Marco (1973)

Another failed attempt at extending their success to the big screen, musical fantasy Marco was produced by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., beloved for their stop-motion Christmas specials of the ’60s and ’70s. Marco offers a weird riff on the lore of 12th-century explorer Marco Polo, played here lifelessly by Desi Arnaz Jr. The picture opens in the court of Mongol king Kublai Khan (Zero Mostel), and the central premise is that Marco’s father asks Khan to punish Marco for being irresponsible. Khan mischievously tasks Marco with spending a day in the king’s court, all the while begging Marco to marry one of Khan’s many daughters. Eventually Marco and his would-be betrothed venture beyond the castle to search for whale oil in a desert. Even setting aside the bizarre and episodic plot, Marco is tough to endure. Arnaz is terrible, Mostel screams most of his dialogue, and leading lady Cie Cie Win, as the butch Princess Aigarn, is charmless. (Totally wasted is the great comic actor Jack Weston, who plays Marco’s uncle and sings a dumb song about inventing spaghetti.) The production values of castle scenes are okay, but for no discernible reason, one fantasy scene is presented in the familiar Rankin-Bass style of cutesy puppets and stop-motion animation. And then there’s the issue of the songs—the awful, grating, stupid songs. Some are sickly-sweet, some are offensive with regard to gender and race, and all are interminable. Strangest of them is Aigarn’s recurring theme, “By Damn,” repurposed every time she articulates a strong emotion. Especially when she performs the song while stripping off her clothes to protest Khan’s insistence that she dress in a more feminine manner, “By Damn” does not belong in a G-rated kiddie flick. And for those who might argue that Aigarn’s characterization as a willful warrior woman is the movie’s most interesting and progressive element, watch out for the cringe-inducing way her storyline resolves. Like everything else in Marco, it’s just wrong.

Marco: LAME

Journey Into Fear (1975)

          Featuring a random assortment of familiar faces, this Canadian production offers a pedestrian new adaptation of a 1940 spy novel previously adapted for the screen in 1943 by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. The 1975 version of Journey Into Fear is pleasant enough to watch, but because it’s almost all plot, those who don’t lock into the storyline early are likely to get bored during long exposition and/or suspense scenes featuring leading man Sam Waterston. Although he does credible work, the only fun sequences in Journey Into Fear are those with costars Donald Pleasence and Vincent Price. Pleasence combines his characteristic fidgety energy with a campy Turkish accent, while Price, taking a welcome break from playing cartoonish ghouls, lends sophistication to the role of a cold-blooded pragmatist.

          The murky plot involves geologist Graham (Waterston) visiting Turkey to explore oil resources, even as nefarious characters repeatedly try to kill him. Local cop Col. Haki (Joseph Wiseman) tells Graham he can’t leave Turkey until a criminal investigation related to one of the attempted murders is resolved, so before long Graham gets enmeshed with sketchy characters including the nervous Kuvelti (Pleasence) and the obsequious Kupelkin (Zero Mostel). Graham also begins a romance with French singer Josette (Yvette Mimieux) before finally meeting his main adversary, the suave Dervos (Price). That this brief synopsis excludes significant characters played by Ian McShane and Shelley Winters indicates both how overstuffed the storyline is and how many different types of acting are on display. Cohesion is not the order of the day.

          Appearing fairly early in his long screen career, Waterston performs with considerable authority, but because his role is so underwritten, Waterston often blends into the scenery. (One wishes Mimieux, chirping in a bad French accent, did the same.) While McShane is suitably menacing in a mostly wordless role, only Pleasence and Price bring real flair—the very quality that made the Welles/Cotten version enjoyable. It’s especially pleasurable to watch Price play someone closer to the sophisticate he was offscreen, though the villainous nature of his character keeps the role on-brand.

