Saluting 70 years of serious snatching

When you think paranoia thrillers, vintage films like The Conversation (1974), All the President’s Men (1976), The Parallax View (1974), and Three Days of the Condor (1975) likely spring to mind. But there’s an equally gripping film that dates back much earlier than the 1970s, long before the political fallout from Watergate and Vietnam: the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), directed by Don Siegel. Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter star as Dr. Miles Bennell and Becky Driscoll, a doctor and his former girlfriend who discover their small California town is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates grown from giant pods. As the invaders assimilate the local police, government, and citizens while they sleep, Miles and Becky desperately flee to warn the outside world before fatigue forces them to succumb.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, conducted last week, click here.

This original bigscreen version of Jack Finney’s story continues to be a surprisingly effective and evergreen horror film as well as one of the best science fiction movies of all time. Reviewer Richard Scheib insists this is “the best thing the science-fiction genre ever produced in the 1950s,” adding that “it may be the most paranoid film ever made.” Filmmaker Mick Garris called this film “a genre movie for grown-ups,” lauding it as one of the first attempts to make an adult sci-fi movie at a time in the mid-fifties when almost every other science-fiction film was a cheap exploitation title marketed toward teenagers and juveniles. And reviewer Chris Justice wrote that “no film captures the anxieties of an entire decade of American history better.”

Body Snatchers remains relevant and resonant because its paranoia persists. At a time when extraterrestrial invaders came from without, the concept of being invaded from within and replaced (explored earlier in It Came From Outer Space and Invaders From Mars, both 1953) was fresh and frightening 70 years ago. But it continues to pack enough of a disturbing punch that this story gets remade every few years.

This work boasts several unforgettably chilling scenes: the pod hatching sequence in the greenhouse; the moment Miles kisses Becky but shockingly discovers she’s an emotionless shell of her former self gazing up at him with dead eyes; Miles discovering Becky’s double in her father’s basement; the deep focus shot of Jack’s supine doppelganger in the foreground opening his eyes, causing Theodora to scream; the wide shot of the Santa Mira citizens converging on the town square to organize their pod dissemination efforts; Miles overhearing plans to put a pod inside a baby’s playpen; and the famous penultimate ending on the freeway when a raving Miles tries in vain to convince any of the motorists to heed his warnings.

What’s particularly impressive is that, despite its hyperbolic title, it doesn’t suffer from typical genre tropes and limitations of its era. There is no violence or killing shown, jump scares are absent, and the monsters – the pods and the replica humans created from them – aren’t the ridiculous-looking alien thingies you’d expect from a 1950s horror show, and they’re sparingly shown. Yet they prove graphically effective thanks to clever prop effects like pneumatic air bladders that pop out realistic rubber body molds nestled inside latex-and-foam pod shells, slathered in a gooey outer bubbly coating of rubber cement, soap, and chemical foam. What’s more, the plot, dialogue, and monologue are thought-provoking, the fear generated is convincing and well-earned, and the acting is praiseworthy – a rare combination of quality for a genre picture from this era. And the storytelling is admirably economical: At only 80 minutes long, the narrative moves along at a brisk, confident pace without any superfluous scenes.

Considering that it was produced on a relatively small budget of $350,000, and that it was originally double billed in theaters with either The Atomic Man or The Indestructible Man, sometimes running second to those films in select markets, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is regarded as one of the greatest B pictures or low-budget genre films of all time. (Other contenders include Detour (1945), Gun Crazy (1950), Narrow Margin (1952), Carnival of Souls (1962), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Evil Dead (1981), Re-Animator (1985), and Tremors (1990).)

Helmed with skill and savvy by Siegel, some critics, like DVD Savant Glenn Erickson, believe this is his best work in a directing career that included quality films like Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), The Lineup (1958), The Killers (1964), The Beguiled (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), The Shootist (1976), and Escape from Alcatraz (1979). Let’s also give flowers to screenwriter Daniel Mainwairing, who penned the script for Out of the Past (1947), veteran cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks, whose noirishly intense monochrome lighting scheme shines with a shadowy silver brilliance, and composer Carmen Dragon, who crafted a bold, brassy score with brilliantly discordant piano undertones.

The fact that there have been three big-screen remakes so far – Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1993), and The Invasion (2007) – indicates its pervasive influence. Plenty of fans give the nod to the 1978 remake as the superior film, but it’s hard to argue with the historical impact and ingenuity of the 1956 original. Seventy years ago, this concept would have been more original and frightening. Imagine living in the Eisenhower era, at the height of the Red Scare, and seeing this film for the first time: It could have been the most alarming motion picture you’d ever seen. The 1978 version, on the other hand, is just as thematically terrifying but has scarier images and scenes that have aged quite well. Essayist Kier-La Janisse wrote: “Each successive film version of Body Snatchers becomes progressively more cynical, but Siegel’s version remains the one most intimately connected to the time in which it was made, and a well of very specific post-war anxieties.”

On which genre shelf does Snatchers belong: science-fiction, or horror? Arguably, there isn’t much “sci-fi” here; lots of fiction, but not much science. In other words, the aliens look just like us, the special effects are minimal, and there’s no spacecraft or otherworldly technology shown. Still, these seed pods came from outer space, which clearly marks this material as SF. But Invasion of the Body Snatchers plays more convincingly as a work of genuine horror. The way it unnerves, accelerates the distrust, and engulfs Miles and Becky in a hopeless nightmare is fright film fuel all the way. The fact that their antagonists aren’t violent, vindictive, emotional, or monstrously menacing-looking adds to the unease while undercutting our expectations for a horror movie.

Helping matters immeasurably is Siegel’s steady hand, moving the narrative along at an efficient clip and building tension with a quickening pace and increasing vibe of apprehension, foreboding, and desperation. He was considered a workhorse of a director and a practical storyteller who valued lean precision, no-frills effectiveness, and, in a way, perpetual motion. For proof, ponder how nearly every scene here is kinetic, with characters regularly walking, running, driving, searching, skulking, hiding, escaping, even dancing. From the opening credits, which showcase clouds darting quickly across the sky, we know that this will be an on-the-move movie, with action unfolding continually and rapidly. Siegel wisely insisted on shooting on location in familiar California locations as well as night-for-night filming to give evening scenes the inky blacks he wanted. And he chose a healthy mix of compositions, alternating between tight framing and wide vistas, between claustrophobic close-ups and revealing wide shots.

The director believed “the world is populated by pods, and I wanted to show them… They have no feelings. They exist, breathe, sleep… It’s the idea that people aren’t who you think they are, that which you love most and care about the most remains externally everything you know, but, in fact, internally has become something else. There is never a moment of security. Everything is topsy-turvy, and nothing lasts. But of course, American society is predicated on a kind of fantasy that things turn out well and that there’s stability. This is the whole middle-class dream. And of course, there is no stability. So a movie that says everything you think you know – you’re in a safe community with middle-class white people in an agrarian community in which everybody knows you, and nobody has to lock the back door – guess what? You’re not safe at all.”

Body Snatchers has planted seed pods across entire generations of cinema and pop culture. It gave rise to the common idiom “pod people,” a term that describes an emotionless, bland person who kowtows to the herd mentality while devaluing individualism. And at a time when most science-fiction alien invasion movies focused on external threats from beyond coming to Earth, it made the threat internal, coming from within, a scary notion in the 1950s that gave rise to later horror and sci-fi works, including: Quatermass 2 (1957), I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), The Brain Eaters (1958), Village of the Damned (1960), The Day of the Triffids (1962), Red Nightmare (1962), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), It Happened Here (1965), Invasion (1965), Seconds (1966), Quatermass and the Pit (1967), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975), God Told Me To (1976), Alien (1979), The Thing (1982), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Strange Invaders (1983), The Stuff (1985), Night of the Creeps (1986), The Hidden (1987), They Live (1988), The Puppet Masters (1994), The Faculty (1998), Slither (2006), and Annihilation (2018). A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) further developed the blood-curdling concept of being attacked or infiltrated when you fall asleep.

