jacegaffney

WINDOWS reminds me of REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. When REFLECTIONS came out in 1967, it had the book thrown at it for being deviant, sick, perverse, reactionary, offensive, pretentious (which is such a mouthful that it makes one believe that the hater(s)doth protest too much). On top of these epithets, was the final body blow, and "just plain boring." It's difficult to be all of the above and be "just plain boring" to boot which is the reason I was compelled to check out both movies. I'm glad I did. WINDOWS is not the outright triumph REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE is, but it's thoughtful and original about something that shouldn't be dismissed by film lovers out of court. It's not sleazy or exploitative; as a matter of fact, that's a major problem with it. It refuses to further sensationalize its wildly lurid "givens." It's artful enough in its intentions to try to suggest that the tragedy of urban life is not the violence of melodramatic evil, but the glass cubicles people live in that link and separate them in devastatingly emotional ways. Gordon Willis' direction is typical of a first time director. It suffers from being too studied but it's far from daft or moronic; visually, it's as thought through as REAR WINDOW, its obvious predecessor in voyeurism. But there's nothing in REAR WINDOW, as seriously naked and exposed as Elizabeth Ashley's performance. It's interesting that when great actors like Brando (in REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE), and Ashley in WINDOWS attempt something that goes beyond the average viewer's opinion of how a homosexual SHOULD be portrayed, there's is an automatic reflex action on the part of said viewer to distance themselves from the performance, to laugh at it or automatically dismiss it as being "over the top." This response is, in fact, more reactionary than the sins that have been dumped in the picture's lap. WINDOWS is not as dumb or insensitive as the knee jerk response it provokes in most people who feign an interest in the dark side until it becomes too real.

Perhaps the reason I like this film so much is because I don't, normally, like the cinema of Richard Lester. I've always found it too frenetic to be funny and too fragmented to be involving on any human level. However, CUBA is, arguably, the most misunderstood picture to close out the decade of the 70s. It is a brilliant visual satire of a society in total materialistic collapse with every character in the picture (save the white knight James Bond figure played by Sean Connery who is rendered completely ineffectual by the chaos that is tumbling down upon him)is literally on the take. What is extraordinary here is that the mise-en-scene is as visually dazzling and stylistically coherent CAPTURING chaos as it is satirically barbed, subtle and consistently ingenious. You really have to WATCH this movie. There's always something inventive and extremely droll going on around the edges. The supporting cast of Jack Weston, Hector Elizondo, Walter Godell, Martin Balsam, Chris Sarandon, Denholm Elliott and Alexandro Rey (unrecognizable)was flawlessly assembled but because the film doesn't ANNOUNCE its satirical intentions and Lester refuses to telegraph his gags and put anything in the center of the frame, most people came away from the picture pooh-faced. Well, there is one other problem with CUBA and Lester has to take the brunt of the responsibility for it which is, in his corrosively ebullient fervor (and perhaps because, as a director he never responded to women very much), he left poor, ultra-lovely Brooke Adams out to dry as a character. It's clear that he has nothing but contempt for the "Casablanca" aspect of the story involving her and Connery but he should have done a better job disguising the fact. I think Connery is terrific in his role making the pathos of his Gable-like flawed hero comical and deeply affecting. Lester was even more successful in JUGGERNAUT satirizing a genre while squeezing the maximum thrills out of it at the same time. CUBA doesn't work successfully on both levels in the way that JUGGERNAUT does. But it is the most impressively detailed and dynamically precise cinematic rendering of what the last days of a politically corrupt regime looks like - as it goes into free-fall - that a mainstream commercial film maker has ever given us.

For quite some time, this movie has held a place on my list of quintessential 60s guilty pleasure; it's a mini-super-light heist flick variation on some of the same themes in John Boorman's masterpiece, POINT BLANK - with its consistent visual chronicling of a transient American culture made anonymous by its materialistic-quack preoccupations (and thus,easily vulnerable to chameleon criminality). James Coburn, who plays DEAD HEAT'S hero shares some of Lee Marvin's traits in POINT BLANK. Both men move, mysteriously, like the wind, "beat the system," "win out" as anti-heroes but, in the process,they negate themselves out of existence ( they are, literally, "gone with the wind" at their respective pictures' fade-outs). On this last go-round, having just recently watched it again (via TCM), I'm prepared to give it a less qualified, more hearty endorsement. Writer-director, Bernard Girard makes the best case for modern international airports to be THE stage for absurdist comedy of any film I can think of. It begins with a mock-dramatic monologue by Coburn that keys the unique tongue-in-cheek tone of the film brilliantly and is probably the best acting he ever did on film. Stu Philips' catchy theme music maintains the puckish spirit of the piece in a way that few American movie scores of the 60s ( or movie scores of any other period for that matter) have been able to do as successfully or as memorably.