Journey Into Fear: FUNKY

Best Boy (1979)

          Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature of its year, the straightforward but deeply moving Best Boy encompasses not only some of the highest aspirations of nonfiction storytelling, but also, in an unpretentious way, some of the highest aspirations of the popular arts. Telling the story of a mentally challenged man’s difficult journey from isolation to a sort of independence, it’s a profound testament to the bond between a mother and her child, with all the joy and sadness that connection implies. Filmmaker Ira Wohl made the film to record his efforts to help a cousin, 52-year-old Philly Wohl, transition from his parents’ house to a group home. At the beginning of the picture, Philly enjoys a loving but sheltered existence with his aging parents, Max and Pearl. Given his severe impairments, Philly is childlike, capable of managing little more than everyday grooming functions and a few simple chores. Yet he’s affectionate and he projects contentment, so Best Boy doesn’t play for cheap audience sympathy. Rather, the film asks viewers to enter Philly’s world while also forcing viewers to consider larger questions of what responsibility society has with regard to providing for citizens who cannot provide for themselves.

          To the extent of their abilities, since both are diminished by age and illness, Max and Pearl give Philly a comfortable home life. With Ira’s prodding—the filmmaker appears in a few scenes and provides narration throughout—the doting parents acknowledge plans must be made for Philly in the event of their deaths. This realization triggers the most heartbreaking element of the story, because Max and Pearl have to begin their separation from Philly while they’re still alive, lest he find himself completely overwhelmed trying to make a transition without their support. It’s giving nothing away to say that Max died partway through production of the documentary, since he’s in poor health from the earliest scenes, but when Max goes, the emotional aspect of the movie becomes even more powerful, because viewers can see that, all along, it was Pearl who provided the familial lifeline for her “best boy,” as she calls Philly.

          The last half-hour of the picture, give or take, is simultaneously inspiring and wrenching, because just as Philly begins to adjust to his new life in a group home—replacing familiar patterns with new ones—Pearl crumbles, partially from the loneliness of an empty home and partially from the realization that she’s no longer solely responsible for Philly’s welfare. Only the most hard-hearted viewers will be able to resist Best Boy’s power. The film starts slowly, using conversations and vignettes to establish the particulars of Philly’s circumstances, and the intimacy with which Ira presents the story gives the early scenes a home-movie quality. (In one sweet scene, Philly, who often hums the Fiddler on the Roof score, attends a performance of the play and meets star Zero Mostel backstage.)

          The longer Ira stays with the story, the more intense and relevant Best Boy becomes. After all, but for the availability of a publicly funded group home, Philly’s options might have included homelessness or institutionalization. Yet the story’s heavier implications are rarely stated outright, since Ira keeps his focus on the day-to-day reality of helping Philly find his place in the world. Accordingly, the climax—played, like the rest of Best Boy, without unnecessary dramatic adornment—is devastatingly sad and surpassingly uplifting all at once. Ira Wohl returned to the subject matter of this film for two follow-up documentaries, Best Man: ‘Best Boy’ and All of Us Twenty Years Later (1997) and Best Sister (2006).

Best Boy: RIGHT ON

Rhinoceros (1974)