Indeed, Invasion works as a powerful and important sociopolitical allegory that can speak to each new generation in different ways. In 1956, the two main allegorical readings were that it was either a conservative warning or a liberal message.

In 1956, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was at fever pitch, and fears of communism secretly spreading across the United States were rampant. Body Snatchers was viewed as an obvious parable decrying the dangers of communist infiltration in American society and, therefore, a conservative treatise. But 1956 was also just two years after the conclusion of the anti-Communist hearings conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy, a period when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was aggressively forcing members of the entertainment industry to name communists and communist sympathizers. These witch hunts by government officials fomented distrust and apprehension among the public. Body Snatchers plays into that paranoia and the pressure to acquiesce to governmental and societal demands for conformity, making it appear as a left-leaning movie.

Consider, too, that Invasion reminded some that year of highly publicized reporting on the brainwashing of American soldiers during the Korean War. This brainwashing allegory served both political sides: for conservatives, it symbolized the cold, godless depersonalization of foreign communist subversion, while for lefties, it represented the terrifying surrender of individual conscience to domestic state-enforced conformity and witch-hunt hysteria. Others interpret the film’s mass hysteria vibe as tapping into 1950s fears of science run amok and atomic war, as well as disillusionment with suburban conformity.

Additionally, ponder the romantic subplot about Miles and Becky, two recent divorcees who now have the hots for each other but are thwarted from indulging in their desires by sudden urgent circumstances and societal interference. Perhaps it’s a stretch, but maybe this is a more liberal reading of the film that subtly criticizes conservative values, which would have frowned on divorce, being childless and single, and the representation of a relatively strong female character (one who even drives the car while her man rides as a passenger).

Erickson puts more stock in the conservative message, writing: “The film's spokesperson for Pod-ism is the psychiatrist Danny Kauffman, who affects a slight air of elite intellectualism. He's the kind of person that conservatives distrust and accuse of disloyalty. The Pods sneak around, conspiring in the shadows to effect an invisible revolution. ‘Join us,’ they say, and throw away the stifling chains of humanity. That's a communist appeal.”

Actor Kevin McCarthy believed no political allegory was premeditated, and Siegel himself said that “the political reference to Senator McCarthy and totalitarianism was inescapable, but I tried not to emphasize it because I feel that motion pictures are primarily to entertain and I did not want to preach.”

Ultimately, Body Snatchers reinforces a sobering message: Conformity kills. Invasion posits the importance of being an authentic human being, living life with passion and verve, and thinking for yourself. “Love, desire, ambition, faith,” and other virtues are core qualities that make us human and allow us to express our individuality and exist uniquely. But once you devalue or surrender these traits, you've been dehumanized, and you’re no different than anyone else – part of the mindless herd that follows the crowd and blindly obeys authority. Miles articulates this concern well: “I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us - a little bit - we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.” In this paradigm, falling asleep is akin to turning off your mind and relinquishing control and creativity.

The film also adeptly explores three key fears: losing your identity, the unknown, and infiltration from external threats that become internal —including permeation of sociopolitical forces like communism into mainstream society. It reminds us that no person or place is truly safe from these perils, which can take fresh forms. In Body Snatchers, the peace and sanctity of small-town suburbia is a myth; fear, conspiracy, and corruption can occur anywhere and affect anyone. “The mind is a strange and wonderful thing,” Dr. Kauffman says. “I'm not sure it will ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe. Everything except itself.” These words reinforce the notion of the mysteries of human existence, and the existential dilemma of never being able to truly know yourself—which further implies that we are each vulnerable to invasion from within.

What also makes Snatchers so thematically mortifying is that the horrible can happen in the darkest shadows as well as broad daylight, with the latter proving the most disturbing. Per Scheib, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a film that uses the fear of night probably more so than any other horror film ever made – night and sleep are the realms of fear, day is the realm of reason. What is interesting is that the film sides with irrationality and night, rather than day and reason…It is really a film about the divide between the fear that nightmares hold and the rationalism that the waking world offers…The psychiatrist’s explanation the morning after that the pods are part of a mass hallucination becomes so convincing that the film’s entire perspective changes about in a single moment – one believes it because it sounds so rational.”

Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ greatest gift to us all, 70 years later, is that the premise and primary conflict remain terrifying and eternally adaptable. Here’s a story suggesting you can’t trust that anyone is their authentic self, even your closest loved ones; that individuality and the essence of being human can be secretly and suddenly stripped away; that you should fear falling asleep, lest you awaken forever altered; and that you will be relentlessly hunted and forced by society to fall in line and assimilate.

And consider how a rewatch can symbolically reflect more modern fears, such as the anxiety over being replaced by artificial intelligence, distress around conformity to an authoritarian or totalitarian government, or the repercussions of an overreliance on and desensitization caused by technology and groupthink, leading to a lack of independent critical thought. Siegel’s classic never fails to snatch our imaginations and tap into fresh fears.

Unfortunately, we have that tacked-on prologue and epilogue to reckon with. It’s a framing device that certainly feels forced (which it was), demonstrating that the studio suits were afraid of the original nihilistic ending and concerned about box office appeal. The conclusion offers a ray of hope, suggesting that we need to wake up and fight back; “It’s an emergency!” are the last words we hear. Yet, even if the final scene nullifies some of the stark impact of the freeway scene where Miles rants, “You’re next! They’re here already!”, looking closer, the shoehorned psychiatric ward sequence doesn’t necessarily give us confidence that the convinced psychiatrist is going to persuade anyone in Washington or curb the inevitable nationwide takeover. (Interestingly, the movie was distributed without the prologue and epilogue in Europe. It’s unfortunate that no version of this truncated cut exists anywhere that you can purchase, rent, or stream.)

Another flaw is that the film is sometimes confusing and inconsistent in its rules about how pod people actually replace their originals and how the “snatching” works, as well as what happens to the corpus mortuum. How and why does Becky turn into a pod person inside the cave near the conclusion? We don’t see any pod nearby, and the body that Miles carries and kisses appears to be the same Becky who merely fell asleep and was suddenly transformed. Doesn’t the replica have to emerge from an actual pod? For that matter, how is Jack’s doppelganger on the pool table able to mature as fast as it does, including opening its eyes, while the real Jack remains himself?

But these are but minor blemishes on an otherwise seamless work that the American Film Institute ranked as the ninth-best film in the science-fiction genre. Invasion of the Body Snatchers also earned a spot at #53 on Entertainment Weekly’s 1999 list of the greatest movies of all time, while Time magazine featured it across three separate honors: its 100 all-time best films, the top 10 1950s sci-fi movies, and the top 25 horror films. IGN rated it the 15th-best sci-fi picture, and the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 29th scariest film ever made. Today, the film maintains widespread critical acclaim, holding a 9.2 out of 10 weighted average among critics and a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes versus a Metascore of 92 on Metacritic.

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A 2003 standout from South Korea

Park Chan-wook is one of a handful of South Korean filmmakers who have become an international success over the last quarter-century – including contemporaries like Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Parasite), Lee Chang-dong (Oasis, Burning), Hong Sang-soo (Right Now, Wrong Then, The Woman Who Ran), Kim Jee-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life), and Na Hong-jin (The Chaser, The Wailing), all of whom seamlessly blend sharp social critique, intricate genre-bending, and striking visual artistry.

