Category: Richard Dreyfuss

NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN

By Marc S. Sanders

Sidney Lumet is the director known for shining a light on police corruption. His films were not crime dramas or legal thrillers really. They were an examination in what turns righteous professions within the confines of law and order into something tainted in violations of morality. Night Falls On Manhattan showed what can happen when the politics of New York City could be stained by the policemen who lost their sense of distinguishing right and wrong.

Andy Garcia plays Sean Casey, a newly deputized, very green district attorney and former street cop. His image looks perfect to prosecute a big time drug dealer who wounded his own policeman father, Liam (Ian Holm), and killed two other cops. Richard Dreyfuss does an inspired Alan Dershowitz personality portraying the defense attorney for the dealer, by angling a theory that police corruption is unfairly working against his client. It seems like a very open and shut case for Sean, which occupies the first half of the film.

Afterwards, Sean appears to have a white hot image in the public eye and he is quickly nominated and wins an election as Head District Attorney for the city, following a heart attack from the incumbent and his boss played by Ron Leibman. Conflicts arise though when it is uncovered that perhaps Liam, along with his partner Joey (James Gandolfini), have been taking money under the table as part of a group of dirty cops spread among three precincts.

Sidney Lumet’s films always present topical and complicated real life problems with no expected solutions. These issues of transgressions exceed any kind of quick fixes. He’s shown this time and again with films 12 Angry Men, Serpico, and The Verdict. With his original script here, Lumet gets a little personal. What can you do when a city relies on your image of ethical practice, but your own loving father may be a traitor to the laws he’s vowed to uphold? How can Sean work ethically for his constituents while his father and his longtime partner are possibly betraying sworn policy?

I was always engaged in Night Falls On Manhattan. What is Sean going to do? The dilemma is never patched up with a band aid. It actually feels like it gets worse and worse because it is next to unsolvable. Cops are heroes in this film and a cold blooded killer seems to have been rightfully sentenced? So how can Sean, Liam, Joe and the rest of the cast live with themselves when the end results they wanted all arrive, but came about in all the wrong ways?

This is a terrific assembly of talent. Most especially, credit has to go Ron Liebman as the head DA whose overbearing loud mouth is necessary for the city that never sleeps and the endless amount of police troops and city prosecutors he has to answer for. If New York City had an actual voice that emanates and speaks the endless noise of the Big Apple , it is Ron Liebman. He should have been Oscar nominated. He comes carved out of the concrete of the city landscape.

This is really an unsung picture of Lumet’s that should be seen, much like Find Me Guilty with Vin Diesel. My one issue is the preachy monologue that Sean delivers at the end of the picture. It comes off like a concluding statement and left me with the impression that the conflict of the story painted these characters into an inescapable corner. So, tack on a speech to bring on the credits. The monologue just didn’t work for me though. It didn’t give me that bookended impact I was hoping for.

Other than that, however, Night Falls On Manhattan is another fine piece of filmmaking rooted in a metropolitan setting that becomes a character all its own. Lumet was a genius about acknowledging his settings. This is another perfect example.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

By Marc S. Sanders

Close Encounter of the First Kind – Sighting of a UFO.

Close Encounter of the Second Kind – Physical Evidence.

Close Encounter of the Third Kind – Contact.

Music is the most universal of all languages.  Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind demonstrates that claim. 

I appreciate how Spielberg’s script, along with his direction, opens the film.  It takes place during a sun swept sandstorm in New Mexico.  At first, hardly anything but sand blowing can be seen, along with the high volume of wind breezing about inconveniently.  You are not even sure what you are looking at.  Then, headlights from a vehicle appear and a group of men assemble.  We come to find the main character of this scene is a French scientist named Lacombe (Francois Truffaut).  He only speaks French and hardly understands any English.  He is in need of an interpreter (Bob Balaban) to translate to American men who are accompanying them.  After we’ve established French and English are in the fold, we then realize that Spanish must enter the conversation amidst the overwhelming winds from the blinding storm.  An occurrence must have happened here recently, because Lacombe and crew interview some of the locals who are trying their best to define what took place the night before.  An elderly man is mysteriously sunburned on only one side of his face.  Thereafter, a grouping of bi-planes last seen flying over the Bermuda Triangle nearly forty years earlier come into focus.  No matter how you learn, communicate or understand, the confusion depicted is a perfect match for each of the men occupying this space.

