Blog Directory CineVerse: 2024

Yes, Meet Me In St. Louis is a Christmas movie--and a masterwork regardless of the season

Monday, December 23, 2024


“They just don’t make ’em like that anymore" is an axiom—albeit a rusty one—that certainly applies to Meet Me in St. Louis, the 1944 MGM musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by Arthur Freed that spotlights the Smith family as they prepare for the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. The film stars Judy Garland as Esther Smith, a lively young woman who falls in love with her neighbor, John Truett, played by Tom Drake. Margaret O’Brien delivers a standout performance as Tootie Smith, Esther's mischievous and imaginative younger sister. Mary Astor and Leon Ames portray Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the loving but occasionally strict parents who must navigate significant family decisions, including a potential move to New York—a decision that comes to a head in the Christmastime segment near the end of the film.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Meet Me in St. Louis, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode honoring this movie’s 80th birthday, click here.


Rewatched by many around the Yuletide season, it’s fair to ask: Is this really a Christmas picture? In his book Christmas Movies: 35 Classics to Celebrate the Season, author Jeremy Arnold wrote: “The two and a half minutes of screen time in which Judy Garland sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas would be enough to catapult Meet Me in St. Louis to the front ranks of holiday classics. As it happens, the film devotes 25 minutes to the season, all of them set on Christmas Eve and all rich with meaning in a story built entirely around themes of family and nostalgia. (The song’s) melancholic feel, conjuring loss and sorrow beneath the nostalgia, injects a dose of honesty into the film’s image of Christmas—not to mention childhood…The meaning that the song imparts to the audience’s experience of the story is significant, enough to make this a genuine Christmas movie. As a point of comparison, the Bob Hope comedy The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) also introduced a top-notch holiday song to the world—Silver Bells—but the song carries no real meaning to the story or characters and therefore is not enough to make The Lemon Drop Kid a ‘Christmas movie.’”

Regardless of whether or not you deem Meet Me In St. Louis worthy of your time as a holiday entertainment staple, there’s no denying the magically nostalgic power of this film, which, in 1944, provided a vision of what America could be again. It demonstrates that wistfulness, sentimentality, and Americana can be powerful tools to tell a cinematic story and emotionally impact viewers. The film continually reminds us of a simpler, more innocent, and charmingly quaint time—before any electronic form of popular entertainment, automobiles, or modern technological conveniences—when family was the focus and the limits of your fun were dependent on your imagination and resourcefulness.

Consider that World War II was still raging at this time. This movie made viewers appreciate what we were fighting for: the preservation of the American family and all the precious values that we as a nation held dear. The film intended to make people remember the importance of family unity and happy, secure domestication. In 1944, this picture would’ve touched viewers and families eager to see an end to the war; any homesick soldiers who would have watched were likely moved by it, as well.

Today, the film’s key messages – be true to your roots, honor thy mother and father, continue family conventions in familiar settings – probably don’t resonate as powerfully among modern audiences. They aren’t likely to be inspired to marry the boy next door, buy a single-family home in the neighborhood they grew up in, have three generations living under the same roof, and live life as mom and dad and grandma and grandpa do. However, the simple values on display here, the fantasy of having a normal, close-knit family, and the sentimental Americana imagery can still pack a punch and make a contemporary watcher feel wistful for these things they’ve likely never experienced.

Per DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson: “The world of Meet Me In St. Louis is a 1944 dream of a life most Americans never had. Yet it is the sentimental definition of the American way of life that our troops were defending. America's official ideals were accepted by a much greater consensus of the country back then, which some people think was a good thing. Although it is an idealized fantasy, this is one of the key films my generation could have looked to, to understand our parents' generation.”

The narrative structure, being segmented by the four different seasons—with tintype postcard visual intros used as framing devices—provides a simple yet effective way to tell the story of one family’s growth and transition over a set period (one year). As each season progresses, so too do the characters, who come of age more as time passes. Interestingly, the season that opens the story, summer, comprises nearly half the runtime, and spring—the fourth and final chapter—commands a mere three minutes.

Granted, there isn’t much of a plot here, tension and conflict are lacking, and not every song is instantly memorable as with other classic musicals. But what the film boasts an abundance of is emotional resonance, courtesy of its reliance on nostalgia, homespun allure, and idealized depictions of domestic harmony and everyday life in an upper-middle-class American family from 120 years ago—a household where the kids engage in relatively believable behaviors as they squabble and scheme, joke around, pine for love, and have each other’s backs.

Meet Me in St. Louis is one of the crown jewels in the cycle we now know as the golden age of the MGM musical that began in 1929 and continued through the early 1960s, with Freed serving as the head of MGM’s musical unit for most of those years. Meet Me in St. Louis is regarded as the first Freed unit masterwork, which would later include Easter Parade, On the Town, Royal Wedding, An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, and Gigi.

This was a huge box-office attraction, becoming the second highest-grossing film of 1944 and the studio’s most profitable picture since Gone With the Wind five years earlier. This helped establish MGM’s signature look and style for subsequent Technicolor musicals.

