The Anderson Tapes

The Anderson Tapes (Sidney Lumet, 1971) The second of five films Sean Connery made with Sidney Lumet, an unlikely pairing of the Scots actor and the New York director, but the two obviously enjoyed working together, as Connery's next project with him (The Offence) was one of the "vanity" projects he was allowed to make for returning to the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, and Lumet was Connery-picked to direct, no doubt in loyalty to the director, as their first project, The Hill, allowed the world to see that the star of the "007" films had a range that extended outside the spy field.

The Anderson Tapes, however, was a different creature, entirely.  An extended heist film, in which Connery, Martin Balsam, and (introducing) Christopher Walken participate in what must be the slowest caper in history, the casing of a luxury apartment building in New York City.  Connery plays Duke Anderson, a con just released from a ten year stretch in prison, who can't wait to do another score. The inspiration is his girlfriend Ingrid (Dyan Cannon), a high-end call-girl, who has been set up in a luxury apartment by another man.

But, things have changed in the ten years since Anderson was free.  Unbeknownst to him, he is under constant surveillance by three different agencies: Ingrid's apartment is bugged by a private detective hired by her "keeper;" the FBI is tracking Black activists, whose headquarters is at a flop where the thieves meet; the IRS is phone-tapping the Mafia Boss (Alan King), who is funding the heist; and the Bureau of Narcotics is keeping tabs on one of the group's members.  All of these groups are keeping a running record of the planning of the break-in...but none of them are coordinated or sharing information,  and the surveillance work is so concentrated on their individual subjects, that nothing is put together to prevent it from happening.  It's hard to determine exactly what is being decried here—that our privacies are being invaded to such an extent, or that this intelligence isn't being cross-referenced to prevent actual crimes and is...dumb.  One gets the impression that there is no stance being taken, rather it's to present A Big Irony, that undercuts how events play out, eventually.  But, that was Lumet's specialty—he frequently spaced his flat-out movie drama assignmnents with "Ironies," (as opposed to "Comedies") that, their point having been made half-way through the movie, wear out their welcome by the often dissatisfying end of the tale.  Everybody looks a little stupid here: the agencies, for their tunnel-vision, the crooks for their own utter lack of surveillance as the crime goes about, and the NYPD, whose very elaborate storming of the apartment complex is literally over-the-top.

Lumet was not the best director for comedy as he had a tendency to sledge-hammer things—like Martin Balsam's mincing interior decorator/antiques smuggler (yeah, yeah, "it was the times," I suppose), but there are some joys to be had, besides Connery doing something different and Walken's debut: appearances by Max Showalter, Margaret Hamilton (her last role), and "crazy old lady" Judith Lowry, as well as Ralph Meeker and SNL pioneer Garrett Morris as Gotham police.  

Lumet would hit his stride later in the decade (with the sure editorial hand of Dede Allen), but this one is only moderately successful.

The Bedford Incident

The Bedford Incident (James B. Harris, 1965) A veritable Bartlett's fills my head after seeing The Bedford Incident.  For instance, the astronaut's description of his job as "98% tedium punctuated by moments of sheer terror," and Elwood P. Dowd's "You can be 'oh-so-smart' or 'oh-so-pleasant'—I recommend "pleasant."  Then, because the story is basically, "Moby Dick in The Cold War," there are all sorts of Melville quotes...and one bad joke: "Cook 'em, Dan-O."

It's that last one that sticks, though.  The Bedford Incident is, basically, a terrible, terrible joke with a possible several mega-tonnage punchline.  And director James B. Harris, who before making this film was Stanley Kubrick's film-making partner, can't have missed the thought as his ex was making an out-and-out comedy of errors out of the nuclear arms race.  

