Oh my! Alan Rickman died earlier today. When I learned earlier this week that David Bowie had died, it made me feel a little old. But there wasn’t much in terms of emotional impact, despite the fact that there are at least three Bowie albums that I love: Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane, and David Live. And I’m also a huge fan of the film Labyrinth, although not because of him. But my reaction to Alan Rickman’s death is different. It bothers me. I’m actually sad about it.

I discovered him the same place most people did, as Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Despite being a cliche, it is still true that the most important element in a film like that is the villain. This is why the other Die Hard films are not as good (but at least Die Hard 2 had a really good plot). The truth is that Bruce Willis has never been very interesting on the screen. And Rickman added all the charisma that was otherwise lacking. I remember reading that someone on the staff was sending the production company reports indicting that Rickman was destroying the film. It just goes to prove William Goldman’s saying, “No one knows anything.”

As if to prove that wasn’t a fluke, Alan Rickman played the most evil and twisted Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. That was a film that was totally forgettable except for Rickman. It was just such a delight to watch. Check out this scene (which is not at all an especially good one for Rickman) and ask yourself, “How is it that Kevin Costner is a star?” This is the problem with Hollywood: being boring is a good thing. “I shall never fear my father’s sword.” It’s not a terrible line by itself, but Costner makes it as bad as it could possibly be.

I assume that Alan Rickman didn’t especially want to be a star. He was an actor. So he got to play a lot of different kinds of roles. One very early was Ed (the painter) in The January Man. It wasn’t a great film, but it was a fun one. And Rickman showed that he could hold his own on the weird front against Kevin Kline. He was wonderfully sad in, An Awfully Big Adventure. He managed to make Colonel Brandon just cool enough in Sense and Sensibility. And he played the wonderfully snobby, yet likable, Steven Spurrier in Bottle Shock. He was wonderful creepy as Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd. But of course most people will always remember him as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. I could go on, because there are other films of his I loved like, Truly, Madly, Deeply. Oh, and Galaxy Quest. Like I said: I could go on.

So I’m very sad that Alan Rickman has died. (And truly: God must hate humanity because Dick Cheney continues to live.) But I’m not “sobbing sad.” I didn’t know Alan Rickman. But the film industry will be all the poorer for his death. First Terry Pratchett. Now this. Is something going on in England? I don’t think I can take much more of this.

Goodnight, sweet prince! And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

In 1938, Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town. It was hugely successful, ultimately winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And as I’ve discussed, it is a fine play. Ultimately, what is most innovative about it can be found back in 1921 in Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. But not everything needs to be innovative. And Our Town does deal with a fundamental issue about the perspective of life in an omniscient context.

This is established at the beginning of the play when the Stage Manager talks about the newspaper delivery boy, Joe Crowell. The Stage Manager tells us that he is very bright and will go on to graduate high school at the top of his class. Then he will go to Massachusetts Tech and graduate at the top of his class there. He was going to be a great engineer. But then World War I came and he was killed in France. The Stage Manager sums it up, “All that education, for nothing.”

But in the context of the play, that can be said about everything. The one thing that is most clear throughout the play is that people die. They live their lives and then they die. There isn’t much more to it than that. We may have a positive or negative impact on others, but they too will die. The significance of our lives is like an asymptote that approaches zero the further we move in time. Wilder seems to have something to say about appreciating the present, but it is vague and the play itself seems most interested in death.

It is thus interesting to see what Hollywood did with the play when they first tried to film it in 1940. Clearly, they had to get rid of the obvious theatrical nature of play. So there are real sets much like we found in director Sam Wood’s earlier film, Goodbye, Mr Chips. But that doesn’t really matter. Trying to maintain the “theaterness” of a play in a film is usually a bad idea. It’s better just to film a play, which worked well for the filmed versions in 1977 and 1989.

The problem with the film is the ending. As Emily, dead from her second childbirth, goes to visit her 16th birthday (12th in the play), she has the same reaction that she has in the play. “Oh, Earth you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Oh, I want to live, I want to live, I want to live!”

