The Rake Magazine

The Third Man, 1949. Directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene (with uncredited help from Alexander Korda and Orson Welles). Starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Paul Horbiger, Ernst Deutsch, Siegfried Breuer, Erich Ponto, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Hedwig Bleibtreu, and Orson Welles.

With the person of Holly Martins, Graham Greene created a character I can relate to more than anyone else on the silver screen. Holly is:

Lonely,
Confused, and
In Over His Head.

Just like I am on most days. That's one of the reasons why I love The Third Man more than any other movie.

Just look at Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins. His loping gait, sour mug, his desire to come to the bottom of a mystery while at the same time failing to realize he will never get to the bottom of any mystery, ever. Look at him drinking, trying to bully those people who will not be bullied by the likes of him. Holly Martins: a fellow lost in his dime store novels who can't do the right thing if was written on a bank note, locked into a safe and rolled over on him. Holly Martins: split into a million pieces, loyal to a friend he barely knows, just as easily in love with a woman he's just met, ready to turn the world upside-down for a secret he doesn't even come close to knowing.

Holly came to Vienna to get hooked up with a job. Vienna is a lovely wreck, quartered in the wake of the Second World War, run by the Americans, Brits, French and Russians. It's a city of great secrets, a city desperately trying to keep its head above water. Holly doesn't know any of this, nor does he care. His old pal from school--Harry Lime, you know, the guy who could get away with anything--wants old Holly, the dime store novelist, to write propaganda for his medical organization. There goes Holly, full of spit 'n' vinegar, fresh off the train, walking under ladders, and then, whoops, dumbfounded when he hears his pal is dead, struck down by a car and carried to the side of the road by two men.

The Porter of Lime's apartment, informing Martins of Harry's death: "He is," says the Porter, pointing up, "how do you say, in hell?" Pointing down. "In heaven?"

That's bad. Holly has no money, no prospects, and since he dropped everything to come to Vienna, why, now what's he going to do? Look at him, right there, standing at the funeral service, eyebrows furrowed, looking like the lovely dimwit that he is. Who can't feel for this noble dope? He sees Lime's girl Anna for the first time, falls in love with her in an instant. Major Calloway of the British forces is also at the funeral, feels sorry for the poor Holly, and asks him along for a ride to town and a free drink.

Holly will drink all right. And then, when Major Calloway informs him that it's probably to the world's benefit that a rogue like Harry Lime is dead, Holly tries to punch the captain. And fails. In fact, Holly gets punched, shot at, chased, and bitten by a parrot. Worst of all, he falls as deeply in love as he is capable. All the while he can't protect himself, can't do anything but shadow box. And lose.

Amidst the ruins of this once-great city, Holly bumbles around trying to get to the bottom of his friend's death, which he believes was a murder. Government officials and evil henchmen in rabbit-fur coats and bow ties ignore him for the most part, both suggesting he should leave, but both realizing he probably won't amount to much whatever his choice. Holly can stay or leave for all they care.

He's a hack writer who's so oblivious he's unable even to lecture a group of bookworms about "The Crisis of Faith", even though that title sums up his situation perfectly.

Like a hero from the cheap Westerns he's moderately famous for, Holly goes in search of Lime's murderer without bothering to consider who might get hurt or even destroyed. The more involved he becomes, the more trouble Anna gets into (for the fake passport Lime created for her). It takes hours of discussion and piles of evidence to convince Holly that Harry Lime was a monster, selling diluted penicillin for an outrageous price, a practice which maims or kills the young children to whom it is administered. When he's convinced, he's fully convinced... until the next day. Holly's a weathervane, unable to see Vienna, unable to see Anna, unable to grasp anything. Look at him stumbling through the ruins of Vienna, her wet cobblestone streets filled with abandoned cars, half her buildings blasted apart. Notice the bent old woman straining to push an abandoned Merry-Go-Round for her child, who sits atop the plastic horse looking bored. The old man selling balloons--to whom? We see this and are moved; Holly can't see past the end of his nose. And yet we're still moved.

