, Harry is cast indelibly; Gene Hackman is the perfect person to play an obsessive considering that he himself is such a method acting leading man type. What’s odd is the casting of fun lovin’ Vincent "Vinnie" Barbarino/Tony Manero in the part of an obsessive paranoid. However, I think there is a point to this casting choice (not to mention that Travolta is brilliant in the part) and that is that initially Jack shouldn’t be off putting like Harry. It’s only as the film goes on that Jack becomes more and more the stereotypical paranoid, which is just another way for society to castigate him. (In some ways, Blow Out is a subtle critique of The Conversation, which is odd, considering the fact that De Palma was probably highly influenced and enamored by the film.) It’s this sense of being enamored that makes Blow Out a more romantic version of The Conversation; it’s also why a romantic leading man type was cast as Jack. (The Conversation is an all out renunciation of everything in its sight-perfectly fitting for a 1970’s downer of a film, and perfectly fitting for Gene Hackman to play the part.) Jack is in love with the victim of this conspiracy Sally (Nancy Allen) because she represents his love with liberty against tyranny; he wants to keep that ideal/her alive. Harry has no attachment with his victims, other than being obsessed with them-as if they were tabloid figures. However, I find the style of Blow Out to be more disturbing than The Conversation, because of the fall from grace aspect of Jack’s character. It’s reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho; the audience tragically knows ahead of time what is going to transpire for Jack, while in The Conversation, Harry is lost in his own obsessivness, so that by the time the ending happens it’s a complete shock. I think the reason for this is that Blow Out is the more plangent film; it’s 1980’s statement is one of lament in the form of a question directed toward The Conversation and Coppola-What’s the point of even fighting the system, when you know that it and everyone else is crooked?
Seeking justice in the American landscape is a difficult endeavor; especially in American film. That’s because it’s so difficult to apprehend the motives and rationale behind seeking justice; analysts constantly get it wrong. Even though it’s popular to state that Unforgiven is an example of how Clint Eastwood’s politics have changed as a filmmaker compared to his earlier work, I feel that Eastwood’s ideology is more complicated than that; let’s say for the purposes of argument that his politics have changed and they haven’t changed. If one were to compare Unforgiven to Dirty Harry, one could clearly see that even though both films hold different stances toward violence, both films also hold the law that’s protecting a given area (in Dirty Harry that area is San Francisco, while in Unforgiven that area is Big Whiskey, Wyoming) in contempt. The way both films are different is that both have different takes on why those particular forces should be in contempt, in relation to that particular law system’s views on violence.
If one were to compare both films they could clearly see that both Dirty Harry’s structure and Unforgiven’s structure are similar. In both films the characters that Clint Eastwood plays (Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry and William Munny in Unforgiven) both have to fight the law of the land to seek justice. In Dirty Harry, the police force that Harry Callahan works for won’t charge the mass murder in the film because of lack of evidence and Harry’s unethical behavior in going after him. Therefore, Harry has to go after the killer illegally, in order to stop him. Clearly, the film has an ideological hatred of the ethics of the police force and judicial system in San Francisco circa the 1970’s. Unforgiven has a similar contempt for how the sheriff Little Bill Daggett runs his town. In the film, William Munny (an ex-killer for hire) comes out of his retirement for one last job, which he takes ironically enough because of his ethics. The job concerns killing the man who disfigured a prostitute and was not reprimanded in anyway by Bill Dagget. In Munny’s efforts to seek out this man, he seeks out help from his old partner in crime, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman); these two are a similar partner team to both Harry and his partner Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni) in Dirty Harry. They are lone wolves seeking out justice without the help of the law. Both films share the similar trope of having their middle and end scenes be reversals of each other. In Dirty Harry, when Harry tracks down the killer, the killer one ups Harry by beating him up, and by the end of the film there’s a reversal of roles where Harry beats and kills the killer; the same occurs in Unforgiven.