A parallel story begins after this opening in the state of Indiana.  Sightings by airline pilots, as well as residents, are discovered in the skies above.  Blackouts occur everywhere.  The experiences of two residents, a young boy named Barry, and a utility worker named Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), are who Spielberg uses to guide us through these strange episodes of phenomena.  They are being drawn towards a calling or an image and they become entirely focused upon what has happened to them.  Barry’s mother, Jillian (Melinda Dillon), while trying to reign her son back home has also been delivered a message from unusual spectacles in the skies. 

Soon after, these people cannot help but focus on a shape that they know they’ve seen before but can not place it.  Roy sculpts the shape in his shaving cream and his mashed potatoes.  He becomes neglectful of his work, his three children and his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr), who refuses to take him seriously.  Barry’s young age allows him to avoid understanding the meaning of any this.  So, when the blinding “lights,” of whatever these entities could be, come towards his home in the middle of the night, he happily welcomes them, and willingly accompanies them back to wherever they came from.

I know this science fiction film is a highly regarded classic.  It’s earned the right to be considered as such, and so many have seen it.  Yet, I also know that I appear vague in my description of the film here.  I choose not to expound on everything going on in Close Encounters…  Steven Spielberg would want it that way, and I hate spoiling any movie.  A movie not seen is new to any of us. 

The residents of Indiana insist to higher governmental and military authorities that they have witnessed unidentified flying objects.  What those UFOs are, or where they came from, or why they visited their home state is unexplainable.  Spielberg intentionally avoids definitively explaining what’s occurred.  After all, if aliens are visiting our planet Earth, then who’s really to say we understand what they want or why they’ve come here?  Like the rest of the countries of the world, it’s fair to say that inhabitants of another planet in our galaxy would likely have their own way of communicating or speaking that’s entirely different from English, or French, or Spanish.

Spielberg goes even further to distance any understanding among ourselves or with these new entities that we are encountering.  A cargo sea vessel appears out of nowhere in the most unlikely place, the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.  Why?  How?  The people of a village within the continent of India are harmonizing a tune over and over again, in unison.  Lacombe along with his interpreter, and their American crew, attempt to decipher why these episodes have occurred as well.  The harmony must mean something.  What’s the message?  The world must learn to communicate with one another if they are to understand why these strange happenings continue.

Once Spielberg introduces the Indian village’s response to their experience, oddly enough Barry becomes obsessed with the tune as well.  Lacombe believes he’s recognized the tune as a means to speak with the visiting entities.  Again though, what is the message within the song?  In addition, Roy and Jillian are beginning to understand their obsession of the shape.  “This means something.  This is important.”  The script for Close Encounters… does not take for granted the repetitive significance of this line.  It is uttered a few times at different moments, by both Roy and Lacombe.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind functions as a riddle, and yet it all makes sense in a breathtaking ending that occupies the last 30-40 minutes of the picture.   I hope there will be readers of this column who have yet to see this film.  It is better to go into it by knowing as little as possible.  Only then can you truly experience the maternal frustration that Jillian has for her young son’s insistence on going towards the lights, or Roy’s obsession with what dwells in his mind following his encounter.  With knowing as little as possible, can you become all the more curious at Lacombe’s pursuit.  When Spielberg gradually pulls the curtain away, it is such a satisfying relief and a feeling of fulfillment to have taken the journey with these characters. 