But where that one took to the air, The Bedford Incident plays out at sea in a cat-and-mouse game between a Soviet nuclear sub and a naval destroyer.  In command is Captain Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark, steely with just a touch of baleful twitchiness that goes full-on berzerkoid in an interview), a determined commander who takes enormous pride in the proficiency of his crew, and in the hunt and pursuit of his targets.  As an advisor is a former Nazi U-boat commander Wolfgang Shrepke (Eric Portman), who was responsible for the most tonnage (ours) sunk during the second World War.    Also on board is reporter Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier), who serves as an exposition conduit and Royal Pain In The Ass.  Among the crew are Martin Balsam as the ship's new doc, James MacArthur as a too-eager ensign, Wally Cox as the sonar bat, and if you're watching early and quickly, there's a young Donald Sutherland as a garbage analyst—garbage being clues to conditions on the enemy boat, and age-analysis gives tracking position and history.

It shows how extreme the measures are on the Bedford, how detail oriented, how precise, how strategic and how puckered the thought processes go into keeping an eye on the enemy.  And once found, Finlander will pursue chasing Soviet subs out of territorial waters, even forcing them to stay underwater until they're desperate for air, provoking confrontation.  When your Nazi adviser tells you he's scared of your methods, it means you might be going so overboard as to pro-actively lower the life-rafts.

If you're immersed at all in pop-culture, you can see elements of Bedford in such disparate strategy plays as "Star Trek" and The Hunt for Red October.  And such gamesmanship is all well and good in limited skirmishes.  But, when the arsenal is nuclear?  Do you really want a cigarette in a room full of gasoline?  

No, and that the game is played despite the mega-stakes makes the movie and its characters seem not just petty, but a little dim for all the talk of brilliance.  The point of hubris is well taken, but the point was better made as an out-and-out black comedy about short-term, selfish interests in the face of global catastrophe.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Tora! Tora! Tora! aka (トラ・トラ・トラ！)(Kinji Fukasaku/Toshio Masuda/Richard Fleischer, 1970) "The American Pacific Fleet was attacked and partially destroyed by Japan on . . . Sunday Morning December 7, 1941. This attack led to the entering of the United States into World War II. All of the events and characters depicted are true to historical fact."  20th Century Fox's former studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had served in the second World War, and spent his senior years at 20th by the overseeing of large movies showcasing major battles of that war, his most prominent being The Longest Day, based on Cornelius Ryan's book documenting the Normandy Invasion.  But, in 1966 plans were put in place to make an historically accurate film about the Pearl Harbor attack, based on Ladislas Farago's "The Broken Seal."  Ambitious in its scope, the film would be made with both Japanese and American crews, and for a great deal of the pre-production the man in charge of the Japanese unit was  director Akira Kurosawa.  Kurosawa agreed to the film, thinking that David Lean was making the American section, but when he discovered it was, instead, Richard Fleischer, the Japanese master bent some rules in order to allow himself to be "fired" from the film.  He was replaced by two directors known to be as efficient and workmanlike at bringing films in on-time and under-budget as Fleischer.  The intention was not to make great art, but to make an historically accurate film, devoid of trumped-up drama (From Here to Eternity had done that already) and stick to the main subject of the planning and execution of the attack.

The result, although accurate, is rather flat.  Fleischer's American scenes seem drab and stale and, peopled with character actors like Jason Robards, E.G. Marshall, Joseph Cotten and Martin Balsam, lacking in star power.*  The Japanese sequences, perhaps because they have less of an American film studio-feel, seem to have more verve and energy...and better performances.  The movie seems to reflect the situation of the real life events: the Japanese have all the bright ideas, while the Americans have the lethargy associated with "a sleeping giant."** Still, the battle sequences and attack footage is extraordinarily well done, a combination of L.B. Abbott's and A.D. Flowers' model work and the Fox Studio's sometimes hair-raising practical effects crews and stuntmen.

