Starring: Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Tom Drake and Marjorie Main
Directed By: Vincente Minelli
Screenplay By: Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe
Story By: Sally Benson
Produced By: Arthur Freed
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: Approximately  113 minutes
Genre: Musical
Release Date: November 28, 1944

Despite its innocuous title, 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis has emerged as a favorite film of the holiday season. While at first glance the movie’s Christmas ties seem dubious – the plot concerns a year in the life of an affluent family in the title city – its indelible contribution to the celebration of Christmas comes near the end of the movie, when the following song is heard for the first time:

Sung by the still-incomparable Judy Garland and composed by songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is now as well-worn a holiday staple as they come (subsequent revisions would disappointingly brighten up the lyrics a bit). Mostly famous today for debuting this ubiquitous Christmas hit, Meet Me in St. Louis was loaded with popular original songs, including “The Trolley Song” (let’s go out on a limb and suggest it remains America’s most popular streetcar-themed tune). While the music is undoubtedly a highlight and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” tends to outshine the movie itself, Meet Me in St. Louis has considerable charms to recommend it beyond its signature songs.

Garland stars as Esther, boy-crazy daughter of the expansive Smith family. The Smiths live in an idyllic version of 1903 St. Louis, where the biggest worries are full dance cards and the excruciating wait for the upcoming World’s Fair, which promises to raise the city to new prominence. Amidst excitement for the Fair, Esther and Rose (Lucille Bremer) are looking for good men to marry, and they have their sights set on a handsome neighbor (Tom Drake) and a young man that can’t seem to pop the question to Rose. The girls’ romantic schemes to find Mr. Right delight all – cantankerous Grandpa, bemused Mother (Mary Astor), smart-mouthed maid Katie – except their exasperated father, lawyer Lon (Peyton Place’s Leon Ames). The lives of the Smiths are turned upside down when Lon announces a promotion that requires the family’s move to New York – scuttling plans to see the Fair and seemingly putting an end to Esther and Rose’s percolating romances.

This being an old-fashioned Hollywood musical, it’s a safe guess that the family does not make a miserable move to New York City, a trail of broken hearts in its wake. Filmed and released at the height of America’s involvement in World War II, Meet Me in St. Louis harkens back to a less anxious time in the American consciousness, a sincere celebration of the resilience of family and the belief that there’s no problem too difficult to be overcome. With their plucky attitudes and strong family bond, the Smiths are not unlike the Marches of Little Women (Ames, essentially playing the same part, would later play Father in 1949’s version of Louisa May Alcott’s novel), and they face adversity with similar resolve.

St. Louis, however, lacks that undercurrent of tragedy: here the dilemmas are solved with a  kind word and a gesture of goodwill, and all misunderstandings are just that. It’s this spirit that defines the musicals of the era, nostalgia for a time and place of easy solutions that never really existed. The stakes are low, but the Smiths make you want to believe that stability and the comforts of their cozy two-story home is the most important thing in the world. The film’s breezy take on life’s problems would serve as a model for countless movie musicals to come.

Shot in gorgeous Technicolor, the lives of the Smiths play out like candy-colored portraits on the screen, shot with grandeur by director Vincente Minelli, here working with Garland, his future bride, for the first time. Garland, naturally, carries the movie, both dramatically and through the songs, which include additional originals by Martin and Blane as well as rearranged standards like “Skip to My Lou.” Child actress O’Brien, source of much of the movie’s adolescent mischief, earned a special tiny – literally tiny – Oscar for her collective film performances that year, and her performance in St. Louis successfully rides the line between cute and cloying (future actresses using O’Brien’s cute-moppet template would be less successful). The whole ensemble follows Garland’s lead, turning in exuberant performances that are broad but never cartoonish.

The film’s Christmas segment is undoubtedly a highlight, and Garland’s serenade of O’Brien with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is easily the movie’s emotional high point, coming at the brink of the family’s move on a sleepless, snowy Christmas Eve. The film goes on a bit after the Christmas sequence – there needs to be some payoff to all that talk of the spectacle of the World’s Fair – but the movie’s heart lies in Garland’s tender, instantly definitive version of the Christmas classic and the action that follows.  The Christmas segment makes it a classic, but the movie around it offers its own set of nostalgic charms.