It’s also the film that established Vincente Minnelli as an A-list filmmaking talent and helped cement Judy Garland as a major box office draw on the heels of her star-making role in The Wizard of Oz five years earlier. The two met during production, fell in love, had a baby (Liza Minnelli), and collaborated on four additional movies prior to their split in 1951.

The music won an Oscar and is among the most memorable song cycles in the Hollywood musical canon. Many of the tunes have become evergreen standards, including The Trolley Song, The Boy Next Door, and the aforementioned Have Yourself a Mary Little Christmas—three numbers written exclusively for the film. The latter song was especially resonant to viewers in 1944, many of whom were missing their loved ones fighting overseas in the war and yearning for them to come home and be reunited with the family.

Other tunes, including the title song, Skip To My Lou, and Under the Bamboo Tree, were turn-of-the-century standards that were period-accurate for the time depicted in this story. But unlike many other contemporary musicals, Meet Me in St. Louis doesn’t drown out the central narrative with a glut of sung music; there are only about seven or so complete songs performed by the cast.

Some experts contend that Meet Me in St. Louis innovated the classic film musical to some extent. This production skillfully integrates song lyrics into the dialogue, allowing both to collaboratively advance the narrative. In most earlier musicals, the songs often seemed arbitrarily placed, mainly to showcase the stars' vocal and dance abilities. Recall how, in spontaneous fashion, different members of the family begin singing the lyrics to the title song, which is actually the official anthem of the real world’s fair that came to St. Louis in 1904. Consider the lyrics to The Boy Next Door, which perfectly summarize Esther’s growing feelings for John Truett, the boy she saw outside a few moments earlier. Ponder, as well, how Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and its words fit the melancholy mood and advice that Esther is offering Tootie in that scene. And remember that this movie doesn’t feature any significant choreographed dance sequences, which many earlier musicals did.

Critic Emanuel Levy makes a case for how the director imprints a strong creative stamp on this work: “In his third film–and first masterpiece–Minnelli fuses brilliantly all the elements of a musical (songs, performances, cinematography, decor and costumes) in service of his singular vision. Stylistically, the film demonstrates Minnelli’s fluid camera, relying on swirling movement and smooth dissolves rather than sharp cuts and montage (the Busby Berkeley style).” Levy also credits Minnelli and his collaborators with infusing the production with thought-provoking thematic underpinnings. “Taking a mythical approach, the film tries to reconcile the dichotomies of art versus reality, stability versus change, small-town America versus the Big City, extended versus nuclear family, East and West, past and present. At the end, the World Fair becomes both a dream image and hometown reality for the Smiths family.”

Minnelli’s camera purposefully lingers long on the youthfully beautiful countenance of his future bride, Judy Garland, who probably never looked as radiant or ravishing before or after in a motion picture. Recall how he maintains a surprisingly long unbroken shot of Judy singing The Boy Next Door in the open window, for example. The director also deserves praise for many smart creative decisions, including the mesmerizingly memorable sequence where John helps Esther turn off the house lights, flaunting incredible shadows contrasting with eye-catching colors.

One of the movie’s finest moments is the lengthy backward tracking shot showing the apprehensive Tootie approaching Mr. Braukoff’s home, allowing us to study her increasingly frightened face. Another standout visual involves Esther dancing with her grandfather, a duo waltzing in a circular pattern as they disappear behind a gigantic Christmas tree only to re-emerge as John and Esther. As featherweight light of a plot as this is, Minnelli also favored economical storytelling, as evidenced by having John and Esther talk about marriage without showing him proposing.

There’s no denying that the vibrant Technicolor on display really pops. The filmmakers were able to create an idealized cinematic confection thanks to the chromatic palette provided by the old-school Technicolor process.

Succeeding films and musicals it may have inspired include State Fair (1945), Life With Father (1947), Cheaper By the Dozen (1950), On Moonlight Bay (1951), The Music Man (1962), and The Sound of Music (1965). Among the predecessors that may have influenced Meet Me in St. Louis to some degree, or that at least come to mind, are Little Women (1933), also a tale about a female-centric household with several independent-minded daughters; The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), a similar study of how technology will inevitably change the American family; and Holiday Inn (1942), which is also segmented into different chapters based on holidays or seasons.

One obvious reading of the film stresses the importance of traditional and conservative family values, staying true to your roots, and navigating challenging familial dynamics. So long as the family remains cohesive, it doesn’t matter what happens in life. Meet Me in St. Louis is a coming-of-age story, too, a tale about experiencing first love, and a narrative maturing into a new stage of life. Hope springs eternal is an obvious takeaway, and it’s fitting that the film’s final act falls in springtime, a time of renewal and rebirth when love, like the flowers, is in bloom.

A further timeless message? There’s no place like home—a message shared by Garland’s earlier film “The Wizard of Oz”. This is echoed in her closing remarks: “I can't believe it. Right here where we live – right here in St. Louis.”