I attended the premiere of Tora! Tora! Tora! with my family at a special showing at the old Paramount theater in Seattle.  It was a special preview for the local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors local chapter, of which my father, John Wilson, late of the U.S.S. Missouri, was a member.  The only story my Father ever told of the war was the events of December 7th, when he was waiting on the dock of the U.S.S. Arizona to attend on-board church services with his friend, Howie Whims, who, for whatever reason, was late.  Were it not for his buddy's tardiness, my Father would have been onboard the doomed Arizona at the time of the attack, and likely might have joined the ranks of the sailors who are still entombed there.***

It was an odd thing sitting in that audience with that audience.  29 year previously, they had witnessed the true horrific events of what was being fictionalized on screen.  The mistakes made (by both sides) that made the devastation so complete was laid out for all to see.  But, however good the effects and pyrotechnics, they couldn't recreate the carnage of that day: the deafening noise, the stench of burning oil that enveloped Pearl for weeks, the bodies, the desperation.  The sight of good friends and comrades-in-arms caught in the gears of the attack and lost forever.**** 

The retired sailors sat stonily, watching the film—no doubt poor competition for the memories unreeling in their own heads and hearts and souls.  There was a smattering of applause when a Japanese zero was shot down, but it was unenthusiastic, hardly celebratory.  For them, it was a film about—and I say this hopefully—the worst day of their life.  However artfully done, however accurately portrayed, who would want to sit through that?  As Sam Fuller succinctly put it in The Big Red One, "Surviving is the only glory in war."  I hope, on that day, they could appreciate their own glory.

* Actually, it's not a bad strategy.  Less attention is paid to the actors on-screen to the advantage of the story.  Films such as Zanuck's The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far become parlor games after awhile ("Look!  There's Sal Mineo and Richard Beymer! Isn't Gene Hackman in this movie?")

** That's taken from the thing the movie is most famous for—Yamamoto's assessment of the attack ("I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve").  Even Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor used it.  It's a good line, making the Imperial General seem both presecient and tragic.  Unfortunately, it appears that, historically, Yamamoto never actually said it.

*** It's one of the reasons I have no patience with Michael Bay's post-Titanic disaster, Pearl Harbor: there is one shot, meticulously recreated, following the path of the most damaging bomb that struck the ship—one of those CGI-sailors scrambling for cover below could likely be my Father, and it irks me that Bay's sensibilities had more gung-ho enthusiasm for the bombs than for the victims.

**** Those sailors' names are etched in stone at the Pearl Harbor Memorial, which is constructed over the still capsized hulk of the Arizona, which still burbles oil to the surface to this day.  But, there's another section, a more recent section, with fresher names cut into the rectangular portal that leads under the surface to the Arizona.  It's for survivors of the attack, who after living through the war, living a full life with wives and families, still chose as their final resting place the ship in the Harbor where they lost so many friends.  I never fully understood "survivor's guilt" until I saw that.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (Joseph Sargent, 1974) Taut, no-frills caper thriller about the hi-jacking of a New York subway train by a group of color-named conspirators. Veteran director Joseph Sargent and cinematographer Owen Roizman create a gritty landscape of dark passages and harsh fluorescent lighting while the Transit police try to negotiate with the hi-jackers, and the hi-jackers deal with their internal squabbles and a subway car of jumpy New Yorkers. It's like anything: Nothing's easy.

This was the first of more adaptations than necessary (a TV version was broadcast in 1999 with Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio, and Tony Scott is making a new one with Denzel Washington and John Travolta) of John Godey's novel, but is the best of the bunch, having the advantage of a witty script penned by Peter Stone, screenwriter of "Charade" and the musical "1776." Stone realized the bare-bones plot of the novel wouldn't sustain a movie, and fleshed out the characters with a jokey, schlumpfy "attitude" that keeps the slow parts entertaining, especially when played by two character actors like Walter Matthau and Jerry Stiller. Matthau gets the advantage of playing a fairly straight character with a muffled humor, while Stiller makes the sarcasm of his dispatcher as dry as Brooklyn dust. By contrast, the hi-jackers (Hector Elizando, Martin Balsam, Earl Hindman, led by Robert Shaw) are twitchy no-nonsense cyphers cloaked in anonymity. It's the cops who are the interesting ones, as they race against time to secure a million dollars in ransom and deliver it before hostages begin being killed.

The direction and lighting take their cues from the documentary style of "The French Connection,"* as does the funky score by David Shire, but Stone's script is the factor that nudges the film beyond its thriller origins and give it a cynical style.

In fact, it is so well done, that one questions the need to do another version.


*Owen Roizman was the DP for that film, as well.