Meet Me in St. Louis plays at the Rosebud Cinema through Dec. 15.
 

Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Madge Sinclair, Robert Guillaume, Moira Kelly, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin
Directed By: Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff
Written By: Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton
Produced By: Don Hahn
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Rating: G
Running Time: Approximately 89 minutes
Genre: Animated
Release Date: June 15, 1994

With the recent re-release of The Lion King taking up unexpected residency at the #1 spot at the box office, it seems like a good time to reconsider the 1994 animated film. A staple of any parents’ arsenal of VHS tape collection throughout the ‘90s, it shouldn’t be a surprise that, nearly 20 years later, the movie still packs a considerable emotional punch.

For those who did not have children who watched the movie 118 times per month growing up and/or have no cultural awareness whatsoever, the story of The Lion King is basically a Shakespearean tragedy transposed onto the animal kingdom, a kingdom ruled by a noble pride of lions led by the wise, benevolent Mufasa (voice of James Earl Jones). The birth of Mufasa’s heir, young cub Simba, is greeted warmly by all the animals of the African veldt – all except Mufasa’s brother, Scar (Jeremy Irons, nicely sinister). Scar conspires to kill his brother, drive his naïve nephew out of the kingdom, and take control of the kingdom himself. In one of the more heart-wrenching scenes in any movie, animated or otherwise, a cruel, haughty Scar sends Mufasa to his death, and manages to convince Simba it’s his fault in the process. In exile, Simba finds friends in the easy-going duo of meerkat and warthog, Timon and Pumbaa (Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella). Young Simba grows up to be a big lion with Matthew Broderick’s voice, and a chance encounter with childhood friend, Nala (Moira Kelly), sets the shamed Simba on the road to reclaiming his kingdom – a road that takes him into direct conflict with Scar.

From an adult eye, it’s easy to recognize the film’s flaws: the sometimes-dubious subtext, the suspicious resemblance to Osmau Tezuka’s earlier Kimba the White Lion, the brazen commercialism that followed in the countless tie-ins and spin-offs that followed. If The Lion King can accurately be accused of co-opting “Hamlet” and cross-cultural mythic tropes, it doesn’t diminish the movie’s power. The film successfully manages a dark, dreary storyline of what amounts to regicide and fascism with a light-hearted tone. The light moments work in no small part thanks to the songs by Elton John. John, with longtime collaborator Tim Rice, hasn’t been nearly as relevant since his tour-de-force display here. The film is loaded with memorable songs, even a short list of which – “Hakuna Matata,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” “Circle of Life” – is likely to get at least one of those songs stuck in your head. Coupled with Hans Zimmer’s memorable score, The Lion King has a stunning musical palate.

The ubiquity of the music is hardly the only thing that makes the movie work. The dark moments – and there are plenty here – are intense but never beyond the pale for family entertainment; for a movie with a farting warthog, there’s a surprising maturity and balance to the storytelling. That the movie deals with plot elements we’ve seen before – ambitious kings, jealous rivals – is beside the point – mapped onto the cast of animals both silly and grave, hoary plot devices are given convincing new life. Speaking of the farting warthog, the voice cast is worth noting. The interplay between Lane and Sabella as Timon and Pumbaa is charming and their performances spot-on. Likewise, James Earl Jones’s Mufasa oozes authority. When Mufasa dispenses wisdom, everyone – including the audience – is inclined to listen. Irons, of course, adds the perfect note of English menace to Scar, while comedian Rowan Atkinson brings nervous affection to Zazu, Mufasa’s avian advisor.

Arguably the apex of Disney’s dynasty of hand-drawn animated classics before diminishing returns (creative and financial) and the rise of computer animation, The Lion King has earned a place in the pantheon of great 20^th century movies. Disney itself tried to replicate the Lion King formula numerous times over the years, but the results were usually close to their Tarzan – an imitator in form, but not in spirit.

