Short Take: Sisters

Brian De Palma’s 1972 film Sisters, starring Margot Kidder, is no longer a film that can be watched on its own terms. One can’t help but consider it relative to De Palma and Kidder’s other work. The picture is a horror thriller built around the mystery surrounding two separated Siamese twins (both played by Kidder) and the murder one of them commits. For De Palma, the film (like his subsequent Phantom of the Paradise) functions as a bridge between the cultural satire he was initially known for, and the thriller-suspense material that now defines his reputation. He’s at his best here with the cultural satire, specifically the lampoon of the Candid Camera TV show the film opens with. The thriller material is largely reworkings of elements from Alfred Hitchcock films—clever but ultimately empty. De Palma highlights the absurdities, but doesn’t go much beyond that. He has yet to develop the incisiveness with which he would investigate these tropes in his later efforts. He does provide the thrills, but the grisliness aside, it’s in a bare-bones, 1970s action-TV-series manner. Anyone expecting the gorgeous staging and camerawork that are the most admirable hallmarks of his mature style will be sorely disappointed. (He was still learning. Reportedly an extended tracking-shot treatment of a police apartment search was heavily reworked in the editing room because the footage looked too awkward.) Other steps toward the filmmaking style he developed, such as the use of split-screen, aren’t very deft. He was still learning his way with the actors, too. The dialogue scenes have a rather stilted quality. Margot Kidder is impressive, though. As the sister who’s center-stage, she speaks with a Quebecois accent, and is a warm, emotionally fluid presence. It’s a pleasant contrast to the brittle, anxious Lois Lane that defined her career in the Christopher Reeve Superman pictures. The best aspect of her work here is her ability to reconcile this softer manner with the violence a sister commits. The cast also includes Jennifer Salt as a ninny newspaper reporter, Lisle Wilson as the murder victim, and Charles Durning as a comic private detective. (The movie's final shot, featuring Durning, is a piece of surreal-absurdist tableaux that ranks with the best of Luis Buñuel.) The script is credited to De Palma and Louisa Rose. Bernard Herrmann’s musical score is a fine addition to the library of work he put together with Hitchcock and other filmmakers.

Short Take: The Godfather

The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, has a pretty fair claim to being the Great American Movie. It begins in 1945. At a wedding reception, the youngest son (Al Pacino) of a wealthy Italian-American family sits with his fiancée (Diane Keaton). He tells her a story about the ruthlessness of his Mafia don father (Marlon Brando). After seeing her shock, he reassures her, in complete sincerity, "That's my family... It's not me." The story ends a decade later, when she, now his wife, sees him called out for murder, and watches his father's lieutenants swear fealty to him as the new don. In between, the film dramatizes how the son became what he thought he would never be. One is also shown the irony that, despite two older brothers, he was the only one with the qualities necessary to be his father's true heir. It's a story of organized-crime intrigues, family loyalties, and hopes dashed by circumstance. In short, it's an epic about the corruption of the American Dream. Coppola presents much of the material with a quiet, stately tone. He renders the characters and situations with subtlety and nuance. On the occasions when violence inevitably rears its head, the horror has a grandeur that surpasses that of perhaps any other film. The cast is one of the finest ever assembled: Pacino, Brando, Keaton, James Caan, Richard Castellano, John Cazale, Richard Conte, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, Al Lettieri, John Marley, Talia Shire, and Abe Vigoda. Production designer Dean Tavoularis and costumer Anna Hill Johnstone do a fine, unobtrusive job of evoking the period setting. Gordon Willis provided the handsome, dramatic cinematography. The superb screenplay, based on the novel by Mario Puzo, is by Coppola, Puzo, and an uncredited Robert Towne.

Short Take: The Candidate

The Candidate is probably the single finest movie about American politics, and easily the richest (and funniest) treatment of a political campaign. A professional campaign strategist (Peter Boyle) is looking for a new race to run. He settles on Bill McKay (Robert Redford), a social-activist attorney, as a candidate for U. S. Senator. McKay's innate advantages are considerable. He has the name recognition that comes from being the son of a popular former governor (Melvyn Douglas), and he's exceptionally telegenic--handsome, personable, and well-spoken. McKay initially refuses to run, but the strategist convinces him that the incumbent (Don Porter) is nearly unbeatable, and that frees up the opportunity for a campaign of ideas and principles. McKay's candidacy, though, gains traction, and the closer the race gets, the further McKay is taken from the ideals he sought to promote. Jeremy Larner's breezily cynical script does a terrific job of satirizing the inherent bad faith of most political campaigns, from the hackneyed language of slogans and speeches to hypocritical alliances to the opportunistic exploitation of people and calamities in the effort to gain support. Director Michael Ritchie presents the material in an impressionistic, semi-documentary style that fully captures the mercurial atmosphere that defines politics in the contemporary media age. Robert Redford is marvelous in the lead. His charisma and extraordinary good looks make him seem perfectly cast, but Redford also has a wryness to him, and he uses it to subtly put across McKay's disgust at how the campaign is selling out his dignity. The supporting cast is also strong, with particular kudos to Don Porter for the polished gravitas he gives McKay's opponent. Victor J. Kemper provided the cinematography. The outstanding editing is by Robert Estrin and Richard A. Harris. Ritchie and Redford made uncredited contributions to the script.

Short Take: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

This review was originally published on Pol Culture.

From its first shot to its last, the German writer-director Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) is a great, visionary film. The story is about an off-shoot expedition from Gonzalo Pizarro’s 16th-century quest for the mythical El Dorado. Herzog and cinematographer Thomas Mauch’s depiction of the Andes and the Amazon River is spellbinding and, at times, hallucinatory. The imagery beautifully dramatizes how insignificant and puny these would-be conquerors are in the face of nature’s grandeur. Their hubris in trying to navigate this supremely dangerous environment is a horrifyingly absurd spectacle. Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), the expedition’s leader, is the most horrifyingly absurd of all. He’s possessed of the insane delusion that the conquest of El Dorado will confirm his greatness, and it is but the first step through which he will fulfill his destiny of becoming ruler of the New World. Kinski’s performance is a tremendous portrait of megalomania. His intense eyes, sculptural features, and overall volatility make him seem demonic. But in this jungle, he and his crew turn out to be less than the monkeys in the trees. The film’s depiction of obsession and futility in striving against nature is awe-inspiring--perhaps the closest movies have come to the achievement of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The haunting electronic score is by the German band Popol Vuh.