Look at Holly there, leaning against a fence at the train station. He can't save his girl from the forces of evil, from the lugubrious forces of bureaucracy, from the whims of her damned heart. "I could stand on my head and make all sorts of comic faces, and I wouldn't stand a chance, would I?" he asks Anna. Of course not. For that's Holly all over--a collection of parlor tricks, and when the shit hits the fan he's bewildered and helpless. She loves an evil man, why can't she love him? But Holly isn't a good man or an evil man. Nothing he does in this film on his own works out; nothing he's prompted to do does either. He gets his man, but at what cost? The reality is that Holly doesn't even know himself.

In the end, virtually no one was saved. In the final shot, Alida Valli marches toward the camera with a melancholy determination, right past Cotten, as the leaves tumble slowly around her. The black market still operates, children will live and die, Anna will grieve forever, and Holly's work is as meaningful as those dead leaves. Holly just watches her go, and does nothing. After all, there's nothing he can do.

A long weekend and I'm still tired. Guests on the horizon--four adults, two children, and a pair of eight-month old twins--and I haven't yet mowed the lawn, cleaned the house, or etc. Had the movies I sat through this weekend warranted discussion, you'd have a pair of reviews. However, they stank, so I'll spare you the titles, and the details.

What I have for you is a few links to other sites that have actually done their work lately:

WellesNet, the Orson Welles web resource. Frankly, the guy who runs this amazes me--how he manages to post something new about the big boy (my favorite filmmaker in case you hadn't guessed) nearly every day is baffling. Yet he does. Today's entry is OW's wonderful speech for receiving the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. The guy was eloquent, you have to admit.

From one of my addictions, the New York Times Obits: Paul Gleason (Paul Xavier Gleason, to be exact) died, famed for playing Principal Richard Vernon in The Breakfast Club; as did Ted Berkman, who wrote Ronald Reagan's fabulous Bedtime for Bonzo.

In July I'll be reviewing two of Preston Sturges' great films, Sullivan's Travels and The Lady Eve, which the Walker will screen in Loring Park this July. Check out the Sturges website in the mean time.

That's all for today. Over and out.

The Proposition, 2005. Directed by John Hillcoat, written by Nick Cave. Starring Guy Pierce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston, the foppish David Wenham, Richard Wilson, and the woefully underutilized John Hurt, and two of Australia's greatest aboriginal actors: David Gulpilil (famous for Walkabout) and Tommy Lewis (from The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith).

Now playing at the Lagoon, instead of the Uptown, where they're screening The Celestine Prophecy. Apparently, the finest films in the world don't have a home at this Landmark Theatre.

For those of us who love westerns--and I count myself amongst that forlorn group--The Proposition is as welcome as, well, as welcome as a the ghost of Sam Peckinpah in a lonely Montana hotel on a cold evening. Like old Sam's best movies, this one is dirty, has vile characters, bucketloads of extreme violence, a morally compromised society, and gorgeous photography. Not to mention a decent script that sometimes falters but nevertheless serves its masters well. Like the films of Sam Peckinpah, this one's being criminally neglected, shuffled off to the shoeboxes at the Lagoon theater, waiting to vanish like a bad dream.

Even better, The Proposition doesn't soak itself in Peckinpah's drunken machismo, has a sharp female character who is not simply a whore or a saint.

The facts: Captain Stanley (played by Ray Winstone, whose tense performance almost gave me a headache) and his scurrilous crew blast apart a brothel in order to apprehend half of the infamous Burns gang. After killing scores of prostitutes, the captain gets his men, Charlie and Mike Burns (Guy Pearce and the angel-faced Richard Wilson). Stanley makes a deal with the intelligent Charlie: if you go into the outback and murder your brother Arthur, the maniacal leader of the wicked clan, then the baby, Mike, won't die at the hangman's noose. Charlie accepts, is given a gun and a horse, and makes his way into the unforgivable desert.