The Lion King was lightning in a bottle – a heavily marketed lightning bolt in a carefully tested bottle, sure – but a rare collusion of style, substance, and those damn infectious songs. The advent of Pixar and its imitators would eventually shelve the languishing art form of conventional animation for years (2009’s The Princess and the Frog was a respectable, somewhat half-hearted return to the form for Disney), but in a long line of successful, gorgeously rendered cartoons with a lineage going back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Lion King possibly rules them all.

Starring: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Zack Norman, Alfonso Arau, Manuel Ojeda, Holland Taylor and Mary Ellen Trainor
Directed By: Robert Zemeckis
Written By: Diane Thomas
Produced By: Michael Douglas
Distributor: 20^th Century Fox
Rating: PG
Running Time: Approximately 106 minutes
Budget: $10 million
Genre: Action/Adventure/Comedy/Romance
Release Date: March 30, 1984

Full disclosure time: I was a little late to the Romancing The Stone party. I was 7 when it first played in theaters in 1984, but actually didn’t get around to seeing the film until the fall of 1993. Interestingly enough, I had seen its 1985 sequel, Jewel of the Nile, any number of times. As is the case with most discerning moviegoers, I almost always prefer the original film to the sequel, but for many years I was a fan of  Jewel of the Nile without even being aware of Romancing the Stone’s existence.

When I did finally get around to seeing Romancing the Stone – nine years after its theatrical release on one of the premium cable channels – I was blown away by it. All those years enjoying the madcap adventure on display in Jewel of the Nile should have been spent enjoying the swashbuckling escape and budding romance at the heart of Romancing the Stone. There’s no question that the original is superior to the sequel and contains what is arguably Kathleen Turner’s best on-screen performance. As great as she was in her Oscar-nominated performance in 1986’s Peggy Sue Got Married, as assuredly as she held her own against Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor (1985), and as unforgettable as she was as a calculating femme fatale opposite William Hurt in her big screen debut, Body Heat (1981), I’m hard-pressed to name another film in which she’s better. 1989’s The War of the Roses? Perhaps. 1984’s Crimes of Passion? A case could be made.

But it’s safe to say that without her enormously appealing, perfectly calibrated performance opposite Michael Douglas’ career best comic performance, the movie wouldn’t be such the modern-day classic it is.

In the early-1980s, Diane Thomas, a frustrated thirtysomething waitress in Malibu, California finally decided to follow through on her dream of writing an original screenplay. Thomas had put off writing a film script for years because she didn’t want to become a part of that ubiquitous Southern California cliché (i.e. the struggling screenwriter).  

Nonetheless, she eventually threw caution to the wind and wrote Romancing the Stone. The movie focuses on Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner), a mousy New York-based romance novelist whose older sister, Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor, Zemeckis’ then-wife), is being held for ransom down in South America. She will only be released if Joan travels to Colombia to exchange a treasure map her recently murdered brother-in-law mailed her prior to his demise. 

Once in Colombia, Joan naively places her trust in a charming local, who we soon discover has ulterior motives. He knowingly leads her far away from her destination deep into the Colombian jungle, and attempts to steal the map for himself. Joan narrowly escapes certain death thanks to the sudden appearance of one shotgun-toting Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas), an American expat who reluctantly agrees to get her to back to the coast where she needs to be for the exchange. With so many people after the treasure the map promises to bring to them, Thomas’ script keeps us guessing (much like Joan herself) as to whether we can place our trust in Jack to do the right thing without letting greed get the better of him. Is he her knight and shining armor, or an opportunist with an easy mark?

Romancing the Stone was the fulfillment of Thomas’ long held wish to write a smart, funny and original film with a strong female character anchoring the story.  In record time, and to her surprise, the script sold very quickly and was put on the fast track to production – eventually becoming a critically-lauded box office hit.  

The metamorphosis Joan goes through over the course of the story – from an insecure, sheltered bookworm to a sexy, confident, risk-taker with great legs – is brought to vivid, multi-dimensional life by Turner. Similar to Thomas realizing her dream of becoming a successful screenwriter, Joan becomes the kind of woman she always wanted to be  – the take-charge women that she’s written about for years in one bodice ripper after another.

