Scope Samples #5

 

Montgomery Clift Beset by Hollywood Hillbillies He's Come to Straighten Out

Wide Worlds: Wild River and Patton

Mere Five Year Age Difference Separated Clift and Co-Star Jo Van Fleet

WILD RIVER (1960) --- Montgomery Clift ideally cast here. He’d have been less so prior to the road accident that changed his face, manner, and suitability for parts he had prior to the catastrophe. Before-after represents two distinct actors, and I never thought the after was ruin or decline for Clift. His skills still were there, if abated a matter of opinion, and certainly he suffered from what had happened, but boon for us is him not giving up or leaving the screen as many (most?) would have after what he’d been through. Monty chose to work, perhaps more so than when enjoying a peak of fame during which he turned down a lot of promising projects. Wild River was a starring part in color and Cinemascope, a Fox release done largely on location. Clift is a government hire sent Tennessee way to get people off an island to be flooded by the Valley Authority so surroundings can be made safe from flooding. His is not a romantic role, the romance in fact thrust upon him by Lee Remick as shack dweller girl ill-suited to say the least for “Chuck Glover’s” sort of sensibility. Frankly sad ending for me is the poor guy hog-tied by Lee and flying off with her and brats toward for-life trap, this after Chuck made such a good argument against tying himself down with domestic obligations. Chuck needed Sigma strength here, Remick as “Carol Garth” molding him like softest clay. We see Chuck tossed in the river by bumpkins familiar from westerns and comedies (Jay C. Flippen, James Westerfield, who’d been a slapstick cop for Disney). These aren’t Deliverance hillbillies who’d scare us later, nor inbreds that shot Dennis Hopper off his motorcycle. Such then is familiar if comforting aspect of Wild River. Would director Elia Kazan have been better served hiring locals? It seems so in hindsight and by comparison with those later explorations of scary Southland.

Too Late for Monty to Learn Sigma Lessons, Him Hog-Tied by Remick and Brat Brood

Southern Showman Trying Darndest to Make Wild River Appealing to Yokals

Some of us know real south when we see it, director Elia Kazan at least getting accents mostly right if not attitudes. We know Monty’s in trouble when he speaks tactless to these natives, getting past that learning curve a hardest challenge he’ll face. I found myself saying, No Monty, you don’t talk to Southern folks that way, and sure enough, here comes another beating or dunk in muddy water. Clift took lots of physical punishment in films done after the wreck. It seemed at times like a sort of penance. Kazan observes hicks like natural wonders sprung from mud, some of his compositions resembling Depression-era photography more social statement than simple capture of people and scenes. Much evokes A Face in the Crowd, Kazan the microscope hovered over us bugs down in Dixie. Unlike Face, Wild River is too serious to laugh off, part reason perhaps why it failed ($2.5 million spent on the negative … $2.1 million back in worldwide rentals … $1.8 lost). Rube cinemas sold hard if misleadingly, such as here with home-typed reference to “Fightin, Lovin’ Garths,” them the object of Monty’s mission. It’s OK funnin’ the South except where lasers burn too deep. Jo Van Fleet is the object of strife, her a last holdout to modern progress. The South heard a lot of that during the fifties and sixties, almost like Feds were going to reboot reconstruction (in fact, they did). I bet anybody snookered into drive-ins by that Fightin’ Garths pitch drove out quick once put wise. I can’t confirm what happened locally, assume our Allen Theatre got Wild River per product split with the Liberty (Allen's lock on Fox product). Wild River went to TV syndication in 1965 after NBC had a March 1964 primetime run, full-framed exposure no good to the film’s reputation. Wild River is one that needs every inch of Scope to register effectively. It plays well on Blu-Ray as part of a Kazan box, plus it’s available separate from Fox, plus Eureka Region Two ... also streams here and there.

For Lots of Watchers' Money, That Man Patton Did Everything Right

PATTON (1970) --- Ann says she stood on line round the corner from the Liberty to see Patton. At age nine. I was not there. Why was I not there? Another misstep, like with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. George Scott turned down Best Actor, but not for flower childish reason. He felt actors should not be put in a position of competing with one another. Few could argue that. The AA’s were always phony baloney, as is freshly proved each year. I understand they’re going to You Tube, too bad because You Tube is too good for them. Patton is on Blu-Ray but I hear rumblings it needs an upgrade. Last night’s show looked OK, but yes, one can imagine 4K helping here. Patton/Scott says in his opening speech that “we never lost a war,” this as Nam wall was falling down, and too there was Korea after Patton’s time. Dig how this soldier studied past soldiers, thought he was reincarnated from a line of them going back centuries. George Patton was a little mad, maybe a lot mad. Still, we love him, or did we? Anti-warriors surely steamed at the sympathetic portrayal. Many wrote Patton delivered “both ways” by accommodating pro and anti-attitudes. I’d call it 95% pro, or is that just my attitude? Patton had a big mouth, no governors, and notoriously slapped a soldier for cracking up in the face of battle. Fact is he slapped two different soldiers for the same perceived offense, both living long enough to see the movie in 1970. Him who played one of them showed up at 90’s autograph shows, Tim Considine. He’d sign stills of the moment when Scott strikes him. Was this better than being Spin, or was it Marty? Patton had 70mm engagements and was one of only four 1970 releases shot that way. Charlotte hosted it in July but not on reserved seat basis. Their Carolina Theatre got a 70mm print, as they had when I saw The Sound of Music there in 1965. They did a second run, April 1971, also 70mm, so Patton must have been popular. Revivals in the format have been plentiful.

Like With That's Entertainment! in 1974, Boy Did We Need Patton in 1970

Patton is admired the more for having used “practical” effects, CGI now a sort of dirty word (or letters) for special fx. Jeeps flip over with guys underneath. Explosions send men flying. Patton’s driver is played by Bill Hickman of Bullitt fame, so you know he was loaded for bear. Did success of The Longest Day enable Patton? Other actors were offered the Patton part before Scott took it. Robert Mitchum admitted he could not have done half so good a job. John Wayne would have been too familiar as John Wayne for him to work. They get at irony of the way Patton died (road accident) by giving him a near miss with an oxcart, a moment played for humor, but we get the forebode. Patton made so many wild moves in his time that they simply could not show them all. I wondered if he would cross the Rhine ahead of everybody else in violation of orders, but no, we only had three hours to tell this story, all of which went by fleet for me. This really was Everybody’s War Movie. I bet even hippies and draft dodgers would admit they like it. Problem for Scott: What to do for an encore? There was reprise of Patton for a TV-movie, but I haven’t the heart to watch. Sort of like when Lee Marvin did Major Reisman for the tube (1985, him too old, the concept too tired). Bummer, and certainly beneath him. Scott would do uneven things, one where he drove for criminals that started with John Huston as director, but he and Scott fell out (The Last Run). Scott had a hot temper and drank. Being the world’s greatest actor would have been a heavy weight to haul. Scott gave his wives work and had a son who inherited some of his talent. It was neat seeing him head-to-head with Brando, not a fair contest for Brando being a little nutsy by then. I think Brando gave his peculiar perf in part because he knew Scott was the better actor, and was afraid to take him on honest.