Yet, there’s a subtle difference between both films and that is that the villain in Unforgiven, the character who resembles Andy Robinson’s Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry, is Gene Hackman’s character. This is clearly Eastwood’s way of stating that even though he still does not trust the Law of the land, at the same time he does not advocate violence like he did in the past. (In Dirty Harry, the police force were keeping Harry from administering violence on the Scorpio killer, while in Unforgiven it’s ironically enough the sheriff who believes in administering violence on people who don’t deserve to be treated in such a harsh way.) There are other indications of Eastwood’s stand against violence (albeit not against vigilantism.) It’s in the characterization of William Munny and how he doesn’t have it in him to kill anymore, even if it’s for justice. It’s interesting that both Eastwood’s character and Hackman’s character used to be murderous gunslingers. Hackman’s character hasn’t changed at all, even though it appears that he’s become a law-abiding citizen; he loves the prestige that he now receives as a psychopathic sherrif while Munny doesn’t want anything to do with the biographer who tries to glorify him by film’s end for killing so many people.
It’s almost as if Eastwood is criticizing the character he played in Dirty Harry for not being a vigilante in the right way; it’s almost as if he’s equating him with the initially psychopathic William Munny who hasn’t reformed. There’s an indicative scene in Unforgiven when Eastwood says to the Schofielfd Kid (who in Dirty Harry would have been the Scorpio killer or another victim of Harry’s like the bank robber at the beginning of the film because he views himself as a pro in unlawful acts) that, “We all have it coming kid,” meaning that everyone will get what’s coming to him in Heaven or Hell. (This Eastwood character is different from Harry Callahan in that he’s religious opposed to viewing himself as the enactor of justice in the world-in Dirty Harry it’s almost as if Callahan’s Magnum gun was a holy religious object-in Unforgiven guns are abhorred by the filmmakers.) If one were to compare this scene to the one at the beginning of Dirty Harry where Eastwood threatens a bank robber by saying, “I know what you’re thinking—“Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But, being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya punk?” clearly Eastwood is trying to subvert the Eastwood mythos of being pro-violence and pro-guns.
The scene where in Unforgiven where Morgan Freeman’s character can’t shoot one of the men who disfigured the girl, and Eastwood reluctantly (which is the key style in Unforgiven-everything including the look of the film is reluctant and not quite sure of itself-including the film’s politics) kills the man is perhaps the best part of the film; the scene ends when Eastwood demands that the other men give the person he just shot some water. If one were to compare this scene with the one in Dirty Harry when Eastwood and his partner come down on the Scorpio killer in the middle of the film in the football field, it’s an indication of Eastwood’s distaste in his past films for vigilante justice.
However, there still is that caveat that the law doesn’t help matters in anyway-both films deal with a figure like Hackman’s stripping citizens of his town of their guns so that they can basically be unsafe from him. It’s this version of Eastwood’s politics (perhaps his view on gun control and distrusting of the government) that hasn’t changed. Even though one form of the government in Dirty Harry are pacifists, and one form of the government in Unforgiven are for appearance’s sake pacifists, Eastwood equates both factions as the same reprehensible force; they both don’t believe in protecting citizens from harm’s way but instead mean to merely hide their reprehensibleness behind a set of regulations; it’s always the Eastwood character who is looked down upon by everyone else as being a vigilante. In some ways, Unforgiven isn’t that different from Dirty Harry at all.
Films that do share similar qualities, albeit not obviously, are both Citizen Kane and The Usual Suspects. Both films deal with men who are complete legends because they are so mysterious (Charles Foster Kane (Orson Wells) in Citizen Kane and Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects.) Both films utilize a highly complex structure of someone else’s perspective on the individual in question. What’s brilliant about The Usual Suspects is that it’s a modernist subversive take on the Citizen Kane idea in that the person being interrogated—Verbal (Kevin Spacey)—is Keyser Soze. Imagine if in Citizen Kane the person being asked on what Rosebud was was actually Kane in disguise! Well, that’s not a bad way to create an alibi for yourself and get away with a crime in the process.