The Smith family dynamics are captivating. The children and the maid are often in collusion with little white lies to fool their parents. Patriarchal order dictates the family meal schedule, tableside etiquette, and major decisions like the choice to move. The maid is a cherished family insider yet unafraid to sarcastically speak her mind. Time and again this work suggests a clash between strong-minded women and the patriarchal order, and how men often fail at accurately reading women’s signals. Remember how John Truitt compliments Esther on wearing a perfume preferred by his grandmother, or how Papa stubbornly insists on moving the family to New York without carefully considering the relocation’s impact on the women in his family. It’s obvious that the females rule this roost, raise the kids, and solve most of the problems, with Father Smith serving as more of a figurehead of the household who is given proper respect but is not the center of the Smith clan. Tellingly, when Tootie is tended to after her injury on Halloween night, Anna tells her daughters “Don’t call your father—what would he do?”, suggesting that Papa doesn’t have the proper nurturing or healing skills.

Of course, this movie unintentionally demonstrates the negative effect of a male-dominated society and the pressures it imposes on women, at least back in this period. Today, Meet Me In St. Louis perhaps unintentionally conveys the relative lack of freedom and agency that women had back then as well as their methods for coping with society’s limitations. Consider, for example, that Tootie gets respect on Halloween by wearing male cosplay; the mother acquiesces to her husband’s rules and wishes; and the older sisters eagerly await and bank on marriage proposals, suggesting that an of-age female’s sole objective back in the day was to land a handsome and upwardly mobile husband. In this turn-of-the-century era, men had the vast majority of jobs and college educations. Ponder, as well, that every vehicle and outlet for escape for these women is literally driven by men, like the trolley, the horse-driven carriage, and the ice truck.

On the other hand, let’s not forget that this is a female-centered story in which the Smith women demonstrate strength and solidarity, with the Smith sisters and their mother supporting each other through challenges and presenting a united, resourceful front. Recall how Rose subtly defies societal dating norms by refusing to call Warren Sheffield, asserting her independence, while the youngest, Tootie, embodies an unconventional spirit with her rebellious, imaginative nature, challenging traditional expectations for young girls and celebrating individuality. We see how Esther strongly defends her sister physically and verbally and castigates her father after nearly spoiling Rose’s telephone call opportunity, and we learn that Mr. Smith is preparing to send Rose to college.

Additionally, Meet Me In St. Louis persists as a fascinating study of childhood precociousness. Both Agnes and especially Tootie possess morbid curiosities, speaking in candidly strong words about violence toward people and animals—although often through the lens of playful pretending and juvenile imagination. It’s interesting that an ultra-family-friendly studio like MGM would have green-lit a movie featuring ghoulish-minded and death-obsessed child characters like these, who almost cause a Trolley to derail that could have killed several people (!) Recall how, after the maid kids Agnes’ about kicking her cat down the stairs, the child replies “If you killed her, I’ll kill you. I’ll stab you to death in your sleep and then I’ll tie you to two wild horses until you’re pulled apart.” Tootie says of her doll: “Poor Margaretha, I've never seen her look so pale…I suspect she won't live through the night, she has four fatal diseases.” Later, she says: “It'll take me at least a week to dig up all my dolls in the cemetery.” Of her Halloween character, she says: “She was murdered in a den of thieves, and I died of a broken heart. I've never even been buried because everyone's scared to come near me.” Of her neighbor, whom she’s vowed to “kill” by throwing flour in his face, Tootie comments: “We'll fix him fine. It'll serve him right for poisoning cats... He buys meat and then he buys poison and then he puts them all together…and Mr. Braukoff was beating his wife with a red hot poker... and Mr. Braukoff has empty whiskey bottles in his cellar.”

The picture echoes across the ages, as well, as a comment on how new technology can serve as both a benefit and a disruption to the American family. Recall how Papa bristles at phone calls during dinnertime from the recently invented telephone, or how the maid remarks, “Personally, I wouldn’t marry a man who proposed to me over an invention.”

At a time when many people criticize the dangers of living in the past and frown on cinematic sentimentality, this film’s entire central premise celebrates nostalgia and its feel-good effect. Today, the media and popular culture often reinforce how different we are generationally, and how it’s healthy and necessary to break from your parent’s unhip and outdated values and traditions. But Meet Me In St. Louis suggests that being in a loving family is perhaps what’s most important, and that family dysfunction isn’t a universal experience.

It also teaches us that you need not have lived in 1944, or 1904 for that matter, to appreciate this movie’s themes, characters, music, or values. These represent some pretty great gifts for an 80-year-old film set 120 years ago.

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The Wachowskis hit the Bound running

Friday, December 20, 2024

Who’da thunk that the filmmakers responsible for the most revolutionary science-fiction film of the last 25 years would come bolting out of the gate a few years earlier with a sleeper of a neo-noir heist thriller (one recently added to The Criterion Collection, no less)? Bound may not have captured the zeitgeist in 1996 like The Matrix did in 1999, but in retrospect it was easy to spot the innate talents of the Wachowski siblings—formerly Andy and Larry, who publicly transitioned years ago as Lilly and Lana—in their directorial debut.

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


We’ve seen tales of dirty deeds like this made masterfully in the 1940s and 1950s, filmed in black and white during the censorship era by virtuosos of the genre like Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, John Huston, and Fritz Lang. Bound furthers the shadowplay tradition of classic noir by taking the adult material to a more accepted extreme for modern audiences, with ample violence, gore, and sexual imagery and language on display (although the nudity is relatively tasteful and spare).