The film is generally regarded as having put Turner on the map as a proven leading lady with impeccable comedic timing, and it was only her third movie. The film ignited Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis’ (Forrest Gump) career filmmaker; prior to Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis was mainly perceived as Steven Spielberg’s protégé, best known for the cult comedy Used Cars (1980).

Romancing the Stone received a number of accolades, including Golden Globe wins for Best Motion Picture – Musical/Comedy and Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical/Comedy for Turner, who also was voted Best Actress by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Thomas received a Best Original Screenplay award nomination from the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA). Not surprisingly, Turner was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. So often the Academy favors dramatic performances over comedic ones when everyone worth their Screen Actors Guild card knows comedy is infinitely harder to pull off than drama. 

As a bumbling crook in hot pursuit of Joan and the map, Danny DeVito is a hoot, bringing boundless energy and effortless charm to what could have been a grating caricature in the hands of a lesser talent. Emmy-winner Holland Taylor (“The Practice,” “Two and a Half Men”) is terrific as Joan’s world-weary book editor, Gloria.

Sadly, Romancing the Stone marks Diane Thomas’ sole produced screenplay and in many ways is a long standing tribute to her. Thomas died from injuries sustained in a car accident in October of 1985, shortly before Stone’s sequel, Jewel of The Nile, was released in theaters.

Twenty-seven years later, Romancing the Stone is still unequivocally the best of its genre. There hasn’t been a completely successful film that mixes romantic comedy and adventure in the years since that is comparable to Romancing the Stone. Films like Six Days, Seven Nights (1998) have tried and failed to capture the same carefree abandon, witty banter and sweeping romanticism that Thomas’ deft script and winning performances by Turner and Douglas brought to the proceedings.

Romancing the Stone is available on DVD  and Blu-ray from 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Starring: Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss
Written and Directed By: Tom Stoppard, based on his stage play
Produced By: Emanuel Azenberg and Michael Brandman
Distributor: Cinecom Pictures
Rating: PG
Running Time: Approximately 117 minutes
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Release Date: February 8, 1991

Well before such movies as 10 Things I Hate About You and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet put their spin on the canon of William Shakespeare, acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard wrote the definitive Shakespearean reinvention with his extended “Hamlet” riff, 1990’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

Directing from his own screenplay, modified from the stage production, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead casts Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the two title characters, though which character is which is neither entirely clear nor all that important. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor but pivotal characters in “Hamlet,” bland, minor nobles who service the plot and are unceremoniously killed between acts. Stoppard’s film is the story of “Hamlet” – structurally and thematically – and tells it from the point of view of the two minor characters doomed to die.

Oldman and Roth’s characters fumble through a life that to them holds little coherence, their actions dictated by the whims of the source material. They are disruptively whisked away to whichever scene the plot demands they attend to, from receiving the treacherous new king and queen or comforting the faux-insane Hamlet. Their sense of impending dread is personified by the Player King (Richard Dreyfuss), another minor character with an important role who returns time and again to hound Roth and Oldman. The Player King hints at the kind of self-awareness that eludes them as they try to comprehend their place in the world around them.

Desperately trying to follow their own plot even as Hamlet’s grand drama unfolds around them, the two men spend the film debating the nature of reality, destiny, luck, and just which one of them is Rosencrantz and which is Guildenstern. Coasting through and often unwittingly influencing the larger plot of “Hamlet,” Roth’s clueless rage and Oldman’s good-natured ignorance carry the characters from one funny, increasingly foreboding scene to the next – the title is, after all, unalterably literal.

“What are you playing at?” an exasperated Oldman asks Roth, after the two try to riddle just where they are and what they’re supposed to be doing. “Words,” laments Roth, just short of realization. “They’re all we have to go on.” Coming at Shakespeare’s bloody drama with the sensibilities of a screwball comedy team, the duo live in plain sight of the truth but are condemned by the dual restraints of their own antic distractions and the fixed roles the developing drama demands of them. They mouth dialogue from “Hamlet” naturally, then look confused and disoriented when the scene has passed them by and they’ve returned to their normal state; the wordplay of a role-playing exercise osbcures the truth they’ve uncovered about what’s really going on. But no matter what their discoveries, how close they come to understanding, the fact remains: Roth and Oldman are dead.