One of Park’s most impressive works is Oldboy (2003), the acclaimed psychological neo-noir mystery thriller adapted from the Japanese manga series of the same name. Oldboy tells the tale of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), an ordinary man who is inexplicably abducted, imprisoned in a sealed hotel room for 15 years with no human contact, and then suddenly released without explanation. Stripped of his freedom and framed for his wife's murder, Oh embarks on a violent search for revenge and answers while falling in love with a sympathetic young sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung). His relentless quest leads him into a twisted game orchestrated by his mysterious tormentor, Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae), who forces Dae-su to unravel the dark past connecting them before learning the harrowing truth behind his captivity.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Oldboy, conducted last week, click here.

Despite its action-thriller appearance, Oldboy is actually a difficult movie to categorize. It’s both a tragedy and a comedy, a mystery and a horror film, a romance and a revenger, a noir and an Asian extreme picture. Park certainly isn’t afraid to push the envelope with ultraviolence and sadism. From teeth being yanked out by a claw hammer to brutal beatings and stabbings to a live octopus being chewed up and swallowed, Oldboy lingers long in the memory with uncomfortable imagery.

The corridor fight sequence is a highlight here, playing as an uninterrupted shot for over three minutes and unfolding as a side-scrolling, left-to-right symphony of stilted violence that benefits from no cuts or digital effects (except for the knife in Oh’s back).

And talk about defying our expectations, especially when it comes to genre conventions. (SPOILERS AHEAD) We anticipate a retribution payoff and justice fulfilled by the denouement, but the film veers in another direction, and we’re left feeling uncomfortable about Oh’s choice to be hypnotized and, presumably, to continue his incestuous relationship with Mi-do. Highly stylized and imbued with a Tarantino-like sheen of chic violence, we await impressive martial arts choreography, boffo set pieces, and visually impressive kills, yet the fight sequences are sometimes clumsy, with Oh commonly failing to neatly dispatch his attacking adversaries.

Oldboy espouses that revenge is a dish best served raw – just be careful not to choke on it. This is a tale of vengeance and violent payback, but the tables turn by the conclusion when we learn that the revenger becomes the revenged upon. We’ve been rooting for Oh to exact his retribution on Lee, who has imprisoned him for 15 years, killed Oh’s wife, and framed the husband for her murder; but we learn that Lee’s diabolical long-term scheming trumps any attempt by Oh to settle his score. Once Lee’s plan is fully completed and Oh is completely shattered by the revelation that he and his daughter have been puppeteered to become lovers, Lee kills himself, robbing Oh of any opportunity to avenge these acts. Whether we think this resolution is cruel, unfair, or narratively unsatisfactory doesn’t matter. The implication here is clear: violence begets more violence, revenge is futile, and bloodthirsty vengeance can backfire in lethally violent and psychologically damaging ways while also taking a toll on collateral innocents.

And, as was true in The Matrix (1999), ignorance can be bliss — or not so much. Ultimately, Oh opts to be hypnotized to erase the horrible truth of his incestuous relationship with his daughter from his mind. However, the final shot, revealing Oh’s uncomfortable grin, leaves us unsure. Per Deep Focus Review essayist Brian Eggert: “Does Oh Dae-su’s crooked smile in the last shot suggest that a part of him is not affected by the hypnosis? Is his expression another twisted reflection of the painting on his prison room wall? “Laugh, and the world laughs with you,” the image reads. “Weep, and you weep alone.” If the expression is a smile, then he is blissfully unaware that his love for Mi-do is wrong, which has depraved consequences. If the hypnosis didn’t work, his desire to protect his daughter from the truth has even more disturbing implications if they remain together.”

What’s also interesting is that, like a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Oldboy relates the woeful tale of a character who is predestined to experience cosmically cruel disaster and suffer in ways he perhaps could not have avoided. Lee serves as an immortal Greek god of sorts who mercilessly manipulates the mortal pawns he observes from his lofty position above.

Similar works

• Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex
• Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Kafka’s The Trial and The Metamorphosis
• Vertigo (1958)
• Marathon Man (1976)
• Memento (2000)
• Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 (2003/2004)
• Zinda (Hindi remake, 2006)
• The Raid: Redemption (2011)
• Oldboy (American remake, 2013)

Other films by Park Chan-wook

• Joint Security Area (2000)
• Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
• Lady Vengeance (2005)
• The Handmaiden (2016)
• Decision to Leave (2022)

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Singing the praises of this "Love Song"

You’ve seen her face before, an unforgettable countenance weathered by the heartache, addiction, poverty, and other stressful factors her film and television characters experience. Finally, Dale Dickey gets to headline a feature film: A Love Song (2022) is an intimate romantic drama written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman in his feature directorial debut. The plot follows Faye (Dickey), a lonely widow camping at a remote site in the Colorado mountains, as she anxiously waits for Lito (Wesley Studi), a widowed childhood friend she hasn't seen in decades, in hopes of reconnecting and finding solace in their shared past. Over the course of a day and night, the two share memories, songs, and quiet reflection, navigating the bittersweet space between grief, nostalgia, and tentative hope for late-life affection. The film also features supporting performances by Michelle Wilson and Benja K. Thomas.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of A Love Song, conducted last week, click here.

This is about as simple a story as you can film, with the merest of characters, plot points, and dialogue. Yet, it’s a riveting portrait of a woman in the twilight of her life seeking to chart a new course and avoid loneliness. Much of the dramatic thrust is accomplished with sparkling outdoor cinematography and wordless visuals, especially quiet shots of Faye alone in or around her trailer, with her craggy, world-weary countenance speaking volumes about her emotional state and desire for change. Here is a film where what isn’t said, as well as the nonverbal spaces between characters and their environment, is more revealing than anything mouthed. A Love Song is also a contemporary Western packed with Americana, from a vintage transistor radio that plays country, folk, and bluegrass, to a majestic skyline and shimmering river, to a lovable black dog, to tried-and-true edible favorites like a cold beer and an ice cream cone.

Problem is, A Love Song is imbued with a touch of magical realism that can feel a bit at odds with the naturalism and assumed plausibility of Faye’s setting and situation. It’s perhaps a bit too perfect that the radio always plays the ideal song whenever you turn it on, and the movie too closely hews to the comical quirkiness of a Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers cadre of characters moment when friendly but offbeat visitors (like the family seeking to re-bury their father, the lesbian couple, and the mail carrier) suddenly appear out of nowhere.

Some moments stretch believability or exist seemingly to function only as plot catalysts, such as the unlikelihood of the five siblings’ vehicle breaking down and needing her engine (to go where and do what, and how, without a special hoist, could they possibly lift a truck engine that can weigh over 700 pounds?), which forces her to stay put just long enough for Lito to arrive in time; the presence of the nearby oil rig (the noise alone would have likely exasperated Faye); and the question of whether or not fellow camper Jan will propose to Marie (a somewhat parallel relationship uncertainty).

Thematically, this is a third act with blank pages. Faye, who lost her husband seven years ago, now lives off the grid and has encamped in Colorado, eager to rekindle an old friendship that could turn romantic. She’s yearning to live a fuller life and start afresh with a new love in her senior years, open to what the universe presents her but with no other plans either immediate or long-term. While Lito – whose spouse had also died – doesn’t prove to be the stabilizing amorous force she had hoped he might be, his last words to her, “We’re going to be okay,” give her (and us) hope that her future is a wide-open road, not a dead end, even though she’ll have to continue navigating loneliness.

A Love Song also preaches the merits of harmonizing with life and love. Faye draws inspiration from the random songs she hears on the radio and studies bird songs and constellations. Later, she literally gets in tune with Lito when they attempt a singing duet on guitar; while they make some beautiful music together, unfortunately it’s a one-off that isn’t repeated, or that triggers any lasting romantic spark. Yet Faye can still count on the melodic crooning of nature to inspire her, as evidenced by the call of the morning dove she hears.