The visual style of Bound is one of its prime calling cards, boasting impressive shots, creative camera movements, and moody lighting to produce a dramatic visual effect, despite only having two main sets: Caesar’s apartment and Corky’s apartment next door. The directors and their cinematographer accomplish optic marvels with a small budget and limited resources.

Erotically charged and sexually explicit, with a steamy foreplay scene and a famous nude sequence between Violet and Corky, Bound would have been fair game for criticism as yet another titillating film designed for the male gaze. But the fact that the Wachowskis eventually changed genders and proved to be more attuned to non-heterosexual sensibilities now better acquits this film as a respected work of queer cinema. Twenty-eight years onward, Bound is regarded by many in the LGBTQ+ community as one of the best movies featuring lesbian characters and a somewhat pioneering work that predates more modern representations of queer characters in cinema.

Chicago Reader journalist Cam Cieszki wrote: “Bound was ahead of the curve and all the better for it, deepening Violet and Corky’s connection and keeping their romance centered around real communities. Bound gleefully toys with the binaries and restrictive scripts enforced upon bodies and spirits. Just as The Matrix invites a trans textual reevaluation—spurred from its creators coming out as trans women years after release—Bound subconsciously uses its genre-bending cinematic elements toward corporeal freedom and autonomy.”

Bound was also refreshing for its time by not suggesting that the lesbianism was perverse, unhealthy, or dangerous. Slant Magazine’s Jake Cole posited: “The basic subject matter of the film…runs counter to decades of noir’s fraught depiction of openly or heavily coded queer characters as usually the villain motivated by repression and longing. Bound walks a fine line in introducing its characters in blatantly criminal terms (Violet’s shameless seduction and manipulation of Corky, Corky’s tough-as-nails demeanor and reference to a rap sheet) before having them pull off a scheme worthy of Billy Wilder, only to slowly humanize them through their deepening sexual connection. This is an erotic thriller where eroticism is the agent of redemption, not damnation.”

The film further earns respect among viewers and critics critical of male gaze filmmaking thanks to the hiring of an intimacy choreographer and sex consultant, Susie Bright, who supervised the lovemaking scene.

This is a movie that espouses embracing your true sexual identity. Bound is a literal and figurative “coming out of the closet” story about trusting and accepting your preferred sexuality and your preferred sexual partner, a film with surprising gender politics. Violet and Corky defy the sexual and gender expectations others assign to them, proving to be much more than what meets the eye. Violet uses her dumb moll act and high-pitched sexpot voice to fool the mobsters, demonstrating intelligence and savvy in outwitting them; and Corky, despite being hard-edged and jaded from her prison stretch and previous criminal experiences, is willing to be vulnerable in Violet’s hands and fall in love with someone she probably shouldn’t trust.

Bound forces us to answer the question: Can you fully trust someone when you’re both in a precarious situation? This picture is all about duplicity and disloyalty, as we witness Violet deceive and betray the gangsters while staying true to Corky. “Because we are familiar with the conventions of film noir, we cannot help but suspect Violet throughout,” wrote Deep Focus Review’s Brian Eggert. “That she never double-crosses Corky is less a disappointment or failure to realize the character’s potential than a romantic jolt. This is where Bound becomes more than just a thriller, or a film that would exploit its lesbian characters; rather, it’s a sordid and violent love story. The Wachowskis present Corky as a strong woman who has been wounded by other women in the past, and rather than play out her repetitive and ill-fated lot, as so many film noir protagonists have, she finds true love.”

Bound also plays like a high-stakes game of chess where death can pounce after any finished turn by a player. The tightly woven plot skillfully ratchets up the tension as we observe how the lovers, who think they’ve concocted an airtight scheme, must pivot and improvise as the pieces on the chessboard move in ways they didn’t expect.

Similar works

  • Erotic thrillers of the 1990s, including Basic Instinct, Single White Female, Wild Things, Cruel Intentions, and Poison Ivy
  • Neo noirs and thrillers of the 1990s including The Last Seduction, Red Rock West, Jade, and Killing Zoe
  • Classic noir films involving a crime scheme for profit like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Out of the Past
  • Blood Simple
  • Mad Dog and Glory, also set in Chicago
  • Thelma and Louise
  • Disobedience
  • High Art
  • The Handmaiden
  • Love Lies Bleeding
  • Drive
  • Sin City

Other films by the Wachowskis

  • The Matrix films
  • Cloud Atlas
  • Speed Racer
  • Jupiter Ascending

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Cineversary podcast celebrates 80th birthday of Meet Me In St. Louis

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Jeremy Arnold
In Cineversary podcast episode #77, host ⁠Erik Martin⁠ commemorates the 80th anniversary of one of the most beloved musicals in Hollywood history, Meet Me In St. Louis, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Judy Garland. Joining him to discuss this seasonal favorite is Jeremy Arnold, a film historian, commentator, and author of Christmas in the Movies, and The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter. Together, they examine the many musical, mirthful, and melodramatic merits of the movie, how it has stood the test of time, its brilliant songcraft, and much more.

