American Film

Character in American Cinema

A while ago a Russian friend asked me to give him a list of films that were characteristically American. After I gave it some thought, I wished that he had asked for something simple - like directions to a good bar. Nonetheless, it got me to thinking about film as an art form and the place that flics play in American values, American culture.

Few arts are uniquely American with the exceptions of Jazz, Rock and Roll, quilting, decoy carving, barbeque and cheeseburgers. Among these, motion pictures are preeminent. Thomas Edison had a lot of good ideas, but story telling with film is surely the most pervasively influential. From the beginning, Americans have made the best good movies and the best bad movies.

That dominance continues today. Indeed, overseas critics will often characterize American motion pictures as cultural imperialism. If this were true then that would make foreign viewers political masochists. Hollywood doesn’t employ many Lani Riefenstahls. Propaganda doesn’t sell. And there are few aesthetic differences between propaganda and pornography although porn will always have a more attractive bottom (line).

The meaning of the words motion picture, movie or film have a universal understanding. The meaning of the adjective ‘American’ is less clear. Cinema, like literature, reflects values, so it might be useful to explore how typical Americans see themselves – assuming of course that “typicals” exist anywhere.

We are a people, or the descendants of folks, who come from someplace else.

They came from afar because there was something lacking where they were. This is especially true for the American film industry where immigrants have played a pivotal role. As such, many Yankees seem to be hardwired as adventurers or risk takers.

The first European who laid down such a marker was John Smith, leader of the first English speaking business in

America (the Virginia Company). Smith would have been unique in any culture. He was a soldier of fortune, slave, navigator, explorer, map maker, linguist and journalist.

He was a critic of aristocracy in an era when it was dangerous to attempt to rise above the class of your birth. He was an outspoken advocate of entrepreneurship and meritocracy. Many of Smith’s notions found their way into the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To understand historical American character, it is important to remember that we were a business before we were a democracy. Indeed, Smith’s most famous adage still rings like crystal; “Those who will not work, shall not eat!”

A century after John Smith, the heart of American political philosophy was still beating in Virginia. Washington, Madison, Mason, Jefferson, and Henry resurrected Periclean democracy from the ash of antiquity. With some thoughts from John Locke and Adam Smith, they created a republic with hard Yankee varnish.

The most important ideas to come from this ferment were independence, freedom and republican democracy. And the most important value established by the American Revolution and the War of 1812 was that words mattered. Ideas are worth fighting for: ideas are worth dying for. A few years later, at Gettysburg, Lincoln borrowed a euphemism (from Pericles) for combat death when he called it “the last full measure of devotion”. He wasn’t taking about dying for your country; he was talking about dying for a belief, an ideal.

Fair play and social justice were two of those ideals. The Civil War was the great bloody test of American character, truly a red badge of courage. Slavery was freedom deferred. Slavery and states rights were the unfinished business of colonial America. Other values underscored by the Civil War were humility, optimism and redemption. We were humble enough to recognize error and optimistic enough to believe we could be saved from ourselves.

Redemption is a golden thread of American culture. We believe in good and evil and we believe in good triumphant. The Scarlet Letter is the classic of American literature that tells this tale best. The film classic, On the Waterfront, is a direct descendant. Almost all American westerns and gangster films are less elegant morality plays. Ironically, good and evil often take the same road to the same grave - for different reasons. Shane is a good guy, but he dies too. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Actually, it’s guns. Firearms play a large role in our brief American history. Guns of every sort are used to settle issues great and small. Film does not exaggerate so much as reflect the role of guns in American culture – although Hollywood body counts are more than a little fantastic. The value at work here, enshrined in our constitution, is that Americans do no want to give police, soldiers and criminals an exclusive franchise on deadly force. Call it defensive lethality. Guns are closely related to a historical suspicion of government. They also represent a kind of portable fair play. From the beginning, a gun was thought to be the great equalizer – the instrument that levels the field. Indeed, that ubiquitous Colt six-shooter of the American West was called “the Peacemaker”.