Nothing, of course, can go right. The Proposition cuts between the two societies, that of the criminal in the desert and the face of law and order in the town. But the Captain has troubles: his men, as rotten as the criminals they pursue and nearly genocidal in their attempts to rid Australia of aborigines, don't trust him; his wife (played by Emily Watson, a beacon of cleanliness and clear morality in this wasted land) seeks justice for the murder and rape of her best friend (at the hands of the Burns gang); his superior Eden Fletcher (played by David Wenham, whose lispy performance is ridiculous, the only weak spot in this fine film) is after him to get results, and eventually disrupts this proposition by having the feeble Mike Burns flogged to death.

Nick Cave's screenplay is nice, even as it threatens to slog into Cormac McCarthy's He-Man Spiritual Territory. I might also add that Cave's soundtrack is astounding, and should be required for future westerns. But I digress: the menacing Arthur burns, played with one of the great slow-burners in Danny Huston (John's grandson) is simply fabulous--a philosophizing bastard who stares at sunsets and ruminates on love and family. John Hurt is along for the ride, acting with the subtlety of John Lovitz in his Subway ads, but it's great to see the old coot brandishing a gun, snot dripping from the end of his nose. The film is relentlessly dirty, and insects are everywhere, crawling on men and women, biting and buzzing.

One could argue that The Proposition is a study of the madness of society versus the madness of family. For the Burns' clan is, indeed, a close-knit family who might even be said to love one another. Captain Stanley's little town in the middle of nowhere is a civilized place, where no one trusts one another and deceit is the first order of business, as long as everything is in its place. But the Burns' are vile creatures, rapists, murderers, and in the final analysis, no one emerges clean and clear and unwounded.

The Proposition is a film you could analyze until the dingoes come home, and in doing so find scores of little contradictions, mistakes, and etc. It's not a perfect film, but for the lover of the western, it is perfectly entertaining, provided you can stomach some its violence. I could, and would see it again.

For those of you who are still reeling from Matt Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, I have just the thing for you: tonight at the Walker Art Center they're showing the documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint at 8:00--and it's free (provided you get there on time--tix available at 7).

Quite frankly, this documentary is, in my mind, more entertaining than the film itself. Barney talks with his 'aw-shucks' Idahoan accent, and there are weird public access television shots of Barney the high school football player--who woulda thunk? Also, there's some great commentary by the very earnest captains of the whaling company and their baffled crew. The director, Alison Chernick, made a similar feature on Jeff Koons, who I personally consider the worst artist ever walk the face of the earth, so you also get heaping platters of pretension from gallery owners in NYC (though no critics). Nonetheless, the film is a winning companion to the wacky film. My only complaint is that they weren't showing it before I sat through DR9.

The titular quote, by the way, is from Barney himself.

The Maggie (High and Dry), 1954. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, written by William Rose. Starring Paul Douglas, Alex Mackenzie, Tommy Kearins, Hubert Gregg, James Copeland, Abe Barker, Andrew Keir, and Meg Buchanan.

Quite possible the only place to get this remarkable movie is at Netflix.

Did I ever tell you the story of when I first saw Alexander Mackendrick's The Maggie? This was ages ago, when I was still in college, still wasting my time hungover, eating cold Whoppers first thing in the morning (two for two bucks meant breakfast, too), still thinking I was better than everyone else, you know, smarter, cooler, wiser even at twenty-two. A jerk, basically, so I still find it incredible, even to this day, that I actually paid attention to this lovely little film and came away feeling like I'd been keelhauled. Emotionally.