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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This fascinating Wheel of Fortune has nothing to do with game shows

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

It’s rare to discover an anthology film of recent vintage that isn’t a horror/sci-fi movie. But perhaps the finest example of a portmanteau picture of the last several years that isn’t fantastical or frightening is Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and released in 2021. This work weaves together three unrelated short stories that delve into themes of chance, coincidence, and the complexities of human relationships. In "Magic (or Something Less Assuring)," a model named Meiko discovers her best friend is falling in love with her ex-boyfriend, sparking a tense confrontation. "Door Wide Open" follows a student who manipulates his older lover into seducing a professor for revenge, leading to unexpected outcomes. The final story, "Once Again," explores a chance meeting between two women who believe they share a past connection, only to uncover a poignant misunderstanding. The cast includes standout performances by Kotone Furukawa, Ayumu Nakajima, Hyunri, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Katsuki Mori, Shouma Kai, Fusako Urabe, and Aoba Kawai.

Click here to listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, conducted last week.


This is a rare modern example of a triptych featuring three stories. But unlike some other anthology films (such as, for example, Dead of Night, Twilight Zone The Movie, Sin City, or Amores Perros), these tales don’t have interconnecting characters or overlapping narratives. Each tale, while relatively short (about 40 minutes) and thin on plot, is far from predictable or uninteresting. The absorbing dialogue, well-drawn characters, and the situations the characters find themselves in provide plenty for viewers to appreciate.

Hamaguchi tests our patience by lingering long on singular shots and extended scenes, such as in the back of the taxi in the first chapter, or shots of Nao talking to Negawa in part two, or the leisurely pacing of Moka and Nana’s discourse in her home in the third episode. But because the filmmaker continues to intrigue with fascinating verbal exchanges and compelling story twists, the visuals don’t become static or monotonous. The film’s high craftsmanship is self-evident.

“In all three stories, Hamaguchi is spinning a web of uncertainty for his characters and for his audience,” posits Vox reviewer Anissa Wilkinson. “The women at the center of each story feel out of place, alienated from their families and desires and the people around them. Meiko keeps a secret from Tsugumi, but she’s also aching for a love she once had and rejected. Nao has tried every life path available to her and found ways to live without commitment, but an encounter with a man who knows who he is undoes her. And Natsuko, hunting for the only happiness she’s ever known in the midst of a miserable life, is pushed by fate into feeling emotions she isn’t sure how to process.”

The two endings of "Magic," the first episode, can be confusing. In the café, we see first that Meiko boldly demands Kazuaki choose between them, causing Tsugumi to flee and Kazuaki to follow; however, it’s suggested that this is Meiko's fantasy. In reality, she excuses herself, and Kazuaki plans to take Tsugumi elsewhere after their café visit. Calling part 1 “Magic” can lead the viewer to believe, perhaps, that Meiko has the magical power to hit redo on her words and actions.

Chance encounters and coincidental meetings are consistently explored in each chapter. Meiko realizes her friend Tsugumi’s new love interest is her ex-boyfriend Kazuaki, leading to an unplanned reunion when she confronts him. In "Door Wide Open," Nao’s attempt to seduce professor Segawa at her lover’s urging unexpectedly fosters a meaningful connection, heightened when Segawa reads an erotic passage from his novel. In "Once Again," Moka mistakes Nana for a high school friend at a train station, sparking a transformative interaction as they recreate old memories. These serendipitous moments highlight the film’s meditation on the profound effects of happenstance on human relationships.

Variety critic Peter Debruge wrote: “Audiences tend not to take well to coincidence in drama, which can feel unrealistic when handled clumsily. In Hamaguchi’s hands, however, lucky (or unlucky) twists don’t feel so much like manipulation as a chance for the filmmaker to explore a series of intriguing scenarios.”

A valid reading of the film is the unpredictability and twisting nature of life, and the extent to which uncontrollable luck or fate can shape our lives. Case in point: Meiko accidentally learns that her friend’s romantic interest is her ex-boyfriend, leading to an emotional confrontation that blurs the past and present. 

Additionally, Nao's attempt to seduce professor Negawa as part of a revenge plan concocted by Sasaki, her lover, backfires when the encounter unexpectedly exposes her vulnerability and sincere affection for the professor; their meeting elicits an emotional reaction from both of them that doesn’t result in sex or a romantic relationship as the viewer would expect. Nao is surprised five years later when she encounters Sasaki—now engaged to be married and doing better in his career than her. In a shrewd twist, it’s suggested that she may be pursuing a similar honeypot revenge against Sasaki by indicating romantic interest and kissing him. 

Finally, in "Once Again," a case of mistaken identity leads Moka and Nana to form a profound emotional bond during an accidental meeting, offering catharsis based on misunderstanding; despite these women discovering they are actually strangers, not former classmates, they unexpectedly form a friendship bond by the conclusion. 

Ponder, too, how characters in these stories often do things that opposite characters don’t anticipate, such as when the professor reaches toward the student, not to touch her but to open the door; or when ex-boyfriend Kazuaki embraces Meiko after their verbally volatile encounter; or when Nana offers to role play with Moka or runs to catch the departing Moka at the end.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is also about yearning for a deeper connection with others that may lead to frustration or fulfillment when your aspirations collide with reality. Consider, for instance, how Meiko seeks closure with her ex-boyfriend Kazuaki, hoping to resolve her unresolved feelings, only to be confronted with the painful truth of his new relationship with her close friend Tsugumi, leaving Meiko emotionally unsatisfied. And in the second chapter, Nao attempts to entrap her boyfriend’s professor, but instead of seducing him she feels seduced by him—even though the professor’s feelings are platonic; ultimately, Nao’s revenge ploy backfires, which results in divorce from her husband and economic struggles in the years to follow and also leads to Segawa being fired and disgraced. The irony here is that she abandoned her plan to trap Segawa, but by mistakenly sending her recording to the wrong email address, she ended up ruining both their lives.