And then she wakes up. It was all a delirium from her second pregnancy. Praise the Lord, they gave Our Town a happy ending! Or did they? After all, the film is otherwise very faithful to the play. We learn that Joe Crowell died in the war. Everyone dies. The film is still all about how people die and how they can’t see their lives in their completeness. But we are deprived of an edifying ending. We just get Emily having a bad dream. The film commits the same sin that the play indicts the whole of humanity for.

This is the problem with art as commodity. I can imagine the producers thinking that they needed to tack on a “happy” ending, even though the film itself isn’t happy. But it wasn’t just these money grubbing fools. The film was nominated for an Academy Award. It lost to Rebecca, but so did The Grapes of Wrath!

Anyway, I can’t imagine why people do this kind of thing. If you want to give people pleasant films, give them pleasant films. Don’t try to trick them into thinking that a sob-fest is okay because we get to end on a nice picture of Emily with her baby. Emily will die. And millions of women will die during childbirth. It’s a disgrace. Literally.

Original movie poster for the film Our Town (1940 film) by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Each year, the National Film Registry (NFR) designates up to 25 films for preservation because they are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” And this year, just to show what a sham it is, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, Shawshank Enter National Film Registry. Not one of those films deserve to be acknowledged in this way. It’s not that I think they are bad films. They all have notable aspects. But they are also all boilerplate creations. I’m sure the NFR uses the “culturally” part of its criteria to slot these in. But then all it means is that big hits are going to make the list because they were big hits.

I’m not just being an old crank who wants to see obscure films make the list. But what is the point of the NFR? Does anyone think that Top Gun will be lost to us? They just released it on Blu-ray two years ago. Meanwhile, old films are literally disintegrating as we make sure the existing print of utter pedestrian recent films get special treatment. It is appalling. Even in that year, 1986, there were films that are far more culturally significant: Platoon, Blue Velvet, and The Fly to name just three. Top Gun stands out for one reason alone: it was the biggest money maker of that year.

But I understand. The National Film Registry thinks that each year it has to include a certain number of “name” films. Last year they included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Saving Private Ryan. Again: I’m not saying these films are bad. The question is whether they are significant. And they are significant in a way that doesn’t require the help of the government funded National Film Preservation Board. But I suppose there are a lot of would be fighter pilots in Congress who will be more willing to fund the program for another year because Top Gun was on the list.

But there are many worthy films that were added to the registry this year, and ultimately that’s a good thing. Perhaps most interesting is the inclusion of Fred Ott’s Sneeze. It was shot in 1894 and lasts a total of 5 seconds. Fred Ott was an employee of Edison, and in the film, he takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes (or pretends to — it doesn’t look very real to me). Of course, the film is already preserved by the Library of Congress. It is a wonder to me that we aren’t spending hundreds of millions of dollars finding old films like this, restoring them, and preserving them. It is our legacy.

Another worthy addition is the 1937 Disney short The Old Mill. It’s fabulous. But as you can see in the following print, it hardly needs preservation. But it deserves to be highlighted as an important moment in the history of animation. As usual with Disney, it is too cloying, but visually it is stunning.

Also on this year’s list is Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero. Although I’m not sure just how important the film is, I think that Sturges has received too little attention. His films on DVD are not in the best of shape, with the exception of Sullivan’s Travels, which I think is overrated among Sturges’s films. Typical. Comedians don’t get much respect in Hollywood.

The 1929 short film Black and Tan is on the list. It is hard to find fault in that. It isn’t much more than an excuse to highlight Duke Ellington and his band. But it’s wonderful. There is a segment in it that took me a moment to figure out. Two men show up to repossess Ellington’s piano. His wife offers them five dollars each to just go away. They refuse. Then she offers them alcohol, which they accept. I thought that was odd, given that $5 is upwards of $100 today. But then I remembered: Prohibition.

There are lots of others, of course. Some I think really are important. For example, Imitation of Life is a great film that most people just dismiss as 1950s fluff. Yet it is a deep film that deals with racial issues more honestly than most modern films. If you haven’t seen it, you should seek it out. So I’m glad to see it added to the registry, even if there is little concern about it being lost or forgotten.

