The Weekly Gravy #183

The Graduate (1967) – ****

It’s fascinating to read Roger Ebert’s review of the 30th anniversary reissue of The Graduate and see how he takes the film to task – not so much, I think, because the film is, as he suggests, an artifact of its time, but because he misread it when he was young:

As Benjamin and Elaine escaped in that bus at the end of “The Graduate,” I cheered, the first time I saw the movie. What was I thinking of? What did the scene celebrate? “Doing your own thing,” I suppose.

Just before this telling quote, he notes the uncomfortable expressions which form on their faces as they sit on the bus and “The Sound of Silence” begins to play for the final time, “perhaps because they are still to have a meaningful conversation.” He’s right that they haven’t had one, but I contend he’s overlooking the real point of the ending, which is that they have “done their own thing” – which is to say they’ve made an impulsive, seemingly liberating choice and don’t know what to do with it.

He points out that Mrs. Robinson is by far the most exciting and three-dimensional character and that Benjamin is rather a loser – but that’s the point. Going back to his original 1967 review, he doesn’t seem to have missed the point that much:

Otherwise, “The Graduate” is a success and Benjamin’s acute honesty and embarrassment are so accurately drawn that we hardly know whether to laugh or to look inside ourselves.

That “otherwise,” by the way, is a reference to his indifference towards the Simon & Garfunkel songs on the soundtrack, which he would remain cool towards 30 years later, suggesting that Mrs. Robinson, “alone with her vodka, would twist the radio dial looking for the Beatles or Chuck Berry.”

Well, it’s all a matter of taste, I suppose; I think “The Sound of Silence” is a great song, however cryptic the lyrics, and though we only hear bits of the song (it wasn’t finished before the film was), “Mrs. Robinson” is also a classic, while “Scarborough Fair,” their cover of an English folk song, is a lovely piece (though I’m not sure it needed to be combined with “Canticle”). But then, I consider the film great, and I was born long after it debuted.

I’d seen parts of it over the years, and recognized the most famous moments, but for some reason I was of the opinion I’d find it a shallow satire full of dated techniques. I had a similar prejudice towards Bonnie and Clyde, possibly based on my experience with films of the era that have aged poorly, but just as that film greatly impressed me, so did The Graduate.

No, it’s not flawless; I’ll readily admit that the second half could’ve used one less montage and one more good scene between Benjamin and Elaine, if only to give Katherine Ross more to actually do. Ross is good in the film, and her Oscar nomination makes sense – she well conveys the sensitivity and confusion Elaine feels – but she doesn’t even appear until almost an hour in.

But the second half is still good and the first half is nearly perfect, thanks in no small part to Mike Nichols’ Oscar-winning direction. He worked wonders with the limited setting and small cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; given the wider scope (and glorious color) of this film to play with, he and (Oscar-nominated) cinematographer Robert Surtees made one of the most technically virtuosic comedies of the era.

It’s a film which hearkens back to the slapstick of the silent era – Benjamin’s deadpan brings Keaton to mind and his futzing with a phone book late in the film is a great little bit of prop comedy – and anticipates the cringe comedy of the early 2000s, as Benjamin responds with profound awkwardness to Mrs. Robinson’s seductive confidence. The little conversation they have – speaking on the phone while about 40 feet apart – after he gets their hotel room is but one example of the comedic brilliance their clashing energies create.

Of course, Hoffman is perfectly cast in his star-making role as the aimless schmuck Benjamin, whose greatest displays of willpower before the final scene involve his being snarky at best and an asshole at worst, as when he initially humiliates Elaine on their first date. He’s a loser, no question about it; that one can relate to him to a degree is part of the resonance of the film. He’s not a rebel and isn’t truly challenging the values of the suburbs, he just doesn’t know what to do with himself, and Hoffman plays that with hilarious honesty.

Bancroft, while not really a lead in the film (she was nominated for Best Actress alongside Hoffman in Actor, but she has less than a third as much screentime) is simply dynamic as Mrs. Robinson, by turns bold and vivacious, poignantly resentful (as when she talks about her own youth), and coldly vengeful (“I’m don’t think you’ll have time for that drink after all”). It’s a dazzling turn, and that she appears so little in the second half is unfortunate.

Aside from the great Murray Hamilton as the crisply obtuse Mr. Robinson, the supporting cast only get a few chances to shine, though all of them, from William Daniels as Benjamin’s peevish father and Elizabeth Wilson as his blandly doting mother to Buck Henry (who brilliantly adapted Charles Webb’s apparently mediocre novel) as the hotel clerk and Norman Fell as the oafish boarding-house landlord, make the most of the moments they get.