Further reinforcing this latter theme, Moka and Nana initially believe they are former classmates but disappointingly learn they are actually strangers; yet, they spark a relationship by role-playing and pretending to be old friends. While the conclusion is ambiguous and open-ended, showing the two saying goodbye for presumably the last time, the fact that Nana runs to catch up with Moka in the final shot gives us hope that their relationship will continue.

Similar works

  • The Tales of the Tokyo Night Sky (2019)
  • Summer Blooms (2017)
  • Call Me by Your Name (2017)
  • Wednesdays Don’t Exist (2015)
  • The Taste of Tea (2004)
  • In the Mood for Love (2000)
  • Portmanteau films released in the last 20 years, including: The French Dispatch (2021), Rio, I Love You (2014), Burning Palms (2010), New York, I Love You (2008), Lust, Caution (2007), To Each His Own Cinema (2007), Paris, je t'aime (2006), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), 11'09"01 - September 11 (2002)

Other films by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

  • Passion
  • Happy Hour
  • Asako I & II
  • Drive My Car
  • Evil Does Not Exist

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Feasting on forbidden love

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Hungry for a lushly crafted drama that blends themes of love, family, and societal change into its recipe? I Am Love (Io sono l'amore), directed by Luca Guadagnino and released in 2009, is your entrée of choice. Intended as the first in a trilogy, the film portrays the shifting traditions of a wealthy Italian family through the perspective of Emma Recchi, a Russian immigrant who has married into their world. With Tilda Swinton in the lead role, Guadagnino weaves a story that contrasts passion with obligation, set against the backdrop of a transforming Italy. Emma’s life as a dutiful wife and mother, suffering a stifled existence within an aristocratic family, is irrevocably changed after beginning a passionate affair with Antonio, her son’s friend and a talented chef. Their deepening amore disrupts the family’s carefully maintained facade, leading to tension and tragedy.

Click here to listen to our CineVerse group’s discussion of I Am Love, conducted last week.


Praised for its elegant visual aesthetic inspired by classic European cinema and Swinton’s immersive performance, I Am Love stands as a powerful exploration of freedom and self-discovery. This is a film focused on a cinematic evocation of the baroque style, often favoring dramatic visual and audio flourishes, a consistently moving camera with surprising camera movements, unconventional framing, and grandiloquent music to nonverbally tell its story and convey the emotional experience of its main character, Emma.

These directorial choices can be interpreted by some as overly arty, excessively melodramatic, and even pretentious by some viewers, while others can admire the emphasis on aesthetics and powerfully contrasting imagery (such as the naked bodies juxtaposed with insect imagery, or shots of the opulent Recchi family estate contrast preceded by dark exterior visuals) to suggest the emotional experience of Emma and other characters.

Per Deep Focus Review writer Brian Eggert: “(I Am Love is) a film ‘about’ embracing now unfashionable approaches to cinema established by great European filmmakers of yesteryear. Luca Guadagnino’s film values aesthetics as much as it dwells in the plight of its protagonist. The operatic production expects its audience to respond to theatrics, bright colors, lush details, and the swelling score by John Adams. The film wants to immerse the audience through the story, of course, but more so through the visual and auditory language of the entire mise-en-scène. It demands an audience that desires sumptuousness in their cinema, complete with bravado camerawork and meaningful, metaphoric passages to dissect…there’s a particular joy attached to this kind of filmmaking that harkens back to an era where Europe’s directors explored expressiveness and richness as a style. There’s a definite pleasure in high melodrama, the type of Visconti and Douglas Sirk, that doesn’t exist in films today.”

The film is comprised of two main sections: The first half is concerned with establishing the characters and the family dynamics, with Emma remaining in her assumed secondary role within the Recchi clan, and the second half centered on her sexual awakening and liberation from that established identity.

Yet again Tilda Swinton excels in another demanding role here, one that required her to learn how to speak Italian but with a Russian accent and engage in an extended nude scene that would have made other actresses blanch. Her performance seems effortless, organic, and utterly honest, and the subtlety with which she inhabits the nearly catatonic Emma, experiencing unimaginable guilt after the accidental death of her son, is particularly impressive.

I Am Love can certainly inspire as a tale of self-awakening and following your truth. Something stirs in Emma after ingesting Antonio’s culinary creation, and soon she is driven to pursue the younger man and covertly indulge in a physically passionate romance that rouses feelings in her she either has long buried or never knew existed. The film delves into the tension between free will, self-discovery, and the pursuit of personal happiness, contrasting these themes with the pressures of conforming to societal norms and fulfilling the expectations imposed by others.