Hers is a life of stoic solitude. Our protagonist is a woman who yearns for more connection and someone new to love but has the inner strength, practical smarts, and faith in herself to continue to live independently, beholden to no one. Faye also seems to long for a bygone way of life, as evidenced by her reflections. She remarks how her father was a shepherd on the mountain, where sheep used to pasture, and how the lake’s water level has eroded since the last time she visited. She and Lito reminisce fondly about their adolescent experiences. And we learn that she used to fly forest service aircraft.

Similar works

• Tender Mercies (1983)
• The Straight Story (1999)
• Into the Wild
• Wild
• Lucky (2017)
• Leave No Trace (2018)
• Driveways (2019)
• First Cow (2019)
• Nomadland (2020)
• Montana Story (2021)
• Past Lives (2023)

Other films by Max Walker-Silvermamn

• Lefty/Righty (short film; 2019)
• Chuj Boys of Summer (short film; 2020)
• Rebuilding (2025)

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I have always depended on the fineness of Streetcar

It may be as sharp as a jagged piece of glass dangling from that shattered mirror in the Kowalski apartment, but A Streetcar Named Desire is a shimmering and smooth diamond of a film—one that also celebrates a diamond anniversary this month. Directed by Elia Kazan and adapted from Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1947 play of the same name. Set in a steamy New Orleans apartment, the narrative concerns fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois (played by Vivien Leigh) as she arrives to stay with her younger sister Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter) and Stella’s brutish, working-class husband Stanley Kowalski (Brando). Blanche hides a troubled past and clings to delusions of gentility, but her refined airs clash violently with Stanley’s raw, animalistic energy. Tensions escalate into a battle of wills and desires, culminating in violence and Blanche’s mental breakdown. The powerhouse cast also includes Karl Malden as Mitch, Stanley’s friend and Blanche’s would-be suitor, whose disappointment adds to her unraveling.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of A Streetcar Named Desire, conducted a year ago, click here. To listen to the September episode of the Cineversary podcast, which celebrates A Streetcar Named Desire’s 75th birthday, click here.

Streetcar may be relatively thin on story and confined in its settings, but any shortcomings are nullified by its two standout strengths: the acting and the writing. Collectively, the caliber of thespianism on display in Streetcar is off the charts. This film boasts a fearsome foursome – Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden – whose combined acting could hold their own against any acting quartet in any film ever. This film possibly boasts the finest roles and performances by each of those actors in their respective careers.

While it was technically his second movie, this is the picture that introduces the world to the big-screen talents of Marlon Brando. Long before he became a prima donna punchline known for phoning in his overpaid performances, Brando set the stage – and then the cinema – on fire with his electrifying method acting. Perhaps the greatest proof of this talent is evident in A Streetcar Named Desire. Right at the start of his career, he immediately hit it out of the park as Stanley Kowalski, and earned his first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations, although he lost the Oscar this year to Humphrey Bogart. Vivien Leigh was chosen for her more bankable name recognition over Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche on Broadway to high acclaim for years. A wise choice, as Leigh’s efforts helped her win a second Academy Award for Best Actress. Leigh had also starred in a London rendition of the play directed by Laurence Olivier, her husband at the time.

The powerhouse cast also includes Malden as Mitch, Stanley’s friend and Blanche’s would-be suitor; and Hunter as Stella Kowalski, Blanche’s younger sister, who shines with her plain appearance underscoring her earthy sensuality and quiet strength. Both supporting players would receive Oscars for their work in this picture.

The source material by playwright Tennessee Williams remains unimpeachably excellent, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1948, electrifying the stage for two years before it was made into a film, and continuing to serve as essential literature in high school and college classrooms today. The movie is mostly faithful to the play, with some changes made to satisfy the censors, and benefits from having Williams aboard as co-screenwriter. This could be the best big-screen adaptation of a play ever made, perhaps topping contenders like 12 Angry Men (1957), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), A Man for All Seasons (1966), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).

The memorable score, composed by Alex North, reflects the characters’ inner lives: Brief musical cues infused with New Orleans–style jazz conjure an atmosphere of brooding desire and unrest (notably, this was one of the first jazz scores used for a major motion picture). And the moody grayscale canvas by cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. also contributes in no small way to Streetcar’s greatness. The choice to shoot in black-and-white was the right one, giving the movie a timeless monochrome sheen and helping to distill its sobering themes in a visually powerful way.

In all, Streetcar was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, ultimately winning four, including a statuette for Best Art Direction. It was the first motion picture to claim three Oscars for the top acting categories. The film has also received plenty of love from the American Film Institute, placing No. 45 on its 100 Years... 100 Movies list (and No. 47 on its 10th Anniversary Edition), ranking No. 67 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions list, placing No. 19 on the AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list, and appearing on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes with both "Stella! Hey, Stella!" at No. 45 and "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers" at No. 75. It also holds a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an average score of 8.90 out of 10, as well as a Metacritic score of 97 out of 100.

Creative choices by Kazan — who also impresses with his helming of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Viva Zapata! (1952), On the Waterfront (1954), East of Eden (1955), Baby Doll (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957), and Splendor in the Grass (1961) — improve A Streetcar Named Desire and help it transcend its limitations as a stage play. Working closely with Williams and co-screenwriter Oscar Saul, Kazan expanded the settings beyond the Kowalski apartment (where the entirety of the stage play takes place) to include muggy French Quarter streets, a bowling alley, the factory where Stanley and Mitch work, the train station, and a pier.

Streetcar creates a potent sensory experience for the viewer, thanks to the hothouse look and atmosphere Kazan insisted upon. The settings are confined, the skin on the actors is visibly sweaty, and the performances are often escalated, as if exacerbated by the steamy New Orleans climate. We can almost tangibly feel the perspiration, humidity, and grime of The Big Easy. This is a seething sauna of sexuality and confrontation. The director’s visual and sound design amplifies the film’s psychological intensity. Tight, claustrophobic interiors close in on the characters, increasing the sense of pressure and conflict. In fact, the already-small Kowalski apartment was physically rigged to eventually appear smaller as the story progressed, thanks to a contracting set.

Kazan wrote about himself: “I don't have great range…I am no good with music or spectacles. The classics are beyond me…I am a mediocre director except when a play or film touches a part of my life's experience…I do have courage, even some daring. I am able to talk to actors…to arouse them to better work. I have strong, even violent, feelings, and they are assets.”

In the early 50s, this film would have certainly been provocative for its unflinching treatment of sexuality and violence. From the start, there’s a strong carnal undercurrent running throughout the story that would have been difficult to float past the censors. The implied rape of Blanche by Stanley is shocking and disturbing. And other hints of female lust and nymphomania – Stella’s lascivious hunger for her husband and the “colored lights” he promises (marvel at how sexually satisfied she appears in bed the morning after the famous “Hey, Stella!” sequence, and recall her admission that “When he’s away for a week, I nearly go wild”), the erotic tension between Blanche and Stanley, and Blanche’s promiscuity and repressed desires – push the boundaries of what audiences at the time expected on screen.

Consider, too, that Stella endures both physical and verbal abuse, and Blanche’s backstory includes the suggestion that her husband was homosexual, a revelation that, combined with her taunting of him, may have contributed to his suicide. The bleak and tragic ending only intensifies the discomfort: Blanche has been assaulted and committed to a mental institution, and Stella will presumably take Stanley back, as her vow in the final scene to never return to her husband rings hollow to the ears of modern audiences.