A movie reteaming actors Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel, the stars of Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1967), was not inevitable. Lest we forget, The Producers did poorly during in its original release, although it achieved legendary status later. Nonetheless, it’s disappointing to report that the second Wilder-Mostel picture lacks the madcap magic of their first collaborative venture. Based on the absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros was produced for the American Film Theatre, a short-lived program of stage adaptations exhibited on a subscription basis. The problem with this particular adaptation, alas, is that it can’t decide if it’s a broad farce or a cerebral satire. Ionesco’s original play was set in France and filled with dialogue and images that critics interpreted as lampoons of fascism. Transplanted to modern-day America, the film version loses all of its political bite, transforming into an oh-so-’70s treatise on the dangers of joining the Establishment. And yet if the only thing that the picture did was deliver a clear theme by way of a few laughs, it might have been worthwhile. Instead, the piece retains Ionesco’s central comic premise of a world in which people are becoming rhinoceroses. (Again, the key word is “absurdist.”) Given license to depict rampaging animals, screenwriter Julian Barry and director Tom O’Horgan fill much of the picture with loud scenes of chaos and destruction, interspersed with mannered comedy bits like the scene in which Mostel and Wilder pratfall their way through a grooming regimen. It’s all very artificial and pretentious and tiresome, qualities that are exacerbated by Mostel’s intolerably obnoxious performance. Mugging and screaming like he’s playing to an amphitheater, the actor succumbs to all of his worst tendencies here. Wilder, meanwhile, plays to his strengths, shifting between hysteria and sweetness, though the material fails him at every turn. (Offbeat ’70s screen vixen Karen Black appears in a supporting role, though she seems adrift thanks the inanity of the narrative.) Rhinoceros is praiseworthy on some levels, simply for the commitment with which the cast and filmmakers attack the text, but the way this American version omits the play’s original purpose renders the whole exercise futile. Plus, the fact that O’Horgan never actually shows a rhinoceros runs counter to the stupidly literal nature of the overall enterprise—why chintz on the one thing that could never appear in stage versions?

Rhinoceros: LAME

Once Upon a Scoundrel (1974)

There’s a half-decent satirical notion buried inside the tiresome comedy Once Upon a Scoundrel, and the movie offers a large serving of star Zero Mostel’s signature overbearing charm. For those two reasons, it’s likely that some viewers will find the picture amusing, albeit forgettable. However, the same qualities that might be interpreted as virtues could just as easily be perceived as shortcomings. After all, the satirical notion—an entire community of people pretends that a living man is an unseen ghost, with the goal of driving him nuts—gets stretched way past the point of believability. As for Mostel, let’s just say that a little goes a long way, and Once Upon a Scoundrel has much more than a little of the actor mugging, preening, and screaming. He’s simultaneously entertaining and exhausting, in equal measure. He’s also absurdly miscast as a Mexican. Mostel plays Don Carlos del Refugio, the tyrannical overlord of a poor Mexican village. Don Carlos has the hots for local peasant girl Alicia (Priscilla Garcia), but she’s in love with wide-eyed laborer Luis (A Martinez). Don Carlos pulls a scheme to get Luis thrown in jail, then says he’ll only release Luis if Alicia contents to marriage. Fed up with Don Carlos’ villainy, the locals drug Don Carlos and perform a funeral, making Don Carlos believe he’s died and come back as a specter. In the hands of some screen-comedy master, perhaps Ernest Lubitsch or Billy Wilder, this premise might have led to broad-as-a-barn hilarity. Alas, the team behind Once Upon a Scoundrel has the clumsy approach one normally associates with bad sitcoms, a problem compounded by the presence of a strictly workaday cast. (Snce Mostel sucks up so much oxygen, formidable actors would have been needed to counter the star’s manic energy.) Thus, Once Upon a Scoundrel ends up feeling dull and flat, particularly during long stretches in which the jokes simply don’t connect. And, wow, is the final sequence awful, seeing as how it lends a morbid quality to an otherwise innocuous movie. Holding the disparate parts of Once Upon a Scoundrel together is a robust score by the great Alex North, whose music is the movie’s sole unassailable element.

Once Upon a Scoundrel: FUNKY

The Angel Levine (1970)

          Released at a time when American films were making bold strides in the portrayal of race relations, The Angel Levine is odd insomuch as race relations only appear to be an important narrative element. Rather than being a probing study of the prejudices that tinge an elderly Jewish tailor’s unlikely friendship with a younger black man, The Angel Levine is an examination of religious faith. And yet it’s also about the dissipation of a marriage, about mortality, about a fractious romance between a ne’er-do-well and his grounded girlfriend, and about the line separating delusion from reality. The Angel Levine is concerned with all of these things—and less. Presented in a peculiar fashion that’s alternately cryptic, melodramatic, and pretentious, the film begins with a premise requiring considerable suspension of disbelief, then undercuts the premise at every turn, either by deviating into peripheral narrative concerns or by wobbling tonally between satire and seriousness. In the end, The Angel Levine is a mess, but it’s executed with such care and intelligence that one roots for the piece to come together. Moreover, the experience of watching the movie is frequently engaging, simply because the story involves so many provocative ideas.