The construction of Spielberg’s first of many sci-fi films is magnificent.  It performs as if it is operating with real world science and language.  Yet, I have to draw attention to a scene that arrives in the middle of the picture.  Barry’s innocent, but youthful obsession, is tested within the home, beside Jillian’s fear.  Spielberg uses every prop and device available within the set of this scene.  Battery operated toys come alive.  The record player goes off.  The stove turns on. The dishwasher opens and closes. Blinding lights bleed through the curtains, chimney and keyholes.  The echoing sounds become overpowering.  What’s come to the house can’t be explained.  However, one person is thrilled by it while another is terrified.  It is such a well edited scene of terror at the unknown, that for me still remains as one of the most suspenseful moments in film history.  Steven Spielberg is bringing life to a “boogie man.”  When I showed my daughter this picture during a re-release in a Dolby movie theatre, I held her 11-year-old self in my lap concerned she’d become frightened of the scene.  It’s as thrilling as going on an unpredictable roller coaster for the first time.  The scene occurs out of nowhere, with no convenience of foreshadowing.  Once again, as he did with Jaws and somewhat implied with Duel, Steven Spielberg does not show you the terror or the invasive entity.  He allows the viewer’s subconscious to draw its own conclusion.  This is master craftsmanship.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind remains as one of the best science fiction films of all time.  Nearly forty years later, despite its fiction, it still feels like it’s real.  It all feels like it means something.  It still feels like its important. 

STAND BY ME

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m not embarrassed to say it.  I’ve experienced a mid-life crisis.  Last night, I watched Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, and I absolutely broke down in tears when it finished.  As I approach age 50 later this year, the most recent viewing of this film alerted me that my childhood memories are further away than I ever realized before. 

Reiner lifts this coming-of-age story from Stephen King’s novella entitled The Body. Four boys spend the long and hot dog days of summer in Castle Rock, Oregon (it was Maine in King’s story) in their tree house smoking cigarettes and discussing important topics like Annette Funnicello’s breast size on The Mickey Mouse Club and the recent disappearance of a twelve-year-old kid.  Yackety Yak and Lollipop play on their transistor radio in the background.  The wimpiest one of the pack, Vern (Jerry O’Connell), overhears the location of the kid’s body is off the side of the railroad tracks, about twenty miles away.  Teddy (Corey Feldman), along with best friends Chris (River Phoenix) and Gordon (Wil Wheaton) decide to embark on the search for the body and get their picture in the paper, labeled as heroes.  It’ll take them the Labor Day weekend to carry out their quest.

During their long journey across the railroad tracks into the woods, the four boys will discover what concerns them, like figuring out if Goofy is a dog and who could win in a fight; Superman or Mighty Mouse.  As well, they’ll uncover what gives them anxiety ahead of their entry into adulthood.  Gordon lives with being unloved by his parents both before and following the accidental death of his older brother (John Cusack).  Chris lives with being unfairly labeled as a young hoodlum.  Teddy endures the aftermath of an abusive military father currently living in the looney bin.  Vern suffers from a hesitancy to live for adventure and risk due to ongoing fear. These boys had a future that awaited, but for some it seemed like there was no escaping the destiny the locals of their small town had already mapped out for them. 

In the last few years, I reconnected with a childhood friend by means of social media.  Visiting New York City annually over a three-year period, I got to see Scott in person and recollect on our times together.  It had been over thirty years since we had seen or spoken with one another.  We reminisced about tormenting the substitute teachers, and our first crushes.  We reflected on favorite movie scenes that we acted out in between classes.  We are different now, though.  Nowhere near the same as we were at age 12.  We have families and careers and responsibilities.  Yet, our memories of trading comic books, talking dirty, going to movies, and acting out cops and robbers shoot outs in the backyard all remain. 

When Stand By Me opens, a present day adult (Richard Dreyfuss) is shown reflecting in the distance following reading an article about a lawyer who was killed in a restaurant.  This narrator then flashes us back to the year 1959 when this adventure between him and his three friends occurred.  One of those friends was the lawyer who was killed.  A piece of his history has ceased to live and continue on.  That terrifies me personally.  Friends, and family, and people I’ve encountered over my half century will leave my presence, never to be seen or spoken to again.  I’ll never get the opportunity to reflect with them again, much less make new memories.  I’m now living in an age where Facebook comments seem to weekly consist of saying “very sorry for your loss.”  Friends are losing their parents.  Some are passing away themselves.

