NFR Project: 'What's Opera, Doc?' (1957)

NFR Project: “What’s Opera, Doc?”

Dir: Chuck Jones

Scr: Michael Maltese

Ed: Treg Brown

Premiere: July 6, 1957

6:53

It’s the last Elmer Fudd cartoon. It’s regarded as the greatest cartoon of all time.

To take the most forbidding of opera composers, Richard Wagner, and turn his work into one enormous gag is a genius idea and a mighty (and ballsy) accomplishment. Here director Jones and writer Maltese worked together to realize a comic landscape within which Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd could enact their timeless predator/prey ballet in a highfalutin’ farce.

Knowledge of the operas involved only increases the enjoyment of the cartoon, but it’s not necessary. It doesn’t “stage” the conflict; it places it in its imaginary world, into which Bugs finds himself thrust. Again.

And it follows the internal logic of the Bugs/Elmer dynamic, gilded with the trappings of grand opera. Is this animation’s tongue-in-cheek a salute to the high arts, or a (credible) argument for animation’s primacy, a fine art in itself?

Elmer is after Bugs here, as always, but he is dressed as the opera hero Siegfried. “Kill the Wabbit!” he sings to the tune of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Bugs emerges from nearby, unimpressed. Elmer brags of his spear and magic helmet. A frightened Bugs runs away.

Elmer then finds Bugs dressed as a Viking maiden, on a stout white steed. He woos her, they dance – then the wig falls off. Bugs run again. Elmer invokes a storm and kills Bugs with lightning.

Then a contrite Elmer carries the body of Bugs to Valhalla. Bugs raises his head and remarks, “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”

It’s a classic. The animators push the aesthetic of grand opera, just blowing it just a little bit out of proportion into the ridiculous. Yes, we are nuts for paying good money for a multi-day opera that amounts to the contents of a Warner Brothers cartoon.

That Jones and Maltese have obvious affection for the works is evident. There is a nerdy delight in the proceedings, knowninf that there is a coded language being transmitted here that is only truly gotten by those hip to the scene. What the heck – it stimulated viewers to find out more about the genre, and ultimately birthed many opera performers and -lovers.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

NFR Project: 'The Tall T' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “The Tall T”

Dir: Budd Boetticher

Scr: Burt Kennedy

Pho: Charles Lawton Jr.

Ed: Al Clark

Premiere: April 2, 1957

78 min.

Much as actor Jimmy Stewart was united with director Anthony Mann on a series of five Westerns from 1950 to 1955, so it was with Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher. This collaboration concocted a set of seven exemplary Westerns between 1956 and 1960 that remain essential viewing.

All but one of the Scott-Boetticher films were penned by Burt Kennedy, who would go on to become an illustrious Western writer/director in his own right. This was Kennedy’s second Western, after the success of Seven Men from Now (1956), the first Boetticher/Kennedy/Scott collaboration.

This set of films, which became known as the “Ranown cycle,” explored all the classic themes of the Western. None was an “A-list” production; these are genre pictures meant to beguile a dedicated audience. Each featured Scott as a upright, terse cowpoke who’s on the side of right. In each film, he overcomes the usual obstacles and vanquishes the always-charming, well-spoken villain.

What makes these films distinctive is how good the writing is, and how smart Boetticher and company are in delineating it. The movies are set in the desert scrubland, out on the unforgiving frontier, where man and beast are put to the test. They are proving grounds for morality.

In this landscape, decisions have often-deadly consequences. These movies have a firm grasp of right and wrong, and all of them illustrate a basic faith in the individual and the human conscience. Scott is no anti-hero. These are traditional Westerns, but here the plot plays out like a modern and monumental mythology.

Here, Scott plays Brennan, a rancher who hitches a ride on a passing coach. The coach is ambushed by bandits, who decide to hold the newly married, affluent couple inside hostage. The witty leader of the bandit trio, Usher (Richard Boone) keeps Scott around, seemingly for laughs . . . but actually because of the sympathy he feels with him. In a word, sentimental, his fatal undoing.

The heroine (Maureen O’Sullivan) is abandoned by her cowardly husband, who is slaughtered by bandit Chink (the great Henry Silva!). The woman and Brennan are watched over by Chink and Billy Jack (Skip Homeier), who manage to slay them and then sset up a showdown with Usher himself. It’s a battle for survival, as both captives know that as soon as the ransom is paid, they’re dead.

Boetticher serves the screenplay with efficient affection, creating memorably staged scenes, brining a new and captivating insight to the vastly overplayed requirements of the genre. There is a freshness of gaze here. Scott, 58 at the time, is a lean, well-lined presence – the spirit of the Old West come to life.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: What’s Opera, Doc?

NFR Project: 'Sweet Smell of Success' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “Sweet Smell of Success”

Dir: Alexander Mackendrick

Scr: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: Alan Crosland Jr.

Premiere: July 4, 1957

96 min.

Another great New York film, Sweet Smell of Success is a brilliant yet untypical film from a gifted and perfectionist Scottish director, Alexander Mackendrick.

Mackendrick was at the time a veteran of the British film industry, having made the memorable comedies Whiskey Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951) , and The Ladykillers (1955) for Ealing. He came to America determined to make something utterly unlike his previous output. The result is a minor-key masterpiece.

He was lucky to acquire the services of the brilliant first-time screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who would later work on Sabrina, North by Northwest, The Sound of Music, West Sdie Story, The King and I, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Lehman became ill and had to bow out; he was replaced by the great Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter Clifford Odets. Odets, a prominent leftist, had been spared blacklisting by appearing as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

We are on Broadway between 42^nd and 57^th Streets. It’s a brutal story, tough and cynical. At its amoral center is Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), a slimy Broadway press agent hustling to get his clients’ names in the entertainment columns run by the daily New York newspaper. Publicity of such a kind could make or break a creative person’s career.

The king of the Broadway columnists is J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), a high-powered, high-handed ruler of the scene and all the players in it. He is modeled on several newspaper pundits, particularly Walter Winchell. His omniscience does not extend to his too-beloved sister Susan, with whom he has an unhealthy obsession. He wants to break her up with her boyfriend, Steve (Martin Milner), a jazz musician.

Sidney makes it his plan to break up Susan and Steve. A low-down liar, cheater, pimp, and traitor who will do anything to get ahead, Sidney is the antihero of the film, a small-timer looking for the big time. Tony Curtis wanted this part to prove that he could act; he does.

Matching him in vehemence is Lancaster, who plays Hunsecker with a cold, haughty stiffness that barely covers the wound-up tension inside his character. Hunsecker is controlling, vindictive, sadistic; it is one of Lancaster’s most frightening portrayals.

The two wreak havoc on those around them Hunsecker is determined to “tear (Steve) apart.” He gets Sidney to plant marijuana on him and call the (crooked) cops (good old Emile Meyer!). All this drives Susan to the brink of suicide. It is only the final round of betrayals that exposes them for the monsters that they are.

Justice of a kind is meted out, but the take on show business, journalism, and power politics in Manhattan is decidedly downbeat. Everyone is out for themselves, save for our young lovers. Shot in gritty black and white by the great James Wong Howe, the movie intimates that those highest in the pecking order are no worse than the lowest – and perhaps even more so.

Mackendrick soon tired of the deal-making aspects of Hollywood, and wound down his directing career. He went on to be a well-regarded educator at CalArts.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Tall T.