The filmmakers battled long and hard with the Breen Office, which wanted implications of sexual violence, homosexuality, carnality, and licentiousness cut or reduced. Ultimately, Kazan and company had to capitulate on some points, being forced to insert the denouement where an angry Stella leaves Stanley (that doesn’t happen in the play) and remove references taken from the source material about the homosexual affair of Blanche’s husband. However, they stood their ground on keeping the rape of Blanche by Stanley intact, although the assault is more implied than definitively depicted. Defending this in a letter written to the Breen Office, Williams wrote: "Streetcar is an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the deepest and truest sense of the term....The rape of Blanche by Stanley is a pivotal, integral truth in the play, without which the play loses its meaning, which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal forces in modern society."

The film was initially condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which forced the studio to make certain edits that cut out around five minutes. Thankfully, these excised moments were found and reinserted into a 1993 restoration, which endures as the preferred version viewed by audiences today.

This movie, along with The Moon is Blue (also released in 1951), pushed back against cinematic censorship and moral boundaries of the time, paving the way for more pictures with controversial adult subject matter to come, signaling to other studios that audiences would accept such films, and demonstrating that the Breen Office could be challenged. There’s a clear throughline from Streetcar to the late 1960s, when the censorship era collapsed, the ratings system began, and even pornographic material was fair game in movie theaters. “In choosing to make Streetcar against its own best wishes, Hollywood would be affirming its adulthood, and acknowledging its responsibility to portray society with warts intact. The story of Stanley Kowalski's brutal conquest of brittle, tragic Blanche DuBois was a test to see whether Hollywood had grown up with its audience… The censors are long dead, but a great film lives,” wrote media studies scholar Kevin Hagopian.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 is widely recognized as the first film that truly made the public and the industry aware of Method acting: a dramatic technique in which performers draw upon their own personal feelings, recollections, and psychological experiences to create authentic characters. Originating from the Stanislavski system and popularized in America by Lee Strasberg, it prioritizes inner emotional truth and lived psychological realism over external stage artifice.

Roger Ebert noted that American actors before Brando often portrayed violent emotions with restraint, holding back a certain modesty; he believed Brando shattered that restraint, paving the way for Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, and others who embraced rawness as the new standard. “You could make a good case that no performance had more influence on modern film acting styles than Brando’s work as Stanley Kowalski,” Ebert wrote.

Subsequent works that may have drawn inspiration from A Streetcar Named Desire include: 

• Baby Doll (1956) – also directed by Kazan and carrying over his signature style of sweaty, tactile realism and provocative domestic tension, creating a natural spiritual sibling to Streetcar.
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) – This heat-soaked Southern drama shares Streetcar’s thematic DNA of fragile characters hiding behind desperate illusions and facing intense psychological pressure.
• Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) – Depicting the descent of a mentally fractured protagonist into hidden trauma and madness, and serving as a darker, more gothic continuation of Blanche DuBois’s tragic fate.
• Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) – Its desperate, frantic clinging to lost youth and former social status mirrors the core tragedy of a fading outsider trapped in a hostile environment.
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) – This relentless, alcohol-soaked tale of marital warfare evokes the raw emotional violence of the Stanley-and-Blanche dynamic.
• Last Tango in Paris (1972) – The raw, destructive clash of animalistic sex and deep vulnerability between a damaged man and woman captures an explosive energy akin to Streetcar.
• Blue Jasmine (2013) – Woody Allen explicitly translated the complete character arc of Blanche DuBois – down to her delusions, dependency, and breakdown – into a modern setting.
• Streetcar was also given a television adaptation in 1984 starring Ann Margaret and Treat Williams, and returned to Broadway in 1992 with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin top-billed.

Leigh is the spot-on choice for Blanche, bringing with her the association of Scarlett O’Hara and the Old South from her turn in Gone with the Wind. Leigh’s own emerging struggles with bipolar disorder and the dissolution of her marriage to Olivier in that period may also have informed her layered, tremulous performance. Interestingly, she didn’t mesh perfectly with her Method actor co-stars, like Brando and Malden. She also disputed with Kazan over how Blanche should be played.

Brando is a force of nature: His physicality, emotive body language, and dangerous allure create a believable and complex character. Historians and scholars widely see his performance as a turning point in film acting, announcing a new era of nuance, detail, and range. In most scenes in which he dominates, he’s either gnawing on food or drinking alcohol. His mouth seems to constantly be chewing or swallowing, equating him all the more to a coarse, uncouth brute. He also adds some abrupt levity with loud utterances like “meow,” and “Haw! Haw!”

In Streetcar, critic Norman Holland observes that Brando “does very little with his eyes, except to stare intently at people. By contrast, his mouth is always in motion. Either he’s chewing gum or rolling a toothpick around or smoking or drinking a beer—or shouting…That mouth, so to speak, says it all—restless energy. From time to time he explodes into loud and violent rage.” By contrast, Holland believes Leigh uses her eyes, not her mouth: “She rolls and blinks them flirtatiously, radiating cuteness and childishness and evasion – and sex.”

At its heart, Streetcar presents an ideological clash between the past and the present. Blanche represents the old South, a pretender living in denial, a pseudo–Southern belle yearning for a time that has passed. Stanley, by contrast, embodies the new South, one shaped by capitalist and industrial forces, a primal presence standing as the brutish antithesis of the gallant white knight who once saved damsels in distress. Between them stands Stella, exuding fertility and representing a new Southern attitude – one in which women tolerate the brutality of men, having shed the gentler accents and illusions of their upbringing. Together, these three characters dramatize the struggle between decaying traditions and hard-edged modernity.

Blanche and Stanley, in particular, operate as opposing forces locked in a Darwinian struggle over Stella’s loyalties and over the symbolic survival of their respective “species.” Blanche’s attempts to “save Stella from the brutes” and to restore a bygone Southern culture place her directly in conflict with Stanley’s raw, unapologetic dominance. Critics and scholars have often pointed to this tension as emblematic of a survival-of-the-fittest contest. Stanley ultimately wins: The birth of his son signals his line will continue, while Blanche is expelled from the environment altogether. In the end, Stella chooses the flesh over the spirit, staying with Stanley and sealing Blanche’s fate.

There’s another clash, too: illusion versus reality and old values versus new values. Blanche’s misleading letters, her shade over the light fixture, and her pining for Belle Reve all reveal her clinging to a fading ideal of Southern manners and refinement. Yet this gentility is met not with sympathy but with brutality, indifference, and ignorance. The film presents a world where the past and its illusions are crushed by the unstoppable force of the present, leaving its characters trapped between longing and survival.

Streetcar masterfully evokes the tension between erotic impulse and the inevitable decline of aging, as signposted right in the title. We hear Blanche say that the opposite of death is desire. The story explores different kinds of desire – sexual, emotional, and social – along with the search for identity and the power of sexuality to either destroy or redeem. Per critic Norman Holland: “Taxis roll up to a train station…A train comes in (Stanley’s phallic power) and the first person off the train we see is a bride in all her finery (the marriage issue for both Stella and Blanche). Then there is a cloud of steam from which Blanche emerges (the confusing aura with which she surrounds herself). Perplexed, she asks for directions from a young sailor (Blanche’s thing for young men, her husband, her students, the paper boy). ‘Why, they told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to a one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields!’ Again, major themes: desire is what drives all four principal characters; cemeteries, the theme of aging and death (Blanche’s houseful of dying women, the ‘flowers for the dead’ woman who frightens Blanche)…and the Elysian contentment after (sex).” 

Shedding light on the dark and mysterious nature of human beings is a further subtext. Streetcar is replete with symbols and motifs associated with illumination, especially light bulbs, paper lanterns, and the “colored lights” Stanley promises to Stella. Blanche prefers to remain shrouded in shadow and secrecy, but Mitch and Stanley force her into the light—both literally and metaphorically. Stanley can also be an “unenlightened” instrument of darkness; recall how Stella said he busted all the light bulbs in their apartment when they first arrived.