They, along with Richard Sylbert’s subtly fantastic production design, shine in the visuals crafted by Nichols and Surtees that evoke Benjamin’s confusion and alienation and the brightly-colored inanity of the Greatest Generation’s values, but in a way that, contrary to what Ebert said, is not stuck in the dissatisfaction of the late 60s but remains relevant almost 60 years on. As do plastics.

Score: 91

Love Lies Bleeding (2024) – ***

What allowances do we make for the ones we love? In Love Lies Bleeding, Lou (Kristen Stewart) accepts some truly horrific actions on the part of Jackie (Katy O’Brian), not entirely without reason – Jackie is under the influence both of steroids Lou has given her and of Lou’s ruthlessly manipulative father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) – but when set against the harrowing marriage of Lou’s sister, Beth (Jena Malone) to the violently abusive J.J. (Dave Franco), we may wonder whether Lou and Jackie are going to live so happily ever after.

But then, this is a magical-realist neo-noir, a film where the truly deserving and the arguably undeserving meet with gruesome fates, a film where Ed Harris eats a beetle and a cat innocently laps at a puddle of human blood. Can anything truly innocent survive in such a world? Perhaps not.

Set in the month and in part on the day I was born (November 22, 1989), in a New Mexico town which is big enough that Lou Sr. can live in a mansion decorated with a tacky painting of himself and the wife whose absence is one of several sore points between father and daughter, it follows Lou and Jackie, who’s new in town, as they meet at the gym Lou works at, fall immediately in love, and consider what their future might hold as Jackie prepares for a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas.

The only thing keeping Lou in town is Beth, or at least Lou’s determination to free Beth from a horrific marriage despite Beth’s unshakable devotion to the man who makes her life hell. But he’s one of Lou Sr.’s employees and actually gets Jackie a job at Lou Sr.’s gun range after a “magical” assignation in his car. Getting him out of the picture won’t be easy – but once Jackie takes a fateful step, Lou sees a way to put her whole sordid past behind her.

There are a lot of moving parts in the script; I haven’t mentioned Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a junkie who loves Lou and who happens to see the wrong thing at the wrong time, or just what happens when Jackie gets to Vegas, which happens well before the end of the film. I might even say there are too many, and that the film at times feels as if it was shot from a first-draft script; there are enough plot elements that don’t really pay off – and enough themes that don’t quite bear full fruit – to keep it from completely coming together.

I don’t necessarily mind the magical-realist elements, which are enough of a piece with the lurid rest of the film, but the oddly blithe attitude towards steroids and the final scene, which feels mean-spirited in the wrong way and seems at odds with what we’ve been told about the characters involved, leave a sour taste in the mouth.

It’s the more frustrating because so much of the film is really quite strong. The three central performances are excellent, with Stewart conveying Lou’s weary spirit and her lingering hope for a better future, and how both are bolstered by what Jackie brings to her life; O’Brian is nearly as good, showing how Jackie is both a dreamer and a survivor and not sugarcoating the darker and uglier things she does in the course of the film, even as the writing leaves Jackie’s own nature rather vague at times.

Harris, meanwhile, is a fine cold-blooded sleaze, possessed of a certain flicker of humanity that only keeps him from being a literal demon. Malone and Franco are comparatively underused, but she plays pathological devotion as well as he plays vicious insecurity. Baryshnikov is most believable as the aggravating yet pitiable Daisy.

Rose Glass’ direction is vivid, dipping into red-lit flashbacks of violent crime and spells of horrific violence as neatly as it shows the sincere passion between Lou and Jackie; the sex scenes are frank but not smutty. Ben Fordesman’s cinematography wobbles a touch when the iffy CGI takes center stage, but the many evening scenes have a fine, grainy glow. Clint Mansell’s score throbs electronically as befits the period, but it has a contemporary edge which keeps it from feeling like a mere homage.

A friend of mine, whose feelings about Love largely parallel my own, noted that a group of lesbian teenagers attended his screening and adored the film; I was reminded of my own teenage enthusiasm for films like 300 and Wanted. But then, another friend, in response to my reservations, said: “I had my cake and ate it as well. Fist pumping revenge thriller around an unhealthy relationship with abusive tendencies? That’s a noir baby.”