          Adapted from a short story by Bernard Malamud, whose work provided the basis for the fine drama The Fixer (1968) and the romantic baseball yarn The Natural (1984), The Angel Levine is set in a Jewish tenement in modern-day New York. Chubby tailor Morris Mishkin (Zero Mostel) can’t work because of health problems, and his wife, Fanny (Ida Kaminska), is bedridden with illness that might be terminal. One night, Morris enters his kitchen to discover a black man sitting there. The man introduces himself as Alexander Levine (Harry Belafonte), then explains he’s an angel sent from heaven to help Morris deal with his problems. An inordinate amount of time is then spent on conversations in which Morris and Alexander debate the veracity of Alexander’s divinity. Later, Alexander’s girlfriend, Sally (Gloria Foster), enters the scene for more debates about Alexander’s virtues. Eventually, the whole thing becomes a referendum on Morris’ and Alexander’s respective identities, with the female companions of both men finding them wanting.

          Downbeat from start to finish, The Angel Levine was the first American movie directed by Hungarian filmmaker Ján Kadár. Hampered by a claustrophobic script that feels more like a one-act play than a proper movie, Kadár lets his leading actors slip into familiar rhythms—Mostel alternates between annoying brashness and mawkish pathos while Belafonte delivers most of his lines with all-purpose intensity. This has the effect of rendering both main characters monotonous and unlikeable. Even more problematically, the story’s quasi-supernatural element feels contrived and odd, although it’s likely much was lost in translation from Malamud’s story. Compounding all of these flaws, Zdenek Liska’s original score is more suitable for a horror movie than for a human drama, since Linska employs eerie chants and other disorienting noises. Yet unlike other very strange movies of the same vintage, The Angel Levine never ventures fully into the realm of the surreal; quite to the contrary, it feels like a sober attempt at existential inquiry gone wrong.

The Angel Levine: FUNKY

The Hot Rock (1972)

          Lightweight and never quite as laugh-out-loud funny as it should be, The Hot Rock is nonetheless a fun caper flick featuring one of Robert Redford’s most effortlessly charming performances. The movie also boasts a thoroughly entertaining screenplay by William Goldman, the wiseass wordsmith who penned Redford’s breakout movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). In fact, Goldman and Redford clicked so well whenever they collaborated, it’s a shame their friendship dissipated after behind-the-scenes strife during the development of All the President’s Men (1976). Anyway, The Hot Rock was adapted from a novel by Donald E. Westlake, whose special gift is creating likeable crooks and outlandish plots. The Hot Rock begins with career thief John Dortmunder (Redford) getting released from his latest stint in prison—although he’s a talented robber, he has a bad habit of getting caught. Dortmunder is picked up, after a fashion, by his brother-in-law, Kelp (George Segal)—Kelp stole a car he doesn’t know how to drive, so he nearly runs Dortmunder over.

          And so it goes from there: Dortmunder’s life becomes a comedy routine of incompetent criminality once he agrees to pull a job with the amiable but unreliable Kelp. The duo are hired by Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn), the U.N. ambassador of a small African nation, to steal a gigantic diamond, but each attempt at nabbing the prize ends up a pathetic failure. Over the course of several weeks, Dortmunder and Kelp try stealing the diamond from a bank, a museum, a police station, and a prison, abetted by neurotic explosives expert Greenberg (Paul Sand) and reckless getaway driver Murch (Ron Leibman).

