A Touch of Something

 Rushed in this morning to catch Noir Alley, only to find that Eddie Muller was presenting what is, in my opinion, one of the silliest films ever produced in America: A Touch of Evil, or as I would name it, A Touch of Stupidity. Oddly, it is now considered a classic. Why? I don’t know. Oh, the acting is laudable, and the cinematography is magnificent. The plot could have been made believable and understandable.

 It’s just silly, that’s all. First of all, Charlton Heston plays a Mexican police officer, with no trace of an accent, married to an American wife a third his age. Janet Legh plays the wife, one of the stupidest characters, imaginable. You know, the kind who, when warned that the monster is waiting just ahead says, “I’m going anyway.”

 Orson Wells plays an Alabama Sheriff transplanted to a Texas border town. His only redeeming quality is that he thinks Marlene Dietrich is hot. Somehow the film works Dennis Weaver into a scene so ludicrous and “over the top” that it would have been used more appropriately in an acting school to teach the art of burlesque.

 The sheriff is fat and crooked of course.

Charlton Heston’s character is goodness personified, of course.

Jane Leigh is sexy, of course.

Marlene Dietrich is voluptuous, of course.

Dennis Weaver’s character is … well I don’t know what he is but he is the most of it that I’ve ever seen.

But, Charlton Heston a Mexican police officer? That sounds like one of those film-killing character interpretations that they used to let Marlon Brando get away with.

INHO opinion, this is all rather sad because of the excellent individual work done. But, as the late Dr. Samuel Johnson observed, once a brilliant person has done something stupid, it is hard to take them seriously again. Of course, Dr. Johnson said it much better than I.

 I’m just left to wonder what people, many of whom are much more knowledgeable than I, see in this film that allows it to overcome such a flawed premise. A classic?

 It’s as if someone made a technically near-perfect film, brilliantly acted, that can not rise above a ridiculous plot premise. Say someone devised a plot in which an Army Ranger unit was stopped by the brass just after scaling the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day and helping to capture the German emplacements. Say Someone devised a plot whereby the unit was pulled from the ongoing battle and sent to find and bring back a buck private, one buck private. Say the private, upon being found, refuses the direct order of the Ranger captain to come along and then gets most of the Ranger unit killed, including the Ranger Captain, who had, a short time ago  been minding his own business, which business was driving the Nazis from the beaches at Normandy. Say the buck private, as an old man, is presented as a goddam hero.

It’s plots like this that make me think I’m too slow on the uptake to be a movie critic.

Unleashing the Monster

Maybe we all need to pay closer attention to things. Oh, and maybe we need to calm down in the process. Donald Trump is playing us all “like a rusty squeezebox.” I say “us,” and I mean it, but the press in particular is falling for his ploy like kids chasing the Pied Piper. Myself, I don’t think he is saying these dreadfully bizarre things because he is dumb or crazy, be those as they may. I think he is saying them simply to make us angry, angry enough to hate whomever. It’s an old pro-wrestling trick, and we’re falling for it.

Angry people are malleable people. Ask the Germans. Ask the Rwandans. Ask the James Jonesians. Ask the Branch Davidians. Anger is a passion, not a calculated conclusion.

If Donald Trump can generate the passion, i.e. the anger, the Fox show, the meme generators, social media, and the Russian trolls can produce the objects for that passion. Leading up to the 2016 election, it was Hillary Clinton, the Obama Family, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic National Committee. You remember it. That’s the group that had the unmitigated audacity to prefer a member of the Democratic Party as its presidential nominee. That highly publicized predilection and the directed anger it produced convinced a group to sit out the normal processes of a free democracy. The results of that non-participation are apparent now, if we take the time to look beyond the daily news cycle.

It’s happening all over again. Work folks into a rabid frenzy and they’ll go anywhere you want them to. Targets change. Passions don’t. Prior to both World War One and World War Two, many parents were angry, and the object of that anger was the idea of their young sons being sent to die in a European War that seemed to them simply to be the latest production of a never-ending play. Young men directed their anger toward the draft and a military that would interrupt their jobs and dating schedules. Young women were angry that their lives would change for the worse.

It only took persuasive, but manipulative, politicians, a willing press, and (in the case of WW II) a few Frank Capra films to redirect that anger toward Germany. Then, due to an unmitigated act of stupidity (one that included one sovereign nation’s attacking another sovereign nation that had never done it harm, hmmm), that re-directed anger gained a dreadful and terrifying legitimacy. Justified? Of course it was, but justification doesn’t produce action. Ask our African-American brothers and sisters.

So, my fellow Americans. We don’t need to be angry. We need to be afraid. Very afraid. And we need to be aware, very aware. Most of all, we need to be resolved. Very resolved.