Category: Peter Falk

THE PRINCESS BRIDE

By Marc S. Sanders

The Princess Bride, Rob Reiner’s whimsical storybook fantasy come to life by means of a grandfather (Peter Falk) reading to his bedridden grandson (Fred Savage), has taken on an everlasting life of its own.  Though it’s not my favorite movie, it’s way up there for my wife, adjacent to Grease 2. I find it to be cute, but lacking a pulse on occasion.  Sorry, but for me a lot of the characters and moments are simply sleepy.  Maybe it’s literally too much of a bedtime story. Still, I do not frown on its pop culture touchstones since its release forty years ago.

Famed screenwriter William Goldman adapts his book that includes heroics and romance, along with swordplay and fire swamps haunted with R.O.U.S’s.  

A beautiful girl called Buttercup (Robin Wright, in her debut role) falls in love with a farm boy named Westley (Cary Elwes) who tends to any of her demands by responding with the simple catchphrase “As you wish.”  Though, just as the pair confess their affections for each other, Westley is thought to be killed by pirates.

Five years pass and Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) has declared that Buttercup is to be his bride.  The lady has no say in the matter and stands fast that she will never love again as long as Westley is gone. 

Buttercup is taken captive by three strangers. Vizinni, proud of his brilliant mind, Inigo Montoya an expert swordsman bent on avenging the six fingered man who killed his father, and Fezzick, the lovable giant.  (Respectively portrayed by Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and Andre The Giant). 

But wait!!!! A masked man dressed in black takes up pursuit to rescue the kidnapped girl.

Everything looks familiar in The Princess Bride.  What has made the film so special is the attempts for comedy based on one liners and puns.  Billy Crystal is Miracle Max, the old healer, but with his Jewish New Yorker schtick for a personality.  Carol Kane compliments him well as the nagging wife.  Prince Humperdinck has people to kill and frame and a kingdom to overthrow, all while planning to marry Buttercup.  He’s swamped!  I love the sermon focused on “MAAWIDGE” delivered by the kingdom’s clergyman (my introduction to Peter Cook).  These moments of dry comedy make up for some unexciting leading characters.

Try as I might I have trouble understanding what Andre and Patinkin are saying beneath their dialects.  That’s an issue that takes me out of the movie. Patinkin moves gracefully with action, but his personality is sleep inducing.  Even with a Spaniard’s accent, he comes off very flat.  Christopher Guest is also here as Humperdinck’s right-hand man.  With This Is Spinal Tap! and his own mockumentaries, especially Waiting For Guffman, Guest’s appearance here is a bit of a letdown.  The guy is a perfect comic but he’s so dry and unexciting here.

Cary Elwes is dashingly handsome with his blond locks and a wry grin.  The sword fight with Patinkin is one for the ages, despite the blah music behind it and the artificial looking rock like set.

The soundtrack plays like a kid’s electric keyboard and the sets, while decorated impressively, still look like they are residing in a soundstage warehouse.  The beauty of fantasy is the escape.  The imagery must look convincingly like another world entirely.  Here I could never get past the fact that nearly everything from the fire swamp to the pit of despair and the castle looks like something from my fourth-grade play.  The costumes work.  The environments look too crafted out of spray-painted cardboard and paper mache, though. 

Robin Wright is the princess.  She’s beautiful, but there’s not much demanded of her from Goldman’s script except for a graceful English accent.

My favorite is Vezinni.  Wallace Shawn is simply doing Wallace Shawn and that’s absolutely fine by me.  The bratty Jewish guy with the lisp who operates with the most energy in the cast next to Crystal and Cook.  The best scene of the whole movie doesn’t include the screaming eels or a sword fight.  It’s actually when Shawn shares a moment with Elwes in a battle of wits.  Goldman writes his best dialogue here as Vizinni explains layers upon layers of logic because anything that Westley can think of can only be “INCONCEIVABLE!”  This scene plays like the best of Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show.  Truly one of my favorite comedy moments ever.

I like The Princess Bride.  I just don’t love it like so many ardent fans.  My hang ups just keep me out of the picture, and I think about what I want for dinner rather than where my full attention should be – the rescue of Buttercup.

Nevertheless, I love Rob Reiner for making such a film.  Too often the standard princess in the castle formula is reserved for Disney blueprints.  Goldman and Reiner colored outside the lines to lend comedic self-depreciation to the regular tropes.  I only wish they heightened their efforts a little more.