Score: 75

A Letter to Three Wives (1949) – ****

It’s fitting that I saw Letter the same week I first saw The Graduate; 18 years separate the films and as they both deal with the lives of affluent suburbanites (or more accurately exurbanites), it could be said the protagonists of Letter went on to be the elder Braddocks and Robinsons. And while The Graduate occupies a loftier position in film history (which it certainly earned), one shouldn’t overlook Letter, a film which provides a sharp portrait of postwar America and a resonant look at what we seek in marriage and in one another.

The three wives are Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern), and Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell); their husbands, respectively, are Brad (Jeffrey Lynn), George (Kirk Douglas), and Porter (Paul Douglas). As they set out on a day trip with the children from a local settlement house, they get a letter from their friend – theirs and their husbands’ – Addie Ross (voiced by Celeste Holm), revealing that she’s moving out of town and taking one of their husbands with her.

Over the course of the day, each of them thinks about their marriage and if it’s their husband who left with Addie. Deborah thinks back to a disastrous first outing with Brad and the other two couples, Rita reflects on a disastrous dinner party with the other two couples and her employers, and Lora Mae remembers her rocky courtship with Porter. We’re told that Brad was interested in Addie before meeting Deborah, we see a birthday gift she gives George (that Rita’s employers accidentally destroy), and we see that her portrait occupies a favored spot in Porter’s drawing room, at least before he marries Lora Mae.

Through all this, however, we never actually see Addie; we get her waspish narration over the opening scenes, her letter, and a parting word, but Addie herself remains a glamorous phantom, apparently a woman possessed of class and taste, but a thorn in the side of any woman with a man she might steal away.

For Deborah, who grew up on a farm and at first feels ill at ease among Brad’s cosmopolitan friends, she represents everything Deborah’s insecurities tell her she’ll never be. For Rita, who writes for radio, she represents the “taste and discrimination” George finds so lacking in her chosen medium. And for Lora Mae, a working-class girl who married her older boss, she represents what she fears her materialistic husband does not feel for her – genuine love.

Having three protagonists allows the film to touch upon numerous topics and tones. Deborah’s story deals with the societal shifts World War II occasioned, Rita’s with the cultural shifts brought on by radio (and television, briefly referenced) and the utter vapidity of advertising, as summed up in George’s famous speech, and Lora Mae’s with the delicate dance a social climber must perform – and how even the outwardly materialistic have spiritual longings.

We have snarky wit, from Addie’s introduction to the wisecracks of Sadie Dugan (Thelma Ritter), a domestic for hire who helps Rita with her party and is best friends with Lora Mae’s mother (Connie Gilchrist). We have hints of farce, including a very tipsy Deborah trying to modify her old-fashioned dress and being pulled into a waltz and everything Lora Mae’s high-strung sister Babe (Barbara Lawrence) does. And we have drama, often in a low key as we deal not with matters of life and death but with questions of happiness and compatibility.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz won Oscars for his direction and screenplay (from John Klempner’s A Letter to Five Wives), and while the strengths of the script are obvious, I wasn’t so sure the direction needed an award (he also won the DGA). Maybe it was the balancing of tones, the way he worked elements like Lora Mae’s house being regularly rattled by passing trains into a grounded framework, or maybe it was the small touches like the POV shot during Deborah’s waltz and the use of a Vocoder to blend the character’s spoken thoughts with the sounds of an engine, of children at play, and of a dripping sink.

But while the film was nominated for Best Picture (and was better than All the King’s Men, which won), it wasn’t nominated for anything else, which is strange. Crain isn’t that memorable and her drunk acting is pretty clumsy, but Sothern is great at showing both Rita’s own snark and the sympathetic anxiety she feels over the party that goes so awry, and Darnell deftly shows how Lora Mae is at once calculating and sensitive.

The husbands follow suit; Lynn is quite forgettable (and seen only briefly), but Kirk Douglas uses his characteristic intensity smartly, playing a genuinely pleasant man all too aware of his low social status as a schoolteacher (another resonant point) who’s nonetheless happy to air his frustrations when pressed, and Paul Douglas is great as the “big gorilla” who tries to carry himself as a tough cynic, but who really wants to be loved as much as anyone.

Ritter’s cracks, Holm’s elegantly mocking tone, and the presence of Florence Bates and Hobart Cavanaugh as Rita’s stuffily artless patrons help round out a solid ensemble, while Arthur C. Miller’s cinematography, Alfred Newman’s score, and J. Watson Webb Jr.’s editing make the film a smoothly professional product of the period, complementing the writing and performances rather than glossing them over.