Deftly weaving notions of identity and destiny into a tapestry even more complex than its source material, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the rare, resonant “reimagining” that stands the test of time. Stoppard would later win an Academy Award for co-writing Shakespeare in Love, but it’s his earlier Shakespearean-themed work that’s his triumph.

Starring: Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder, Jack Palance, Christine Kaufmann, Monica Calhoun, George Aguilar, Darron Flagg, and Hans Stadlbauer
Directed By: Percy Adlon
Screenplay By: Eleonore Adlon, Percy Adlon, and Christopher Doherty
Story By: Percy Adlon
Produced By: Eleonore Adlon and Percy Adlon
Distributor: Island Pictures/MGM
Rating: PG
Running Time: Approximately 95 minutes
Budget: $2 million
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Release Date: April 22, 1988

German writer-director Percy Adlon was looking to make a film set in a place where there is nothing. Or, as he calls it, a “zero place.” In 1985, he was on Christmas vacation with his wife (and frequent filmmaking collaborator) Eleonore and their family driving around southern California near the town of Ludlow. They were looking for a place called “Bagdad,” which, as it turns out, no longer existed. Enchanted by the desert and a local cafe, the idea for Bagdad Cafe was soon born.

Bagdad Cafe is a quirky and decidedly offbeat comedy-drama about two mismatched women, played by CCH Pounder and Marianne Sägebrecht (two wonderful character actresses who should be household names), who develop an unexpected bond and find their purpose – not to mention some hard fought peace of mind – off the beaten path.

The film opens with Jasmin (Marianne Sägebrecht, The War of the Roses), a buttoned-up, middle-aged German housewife on vacation, who gets into an argument with her husband at the side of a road in the middle of the Mojave Desert. In a defining moment, she walks away, abandoning him. He returns the favor. Alone and seeking refuge from the oppressive heat, Jasmin happens across the Bagdad Cafe, which appears to be an oasis amid the otherwise arid surroundings. There she meets Brenda (CCH Pounder, Avatar, “The Shield”), the proprietress of the dilapidated lodge and adjoining restaurant who, like Jasmin, has also just recently ended things with her no-account husband.

Disheveled, emotionally spent, overworked, and saddled with three kids (including Monica Calhoun and Darron Flagg), a bewildered Indian cook (George Aguilar), a tattoo artist (Christine Kaufmann), and little patience for strangers or fools, Brenda is a ticking time bomb. In comparison, Jasmin’s newfound independence leads her to rediscover the magic (literally, as she is a skilled magician) that had earlier been such an important part of her day-to-day life. Along the way she becomes the muse for one of Brenda’s borders, a former Hollywood set painter (the late Jack Palance) who’s instantly infatuated by the new local’s unusual beauty.

Taken aback by the condition in which she finds her room, Jasmin cleans it up, while the regulars – including a flustered Brenda – look on in complete amazement. Soon she’s cleaning other patrons’ rooms and public areas of the Bagdad Cafe. Jasmin relies on her natural affability as well as her culinary skills to win over Brenda (who proves to be a tough nut to crack), Brenda’s kids, and the cafe’s few loyal regulars.

As zany as the proceedings get from time to time – one character abruptly leaves because the Bagdad Cafe gets too harmonious for their tastes – the film keeps itself from flying off the rails by keeping one foot firmly planted in reality. As Jasmin and Brenda rally back from the edge, there’s a sense of impending trouble ahead that lingers throughout the film like a smudge even Jasmin can’t wipe away.

The evolving relationship between Jasmin and Brenda, so indelibly played by Sägebrecht and Pounder, is at the heart of the film. It’s a real treat to witness them both get their joy back. Both characters could have been one-note caricatures: Jasmin, a German hausfrau; and Brenda, a loudmouthed sistah. But thanks to Sägebrecht and Pounder’s remarkable range and the film’s unique visual style, Bagdad Cafe is a gem from a time when studios had little, if anything, to do with indie film production.

Bagdad Cafe is available on DVD from MGM Home Entertainment.