          Goldman and versatile British director Peter Yates keep things moving along smoothly, balancing jokes and tension during elaborate heist scenes, so while The Hot Rock never explodes into raucous chaos, it sustains a solid energy level from start to finish. Yates shoots locations beautifully, capturing a vivid sense of Manhattan as an urban playground for the film’s gang of chummy nincompoops, and the acting is lively across the board. Redford plays everything so straight that he grounds the film’s comedy in emotional reality (while still cutting a dashing figure), and Leibman and Segal complement his work with motor-mouthed hyperactivity. Sand contributes a quieter vibe of sedate weirdness, and Gunn incarnates exasperation with great poise. Overbearing funnyman Zero Mostel pops up for a featured role about halfway through the picture, but luckily he’s only onscreen for short bursts, so he doesn’t wear out his welcome.

The Hot Rock: GROOVY

Watership Down (1978)

          Notwithstanding a few Disney movies with unforgettable tragedies—we hardly knew ye, Bambi’s mother—the British bummer Watership Down might be the most depressing animated feature ever made. Adapted from Richard Adams’ popular fantasy novel, which was originally published in 1972, the film depicts the travails of a group of rabbits living in the English countryside.

          When the story begins, a young rabbit named Fiver (voiced by Richard Briers) has an apocalyptic vision of his clan’s warren being destroyed. Fiver and his older brother, Hazel (voiced by John Hurt), share the vision with their contemptuous leader, Chief Rabbit (voiced by Ralph Richardson), who dismisses their worries. Sure that danger is looming, Fiver and Hazel lead a group of friends away from the warren in search of a new life. So begins an adventure that involves ecological devastation, existential quandaries, lethal predation, reproductive angst, social strife, and other heavy issues.

          Written, produced, and directed by theater-trained Martin Rosen, Watership Down is an elegant piece of work. The illustration style aspires to both Disneyesque levels of pictorial beauty and unprecedented degrees of realism. Animals are drawn to resemble their real-life counterparts as closely as possible, while backgrounds comprise resplendent watercolor tableaux of foreboding fields and ominous skies. Combined with a moody musical backdrop supervised by Marcus Dods, the visuals create a downbeat atmosphere reflecting the constant presence of death in the lives of these worried little bunnies.

          However, the narrative of Adams’ novel is extremely complex, so even though Rosen somewhat simplified the tale, Watership Down is still a challenge to follow. Clarity is further diminished by the choice to depict the rabbits realistically—it’s often difficult to tell one character from the other. Nonetheless, the seriousness of the film’s approach is impressive. Representing a genuine attempt to use animation for adult storytelling, Watership Down features equal measures of despair and gore and intelligence, never once pandering to viewers with cuteness.

          When the movie reaches full flight, which isn’t too often, one can see the lyricism Rosen must have envisioned. The opening sequence, a super-stylized prologue depicting the history of the world according to rabbits, sets a high bar of concision and potency the movie never quite reaches again, though a mid-movie montage set to the ethereal theme song “Bright Eyes” (sung by Art Garfunkel) is highly evocative.

          The movie also benefits from a voice cast including such reliable British thespians as Joss Ackland, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott, Nigel Hawthorne, Michael Hordern, and Roy Kinnear. (The less said about Zero Mostel’s screechy vocal performance as a helpful seagull, the better.) Briers and Hurt are especially good, infusing their work with palpable emotion.

Watership Down: GROOVY

Foreplay (1975)

          Yet another in a long line of ’70s sex comedies that are neither sexy nor funny, this three-part anthology picture feels like an attempt to capture the raunchy spirit of Playboy magazine’s humor, but inept execution makes Foreplay feel more sleazy than satirical. In the first installment, “Norman and the Polish Doll,” deadpan comedian Pat Paulsen plays a horny everyman who buys a lifelike female doll (Deborah Loomis) for sexual high jinks, only to realize she’s been programmed to nag instead of fondle. Paulsen’s droll line readings get drowned out by insipid slapstick (for instance, he steps in a toilet on the way to the bath) and he’s frequently upstaged by Loomis’ nudity (it’s difficult to focus on jokes when her lissome figure is on display).