I used to drag my sorry ass down to a funny little bar called The Pickle Barrel nearly every day. The Barrel was the only place near my Midwestern campus that didn't have a television. They had a jukebox that was friendly to anyone who had decent taste: aside from the usual standards (Doors, Beatles, Creedence), you could find Beat Happening, The Breeders, and, at my insistence, all four of the Feelies albums. Inexplicably, there was also Tom T. Hall's Songs of Fox Hollow, whose track "Sneaky Snake", the neighborhood mailman used to play after a half-dozen Anchor Steams. The Barrel was relatively quiet, with dim lights that had the soft, waxy glow of gas lamps and a bar-sized pool table in the back. The place was run by an old fellow named Hickory who used to drive truck for a chicken factory, a job he used to describe as "the worst job an American could have". That was why he didn't serve chicken sandwiches in the place, because of that "feathered holocaust". They did serve the best hamburgers in town, and, in the mornings, the worst doughnuts--deep fried in the same grease as the prior night's onion rings.

The place was owned by one Jack Sullivan, a guy who'd made his fortune in real estate and rentals. He owned a pair of strip malls with high turnover, the usual head shops and comic book stores, beaderies and sub shops that pop up like dandelions near any campus. I once rented an apartment from him, a dingy place with a carpet in the kitchen that smelled like feet. The Pickle Barrel was in the middle of Sullivan's empire, and was, in fact, owned by the man himself.

Mr. Sullivan took all his meals at the Barrel, four doughnuts and the Barrel's hideous coffee for breakfast, a basket of fries and a diet tonic water for lunch, and a Swiss cheese burger and a Miller Lite for dinner, followed by his four cigarettes. He used to suck down three packs a day, Hickory once told me, but cut down to four smokes a day after the death of his brother. All four at night, while the lonely Sullivan sat and listened to the ballgame on a headphone radio at the end of the bar. He would not ask for the music to go down, or anyone to be quiet. "Sully knows it's not guys like him that keep this place afloat," Hickory said.

So Sullivan never appropriated The Pickle Barrel except once: on a balmy May evening some twenty years ago, now that I think of it. I should tell you, too, that we used to have some fun at Sullivan's expense: the guy was roly-poly, seemingly unmarried, none too friendly, and as a landlord could be a real dork--he once asked me to hang a plastic Santa Claus on my window one Christmas because it would cheer up the place--I did, and thereafter had to suffer through baubles for every holiday, from St. Paddy's day to Easter to a black curtain over the door on Memorial Day and a Spanish flag on Columbus Day.

This May evening, some pals and I were hungry for some beer and grub and irritable that the patio of The Barrel was packed, and would be for some time. We settled down inside and grumbled at the silence, and I made my way to the jukebox only to find it unplugged. "Sully's going to show a flick tonight," Hick told me. Sure enough, there was a screen and a little projector in the back, and a pile of six movie cans on a table, next to a pitcher of diet pop.

"Shit, does that mean no talking?" I asked.

Hick shrugged. "It's not my place."

So the lights dimmed to candle strength. Hick had taken down the large oil painting of the Liberty ship he used to sail on and hung the screen--acutally, just a plain bedsheet--and Sullivan got the show on the road. A shaft of light with smoke, and the crunch of peanut shells, the tinkle of glasses and dim conversation filled the place. With the credits my pals and I were really laying into it, with its silly Scottish jigs meant to lighten the jowls of every Englishman. I perked up at the sight of Alex Mackendrick's name on the credits: he'd helmed Sweet Smell of Success, an acrimonious film of the highest order, a classic amongst bastards like myself and my friends. So we shut up for a moment, and watched.

Well, The Maggie wasn't like anything I'd ever seen. It was goofy and sentimental, hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking. This coot, Mactaggart, has this old puffer ship that chugs along the rivers of Scotland hauling freight and in violation of every British naval code there is. They get the hammer dropped on them right at the start, told that they're not seaworthy any more. As fate would have it, they manage to get in the right place at the right time, and end up hauling a rich American's cargo to a distant Scottish Island. The American realizes his error and tries to stop the ship, eventually boarding it at one point, and hilarity ensues.