I miss Rob Reiner.  It’s a terrible loss and the tragic fate he shared with his wife is not only unfair to them but to the world of moviegoers and beyond.  He delivered bi-partisan opinions on politics, always looking to improve his country.  The height of his career might have been in the 1980s & 90s (This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, A Few Good Men, Misery, The American President, When Harry Met Sally…) but he always remained a treasured filmmaker and occasional actor in surprising roles (The Wolf Of Wall Street, Sleepless In Seattle).  He’ll also always be “Meathead.”  Sadly, when I return to these special and often groundbreaking movies, there’s now a tragic mark on the experience.  How can I not think about what Reiner would still have contributed to the world had his life and ongoing legacy not been ripped away so brutally and unnaturally? 

It’s truly inconceivable.

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1973)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: John Cassavetes
CAST: Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands, Fred Draper, Matthew Laborteaux (for all you Little House fans out there)
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 89% Fresh

PLOT: Domestic turmoil gets a whole new definition in director John Cassavetes’ landmark portrait of a family in psychological free-fall.


I am a newcomer to the films of John Cassavetes.  The only one of his films I’d seen prior to A Woman Under the Influence is Love Streams (1984), a character study of a woman, played by Gena Rowlands, whose determination to only be herself puts her in conflict with the people and expectations around her.  As a director, Cassavetes seemed only to be interested in putting real people on the screen.  I don’t mean that other great films don’t do that kind of thing, but few directors have made films with scenes so genuine that I had to fight the urge to cough and look away because I felt like I was intruding on a private conversation.

A Woman Under the Influence is about a woman, Mabel Longhetti, a mother of three, who is similar to the woman in Love Streams in that she is constantly waging a battle between how she wants to behave and what is expected of her.  The difference this time is that Mabel is clearly suffering from…well, I’m not going to embarrass myself by putting a name to it because I’m not a psychiatrist.  She seems to be overly anxious all the time.  ALL.  THE.  TIME.  Her husband, Nick (Peter Falk), appears to be sympathetic with her anxiety, almost to a fault sometimes, but he tends to explode at her when she tries to be the life of the party.

How has this relationship lasted through three children?  Nick promises Mabel a romantic night at home, but is unexpectedly called away when a city water line bursts.  (He works in construction.)  She assures him everything’s fine on the phone…and promptly walks out of the house, goes to the nearest bar, and picks up a random dude and brings him home to spend the night.  But hey, Nick’s no angel, either.  After a long shift at work, he impulsively invites his entire crew of roughneck buddies to his modest home for a spaghetti dinner…cooked by Mabel, of course.  Mabel anxiously tries to “act normal” by being friendly and chummy with Nick’s co-workers, but she overdoes it, and Nick blows up at her.

Later, there is a remarkable scene where Nick brings a doctor to the house to see if he can talk Mabel down from one of her episodes.  Gena Rowlands adds these brilliant physical tics and peculiarities to Mabel that, in someone else’s hands, would be showboating, but with Rowlands, they come off as so real that it felt like I was watching a documentary.  I read on IMDb that Cassavetes did very little rehearsing, if any at all, so a lot of what we see in this scene and elsewhere was improvised on the spot.  It’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.  Had it not been for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Rowlands would have walked away with the Oscar.

A Woman Under the Influence was one of the first movies to really make waves as a truly independent production, predating the modern indie movement by some fifteen years or so.  Is it a movie I enjoyed watching?  Yes, but not in the same way that I enjoy watching The Goonies or Avatar.  This was like watching There Will Be Blood or Sophie’s Choice.  It’s an amazing example of acting as a craft, as an art form.  Not a single scene felt scripted or contrived.  I never knew Peter Falk had this kind of range as an actor.  I’d heard that Gena Rowland’s performance was the stuff of legend, and now I understand the hype.  If I have to be honest, I didn’t care for the very end of the film, a scene that seems to indicate that nothing will keep Mabel and Nick apart, even though they are not good for each other, in my opinion, especially considering what happens in the scene immediately preceding it.

This is a shorter review than I might normally write, but words are failing me with this one.  I’ll start describing one scene, then another, then another, and soon I’ve just recapped the entire film, which I don’t want to do.  This movie is searing, uncompromising, authentic.  To do it justice, I’d have to go away for a month or two and write an old-fashioned research paper (remember those?) complete with outlines, bullet points, and a bibliography.  Whatever you may have heard about Gena Rowland’s performance is 100% true, and then some.  In an earlier review of Peter Hall’s The Homecoming (also 1973), I mentioned that I did not have a lot of space in my head for blistering dramas about dysfunctional families, but I’m glad I made room for A Woman Under the Influence.  It’s a master-class of direction and performance.