Stand By Me might not be altogether realistic.  The boys are getting overpowered by a sinister Kiefer Sutherland, who’s not afraid to use a switch blade and cut one of the kids’ throats.  King’s story also feels like an elevated Hardy Boys or Tom Sawyer kind of adventure.  I don’t know of anyone who went looking for a mutilated corpse during my summer days living in Wyckoff, New Jersey.  The adventure conceived by Stephen King serves as a thrill that you imagine as you read it off of the page.  My upbringing consisted of play dates and sleepovers with Scott, Star Wars toys and Saturday morning cartoons.  Yet, the connections that thread the main story together are what’s to treasure in Rob Reiner’s film.  The friends we make in grade school before becoming interested in high school, alcohol, sex, and career planning, are the most important people we know and first encounter in our lifetimes.  It’s impossible to forget them or the impact they had on our lives.  Scott certainly had an impact on my life.  I credit my sense of humor to him, and his carefree attitude to the ugliness of this world.  Sometimes that’s all we have to survive.

King and Reiner use the body that is being sought as a device to drive the characters.  What’s going to bring these boys together with no outside influence?  How can young Gordon deliver his revered sense of imagination as the writer he’s to become?  The best way is to put the boys around a camp fire.  Gordon can then entertain his pals with the story of an incredibly fat kid who got his revenge on the locals during a pie eating contest that results in a massive “Barforama.”  It’s silly and sophomoric and childish fun, but for 12-year-olds, it’s the best thing imaginable.  Teddy dreams of being an army hero storming the beaches of Normandy like his father was rumored to have done.  His sleeping bag is his machine gun mowing down an oncoming train.  Vern’s favorite food?  Watch the movie to find out.  Chris might be regarded as the outlaw, but he’s also the most mature, and perhaps the mentor to Gordon who suffers from the loss of the brother he loved, as much as he suffers from the neglect of his mother and father.  At age 12, in 1959, Chris was all that Gordon had.  I may have had more than Gordon at that age, but whenever I was with Scott, he’s all that I had.

Ultimately, Stand By Me is not an adventure or a silly comedy about boys being boys.  It’s a character study of kids just outside of their formative years.  It’s a film that captures a single moment before friendships inevitably expire.  It’s a reminder to embrace those you’ve treasured over your lifetime, because we cannot be twelve years old forever.

JAWS

By Marc S. Sanders

Steven Spielberg’s third film, Jaws, is more than just an adventure or thriller piece of filmmaking. I believe it explores the dichotomy of motivations by man versus the intrinsic behavior of nature. In other words, in the peak season of summertime a great white man-eating shark will never care about how important it is for a small harbor town to sell the necessary amount of ice cream cones or hotel bookings to make an annual profit. You wanna swim with nature, then die by nature.

The New England coastal town of Amity Island has a new Police Chief named Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). When he comes upon what’s left of a girl’s mutilated corpse on the beach, he takes it extremely seriously when he learns the cause of death was a shark attack. The Mayor (Murray Hamilton) cannot afford to be mired with the inconvenience of a large fish just before the always profitable 4th of July weekend. So, the beaches must continue to stay open.

When the town gets a bloody public viewing of the problem at hand, a young, wealthy, educated oceanographer named Matt Hooper (a perfectly cast sarcastic and smart Richard Dreyfuss) is recruited. His knowledge with the science of shark behavior is not very welcome to anyone but Brody.

One dynamic of Hooper is his reliability of technology. Will any of his expensive tools be enough to rid the town of this shark?

As well, will a bounty hunt worth $3,000 satisfy? Any Joe Blow fisherman will take a crack at it. Spielberg’s film explores Hooper’s intellect of sea life, against the buffoonery that follows from others both near and far. Why not randomly toss some sticks of dynamite in the water or bait the animal with a pot roast while you’re at it? Maybe that’ll work. It’s money and technology in the face of one of nature’s most dangerous creations.

Will a sea faring Ahab like fisherman named Quint (Robert Shaw playing one of the greatest characters ever on screen) do the trick? His philosophy stems from his experience with the might of sharks in general. An illustrious monologue from Shaw describing Quint’s harrowing experience aboard the USS Indianapolis confidently tells us he’s seen what sharks can do. He’s floated in the blood red waters that sharks leave behind. Therefore, Quint has devoted his life to hunting one shark after another, boiling their large jaws of teeth for trophy hangings. He’ll win battle after battle, but never will he win the war with the nature of the ocean water.

Brody might be the only sensible guy, though. He fears the water and won’t go near it. He’s over with danger, leaving the cop’s life behind in the city for what he expected of the tranquility of ocean front real estate.

A mounting pressure always exists in Jaws. The townsfolk are hard pressed resistant to allow their businesses to avoid prosperity because of something as silly as a shark that isn’t even known to swim in these waters normally. Money is what matters. Money is what’s needed to live. During the age of quarantining with the spread of Coronavirus, Jaws is a fair allegory for the argument of staying at home or going back to work. You could die, but it’s still expensive to live.

The other argument lies in what’s more appropriate for this problem. Hooper’s technology or Quint’s hunter instinct. A metal “anti shark cage” with a spear of poison vs tying barrels to the predator and drowning him out in the shallows.

Spielberg with a script by Carl Gottlieb adapted from Peter Benchley’s best selling novel proposes no easy answer to ridding an ocean area of a man eating, uncompromising animal. That’s the thrill that keeps Jaws alive for over 45 years. Sharks will never change. Man might, but nature’s creatures will consistently emote the exact same patterns of behavior.

Unlike the fantasies of Jurassic Park or a Friday The 13th picture, a beast born of nature with enormous strength will always be unpredictable performing on God’s purpose. It will never be negotiable. If you’re a raggy fisherman like Quint, your old, leaky boat might keep you afloat for so long, but a shark will also not feel intimidated, no matter how many others of its kind this hunter might have conquered before.

Experience, technology or disregard for the elements of nature will not always win. Something unconquerable will come along.

To maintain the strength of the film’s monstrous antagonist is to watch the movie with your own most frightening, worst case scenario in mind. Hence, Spielberg gratefully never shows the great white until long after half the film is over. Masterful shots occur where his cameras seem positioned just at the surface of the water. When swimmers make desperate runs for the shore, away from danger, it feels as if the viewer is frozen in fear and getting trampled on by the panicked extras cast in the picture. What could be so terrible that these people are swimming and running away from? When Spielberg finally shows the gigantic shark emerge from the water, Scheider’s shock with his suggestion of needing a bigger boat assure you that, yes, this problem is actually this insurmountable.

Additionally, Spielberg uses props to keep the mystery of his beast alive. When the shark pulls a dock off its moorings with his bait, we know the fish is turning around to pursue its next victim as the wreckage now floats in the direction of a man’s panicky, desperate swim.

Most effectively beyond Steven Spielberg’s camerawork, has got to be the pulse pounding and blood curdling soundtrack from John Williams. (Cliche descriptions they may be, but I’d argue Williams’ score created the terms, nonetheless.). Without his music, the narration of the story would be a little lost, I’m sure. John Williams’ repetitive string notes that build, feel like the dialogue of the underwater monster. His music goes beyond the short rhythm everyone is familiar with. Looking at the opening scene with Susan Backline portraying the moonlight skinny dipper in the opening scene of the film, Williams brings in a variety of different sounding instruments that leave an impression of her body being torn apart by something she’s truly not aware of. Splashing, screams, body thrusting and harsh chords of long strings with percussion the emote panic and anarchy make for one of the most memorable opening scenes of any film. Spielberg with a collaboration of cinematography from Bill Butler and Williams orchestration make for an arguably unforgettable and frightening scene on the same level of the shower scene in Psycho.

Jaws transcends generation after generation. Everyone eventually has some kind of familiarity with the film, even if they’ve never seen it. People have seen the poster, heard the music or truly refused to step in the water off a coastline out of fear for what can’t be seen. Few films ever leave a subconscious effect on a viewer or a general public, but Jaws is most definitely one of those exceptions.