I’ll admit that I am offended by the inclusion of Ghostbusters on the list just because I don’t think it is a very good film. Last year, the NFR added Rio Bravo to the list and it’s kind of the same thing: a opportunity for a bunch of stars to mug for the camera. But it isn’t just that. LA Confidential was added as well, and although I really like that film, it doesn’t belong here. Big budget hits don’t need to be preserved.

One of the great things about these lists is that they introduce people to films they’ve never heard of. In my case, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is new to me. And I see that my library doesn’t have it. But I suspect that now that it has been added to the National Film Registry, they will probably acquire it. But here it is on YouTube. I’ll give it a view tonight:

I realize that the people at the National Film Registry would claim that they have to include some “fun” films — that they want to present a variety of films. But surely there are far more worthy and equally fun films than Top Gun and Ghostbusters.

I will not be seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Part of that is just that I’m not that fond of seeing old actors doing big budget curtain calls. As it is, every time I see Harrison Ford, I think, “Have we really gotten that old?” When I saw him in Firewall, I thought he looked like he could use a walker. And that was almost ten years ago! But maybe I’d feel differently if I cared about any of the cast. Certainly, if Johnny Depp revisits Jack Sparrow in thirty years, I’ll be waiting in line. The truth is that I didn’t like the first Star Wars.

Let me be clear. I saw Star Wars on 4 July 1977 with a packed crowd at the Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa. I remember it was July Fourth because someone threw a fire cracker at the screen when the bad guys blew up the planet. And I didn’t dislike it. I just didn’t see what the big deal was. It’s an action film set in space with stock characters. Darth Vader is easily as silly as Robot on Lost in Space, without the saving grace of it being camp. The only character I thought was cool was (despite the name) Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he gets offed in the second reel.

In my discussions with people who are fans of the franchise, it is clear why they like it: because they do. It struck something ineffable in them when they were in their tweens or teens. And I appreciate that. I wish it had been similarly magical for me. If I had not been such a pretentious intellectual in training, maybe it would have done it for me. Certainly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was more up my alley. But that one didn’t do much more for me either. If there was any film that captured my imagination as a tween, it was Jaws. And I’m pleased to report that it really is an excellent film.

This explains why Star Wars fans have been more and more disappointed with the franchise as it has gone on. The problem isn’t the films; it’s that the viewers are no longer 13 years old. It’s the same way that Star Trek will never be quite as good as the original, despite the fact that nothing that came later will be as silly as “guy in a reptile suit” in “Arena” or the space hippies in “The Way to Eden.” Hold on. We’ve really got to watch Kirk fight Gorn. It’s funny that Gorn never thinks to use his teeth:

But I can see why Star Wars: The Force Awakens is such a big deal to people. It’s a way of revisiting the past in a way that is new but the same. From what I hear, the film is largely a remake of the original. And that’s just fine. People are allowed that. Just the same, it’s not like Hollywood does much more than give people retreads of old things. It reminds me of myself when I’m doing anniversary posts and can’t find anything interesting to write. I go back and look at what I wrote before. But that seems to be step one for Hollywood.

I hope all you Star Wars fans out there enjoy this. Really, if I could get in on the adoration, I would. But I didn’t even manage to drag myself to see the second Star Wars film; I’m certainly not going to watch the seventh.

I didn’t want to watch Damnation Alley. It is based on a Roger Zelazny novel, and I’m not fond of his work. But the film was co-written by Alan Sharp. And it was the film right after Night Moves — which I greatly admire. Plus, it’s a post-apocalyptic film, and I’m fond of those. So what hell, right?

The film starts with Air Force First Lieutenant Jake Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Major Sam Denton (George Peppard) as they dutifully launch rockets to counter a first strike from the Soviet Union. So we skip ahead a couple of years where we find the air base little changed. But now, the Earth has been knocked off its axis and so the sky is not blue but purple with a sort of permanent aurora borealis. But very quickly, there is a fire caused by a cigarette and everyone but the four men survive (the other two are quickly killed off). And then they go on a road trip to seek out other survivors. Apparently, doing this before base was torched was out of the question.