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Cineversary podcast honors 75th birthday of A Streetcar Named Desire

In Cineversary podcast episode #98, host Erik J. Martin⁠⁠ salutes A Streetcar Named Desire on its 75th anniversary. Co-conductor on this streetcar trip is film critic Michael Phillips, host of his all-new podcast The Movie Racket. Together, they examine Elia Kazan’s savvy directing choices, Marlon Brando’s scene-stealing performance, why this movie continues to resonate, and much more.

Michael Phillips

To listen to this episode, click here or click the "play" button on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download, or subscribe to Cineversary wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at www.cineversary.com and email show comments or suggestions to cineversarypodcast@gmail.com.

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Drawing up the perfect crime

What if an episode of Masterpiece Theatre gradually, right under your nose, morphed into Murder on the Orient Express? That’s sort of what happens with The Draughtsman's Contract, a 1982 British period murder mystery written and directed by Peter Greenaway that almost nobody in the States has seen or remembers but which deserves its due 44 years later. Set in 1694 England, the yarn unfolds around Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), a supercilious artist hired by Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to produce 12 meticulous drawings of her family estate. Neville negotiates a contract granting him financial payment and—ahem—sexual favors from the missus. But she and her daughter, Sarah Talmann (Anne-Louise Lambert), have some artful designs of their own that will flip the script on the illustrator.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The Draughtsman’s Contract, conducted last week, click here.

This is an exceptionally clever film, with a celebrated baroque score by Michael Nyman, that begins as a straightforward and structured period piece but evolves into an Agatha Christie-like whodunnit where we begin paying attention to clues found in the frame. After a brief but curious introduction – a grand, theatrical gathering of aristocrats engaging in witty, formal banter and artificial posturing – we proceed to the proper story, which sets up the contractual scenario straightaway. The film is then formally segmented into different chapters organized around Neville’s 12 (actually it’s 13) drawings.

Intriguingly, the first half of the film shows most of the characters clad in white attire, contrasting with Neville’s black garments. But the second half reverses this paradigm, with Neville in white and the rest commonly in black, marking the segue from conventional drama to mystery and suggesting that the tables have turned on Neville, who is now being manipulated by darker forces at work.

Greenaway often uses long, uninterrupted takes to visually tell his story. During dining sequences set around a long table, he’ll slowly pan left and right to present his characters instead of cutting between talking heads, as if we’re watching a measured and dignified athletic match where the players are volleying witticisms, insults, and cutting remarks back and forth. (The director is actually the hand pictured drawing the sketches, and the finished drawings are his own creations. This is a somewhat autobiographical film in that he previously was an artist who enjoyed drawing exteriors.)

Greenaway came up with the idea for this narrative while sketching a modest early Victorian house. He wrote: “It is also a fictional evocation of a long-vanished age in which draughtsmen and painters were employed by country-house owners in England to draw or paint their estates, their property, their houses and gardens. They commissioned such works to show off to their neighbours, or maybe even simply to delight themselves with their prosperity and status. For the gentry in England in the late 17th century would be very much associated with their estates…England always believed the notion of owning property was a sure sign of having a position in the civilised world. So this is a story about a group of aristocrats worrying, arguing, discussing questions about property, money, heredity and continuity.”

If you relish a story steeped in class warfare, social hierarchy, and power plays, The Draughtsman's Contract is for you. It uses a clever 17th-century power struggle between an ambitious artist and a wealthy, aristocratic family to mirror the rigid social divides of 1980s Britain under Margaret Thatcher. Released at a time when free-market capitalism and traditional class structures were clashing fiercely, the film plays out as a tense game of control where the working-class artist tries to outsmart the elite using his talent, only to realize he is just another valuable asset for them to use and discard. The context here is also crucial. The film is set in Restoration England in 1694, the year the Married Women’s Property Act was enacted, which allowed women to finally inherit property and maintain some control over inheritance, their own offspring, and particular possessions. In control now is a Dutch Protestant aristocracy, and there’s increasing strife between Protestants and Catholics. Mr. Neville has Catholic/Jacobite sympathies (he supports the deposed Catholic King James II and his efforts to reclaim the British throne after he was overthrown in a revolution a few years earlier), which is at odds with the Protestant nouveau-riche estate owners who employ him.

In this picture, human beings become transactional objects. Neville uses Mrs. Herbert’s body as temporary property he controls, just as (SPOILERS AHEAD) Mrs. Talmann uses Neville’s body later as a shrewd means to get pregnant and produce an heir, which aids her mother in retaining the estate. The dead bodies of Mr. Herbert and, later, Neville, become disposable husks that are, respectively, retrieved from and discarded into the water, both useless commodities to the family.

Comeuppance is a theme best served cold, and there’s plenty of it here. The arrogant and snobbish, yet fundamentally naïve, Mr. Neville, who imposes strict rules while he works that offend occupants of the estate and who takes liberties with the madam of the house to satisfy his selfish sexual appetite, is ultimately punished for his condescending attitudes and transgressions – paying with his life as a pawn in the hands of a scheming family.

Framing as both a filmic and plot device is another core message. We observe how Neville uses a rectangular optical contraption to help him envision and spatially organize his sketches. The irony here is that, while Neville is framing his artistic creations, he’s also being artfully framed for murder by Mrs. Herbert and her daughter.

The Draughtman’s Contract also reminds us that art and nature cannot be rigidly controlled. Despite his fussy efforts to lock down his landscapes and remove any distractions while drawing, Neville’s style is mocked by the mysterious presence of a naked painted man who roams the grounds of the estate, representing how the chaotic unpredictability of nature and reality usurps any artificial order.

Similar works

• The Rules of the Game (1939)
• The Go-Between (1971)
• Death in Venice (1971)
• The Wicker Man (1973)
• Don't Look Now (1973)
• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
• Barry Lyndon (1975)
• The Duellists (1977)
• My Brilliant Career (1979)
• Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Other films by Peter Greenaway

• A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)
• The Belly of an Architect (1987)
• Drowning by Numbers (1988)
• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
• Prospero's Books (1991)

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Taking a Deep Throat dive into a 50-year-old classic

In the political thriller wing of the American film library, they don’t come much better—or as highly applauded—than All the President’s Men, directed by Alan J. Pakula and released 50 years ago, back in spring 1976. Much as the Beatles did to light a fire in aspiring musicians after appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, this film, and the true reporting it’s based on, inspired many young folk to choose journalism as a vocation. Here, we follow Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as they investigate the seemingly minor 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and uncover the massive Watergate conspiracy leading to the highest levels of the Nixon administration, aided by their steadfast executive editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) and a secretive confidential informant known as Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook).

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of All the President’s Men, conducted last week, click here.

What’s unique about this film as a political thriller and magnificent exercise in suspense is that it relies on very little action: Most of the plot details phone calls, face-to-face interviews, and meetings in offices, doorways, and a shadowy parking garage. Other thrillers typically include chases, explosions, sex, and violence to keep your attention. The villains are rarely seen other than in a photograph or on television, keeping them enigmatic and elusive. It also doesn’t demonize the antagonists or tell the audience what to think, meaning no one proselytises against Nixon or his cronies.

The picture has a documentary-like feel to it, as if we are witnessing history unfolding. All the President’s Men avoids sensationalizing its subject matter, eschewing cinematic clichés, dramatic flourishes, visual hyperbole, or an exuberant, over-emotive score. Remarkably, the film skips over the journalists' official vindication, choosing not to include any triumphant closing scenes that show their hard-won reputations being officially restored.