Perhaps the ingeniousness of The Usual Suspects occurs because, unlike Citizen Kane, it was a film made in the 90’s opposed to the Forties; the one good thing you can say about films made in a recent decade is that so many narrative devices have been used throughout the years that films have to become more ingeniousness in their storytelling techniques. For the 40’s Citizen Kane’s use of telling a story (in this case Kane’s life story is the plot) through different interpretations, or viewpoints, of events was a highly ingenious way in which to tell a story, because the audience would be basically receiving information from unreliable narrators, much like in a novel. The audience had to choose which perspective was the correct one for themselves; they never got a hold of the “true” Charles Foster Kane, and that’s because the movie wasn’t told from an omniscient narrator’s perspective. If a person hated Kane, they obviously would make him out to be a jerk; if they loved him he would be viewed as a saint. What makes the ending of The Usual Suspects so shocking is that the whole movie is a lie and the audience isn’t aware of this until the very end of the movie; at least in Citizen Kane the audience was aware that no viewpoint on Kane was the “correct” viewpoint. They weren’t lulled into believing that what they were seeing was actual fact. In The Usual Suspects, the audience is tricked into believing that out of everyone in the movie, what Verbal is saying in comparison to everyone else’s interpretation of events is gospel; by the end of the film it turns out the audience has been duped by the Devil.
Both films not only were influential in terms of their structures, but also were influential stylistically as well. I think in terms of style this is where both movies differ. For Citizen Kane, the film’s use of deep focus shot composition made it so that the audience could see both the figure in the foreground and the background as well. I think this, coupled with the highly flamboyant aesthetics of the film (the camera is constantly making an interesting movement or is constantly showing an event from an interesting perspective) allows the audience to feel that what they are seeing is highly dubious at best in terms of being factually accurate. The Usual Suspects use of slow zooms and non-flashy aesthetics creates an impression, in terms of the audience’s interpretation, that Verbal’s story is factually accurate.
What’s similar about both film’s is Orson Wells and Bryan Singer’s use of the maguffin. In Citizen Kane, the maguffin is Rosebud, while in The Usual Suspects it’s Keyser Söze. Both things are not as important as the journey that the audience goes through to find them; they are just a pretext for a film to exist. Both films deal with trying to extract information on what exactly those things are, yet by film’s end both the reporter from Citizen Kane (William Alland) and the police investigator from The Usual Suspects (Chazz Palminteri) (who are basically surrogates of the audience) don’t satisfactorily receive what they want. (The reporter never finds out what Rosebud is and the police investigator figures out, only too late, that Verbal duped him, and that he really was Keyser Soze. Verbal flees by the end of the film; Rosebud goes up in flames.)
It’s fascinating that both films have very satisfying powerful cathartic endings, and yet at the same time there’s something off about them. I think this has to do with the fact that even when the maguffin is solved by film’s end, the mystery remains the mystery. In Citizen Kane, even though the audience figures out what Rosebud is the audience still doesn’t know why Rosebud was so important to Kane’s life; here’s a man who owned everything and yet the thing he most cared about was this paltry sled? In The Usual Suspects, even though the audience figures out who Keyser Soze is, the question audiences have been asking for years afterwards is, what was fabricated in the film and what wasn’t? Audiences for both films have obsessed over both maguffin’s for years afterwards because both mysteries haven’t quite been completely solved. For years afterwards, audiences have resembled the look on Chazz Palminteri’s face upon recounting The Usual Suspects and Citizen Kane; they are stupefied by both film’s inconclusiveness.
Both The Hangover and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie share similarities in that they are entirely made up of segments. They are interesting films in that they are both linear and non-linear at the same time. It’s very difficult to follow character progression when trying to study a series of Youtube clips, and the same applies for both films. You might say that they were made for the Youtube generation. If one sketch doesn’t pan out, there’s always another to relieve the disappointment. This isn’t situational comedy so much as it is almost a surreal form of comedy. In Bunel’s film, each segment turns out to be someone’s dream, while in The Hangover moments don’t connect in terms of thematic development and that’s what makes the movie funnier. (I’m thinking of the song number that comes out in the middle of nowhere at one point in the film.) What this type of structure allows the filmmakers to do is to basically please themselves and the audience without worrying about whether or not they are breaking convention; the movie can all of a sudden turn into a musical or a slapstick farce and the filmmakers would be applauded rather than derided for their efforts. I think it’s rather endearing that the young director of The Hangover, Todd Phillips, was inspired by an older directors efforts; I think it’s what makes The Hangover rather touching and surprising.