Only it doesn't. As The Maggie rolls on, the scenes of unchecked chaos become more and more heartfelt. The three men and the bowl-cut kid (we actually see the haircut) are really down on their luck; in fact, they don't eat well and are as crotchety a group as you'll likely see. But the heart of this amazing film, what got me while I was sucking down yet more beer, was Paul Douglas as the American. Douglas, I found, played heavies most of his life, finally freeing himself from the choke-hold Hollywood put on him, only to die of a heart attack at a young age.

Douglas, as the American, is going to learn a lesson for sure--he's hauling tons and tons of supplies to build a dream house for the wife he's neglecting. A bundle of nerves, he seethes and argues, threatens to sue anyone that laughs at him, all the while slowly becoming enamored of the little ship.

The drunker we got, the more we started laughing at this lovely little film. Everyone in the bar would sit and chuckle, whoop and applaud, at various points shouting toasts the crew of The Maggie after squeezing out of yet another scrape.

Toward the end there's a scene I'll never forget: Mactaggart is ignoring his duties, and has docked the Maggie in a small town in order to celebrate Davy Macdougall's hundredth birthday. The American watches from the shadows as the townsfolk celebrates the life of this cackling little blind man. And then, without bluster, without fanfare, he's invited inside, and simply dances with the lovely Scottish girls.

Douglas didn't miss a beat. Later, he asks the young girl he danced with about her two suitors. One is a simple fisherman, not so handsome, who goes out with his brothers on the boat; the other a handsome young man who owns a store and is about to buy the other. It seems, says the American, that the choice is obvious: the latter will give you whatever you want, and is an ambitious young man who will go places.

True, replies the girl. But I'll go with the other, because when he comes home, she says with a wistful sigh, he will think only of me and not his future.

There is virtually no catharsis in The Maggie, no sense that the men who run the boat will be spared the encroaching changes of post-war Britain, or that the American will salvage his marriage. In fact, one gets the distinctly opposite feeling--and when the last reel flipped to an end, filling the Barrel with a harsh white light, there was a long silence.

Mr. Sullivan relooped the film and began rewinding each reel. He appeared terribly pained, clearing his throat every now and then. The sounds of the bar quickly rose again, and he nodded to turn the jukebox on, which blared "Fly Like An Eagle", which grated on my nerves. But I was curious as to where old Sullivan found this movie, and what he thought of it.

"Good movie," was all I said. He didn't answer, so I pressed on. "What is it you liked about it?"

"I don't like anything about it," he told me, while clearing his throat halfway through that short sentence. "It's a piece of crap."

"Piece of crap? I loved it. Why would you show it if you thought it was a piece of crap?"

He gathered up the cans under each flabby arm, grunted, and said, "You kids never pay attention to anything." As he walked out the bar he shook his head, and kept clearing his throat.

"Six!" Hick said as I ordered another beer. "Guy smoked six cigs tonight, instead of the usual four."

"Said he hated that movie," I said.

"That's what he always says. But he must've paid a good penny for it, and the projector. And he shows it here every year for the last four years. Last year, I swear I saw a tear in the poor man's eye. Something about it gets to him. Gets to me, too. It'll hit you when you get older. If you ever see it again."

Mr. Sullivan died a few years after I left school, and he left Hickory the bar. Hickory still honors him by showing The Maggie once a year. "When Sully died there was a note in his will that I got the movie, and instructions simply to keep it in one of those mini-fridges he also left me. I guess if you keep the film cool it'll last. I didn't have to show it, didn't have to watch it, just keep it. If I got tired of it, he told me to find someone who would appreciate and care for it. But I show it every year because I like it.

"I don't quite get the thing, except to say that it hurts when it's over, like the good ending isn't quite there. Over the years there've been some weird reactions--one guy calling it the worst thing he's ever seen, another woman bawling because of a throwaway line from one of the crewmen, something about being hungry all the time. Some people dig the boy, others the American. I like the old man. Every year it's something different. That little puffer ship really gets to people."