There are aspects of the film that I like. A lot of it is very campy. There are human size scorpions. These are done somewhat worse than in Bert I Gordon films. There are also flesh-eating armor-plated cockroaches that can survive being stepped on, but apparently not fire extinguishers. And then there is the almost total lack of any real sign of the apocalypse. We find a casino that is not only still standing, but still has electricity. This absurdity is tossed aside with a bit of dialog, “Boy, nothing changes. Bomb or no bomb, the lights never go out in Vegas.” These are the kinds of things that make idiosyncratic films interesting.

There’s a problem though. This isn’t an idiosyncratic film. It is a big budget Hollywood film. And it has all the tired Hollywood conventions that one would expect. That’s particularly true of the male leads, who are boring from the first scene on. There is, of course, the female lead, although she just kind of hangs out in the movie — never having her relationship with any of the other characters jell. And then there is the obligatory kid who, by 1970s film convention, had to be annoying.

Rather than roving gangs of bikers, Damnation Alley has a group of men who occupy a gas station. They are straight out of Deliverance, but with bad facial hair. They are about as menacing as a villain from Scooby-Doo — and similarly smart. Our protagonists manage to escape these characters thanks to the kid. Somehow, these trained military officers couldn’t deal with them. But far more perplexing is why these guys didn’t check out unfamiliar locations before just wandering into them. You can’t say it is for the plot, because there isn’t much of a plot anyway.

The worst part of the film, however, is how much it is soiled by the later television series, The A-Team. This film stars George Peppard. There really is no difference between the two characters. And they run around in a weaponized vehicle. And both are camp without them showing any signs that they know it. We’re all supposed to think it is cool, not silly.

I can see why the film has become something of a cult classic. It has all the needed elements. And a film with badly rendered giant scorpions can’t be all bad. Then again, a film starring Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent can’t be all good. I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Alan Sharp wrote the screenplay for one of my very favorite films, Dean Spanley. It is notably superior to the Edward Plunkett short story it was based on. So I’ve been going back and watching some other films he wrote. Last week, I wrote about The Osterman Weekend, Idealistic Basis of Liberal Patriotism. And before I had written about another of his movies, Night Moves and the Tragic Search for the Truth. This last weekend, I got a copy of another film, The Hired Hand.

It is a Peter Fonda film, released in 1971, just a month and a half after Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs Miller. It shouldn’t be surprising that the films look a lot alike; they were both lit by Vilmos Zsigmond. But there is much less of a flamboyant quality to it in The Hired Hand. And that is what most comes across in the film: the effort to tell the story in the most direct way possible. But that’s not to say that film is all that direct. For one thing, Sharp leaves a whole lot unstated. For another, the editing by Frank Mazzola (at Fonda’s request) is ostentatious, even while it is largely effective.

The Hired Hand tells the story of Harry Collings (Fonda). When he was 20 years old, he married a 30 year old woman. She had a daughter and soon after, Collings hit the trail, spending the next 7 years wandering around with Arch Harris (Warren Oates). Collings decides to go back home and try to get back together with his wife. Complications ensue. First, his wife, Hannah (Verna Bloom) is not a shrinking violet, but a strong and self-assured woman. Second, the film is bookmarked by the story of the killing of a friend of Collings and Harris, and their reprisal and counter-reprisal.

In addition to McCabe & Mrs Mill, the film reminded me of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1970 classic El Topo. There is something about the pacing, the lack of specificity. Is the story really about Harry Collings? Certainly in the context of Hollywood it is. But he isn’t very interesting. By far, Hannah is the most interesting character. There is a clear reading of the film in which men really are interchangeable: the hired hands. At one point, Hannah even says so to Harris, “Wouldn’t really matter if it was you or him tonight.” Of course, you don’t need to see it that way. At The American Conservative, Bill Kauffman wrote that it was “a lovely meditation on friendship and responsibility.” I see that; I just don’t really agree with it.

But that’s when films are at their best: when they take the viewers seriously enough to have them take part in the creation of the work. Still, I think that both McCabe & Mrs Miller and El Topo are better. That’s mostly because The Hired Hand is too short. If you took out flashy transitions, I doubt the film would be 70 minutes long. So I think the viewer is left with the feeling that there isn’t quite enough material to gnaw on. But it still offers far more nourishment than most films.