I feel that what makes The Hangover so fresh is the fact that it appears from the outset to be like another stupid bromance fraternity house type of comedy, and yet it unfolds in such a beautiful manner that it becomes a rather graceful comedy by its conclusion; just like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I think this has to do with the fact that the audience has missed the stupid escapades of the three main protagonists; there’s subtlety in the fact that the movie that the audience was expecting is bypassed by the filmmakers. These guys have to retrace their steps in order to figure out what they did the night before. It’s a sobering experience. I feel this is also greatly inspired by Bunel’s film. In The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the Bourgeoisie characters that Bunel has aped and made fun of so much in his past films keep trying to attend a dinner but somehow never get to because of one thing or another. The audience in that film is also constantly getting hints of what they are missing and nothing more. I feel this device is supposed to show, in a subtle comical way-and therefore the right way in which to do so, the maturing developmental nature of these characters. Their point of view on matters has to naturally shift because they can’t reach their original traditional (it’s tradition for them to do these kinds of things) goal; in a sense they have to grow up. Stu (Ed Helmes) has to finally realize that his wife is horribly controlling and that he shouldn’t be bossed around by her anymore, just as Rafael Acosta (Fernando Ray) has to realize what a pretentious man he is, and that he shouldn’t put down the poor because he’s just as much, if not more so, of a buffoon than they are. Stu is constantly trying to show how much more mature he is from his friends, only to realize by film’s conclusion that his state of mind is basically a macho fantasy; should one constantly suffer for the sake of being mature? As The Hangover consistently shows, it just a’int worth it because eventually one can’t keep hiding the mess that they have created for themselves-one should rather embrace it.
What makes both films subtle and graceful (almost like a Chaplin comedy) is the fact that both Bunel and Todd Phillips do not condemn or put down their main characters, even though they very easily could have. This must have been hard for Bunel, considering that he always held the bourgeoisie in such contempt in his past films; age cooled him out. He sees their actions as comic and rather endearing in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, just as Phillips is enamored with his characters, because they begin to embrace their faults. It’s interesting that both films mark drastic departures for both filmmakers. Bunel’s previous films, especially The Exterminating Angel, hold characters like the ones featured in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in great contempt. The Exterminating Angel shows the dinner party that the audience misses in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; there the audience and the main characters can never leave the dinner that they attend. Bunel hated the bourgeoisie because he was a deeply political man. I don’t know if I would call Todd Phillips a deeply political filmmaker, but there is a similarity to him and Bunel in that his past films like Road Trip and Old School have a contemptible streak in them when it comes to depicting the main characters in the films. Maybe it’s because of the lack of depth in those films and those characters that Phillips had a stupid snide feeling creep into those films; well, Bunel may have been going through a similar process albeit in a more rich manner.
It’s amazing to me that supposed “disparate” films like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Hangover, and The Usual Suspects and Citizen Kane, have more in common with one another than supposed “similar” films like Blow Out and The Conversation, and Unforgiven and Dirty Harry. I particularly find this shocking, considering that the films that share similarities with one another don’t have the same subject matter at all, while the films that are dissimilar from one another share basically the same exact subject matter and milieu. I think these oddities are a testament to the richness and complexity in American filmmaking, as well as to their deceptiveness. It’s almost as if Blow Out and Unforgiven are subtle critiques, made to look like homage’s, of The Conversation and Dirty Harry. Whereas The Usual Suspects and The Hangover are subtle enhances of the methods, both in terms of style and content, utilized in Citizen Kane and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The irony in the appreciation of American film is that we are comparing the wrong films to one another.