What’s more, we already know the resolution ahead of time (a rarity among films of this type), yet it is how the characters get from A to Z that remains fascinating. Knowing the ending forces us to pay close attention to the details of how they pieced together the puzzle. We play reporter and sleuth along with Woodward and Bernstein, finding it fascinating to watch how they play the game with sources, communicate with higher-ups, and piece together clues.

The terrific acting speaks for itself. This is a well-cast film in which we appreciate facial expressions, reactions, body language, and the humanness of the characters. Redford and Hoffman demonstrate terrific chemistry and acting instincts that improve almost every scene they inhabit. The ensemble cast, including Robards, Holbrook, Jack Warden, and Martin Balsam, provides wonderful depth as fascinating side characters.

The sound design moves mountains by creating a wonderful juxtaposition between the loud, constant noises of the newsroom and the utter silences of doorstep meetings and interviews, while the opening typewriter keystrokes sound like gunshots.

The score is unfussy but pressing, letting the acting, dialogue, and events – as well as disturbing moments of quiet – do the heavy lifting. It’s a low-key approach that doesn’t drown out the plot or dialogue, instead underscoring the subtle ratcheting of tension.

Pakula opts for ample crane shots, deep focus, and split focus to amp up the fear factor. Zoom-out and tracking shots reveal how small Bernstein and Woodward are compared to the environment they are working in, visually depicting how they are searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We marvel at how the pair are frequently dwarfed by the exteriors of large buildings.

Recall, as well, how the bright, even fluorescent lights of the newsroom contrast with the dark, shadowy maze of the parking garage and other settings, signifying that the newsroom sheds light while the garage keeps things murky. Many of the sources the duo need lurk fearfully in the shadows and have to be “brought into the light.” Ace cinematographer Gordon Willis was responsible for this moody lighting scheme, often utilizing chiaroscuro for dramatic emphasis.

Of course, this adaptation of the famous book of the same name can’t include every key subplot and detail. It’s challenging within a two-hour window to tell the complete story. But the filmmakers risk losing the audience's attention if they go too deep in the weeds to stay as faithful to the source material as possible.

The gumption to conclude the film with a teletype epilogue should be saluted; this effect reinforces some of the film’s key themes: the power of the press (signified by the loud and speedy keystrokes of the teletype machine), the importance of the story over the persons responsible for writing it, and the speed at which history transpires and the world can change.

Similar works

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Front Page (1931)
• His Girl Friday (1940)
• Ace in the Hole (1951)
• Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
• Absence of Malice (1981)
• Broadcast News (1987)
• The Paper (1994)
• Quiz Show (1994)
• The Insider (1999)
• Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
• Spotlight (2015)
• The Post (2017)

Other films by Alan J. Pakula

• Klute (1971)
• The Parallax View (1974)
• Sophie’s Choice (1982)
• The Pelican Brief (1993)

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Flying high with Marty and Leo

Martin Scorsese’s string of six movies collaborating with Leonardo DiCaprio may not ultimately eclipse the 10-film run he did with Robert De Niro, but he can look back on both partnerships with pride. The Leonardo connection has paid off with some fine pictures in the 21st century, including The Aviator, Scorsese’s 2004 epic biographical drama that chronicles the sweeping, prolific life of American aviation pioneer, billionaire industrialist, and Hollywood filmmaker Howard Hughes (played by DiCaprio). The Aviator highlights Hughes’ efforts directing Hell's Angels and The Outlaw while also designing innovative aircraft, all the while engaging in high-profile romances with Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) and suffering a crippling descent into severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and psychological isolation.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The Aviator, conducted last week, click here.

As a biopic, this film doesn’t attempt to cover the entire life of Hughes; instead, Scorsese and his collaborators focus on his prime period, a 20-year span between 1927 and 1947. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, as this is a famous figure worthy of several different film treatments; his making of Hell’s Angels deserves its own movie, as does his time as owner of RKO, when he helped implement the Paramount Decree and forced the other Hollywood studios to sell off their theaters (not even covered in the 2004 movie).

The Aviator does an impressive job of covering as many of the big events linked to Hughes during this phase as possible, but the filmmakers aren’t as concerned with fidelity to the facts and accuracy as they are with painting a composite of a fascinating yet controversial American entrepreneur. Per critic Stephanie Zacharek: “Even though The Aviator is based on real-life people and events, very little about it seems real or realistic, and that’s clearly by Scorsese’s design: Among other things, The Aviator is a love letter to a time in Hollywood when matte painting and miniatures gave us a reality so heightened that we could scarcely believe our eyes. And yet believing them, even against our better judgment, is precisely the point of going to the movies, a point The Aviator milks deliciously.”

In a film packed with terrific performances, Blanchett shines the brightest, invoking Hepburn’s tomboyish spirit and mannerisms (without delving into caricature). Her romantic relationship with Hughes is contrasted with his dalliance with Gardner, two strong women who refuse to allow the playboy to clip their wings.

The OCD sequences appear accurate, and for good reason: DiCaprio was apparently plagued by a mild form of this malady in childhood and actually experienced a bit of relapse during filming, and the actor did ample homework on the condition ahead of filming, meeting personally with sufferers.

The title “The Aviator” is perhaps a curious one, considering the roughly equal time given to Hollywood pursuits and Tinsel Town relationships as the film devotes to Hughes’ aeronautical exploits.

Detractors argue that Scorsese lets Hughes off too lightly. This was also a man responsible for stunt pilot deaths during the filming of Hell’s Angels, wartime contract profiteering, predatory exploitation of young actresses, systemic racial discrimination, aggressive union-busting, and the erratic destruction of RKO Pictures. On the positive side, without Hughes, commercial air flights and international travel may not have advanced as quickly, while his pioneering aerospace company laid the technical groundwork for the satellites that later connected the world.

Watching The Aviator, we can feel the immense gravity of ambition. Like Icarus, who also flew too close to the sun, Hughes strove to push the limits of aviation innovation and famously failed or suffered serious consequences, as evidenced by his crashing the Hughes XF-11, his experimental twin-boom photo-reconnaissance spy plane, and nearly dying. Hughes also nearly bankrupted his companies on several occasions and spent millions making Hell’s Angels, the filming of which led to four deaths. This film mostly tracks Hughes’ golden period between 1927 and 1947, when he was at the height of his powers, but also depicts the emerging fall, when he would be sidelined as a recluse suffering from mental illness.

Critic Roger Ebert admired how the film explored two interconnected story arcs, the rise and the fall, which he noted was a pattern in other Scorsese works like Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, and Casino.

Hughes was the richest person in the world for a long stretch, wielding wealth, power, and influence unlike anyone else, leveraging those advantages to innovate aviation and moviemaking, and using his status, privilege, and power of persuasion to bed beautiful starlets and best his adversaries. But he wasn’t bulletproof, and this film skillfully shows cracks in his armor. His Achilles' heel was what we now know as obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition he suffered at a time when they didn’t know how to diagnose or manage that illness. Here is a man who could buy whatever he wanted yet was trapped in a paranoid prison of his own mind, unable to even exit a public bathroom without assistance. The Aviator demonstrates that even the strongest are vulnerable to frailty. “Scorsese and Logan and Schoonmaker’s task: finding a thread in a life that was first about fearlessness and motion, and then about terror and stasis,” wrote critic David Edelstein.

But perhaps The Aviator’s primary thematic takeaway is the upside of defying the odds. Time and again, Hughes and his maverick spirit prove his doubters wrong and outmaneuver his enemies. His Hells Angels, considered a costly and unfinishable boondoggle in the press, became a popular hit and critical darling; he managed to get the censors to approve of his controversial film The Outlaw; he turned the tables on Senator Owen Brewster during that politician’s public hearings that were meant to ruin Hughes’ reputation; he beat Pan-Am to the international travel game; and his massive Spruce Goose eventually proved air-worthy.

