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The Gypsy Moths

This 1969 film about a troupe of barnstorming skydivers has plenty of positives:

• It paints a picture of small-town America in the days before the mass media standardized American culture. In those days, the script reminds us, a skydiving show could be the highlight of everyone's summer. There is one fascinating scene in which a high school band, after having practiced for months under the baton of a persnickety martinet, heads into Main Street on the July 4th parade, only to see it abandoned and looking desolate because every single person in town is at the big air show.

• It features a great cast which provides a cross-section of Hollywood's generations. Bert Lancaster, William Windom, Sheree North, and Deborah Kerr are there from the forties and fifties crowd; Bonnie Bedelia and Gene Hackman represent the new generation which would emerge in the seventies. Bedelia was 20 or 21 when she filmed this role, and Hackman was still in his thirties. Hackman had established himself as a dependable character actor two years earlier in Bonnie and Clyde, but Popeye Doyle, the role which would elevate him to leading man status, was still two years in the future.

• Lancaster and Kerr rekindled the screen sparks they had ignited in From Here to Eternity - except this time the cultural climate allowed them to do it with their clothes off. This they did and looked quite good in the process, even though Lancaster was 56 and Kerr 48.

• It's an unusual experience to see Lancaster play a guy with a tremendous amount of screen time and virtually no dialogue. He played a strong, silent guy who kept everything internalized.

• There is some very impressive aerial photography of the skydiving stunts.

• The film was directed by John Frankenheimer, who was still in his thirties, and only a few years removed from a string of very impressive movies when he was Hollywood's boy wonder.
  1. Seven Days in May (1964)
  2. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
  3. Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

The DVD version of the film can also be characterized as outstanding in many ways.

• It's rare to have a director's commentary available for a movie which is about 40 years old. Fortunately, Frankenheimer was still with us long enough to record the track for this film. I didn't listen to the entire commentary, but I caught about twenty minutes' worth scattered through the film, and Frankenheimer seemed to provide an interesting melange of insights. Sometimes he reminisced about making the movie, and at other times he discussed the actors or the studio's marketing of the film (or mismarketing, as he saw it, because the film was barely released). The commentary was interesting enough that I'll probably go back and listen to the rest someday.

• The DVD producers also managed to find the original trailer and a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the action scenes were filmed. There's also a fairly interesting, if disappointingly generic, featurette about real skydivers.

• The widescreen anamorphic transfer of the film is quite satisfactory, especially for a film four decades old.

Having offered all those kind words, I regret to say that it's only an average movie, albeit competent and occasionally interesting. It has some sections which clip along quite nicely, especially the action scenes, but other parts of the film really drag. There is a full eight minute conversation (really, I timed it - minutes 40-48, more or less) between Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in the middle of the film, and that slows the film's heart beat down to flat-line status.

The film has an odd kind of vibe to it. Instead of a smooth consistent tone, it seems like one of those anthologies of short stories where the stories have a connection, but are written or directed by different people. The first half of the film is similar to the famous film Picnic, in which an outsider disturbs the complacency of a small town in summertime. In this case, all three of the skydivers manage to score one-night stands on their first night in town, and this virtually rends the time-space continuum in the town. Lancaster and Kerr, for example, get it on in Kerr's living room with her husband (Windom) sleeping upstairs, soon to become aware of his cuckolded condition. The second half of the film consists predominantly of actual skydiving - much too much of it for my taste, to the point where the pulse of the film again dropped to corpse status.

Frustratingly, the most important plot development in the entire film is heavy with ambiguity. The action itself takes place entirely before our eyes, but we are never clear whether it was intentional or accidental, and precisely why it went down that way. Then there is a brief post-airshow epilogue in the film, which offers no insights on the major event, and instead presents some additional developments in relationships, most of which weren't fully explained. It was typical in the late sixties and early seventies to end films with unresolved or unexplained matters, leaving the viewer a chance to speculate on how various relationships and situations would develop, and thus to participate in the artistic process. I don't know whether I miss that form of audience involvement or whether I am relieved to see it pass, but I do miss the sorts of post-movie conversations we used to have about matters like, "Why do you think he did that? Did he mean to? What did such-and-such all mean? What happened to the relationship between X and Y?" And so forth. It seems that movies have become more transparent, or less subtle, or both.

Deborah Kerr (film clip)

Sheree North (film clip)

Bonnie Bedelia. No film clip. You can't see jack unless you tinker with it. And not much even then.

 

Trading Places

Maybe it's just me, but for me these scenes are right up there with Phoebe Cates in Ridgemont High as some of the greatest nudity in film history. Jamie Lee truly had a spectacular body.

Here are two HIGH DEF film clips from Dead Red, and three unadjusted raw snaps I made to show you the quality of the clips:

 

 

Black Snake Moan

Once in a great while, someone makes a film specifically for me. Oddly, the film makers don't even know they are doing it. Give  me Samuel L. Jackson, an amazing blues score, and a brilliant performance by a sometimes naked and continuously underdressed Christina Ricci, and I am happy.

Samuel plays a truck farmer and former blues man whose wife has just left him for his brother. His support group is a church, but as a drunk and all-around character, it is an uneasy fit for him. Christina Ricci was abused as a youngster, and turned into the high school slut. She has a relationship with Justin Timberlake. He is subject to constant panic attacks, which she is somehow able to ease. Whenever he is not around, she becomes a nymphomaniac. Timberlake is off to join the Army, and she is off screwing anything in pants.

Timberlake's best friend beats Christina and dumps her in the middle of a road, right next to Sam Jackson's place. She is unconscious, and suffering from a fever and serious cough. Samuel L. decides to heal her, but not just her immediate medical problems. To make sure she stays around for his healing, he chains her to a radiator. Ricci and Jackson both eventually find redemption, but not in expected ways. The two have no sexual tension between them, much less sexual contact. Yes, she initially tries to bargain her body for freedom, but when that doesn't work, she is forced to live in her own head for a while.

Samuel L. learned guitar for this film, and was able to actually play all his tunes in this film, even though the sound track has prerecorded versions. As a guitarist, I can confirm that Jackson was fingering the guitar correctly. This is the second time I have fallen in love with a Samuel L. film that did not do well (the first was The Caveman's Valentine). In this case, I am afraid the public couldn't get past the idea of an old ornery black man chaining a young half naked white woman to the radiator of his house. With brilliant performances from Samuel and Christina Ricci, an amazing blues score, great cinematography, and insightful looks at racial, age, gender, and social position issues, what is not to like? In reading the first several comments at IMDb, it seems to me that everyone who has actually seen this film has loved it. I have ordered the sound track, and will watch the film again and again. If you have an open mind, watch it. If you also love the blues, buy it.

I think the box office problem had to do with marketing, not the quality of the film, and hence score it a B-.

IMDb readers say 7.4, but the film was not a box office success, only earning $9.4M against a $15M budget. Berardinelli awarded 3 1/2 stars, clearly getting it. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 66%, with 50% from the top critics.

 

Christina Ricci shows breasts in several scenes, and is virtually naked through most of the film.

Scoop's note: I agree with Tuna's analysis and have no problem seconding the B-. It should have been a hit, dammit, or at least a success. The film was mis-marketed as an exploitation film (white girl chained to radiator in black man's house), when it should have been presented as the thoughtful and compassionate drama that it is, albeit one with a very steamy, almost naked Christina Ricci smack dab in the middle of it. Maybe it would still have bombed, but it could have bombed honestly. As Tuna notes, most people who have seen it really liked it. (See Dann's review below.)

Props to Ricci for a good job in a role with significant psychological and physical challenges. Here's one more cap of her bum in the deleted scenes: