Airport (1970).

Review #1612: Airport.

Cast: 

Burt Lancaster (Mel Bakersfeld), Dean Martin (Vernon Demerest), Jean Seberg (Tanya Livingston), Jacqueline Bisset (Gwen Meighen), George Kennedy (Joe Patroni), Helen Hayes (Ada Quonsett), Van Heflin (D. O. Guerrero), Maureen Stapleton (Inez Guerrero), Barry Nelson (Anson Harris), Dana Wynter (Cindy Bakersfeld), Lloyd Nolan (Harry Standish), Barbara Hale (Sarah Demerest), Gary Collins (Cy Jordan), John Findlater (Peter Coakley), Jessie Royce Landis (Mrs. Mossman), Larry Gates (Ackerman), and Peter Turgeon (Marcus Rathbone) Written and Directed by George Seaton (#303 - Miracle on 34th Street)

Review: 

I'm sure you are familiar with the disaster film. After all, how many times can you draw from the well of disaster films in a decade quite familiar with big spectacle and stars? Airport isn't the first disaster film ever (obviously), but it surely played a key part in the boom of big-time spectacles involving thrills that would be refined into refined hokum to chuckle with The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), which turned out way better in actual suspense (namely by not putting its characters in peril so late in the film). But wait, we are talking about a movie that somebody somehow really liked, since this made its budget back ten times (on a $10 million budget) and received a plethora of Academy Award nominations (going from Best Picture to Best Supporting Actress...twice! This was the year of Patton and Love Story, remember). But hey, this might seem interesting in its connections with Airplane! (1980). That film was a remake of a film called Zero Hour! (1957), which was adapted from a TV production that both featured Arthur Hailey as writer. A decade later, Hailey would write a book called Airport (1968), one of his numerous novels involving the depiction of a certain profession (such as hotels or the automobile industry), for which this film is adapted from. So, in a decade that saw disasters like earthquakes, meteors, infested animals, what can happen with an airport? If you can believe it, not too much, because this manages to be an interminable experience, proving that big stars cannot hold a 137 minute movie beyond B-movie clichés with all the predictable trimmings for exactly one thrill and nothing else. It is as if Grand Hotel (1932) was being regurgitated, one might say.

This was the 20th of 21 films done by George Seaton, the contract writer-turned-director who many will recognize from Miracle on 34th Street (1947, which he won an Academy Award for), although this film was the biggest one of his career; he never actually shot in Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport due to catching pneumonia, and Henry Hathaway stepped in to direct for five weeks there (he did not want payment for his work), complete with starting with fake snow upon having clear conditions. It is interesting to note this as the second-to-last film produced by Ross Hunter, mostly because of the fact that it reminded me of the fact that he left Universal Studios after this to produce Lost Horizon (1973), and we all know how that worked out. The only reason this is any better than that other film is the fact they don't think to ever start singing. Burt Lancaster even called the film a "piece of junk", and he starred in this film! At least he enjoyed the money that came from starring it to do something better (which is preferable to starring in junk and then getting swindled). Seberg didn't like it much either, but I'm sure the big winners proved to be Kennedy and Hayes, since the former was the only one who ended up starring in the next three Airport films and the latter won an Academy Award for her performance (no, I am not kidding, beating out her own cast-mate Stapleton!). This was also the last film role for Heflin and Landis. The only thing that will likely come out of it fine is the airplane industry, seeing how it is promoted so much in such a corny movie, one that will talk about anything else before thinking about thrills, whether that means trouble with noise pollution, office affairs, and quirky customers - oh, but the thing with a flailing airplane, that's just there for the last 25 minutes. To go through the list of actors is like looking through a view-finder and seeing the various slides to see which one "sticks out" the best, before realizing it is a hunk of junk. Lancaster is a fine actor, but he can't help a silly time get better, stuck between rescue mission and workaholic-ism that would've been in vogue with the 1940s or 1950s more than played here. Martin gets the pleasure of being Martin with a considerable age difference in his romance subplot (while reminding me of how many movies I've yet to get to with him as a lead). Seberg seems more stuck in that coat than anything, miles away from films like Breathless (1960) with confounding astonishment. Bisset is here and there with a supposed role of the mistress that seems quite empty for a film in need of a hole in the head. Kennedy is quite enjoyable, in the sense that a cigar-chomper trying to get a plane moving is probably more exciting than anything else that happens in the film. Hayes plays the stowaway with a few wisecracks that is only noteworthy because it is the famed actress of theatre, film, and TV playing it and nothing else - her being used as a ploy near the climax is amusing though. Heflin, a actor of theatre, radio, and film with star and character roles before his death in 1971, does just fine with the quiet adversarial role that is given very little to really do besides bide his time. Stapleton mounts herself to the ground with panic that could be thought of as camp pantomime, while others are there to point out and say words about, like Nelson (never quite a star, but he was the first James Bond...on television), or Wynter (tall, elegant, and wasted in this film for arguments), or Nolan (various roles in light entertainment or B-fare).

So yes, I have been quite mean with just calling it a turkey, and it is the fact that I did not expect much from it that only seals just how bland my disappointment is at the end of the day. The only plot that really matters involve Kennedy or the plane in the air possibly going down, not so much with the billions of other plots about these folks. But at least when the plane does receive some trouble, it ticks up in interest, which therefore means I did get some silly amusement in seeing actors fumble in cheesy danger, complete with the magic of split-screen photography. Actually, that is my other bone of amusement, because certain scenes feature a shot of someone in a circle cut into a scene on the plane saying their dialogue, as opposed to simply cutting to them just saying it...or just having them heard instead of seen. This is also used with a scene of someone using code words for security (with a diamond cut to see all five guards - nifty?). If things are happening in this film, watch out, because it will probably just stop not long after for something else. With a movie that introduces only one troubled person and nothing else, take a guess at how many people will face danger and lose by the end. Congratulations, you won - oh did you guess zero? If you did, you get credit because that would have made an even worse film. Naturally, there were sequels, and they only managed to get sillier with their progression alongside their choice of stars, which ranged from James Stewart to Gloria Swanson that were all released later in the 1970s (1974, 1977, 1979). Truly, the only thing I learned from this is maintaining an aversion to airplanes for yet another year, with the hope that no one tries to make corny movies like this about the bus industry or worse yet about walking. At that point, one might as well just cover your eyes and look for the hurl bag.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Breathless (1960).

Review #1403: Breathless.

Cast: 
Jean-Paul Belmondo (Michel Poiccard), Jean Seberg (Patricia Franchini), Daniel Boulanger (Police Inspector Vital), Henri-Jacques Huet (Antonio Berruti), Roger Hanin (Carl Zumbach), Van Doude (Van Doude), Liliane Dreyfus (Lilane), Michel Fabre (The other inspector), and Jean-Pierre Melville (Parvulesco) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

Review: 
"The cinema is not a craft. It is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always alone on the set as before the blank page. And to be alone...means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them. Nothing could be more classically romantic.”

The 1960s were a new wave of revolution for cinema around the world, a decade that would see the end of the studio system and loosening of censorship. When it comes to world cinema, the French New Wave found itself as a key influence for its experimentation when it came to editing, visual style and narrative that challenged the conventional methods of the present with admiration for directors like Howard Hawks or John Ford when it came to their vision on making a film. Numerous people of this wave had been part of Andre Bazin's film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in the late 1950s, such as François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Jean-Luc Godard. He was born in France but grew up in both there and Switzerland, and he described his childhood as a "kind of paradise", where he spent a good deal of his time with sports and avid reading. Although he had intended to study engineering, he became interested in the film clubs that encompassed Paris (along with interest in painting). It was his interest in film that led to meeting people like Truffaut and Rivette at the Cinematheque Francais, where spending a whole day with films was like a way to escape from one's life for a bit. It eventually led to them writing film criticism, with one notable Godard article being a defense of the "shot-reverse shot", which Bazin found obsolete. Like Truffaut, he also made a few short films of his own, and it was he who would contribute to Godard getting to direct his first film, with inspiration being found in an article about Michel Portail, who stole a car to visit his sick mother and then killed a motorcycle cop while being turned over to the cops by his American journalist girlfriend. Godard found himself interested in doing this as a feature (after meeting producer Georges de Beauregard while working in 20th Century Fox's Paris office), and the success of Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) helped get a bit of funding together for the film. Although Truffaut had written a script for the film, Godard dispensed with it through writing the dialogue on a day-by-day basis (describing the subject as roughly about "a boy who thinks of death and of a girl who doesn't") while filming with no sound and a hand-held camera to go along with a wheelchair to roll around in to do shots. The resulting film was a hit for audiences and the French New Wave, and Godard has gone on to make several experimental films on his own terms for over five decades, making various works such as Alphaville (1965) and Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998).

One can certainly look at Breathless (À bout de soufflé) as one of energy in its methods of madness to make something out of guerilla-style filmmaking that yearns to challenge its viewer in its daring independence, an offbeat and fairly poetic film (complete with a dedication to prominent b-movie studio Monogram Pictures). Oddly enough, Godard would later say that the film's success was a mistake, stating before his film, "there used to be just one way. There was one way you could do things. There were people who protected it like a copyright, a secret cult only for the initiated. That’s why I don’t regret making Breathless and blowing that all apart.” I can certainly respect the intent of Godard when it comes to wanting to make something bold and different from the usual expectations with confident detachment, a drama with noir aspects (including a love of Humphrey Bogart from its main character that sure tries to act like him in a gangster film) and jagged editing done to trim the film (which lasts 87 minutes) that stick out in the viewer's eyes with amazement (or puzzlement, depending on one's tastes), where the rule-book is thrown out in order to make something new and vital, for better or worse, which can test the patience of those craving discipline in a film's foundation (or perhaps were looking for the 1983 American remake). It is an imperfect film, but it has a key place in world cinema that can't be denied for the devoted film-lover, particularly since this is from someone who clearly has a love for them that desires to make one of his own striking vision to divert from the traditions that banded the past while evoking ones from that same era to respect and reference.

Belmondo and Seberg play off each other with casualness, the former being a staggering caricature of impulse and crudeness that goes with the latter's hypnotic allure and driven spirit to make a fascinating duo to ruminate about passion in its modern age, where style permeates because of its director regardless of its budgetary limitations, where a scene can switch from French to English and then back again and be quite diverting. The climax proves to be a swift and effective way to cap off an intriguing film, no doubt helped by the lasting words to end it (which can prove interesting in translation for English viewers with the word of "dégueulasse"). It still packs a power of curiosity after six decades because of its execution of style and bold attitude of honoring and defying the things of cinema to make a piece uniquely fitting to start a career of directing for someone like Godard that one can find plenty to look into today.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.