Similar works

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Amazing Howard Hughes (TV; 1977)
• Melvin and Howard (1980)
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
• There Will Be Blood (2007)
• The Social Network (2010)
• Steve Jobs (2015)
• Rules Don't Apply (2016)
• Ford v Ferrari (2019)

Other films by Martin Scorsese

• Mean Streets (1973)
• Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
• Taxi Driver (1976)
• Raging Bull (1980)
• The King of Comedy (1982)
• After Hours (1985)
• The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
• Goodfellas (1990)
• Shutter Island (2010)
• The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
• The Irishman (2019)

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The black-and-white truth about captive killer whales

Planning to visit SeaWorld soon or catch a dolphin show at the local zoo? You may want to think twice after viewing Blackfish, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite and released in 2013. This critically hailed and emotionally harrowing documentary pulls back the lid on the controversial captivity of killer whales – specifically focusing on Tilikum, an orca responsible for the deaths of several people, including veteran SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau. Weaving together archival footage, gripping interviews with former trainers, and expert commentary, the film argues that orcas suffer severe psychological and physical trauma in captivity, which can lead to unpredictable aggression.

To hear a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Blackfish, conducted last week, click here.

While it’s effective as a rousing expose, and ultimately its goal is achieved—raising public awareness about the unconscionable way orcas are captured and treated in captivity—Blackfish is not an objective or impartial documentary. It clearly has an agenda (as all docs ultimately do). It states that SeaWorld representatives refused to participate, yet it doesn’t try to present any opposing testimonies or subject matter experts with contrasting viewpoints. (It’s also worth noting that Brancheau’s family distanced themselves from this work, stating that neither they nor her memorial foundation were affiliated with the film and that it failed to accurately reflect the late trainer’s life and experiences. Other participants similarly criticized the documentary's framing; former trainer Bridgette Pirtle claimed the final product was a complete reversal of what was initially presented to her, while Mark Simmons stated that his interviews were largely excluded because his perspective contradicted the filmmakers’ narrative agenda.)

Still, the film serves an important purpose: shining light on our relationship with an animal we know so little about, which was especially true back in 2013. We learn from Blackfish, and from news reported after the film was released, that while wild orcas have no recorded history of fatal attacks on humans, captivity has seen four human fatalities—three involving Tilikum (Keltie Byrne in 1991, Daniel Patrick Dukes in 1999, and Brancheau in 2010) and one involving Keto at Loro Parque (Alexis Martínez in 2009). Alongside these deaths, records and occupational reviews note over 70 employee accidents or aggressive incidents since the 1970s, ranging from minor bumps to severe trauma like broken bones, torn ligaments, and hospitalizations suffered by different trainers.

This movie had a quick impact on SeaWorld operations and in changing public opinion on keeping orcas in captivity. Following the 2013 release of the documentary Blackfish, SeaWorld faced immense public pressure, artist boycotts, and proposed legislation—including California's 2014 orca ban bill—which triggered sharp declines in attendance, falling stock prices, investor lawsuits, and a multi-million-dollar SEC securities fraud settlement in 2018. In response to these mounting financial and societal pressures, the company announced in late 2015 that it would end its signature orca shows in San Diego, followed by a landmark 2016 decision to permanently halt all orca breeding and phase out theatrical performances nationwide.

Consider that, per Species Unite, out of the approximately 53 to 55 orcas currently held in captivity worldwide, 16 remain in the United States, all housed across SeaWorld's three amusement park locations in San Diego, Orlando, and San Antonio. While this means the remaining population represents the final generation of captive orcas at its parks, the whales will live out the remainder of their lives under human care, featuring a mix of older legacy animals like San Diego's Corky II and younger whales born before the ban.

Blackfish doesn’t break any new ground formally, stylistically, or narratively as a documentary. However, it does bounce often between timelines to make its points, straying far from linear storytelling-style docs. And as distressing and gruesome as some of the archival footage shown is, the filmmakers opt not to show intense images of human viscera and gore, including, for example, autopsy photos that could have hammered home the film’s message all the stronger. This was likely a wise choice, as the verbal descriptions of the whale attacks on humans conjure enough unsettling imagery in the imagination.

Cowperthwaite and company skillfully tap into an unfortunately timeless theme: exploitation of the natural world fueled by corporate greed. Blackfish reveals the not-so-secret consequences of kidnapping, confining, mistreating, and isolating killer whales; incredibly intelligent mammals have advanced social and emotional drives that become stifled in captivity. We see several examples of how capitalistic forces will obfuscate or bury the truth to keep their cash machine churning, at the expense of human and orca lives. And we are reminded of our moral duty as stewards of the planet and the dominant species to treat other living creatures with the respect, dignity, and compassion they deserve.

This is, as well, a cautionary tale of nature biting back—of backlash, comeuppance, and revenge, in some ways. “The film may rely on a tried-and-true, smooth mix of interviewees, animation, and archival video clips, but it’s an effective piece of feature-length reportage because of the Frankensteinian rebellion of creature against keeper, and in the slow, if predictable, “revelation” that corporate entertainers like SeaWorld, dependent on these 8,000-pound mammals to keep the revenue churning, apply the amoral sense of the Jaws resort mayor to their bottom line, suppressing and denying a list of 70-plus employee casualties since the 1970s,” opined Slant critic Bill Weber. “This is a sort of showbiz horror film, with Shamu Stadium’s unbridled, bloody capitalism taking the place of a grindhouse thriller’s Native American burial ground.”

Blackfish also exposes the victim-blaming and spin doctoring that ensue when corporate controversy erupts. SeaWorld pointed the finger of responsibility at trainer Brancheau and drifter Dukes, both killed by Tilikum, for their deaths, not at the animal or the horrendous conditions associated with his captivity. SeaWorld should have been honest with the public and the survivors of these victims instead of focusing efforts on PR damage control.

Similar works

• Grizzly Man (2005) – A documentary about a man who lived among wild grizzly bears before his fatal encounter.
• Sharkwater (2006) – An investigation into the environmental importance of sharks and the destruction caused by the shark-finning industry.
• The Cove (2009) – An exposé on the brutal dolphin hunting and capture practices in Taiji, Japan.
• Project Nim (2011) – A look at the life of a chimpanzee raised as a human in a failed language-acquisition experiment.
• The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013) – A documentary following a photojournalist documenting the plight of animals in factory farms and labs.
• Racing Extinction (2015) – An investigation into the global wildlife trade and the man-made causes of mass species extinction.
• Jurassic World (2015) – A fictional blockbuster featuring a theme park where corporate greed and the exploitation of genetically modified animals lead to disaster.
• Unlocking the Cage (2016) – A film tracking a lawyer’s legal efforts to grant "personhood" status to captive chimpanzees.
• Sled Dogs (2016) – An investigation into the inhumane treatment of sled dogs in commercial operations and racing events.
• Long Gone Wild (2019) – A follow-up to Blackfish focusing on the ongoing global trade of orcas for marine parks.
• Tiger King (2020) – A Netflix doc series exploring the eccentric subculture of private big cat breeding and the industry's exploitation of animals.
• The Conservation Game (2021) – An investigation into the connections between celebrity conservationists and the exotic big cat trade.

Other films directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite

• City Lax: An Urban Lacrosse Story (2010) – A documentary about an inner-city Los Angeles lacrosse program.
• Megan Leavey (2017) – A biographical drama about a U.S. Marine corporal and her combat dog.
• Our Friend (2019) – A dramatic feature following a couple coping with a terminal cancer diagnosis.
• The Grab (2022) – An investigative documentary uncovering global efforts to control food and water resources.
• I.S.S. (2023) – A sci-fi thriller about astronauts aboard a war-torn space station.

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