Starring: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Jospeh Calleia
Directed By: Orson Welles
Written By: Orson Welles
Based On: The novel “Badge of Evil” by Whit Masterson
Produced By: Albert Zugsmith
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Rating: N/A
Running Time: Approximately 95 minutes
Genre: Drama/Crime
Release Date: April 23, 1958

When your debut as a writer/director is Citizen Kane, where do you go from there?  If you’re Orson Welles, you spend a career trying to live up to what has become the definitive quality standard of film. Welles would have a few more moments of brilliance – 1942’s The Magnificent Ambersons, the documentary F for Fake – but spent much of his career marginalized by mainstream Hollywood, taking television and voiceover work where he could.  Left to his own devices, Welles spent the remainder of his career working on eclectic projects and taking whatever work (the infamous wine commercials) that would come his way.

1958’s Touch of Evil is NOT a return to old glories for Welles.  In a lot of ways, it’s a purely conventional pot-boiler in the film noir mold that has more than a few of the clichés and characteristics of the B-movie, pseudo-shocking crime dramas of its era.  Charlton Heston plays Vargas, a Mexican police official off to American soil for a honeymoon with his new wife, Susie (Psycho’s Janet Leigh).  Plans get derailed, however, when a car bomb planted on the Mexican side of the border explodes on the American side.  Sensing the difficulties that could arise from a cross-border incident, Vargas investigates, putting himself directly in the path of the American investigative team.  Hank Quinlan (Welles) and Menzies (Joseph Calleia) are on the case, and they don’t appreciate Vargas involving himself – especially when Vargas suspects Quinlan of planting evidence.  From there it becomes a race against time as Vargas tries to implicate Quinlan for years of wrongdoing on the job, while the corrupt Quinlan works with local gangsters to keep Vargas distracted.  They go so far as to kidnap and drug Susie from a sinister motel in an elaborate attempt to discredit Vargas.

There’s the usual crime drama checkpoints along the way: violence, betrayal, seedy locales, the whole bit.  But this is Orson Welles after all, and the difference between this and the standard “Crime Doesn’t Pay” allegory is all in the details. Welles stocks the movie with a stellar cast.  Heston is, in theory, the least convincing Mexican ever put to film (he goes accent-less, at the request of Welles), but he invests Vargas with enough of his characteristic passion and drive that you don’t question Vargas’ steely resolve to find his wife and catch Quinlan.  Leigh plays the distressed damsel with gusto, portraying genuine fear as she is used as a pawn in Quinlan’s ongoing defensive against Vargas.  Memorable cameos are put in by Zsa Zsa Gabor as a strip club owner, and Marlene Dietrich as a wary woman from Quinlan’s past who speaks some of the finest closing lines in any movie.  As for Welles himself, his Quinlan plays off his own post-peak image: tired, bloated, run down by the job and the erosion of mere living.  These characters, the honest and the hopeless alike, move through gritty streets of border towns toward an inexorable fate, and no one gets away unscathed.

Never truly satisfied with Universal’s butchering and subsequent theatrical burying of the movie, Welles circulated a now-notorious 58-page memo detailing exactly what changes he wanted to make to the film.  Re-edited and implementing as many of the late Welles’s changes as possible, the 1998 version is the definitive cut of the movie and shows that in Welles’s hands, even the usual genre tropes can be dealt with in new and exciting ways.  The opening shot – an uninterrupted three minute-plus take following the doomed car from border to border as Vargas and Susie carry on obliviously – can and has been dissected as a great moment of virtuosic camera work, and the signature flourish for a movie that turned out much better than it had any right to be.  Welles would go on to do a few more, largely ignored projects and a long string of television appearances, trading on his voluminous voice. But Touch of Evil remains one of his last great movies and a great final bow for one of cinema’s greats – even if it took more than 40 years and beyond death to show us how it’s done.