          The second installment, “Vortex,” is moderately better, but still not particularly good. Based on a story by respected scribe Bruce Jay Friedman, the piece stars a young Jerry Orbach as a swinger visited by a muse (George S. Irving) who manifests as a doughy Italian man wearing only red bikini briefs. The muse takes Orbach’s character back to the scenes of several near-miss sexual encounters, each of which turns out to be just as frustrating the second time around. Orbach tries valiantly to form a characterization, and “Vortex” almost works. Almost.
          The final episode, “Inaugural Ball,” directed by future Rocky helmer John G. Avildsen, stars Zero Mostel as a U.S. president whose daughter is kidnapped. The criminals demand that in exchange for the release of his child, the commander-in-chief must mount his first lady (Estelle Parsons) on national TV. The closest “Inaugural Ball” gets to wit is the moment when Mostel solemnly announces his decision to comply with the demand: “Call the surgeon general. Tell him to prepare a massive dose of testosterone.” Mostel’s performance is smotheringly loud, which accentuates the crude nature of the comedy throughout “Inaugural Ball,” and the piece drags on forever. (Linking the three stories together are crass interstitial bits in which a clownish professor, played by Irwin Corey, presents a vulgar lecture about sexual topics.) All in all, Foreplay has the exact opposite effect of the activity described in its title: It’s a complete turnoff.

Foreplay: LAME

The Front (1976)

          In the ’70s (and the ’80s, for that matter), Woody Allen only acted in two movies that he didn’t direct, and both are winners. Yet while Play It Again, Sam (1972) is essentially a Woody Allen movie because he wrote the script based upon his own play, The Front is that true rarity: a for-hire acting gig. It’s not hard to guess why Allen joined the project, because in addition to providing him with a great role, the film chronicles an important period in modern American history. A scathing look a the effects of the anti-communist blacklist that ravaged show business in the ’40s and ’50s by purging left-leaning artists from the mainstream, The Front is a message picture done right, delivering its themes with grace and restraint while also providing rousing entertainment.

          The picture’s authenticity and passion steams from the harrowing offscreen experiences of several key players: Screenwriter Walter Bernstein, director Martin Ritt, and actors including costar Zero Mostel were all blacklisted. In the story, which is set in New York during the ’50s, writer Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) learns that he’s about to get blacklisted, so he reaches out to his opportunistic friend, lowly cashier Howard Prince (Allen), for an unusual favor. In exchange for a percentage of Alfred’s profits, Howard is asked to put his name on Alfred’s TV scripts, submit them as if he wrote them, and attend meetings pretending to be a writer. This way, Alfred can continue making a living even though studios won’t officially employ him.

          “Fronting” was incredibly widespread during the blacklist era, and it represented a huge risk for everyone involved, but that’s only one of the nuances The Front brings to life. In addition to portraying Howard’s moral conflicts—he becomes an admired and wealthy public figure under false pretenses, and an idealistic TV story editor (Andrea Marcovicci) falls in love with the man he’s pretending to be—the movie depicts the insidious effect of the blacklist on comedian Hecky Brown (Mostel).

          An amalgam of several real-life performers pushed off the screen because of their past support for liberal causes, Hecky is a tragic figure in the classic mold, a small man caught in the machinations of political forces he barely understands. Watching the cruel anti-communist crusaders slowly destroy Hecky rouses Howard’s previously dormant conscience, and for anyone who thinks of Allen merely as a joker, it’s startling to see the clarity and intensity of his performance. Allen does justice to Bernstein’s clockwork script, in the same way that Mostel, who was prone to abrasive excess, delivers a humane and poetic portrayal. (This was Mostel’s last onscreen role, and a fitting epitaph for his epic career.)

          The best thing about The Front is that it’s a great yarn in addition to being a powerful civics lesson. With Allen delivering zingers in his inimitable style, and with Bernstein carefully depicting the devious way right-wingers persecuted progressives, The Front smoothly balances humor and pathos, all the way from its mood-setting opening montage to its whopper of a closing scene.

The Front: RIGHT ON