None other than Gen. Douglas MacArthur found the resolution to the story too ambiguous, but that’s only by the standards of the era; there is some room for interpretation here and a few points where it behooves one to pay close attention, but the final moments of the film are unambiguously heartening, as these characters, for all that they’ve gone through, have found what they sought in one another – and not in Addie Ross.

Score: 89

Late Night with the Devil (2023) – ***½

I was disappointed to learn that the makers of Late Night with the Devil used A.I. art for some of the faux-vintage interstitials* in their generally painstaking recreation of a late 70s talk show; I only know for sure of one such piece that was used, and it appears so briefly that it’s at once harder to write off the whole film for it and harder to understand why, after all the controversy in the industry over the use of A.I., it wasn’t replaced or removed in the final cut.

There are other reasons to be frustrated with the film, namely the use of “behind-the-scenes” footage which shows us what the talk show’s audience wouldn’t have been privy to. It would’ve been better had the film simply omitted them or not pretended they were as “real” as the “show’s” master tape, which does look and sound like a vintage broadcast. The behind-the-scenes material looks and sounds like a movie – a good one, to be sure, but it adds little that a few careful details in the ostensible broadcast wouldn’t have conveyed.

We first get an introduction in the style of a present-day documentary, detailing the rise of Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), a late-night host who achieves success but never manages to top Johnny Carson; this sequence includes what are I hope were hand-crafted magazine covers, an homage to Jack Davis’ work in Mad, and a mix of clips and stills of Delroy on and off the air. His life and career began to suffer, first from lagging ratings, then from the death of his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig).

Desperate to turn his career around, Jack arranges a big show for Halloween 1977, including the psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), the magician-turned-skeptic Carmichael (Ian Bliss), and the parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who has written about the experiences of Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a young girl who was forced into a Satanic cult and was its sole survivor.

During the show, Christou seems to communicate with the spirits of the dead, but is dismissed by Carmichael, who points out his shortcomings and displays his own skill at sleight-of-hand and hypnotism throughout. But Christou is suddenly stricken down by an uncertain malady, and Dr. June privately warns Jack about Lilly’s increasingly troubled behavior – which makes Lilly’s wide-eyed politeness all the creepier.

Still, Jack insists on having Lilly channel “Mr. Wriggles,” the demon supposedly connected to her via the cult’s ceremonies, on live television, and things go very wrong – and yet, in a way, they go just the way Jack hoped they would, whether or not he realized it. Let’s just say the film evokes both Network and Rosemary’s Baby and brings to mind a line in the former: “You have meddled with the forces of nature…and you will atone.”

Dastmalchian, with his large eyes and nervous energy, has been much in demand as a character actor since he appeared in The Dark Knight, but usually as an eccentric and/or sinister character. This is a rare opportunity for him to play a lead, and a more layered character at that, as he must play the charming TV host, the grieving widower, the ratings-hungry has-been, and the rueful witness to horrors beyond human control.

He succeeds on all fronts, playing the quippy smarm beautifully – his byplay with sidekick Gus McConnell (Rhys Auteri) is superbly timed – while using those eyes to convey his simultaneous horror and fascination in what comes to pass on his show. It’s not only a fine performance, but a wholly convincing one.

He’s ably backed up by the supporting cast, most notably Bliss, who’s wonderful as the smug Carmichael, and Torelli, who convinces us that something isn’t quite right with Lilly long before it’s proven beyond a doubt, and without resorting to excessive mannerisms. A.I. certainly couldn’t improve on her unassuming stare or Bliss’ skeptical smirk.

Writer-directors Colin and Cameron Caines do very well with the visual aspect, at least during the broadcast segments (the behind-the-scenes scenes are too polished to feel real), and if the eventual lapses into overt stylization are less interesting than the scenes of supernatural horror in a realistic context, that ultimately speaks more to the problems in the writing, which does such a good job of setting up the found-footage conceit but throws it aside for reasons which just don’t quite justify shattering the illusion.

For the most part I really did enjoy Late Night with the Devil, and the performances (and some really gruesome moments of horror even before everything goes to hell) make it worth watching. But if you have qualms about the use of A.I., it falls short enough of greatness to keep it from being a must. Proceed as you will.

Score: 83

*Exactly which images in the film were created with A.I. remains uncertain. Depending on the allegations, they range from images which are only briefly seen to key parts of the set design. The directors claimed in Variety to have only used A.I. for the interstitials.