God and guns is an unlikely pair but Americans believe in both. For some, Hollywood contends to be the most godless place on the face of the earth. Yet, the contradictions here are not as profound as they appear. Elmer Gantry is as American as apple pie.

The recent film adaptation of Doubt is an excellent treatment of ethics leavened with uncertainty - an intramural moral struggle between two Catholic clerics. Say what you will about the progressive religious views of the priest and the conservative religious views of the nun; in the end, you would still trust your kids to their school. Faith and trust are synonymous.

Hollywood traditionally reflects this moral culture precisely because it is a product of democracy. A thousand porn films, chic flics, mindless cartoons or paeans to political correctness are redeemed by films such as As Good As it Gets. Here, Nicholson and Hunt are pitch perfect; he as the mean neurotic intellectual and she as the hardscrabble waitress and working mom. They are a fusion of values; regret and trust. He has enough regret to become a better man and she has enough trust to love a flawed creature. If America is a moral cesspool, some good bits are still floating to the top.

The flawed hero is a staple of American film. Nonetheless, American heroes seem to be in transition. The tall strong silent type may be an endangered species. It’s hard to imagine Jimmy Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck or John Wayne enjoying iconic stature today. When Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson are gone, it’s hard to fathom who will replace them. Indeed, when a hard case is needed, we now import our gladiators from England (Daniel Craig) or Australia (Russell Crowe).

The pugnacious bantam - Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Cagey, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart – seems to have bit the dust also. Manly men and studly fellows have been cut by the soft focus of political correctness. Soft is the new hard. Pretty Boy Floyd is now just pretty. Men are weak and women are strong. Thelma might marry Louise!

The simple answer is Shakespearean. The entire world is a stage; art simply holds a mirror to life. Yet, it may be fair to ask whether these shifting values represent America or a politicized Hollywood. Does gender bending reflect a sea change of sex roles or is Hollywood trying to peddle preferred models of politically correct sexual equality if not androgyny?

After seeing Lawrence of Arabia one wag claimed that, if Peter O’Toole had been any prettier, the film could have been called Florence of Arabia. Woody Allen has led the charge against the traditional view of American heroes – especially males. He has been making the same film for 40 years: nerdy, be speckled, neurotic New Yorker does the big city. The Allen hero only has one permanent relationship - with his therapist. His girls wear pants; quirky but capable. His men are flaccid and inept. The perennial urban putz is Allen’s most significant contribution to American cinema.

Saturday Night Live calls them girlie-men. It’s not just the obvious farce like Tootsie where Dustin Hoffman becomes a cross-dresser for hire, but the ease with which today’s leading men slip into mom’s lingerie. The issue here isn’t homosexuality; with few exceptions, most gays, like most Blacks, are caricatures in Hollywood. The issue is casting.

And there is no argument about craft. Surely, the likes of Tom Cruise, Leonardo Di Caprio, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney are competent actors. At the same time, they are so pretty; it’s hard to believe they are selected for their talent. These pretty leading men give us some gross distortions. Cruise as a Nazi combat veteran (Valkyrie)! Put aside for a moment the whole question of Nazi “heroes”, tiny Tom could wear two eye patches, high heeled hip boots and a monocle and still not be convincing. Di Caprio as an Irish gangster (Gangs of New York) from the lower East Side is another charade. But the most popular miscast extravaganza is Schindler’s List.

Here again, we must willingly suspend disbelief while Hollywood tries to rehabilitate the irredeemable. As this tale is told by Spielberg, the action spins around a Jew and two Germans in the Nazi era. Or put another way, we have a good German, a bad German and an emaciated middleman with a big nose. Guess who plays what? The German villain is played by an Englishman; the German hero is played by an Irish matinee idol, and the Jewish prisoner is played by an Anglo/Indian. Are there no menacing Germans to play the Nazi, are there no skinny Jews to play the inmate, and are there no fat, morally ambiguous burgomasters to play Schindler? Any Mel Brooks take on the Holocaust is better than Schindler’s List. The problem with Spielberg’s vision is that it is not a kind of remembering so much as it is a kin to forgetting.

Surely, Liam Neesom is no girlie-man, but just as surely, Schindler was no matinee idol.

Putting a hunky face on one of Germany’s great ethical ciphers is not simply bad theater, its dangerous history. Looking good appears to be the new “looking the part”. Bogart could play any part because he was everyman – he looked to be an average guy. Today, pretty cats are cast as ugly dogs and the audience is not supposed to notice.

While male leads are having their giblets snipped, female leads appear to be growing a pair. Thelma and Louise is a standard bearer in this class. Two gal pals beyond their prime, fed up with abusive men (are there any other kind?), launch themselves on a cross-country jaunt punctuated by boy toys, homicide and suicide. Unfortunately, too many these “serious” female leads are actually victims in drag – call it the celluloid ceiling.

My favorite in this category is Monster with Charlize Theron. This bio-pic is based on the real life adventures of a butch serial killer. By day, our heroine is a heterosexual hooker. Her leisure is divided between her girlfriend and a series of executions where the victims are all male. Hollywood couldn’t find any redeeming features in this girl’s real story so they made one up. They made her a victim – a victim of childhood sexual abuse by, you guessed it, a male abuser. We are left in a quandary. Is abuse a prelude to sexual preference or psychosis - or both? And what about the boys? Are homosexuals all mama’s boys - the product of maternal abuse?

Let’s pause for a dollar and cents reality check. Most recent artistic products, from Hollywood and the Valley, cater to pornographic, politically correct or pubescent tastes – the loathsome and the lonesome. For the pinning teen, Tom and Brad can play any role because they’re so totally cute! Adolescence and tumescence are the cash cows of the industry. So in the end, as with Chekhov, the last act is preordained to be like the first. There’s bound to be a lot of celluloid crap in our future.

Going to a cinemaplex today is a little like sniffing onions in search of orchids. Nonetheless, Hollywood continues to be ground zero for the best. To date, the American industry has produced the best genre flics and will continue to refine those categories. No one makes a better Western, film noir, crime thriller, comedy or musical - to note just a few examples. When it comes to history, biography, religion or great literature, Hollywood is still a tin man in search of an oil can.

Part of the problem with history and biography seems to be quality competition. The British do these things so well that Hollywood seems to have ceded the field. The English film industry also benefits from direct government subsidies on both sides of the pond. BBC will make a film at taxpayer expense and then sell it to America’s CPB where it is aired again with taxpayer help. It’s hard to compete with trans-Atlantic socialism times two. American and British “state” filmmakers now benefit from the best of both worlds; Karl Marx and Adam Smith.

Religion and great American literature are more of a cipher. The aforementioned Scarlet Letter is an example of great source material that covers both subjects - yet to be done well by Hollywood. Hester Prynne is not simply the story of a fallen angel redeemed. The back story is even more fascinating. Hawthorne was writing in midst of the ‘great awakening’, the American critique of Luther and Calvin. In the process of trying to reform Catholicism, these zealots had rejected beliefs in redemption, free will and good works. Hawthorne, a writer with Puritan roots, and his fictional Scarlet Letter helped to restore these core values to American variants of Christianity - a great story yet to be told on film.

John Smith and his American Indian protégé, Pocahontas, are another great tale that has been bowdlerized by Hollywood. There are hundreds of serious books on this quintessential American pair. Yet, the film industry has perpetuated myth and ignored history - in the process creating a buffoon and a cartoon. In life these two were the seminal “what ifs” of early American history.

What if Captain Smith had been returned to Virginia as governor after his burns healed? Smith had been a white slave. It is unlikely he would have tolerated that institution in Virginia. If slavery had not taken root in Virginia, how different the American 19^th and 20^th Centuries might have been. And Pocahontas, by marrying John Rolfe (America’s first agricultural tycoon) had bridged the cultural divide between the English and the indigenous. What if this princess had not died at the age of 23 and returned to Virginia with her husband to create another template for European and Indian relations? Another great story yet to be told on film.

What follows is a short list of great American films (not listed in any particular order of merit) where character, or lack of it, plays a leading role. Hollywood may improve on these but for the moment these are as good as it gets.

As Good As It Gets (2007)

No human commerce is possible without two human values - trust and regret. No relationship, be it public or private, is possible without trust. No progress or change is possible without regret – seeing the error of our ways. As Good As It Gets is a painfully funny examination of these two essential values.

Jack Nicholson plays an annoying neurotic bigot against Helen Hunt’s burdened single mother; the improbable story of how an urban schmuck and a street smart working girl find common ground. As the tale unfolds, she is a stout lifeline to a man drowning in a sea of self absorption or as a New Yorker might see it, obsessive compulsive disorder.

Nicholson and Hunt bring it off because they are simply the best at what they do. He has played every imaginable role except God – although he has done a very credible devil (Witches of Eastwick). If Helen Hunt had a better agent, she might be Meryl Streep. Any film made by these actors is worth seeing.

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca makes every “best” list for good reasons; a great romance, a story well told and a timely vision of the future. In 1942, the course and outcome of WW II was far from certain. Many Americans like Rick (Humphrey Bogart) were ambiguous about Europe’s war and alliances with the likes of Vichy France.

Casablanca was prescient on both counts. In time, fiction and the real world merged. The film was a triumph that anticipated the outcome of the war. Knowing that most of the cast, save Bogart, were refugees from the Nazi Europe gives the film special merit. However, it’s hard to believe that this movie would enjoy iconic stature without the pairing of Bogart and Bergman. He was everyman and she was every man’s fantasy.

On the Waterfront (1954)

On the Waterfront is a film maker’s response to a real world dilemma. The director, Elia Kazan, was one of Hollywood’s courageous few who named names during the anti-Communist purge of the 1950’s. Those who characterize this period as a ‘witch hunt’ seldom mention that the witches were innocent; the closet Communists were not. Kazan’s classic tells the story of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), an Irish dockworker who testifies against the Italian waterfront mob boss (Lee J. Cobb) who ordered the murder of his girl friend’s brother. Eva Marie Saint does justice to her name as the picture perfect virgin. Kazan and the fictional Terry Malloy did the right thing and paid the price. Ironically, the film industry gave Kazan the Academy Award yet never forgave him for his anti-Communist testimony or his likening Hollywood leftists to the New York mafia.

Doubt (2008)

Doubt is an ethical tempest in a Bronx Catholic teapot. And it is a good pretext to include Meryl Streep’s work in our list. She is the best living actor working. If she were a man, she would be the sum of Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood. She is that good.

Here she plays ‘old school’ Sister Aloysius, foil to ‘new school’ Father Flynn (Phillip S. Hoffman). What we have here is not a failure to communicate, but an ethical triptych; a dogmatic nun, a progressive priest and a pragmatic mother (Viola Davis). The three swirl around an axis of suspicion where there can be no comfortable resolution. Nonetheless, it is a great morality play. We are left knowing that not all moral choices are binary; some are just pragmatic. We also leave knowing that morality is a point of departure not a destination.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

To Kill a Mockingbird is the historical antidote to Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. The segregation and institutionalized bigotry that followed Emancipation was in many ways worse than slavery. Harper Lee rolled an expertly crafted grenade into the American psyche with her novel upon which this film was based. Gregory Peck plays the white lawyer who defends a black man wrongly accused. Unfortunately, most attorneys never approach the high standards of ethics and courage set by the fictional Atticus Finch. Nonetheless, To Kill a Mockingbird is another testimony to the virtue and costs of doing the right thing. This film also introduces a young Robert Duval, with hair – the first and last time he plays a mute.

Play Misty for Me (1971)

Almost anything that Clint Eastwood does is worth watching, even those spaghetti Westerns. Like Burt Lancaster, he gets better with age - a great hero but an even better anti-hero. Most of his small ensemble flics (Million Dollar Baby, the Unforgiven, Gran Tourino, etc.) are gems. Play Misty is early Eastwood, a typical quirky slice of life. He plays a smarmy disc jockey – a rogue who beds but does not wed. One night he makes the mistake of dating a caller to his broadcast. What follows is every player’s worst nightmare; a female stalker. American women do not suffer chumps or cheaters gladly. Karen Black is a model for women scorned. Even Hitchcock never crafted a better bent babe in search of gender justice.