Famous opening shot

Trailer

Starring: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, and J.T. Walsh
Directed By: Stephen Frears
Screenplay By: Donald E. Westlake
Based On: The novel The Grifters by Jim Thompson
Produced By: Martin Scorsese, Robert A. Harris, and Jim Painter
Distributor: Miramax Films/Cineplex-Odeon Films
Rating: R
Running Time: Approximately 110 minutes
Budget: N/A
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Release Date: December 5, 1990

“I’ve wined and dined on mulligan stew and never wished for turkey, as I hitched and hiked and grifted too from Maine to Albuquerque…”

This line from “The Lady is a Tramp” serves as an apt description of the formidable trio of con artists at the center of director Stephen Frears’ The Grifters, an adaptation of the popular Jim Thompson pulp fiction classic of the same name.

Shortly before his death in 1977, when all of his books were out of print, Thompson instructed his wife to retain all rights to his published work because he felt that within a decade his novels would be rediscovered and make a major comeback. Thompson’s request proved prophetic. In 1987, director Martin Scorsese (one of the film’s producers) approached English director Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity) with an offer to direct this comic noir about seduction, betrayal, and murder. 

The Grifters centers on the charged relationships Roy Dillon (John Cusack), a young, wide-eyed, small-time grifter based in Los Angeles, has with his estranged mother, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), and his older girlfriend, Myra Langtry (Annette Bening). Roy, who masquerades as a matchbook salesman, swindles people in dimes and degrees, flashing 20s at bars then paying for drinks with 10s. His scam eventually leads to him being hospitalized after he’s socked in the guts with the business end of a Louisville Slugger. Lilly, whom he hasn’t seen in nine years, is a seasoned con artist who works the tracks for Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle), a big-time mobster, by betting large sums on long-shot horses to even out the odds. And Myra, an expert long con player, believes she’s found her new, ideal partner in Roy. Myra’s hungry to re-enter the long con bracket (her niche) with Roy, in whom she sees the same passion and commitment that her burnt-out former partner (the late, great J.T. Walsh) had. 

Lilly and Roy have a thoroughly inappropriate relationship; it’s a textbook example of the Oedipus complex. Lilly, who was all of 14-years-old when she had Roy, is nearly devoid of anything approaching maternal instinct. She flirts with her son, kisses him as if he was a suitor, and is jealous of his relationship with Myra, whom Huston believes Lilly considers “a nasty little kitten.”

When Roy’s hospitalization brings the trio together, it’s apparent the women in his life are playing the game in a loftier league than Roy. Then the movie’s central question soon becomes who’s conning who as Roy finds himself in the middle of these two women who are constantly on the prowl for their next sucker. 

The novel on which the film is based is set in the early-50s, but director Stephen Frears wasn’t terribly interested in doing a period piece. He wanted to craft a modern film with a deliberate period quality – making the film’s setting ambiguous. Los Angeles, filled with examples of unblemished architectural genius dating back to the 30s, proved to be the ideal canvas for the action to unfold. Furthermore, Huston and Bening sport dresses from the 40s, characters drive cars from the 70s, Cusack wears suits from the 80s, and scams at chain-bars like Bennigan’s. In crafting the Oscar-nominated script, writer Donald E. Westlake, who credits Thompson with “giving Greek tragedy to the underclass,” felt it essential to change the focus of the story from the son to the mother.  According to Westlake, told from Roy’s perspective, The Grifters is about death and defeat, however told from Lilly’s perspective, the story is about survival and the price that costs some people. 

The film was a critical smash when it opened in late-1990, and went onto to win a cavalcade of awards and nominations for its cast and makers, including four Oscar nominations, two going to Huston and Bening for lead actress and supporting actress, respectively. The film’s stars turn in exceptional, nuanced performances, especially Huston whose explosive mere fatale is a revelation and should have earned her a second Oscar nod. The film is responsible for establishing Bening as a serious talent (her future husband, Warren Beatty, was so impressed with her work here that he cast her as his leading lady in 1991’s Bugsy), and for helping Cusack transition from teen heartthrob to adult leading man.

There’s one underlying thread in all of Jim Thompson’s stories: none of them have happy endings and all of his characters go straight to hell in one way or another. With that in mind, pay particularly close attention to one of the last scenes. We see Lilly in a blood red dress, holding a briefcase, inside of an elevator making its literal descent to the lobby of an apartment building and its figurative descent into hell. A striking visual metaphor for how all of Thompson’s stories conclude.

The Grifters is available on DVD from Miramax Home Entertainment.