Miracle (2004)

This is a small film about coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) who takes a group of college hockey players to the Olympics. The sport is significant because hockey is as close as you can get to combat without actually firing a gun. On one level, it is a study of how talented individuals learn the value of teamwork. On another level, it is a character study of coaching or leadership. The only flaw here is the stereotyped Soviets, mere foils for the Americans. The Russian team of this period was probably the best ever.

But in the end, it is compelling piece of Cold War history on film - a true tale of how an amateur team of Americans beat the Soviet national team in the 1980 Olympics. Any numbers of virtues are on display here, not the least of which is discipline and hard work. But the real bottom line is a simple message for all: life is a team sport.

Caddy Shack (1980)

This is the film for all those who think Americans take their sports too seriously. Golf is the antithesis of hockey; golf is as close as you can come to a real sport without exertion. Indeed, golf discourages physical effort; it is the only major recreation where players use electric carts on the playing field. No leisure activity uses more herbicide, pesticides and green space. But the real toxic waste is the overweight white guys who play the sport. God created golf for parody, just as surely as Harold Ramis created this cult classic.

Bill Murray is featured as the deranged greens keeper who literally wages war on local wildlife. Ted Knight plays the pompous, petty country club apparatchik who enforces club etiquette and shaves strokes from his game. Rodney Dangerfield plays the loud, wealthy parvenu – a study in bad taste. Deflating a sport where the “athletes” can’t carry their own equipment, this caddy-eye view of the country club characters is priceless.

Doctor Strangelove or:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963)

The true test of political character is humor; any government that can’t laugh at itself is doomed to failure. Any screenplay by Stanley Kubric and Terry Southern is bound to be a wild ride. Indeed, Strangelove is the definitive satire of the Cold War and Russo phobia. Nothing is sacred; not politicians, not science, not the military, not strategy and certainly not nuclear weapons. At first glance, you might not think that atomic bombs and mutually assured destruction (MAD) are that funny, but that would mean that you haven’t seen this movie.

Peter Sellers plays three roles, including a US president and a mad scientist (pardon any redundancy) in the company of George C. Scott among others. Sellers should have been awarded instant citizenship or at least an American passport for his performance.

Cinderella Man (2005)

This is a true story about an uncommon man. James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe) was a Depression era prize fighter and manual laborer. He loved his work, he loved his wife (Renee Zellweger) and he loved his children. He traveled a road from champ to chump and back again to champion. Along the way he worked on the docks and in construction; he and his family even spent some time on welfare (nee public assistance). Braddock and Crowe have shared DNA, descendants of Irish immigrants and pugnacious family men. Crowe is a new Robert Mitchem.

After winning the title late in life, Braddock brought a small house in New Jersey where he lived until he died. He also took a portion of his purse and paid back every dime he had ever received on public assistance. When asked why he returned the money to the state, Braddock replied that he was proud to live in a country that helped a man when he was down; yet, that didn’t relieve him from the obligation to pay that country back.

Shane (1953)

The cowboy, the gunfighter and the Western are unique American art forms. When selecting the best we suffer from an embarrassment of riches; High Noon, True Grit and the Unforgiven among them. Shane makes the cut because, like Casablanca, it features a reluctant warrior (Alan Ladd) who in the end takes on the bad guys. Our champion is a quiet man, forced by circumstance to strap on his iron. Shane is also a tale of love lost – a good man who loves another’s wife. Inevitably our hero, bleeding from his wounds, rides off into a grim sunset. Two hearts are broken; the lady and her son, who idolizes Shane. The finale features the plaintiff wail of a child: “Shane! Shane! Please come back!” We mourn the lost idols of our youth. Roll credits; lower the lights; roll tears! Good art should touch our heart.