The film also plays up "out with the old, in with the new" ideas. I Am Love is concerned with conjuring the contrasts between the Old World and New World, between longstanding family practices dominated by patriarchs and liberated females who dare to buck those traditions. Consider that Tancredi has sold his father’s beloved business, thereby thwarting the founder’s inheritance wishes, and Edo has died, severing a key male bloodline descendant of the Recchi family. Ponder, too, how Emma has chosen a much younger man from a lower socioeconomic class. At its core, the story examines the complexities of family dynamics, the weight of legacy, and the lessons—both implicit and explicit—passed down across generations. It reflects on the rewards and the profound consequences of acting on instinct or impulse, emphasizing the fragile balance between choice and fate. Through its characters, the film also underscores the inherent unpredictability of human behavior, revealing how deeply we are shaped by both our emotions and the world around us.

A further thematic underpinning at work? The notion of breaking from tradition. Emma has been expected to play the dutiful wife, but she’ll always be an outsider in this Italian family that favors long-established conventions and customs. Her choice to confess her love for Antonio to her husband and walk out on the family by the conclusion demonstrates courage and a stark deviation from expectations that surprise everyone except perhaps her lesbian daughter. Roger Ebert espoused this reading of the movie, writing"I Am Love" is an amazing film. It is deep, rich, human. It is not about rich and poor, but about old and new. It is about the ancient war between tradition and feeling.”

Emma appears caught between the contrasting paths represented by her son and daughter, each embodying opposing values she must navigate. Her son, idealistic and devoted to preserving family traditions, symbolizes adherence to societal expectations and duty. In contrast, her daughter, newly liberated as a lesbian unafraid to embrace her desires and explore the sensual world, represents a break from convention and a pursuit of personal freedom. Emma’s internal conflict is evident in her actions, particularly in her initial alignment with her daughter’s path. She cuts her hair short, mirroring her daughter’s style, and adopts similar colors in her wardrobe, signaling her choice to explore a freer, more authentic version of herself.

Lastly, Guadagnino demonstrates how amore can be a disruptive force. The film explores the immense power and irresistible allure of love, portraying it as a force of nature that can both inspire and consume. The characters appear as if they are possibly under the spell of Cupid, their actions seemingly guided by an uncontrollable drive toward passion and connection.

Similar works

  • The movies of Luchino Visconti, especially The Leopard, which also deals with a similar family and legacy-type situation
  • The films of Douglas Sirk, which focused on emotional melodramas and women’s issues, such as Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind, and All That Heaven Allows
  • The visually poetic movies of Terence Malick, especially Days of Heaven
  • The book Madame Bovary
  • Hitchcock’s Vertigo in how Emma pursues the object of her obsession
  • The Age of Innocence
  • Fanny and Alexander
  • Ratatouille

Other films by Luca Guadagnino

  • A Bigger Splash
  • Call Me by Your Name
  • Suspiria
  • Bones and All
  • Challengers
  • Queer

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Rico suave

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

The gangster film became a sturdy and stirring subgenre starting in the early 1930s, thanks in large part to the success of Little Caesar (1931), directed by Mervyn LeRoy and based on W.R. Burnett’s 1929 novel. The plot follows Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello, a small-time criminal whose ruthless ambition propels him to the top of the underworld. Played with intensity by Edward G. Robinson, Rico embodies the archetypal gangster, willing to betray or kill to maintain power. However, his obsession with control and fame ultimately leads to his downfall, as law enforcement and betrayal from within his ranks close in on him.

Robinson’s star-making portrayal of Rico set the standard for the morally complex antihero, and the film captured societal anxieties of the Great Depression era. Its unflinching depiction of crime and violence came before the Hays Code imposed stricter censorship, making it a pivotal work in early Hollywood.

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


Unfortunately, this film hasn’t aged well due to banal direction, mediocre acting from everyone but the lead, and a threadbare yarn that’s easy to predict. This was an early example of a talkie, during the transition from silent to sound, and the end product suffers because LeRoy and his collaborators play matters cautiously, as this was an experimental era where filmmakers needed to find their footing technically and narratively. Nevertheless, Robinson shines in this role, elevating an otherwise dull crime drama to a curious character study.

“Little Caesar endures because of Robinson, not so much because he’s tough but because he’s got a Napoleon-sized ego and a schoolboy’s smile when things are going his way. He enjoys living like a rich pig so much, we’ve got to mourn his loss when he’s sent back to the gutter,” wrote Slant Magazine reviewer Jeremiah Kipp.

Ironically, despite being made during the pre-code era when filmmakers weren’t yet restricted from depicting more extreme violence, sexuality, and adult situations, Little Caesar doesn’t fully exploit these elements or push the envelope as contemporaries The Public Enemy (released the same year) or Scarface (1932) did. Instead, it feels more like a movie made under the watchful eye of Hollywood censors due to its Biblical title card preachiness up front: “For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

Robinson’s Rico Bandello, loosely based on Al Capone, set the mold for many forthcoming ruthless gangster sociopath personalities in cinema. Rico, and by extension Robinson, introduced traits that defined the genre: an ambitious and ruthless drive for power, a mix of charm and menace, and an obsession with control that alienates allies. Rico’s layered personality—confident yet insecure, commanding yet vulnerable—made him both compelling and tragic, establishing the archetype of the gangster who rises to power but ultimately falls due to hubris and isolation. His sharp style, iconic mannerisms, and dramatic downfall influenced generations of cinematic gangsters, from Michael Corleone to Tony Montana.

DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson wrote: “Little Caesar establishes the template for every urban gangland bio to come. Punk hoodlum Rico has ambition and drive but little judgment. He fastidiously refuses to drink but cannot resist the temptation of power. Whether it be taking over his little gang or hurrying to rub out a squealer, all of Rico's moves have an impatient, urgent quality that accelerates the story tempo far faster than the typical talkie of the day.”

The film can be properly credited for setting in motion many of the traits of early gangster pictures, from armed robberies, fights for power, and internal backstabbing to drive-by killings, the closing in of the long arm of the law, and the rise and fall of the overly-ambitious.

Little Caesar is historically and culturally significant also because, while it wasn’t the first gangster film (D.W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley from 1912, and Lights of New York from 1928, preceded it), it’s regarded as the first early sound film to delve into the lives of underworld figures beyond the confines of prison. It also established the trope that tough guy mafioso characters chomp on cigars.

Curiously, this film is notable for suggesting a homosexual attraction between Rico and Joe. Interestingly, Rico isn’t shown expressing interest in any female character romantically, and expresses a jealous outrage when Joe mentions his love for Olga. Joe personifies classic heteronormative qualities and a more sophisticated mindset, coupled with a talent for dancing, that have us question what he gets out of his relationship with Rico.

Thematically, Little Caesar continues to serve as an obvious “pride goeth before the fall” warning, and a Hollywood-ized examination of the consequences of ruthless ambition coupled with untethered arrogance. In the 21st Century, it’s also inadvertently coded in toxic masculinity tropes that remind us how far we’ve progressed socioculturally—to some extent, anyway. Additionally, there’s a lesser “practice what you preach” message afoot; recall that Rico’s decision to spare his friend Joe clashes with his ethos to wipe out his enemies without remorse. Earlier, we hear him tell Joe “This game ain’t for sissies.” Perhaps this hypocrisy proves to be Rico’s ultimate undoing.

Similar works

  • Scarface
  • The Public Enemy
  • Other films in the first cycle of gangster pictures, including Doorway to Hell, Smart Money, The Hatchet Man, The Beast of the City, and The Secret Six

Other works by Mervyn LeRoy

  • I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang
  • Quo Vadis?
  • Mister Roberts
  • The Bad Seed
  • Gypsy

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Gushing over the golden greatness of Godfather Part II

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

It’s not even up for debate. The greatest sequel of all time remains The Godfather Part II, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and released 50 years ago this December. Serving as both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather (1972), the movie continues the story of the Corleone crime family while exploring its origins. The screenplay is based on Mario Puzo's novel and masterfully intertwines two narratives. One follows Michael Corleone as he leads the family’s empire in the 1950s, dealing with betrayal and personal tragedy, while the other delves into young Vito Corleone’s rise to power in the early 1900s, showing his journey from Sicily to becoming a respected Mafia leader in New York City.

To listen to our CineVerse group discussion of The Godfather Part II, conducted last week, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode, which spotlights this film, click here.


Why is this film worthy of celebration 50 years later? What elements make it a masterpiece that holds up five decades onward? It’s arguably at least as good, if not better in many ways, than the first film (released two years earlier in 1972), which is a rarity for a sequel. The vast majority of cinematic follow-ups disappoint audiences because they can’t maintain the same level of quality as a beloved original.

Part II benefits as a true, seamless continuation of the first film in which most of the same creators and actors participated. Coppola returned as director and co-wrote the screenplay again with Puzo, co-producer Gray Frederickson, composer Nino Rota, cinematographer Gordon Willis, and production designer Dean Tavoularis were aboard again, as were Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, and James Caan (Marlon Brando and Richard Castellano backed out). In other words, it’s hard for Part II to fail when almost all the same stellar talent is back on the team and The Godfather magic is still fresh only two years later.

Part II is also longer and more epic in scope, taking us dramatically deeper and fascinatingly further into the world of the Corleone family and its enemies. Unlike the first film, which is primarily set in New York and secondarily in Sicily, the events in the sequel involve multiple locations around the world, including Las Vegas, Havana, Miami, Lake Tahoe, Sicily, and New York. And there are more new characters in the second film to capture our interest and add depth to this continued narrative.

Viewers require more patience and concentration because the film regularly shifts between two timelines and presents a nonlinear narrative that can be a bit offputting but enriching to those watchers who enjoy looking for connections between the past and the present, which can add more resonance to the saga and especially the increasingly complex character given the most attention: Michael Corleone. There are 12 shifts between the present (Michael in the late 1950s) and the past that occur over the film’s extended runtime.

Part II boasts one great performance after another from one of the all-time best casts, with many regarding Pacino’s work here as the best of his career. In 2009, Total Film placed him in fourth place on its list of "The 150 Greatest Performances of All Time," and in 2006 Premiere positioned it at #20 on its ranking of "The 100 Greatest Performances of All Time." A bit of trivia: Pacino is one of only six actors to be Oscar-nominated two times for portraying the same character.

Slant Magazine reviewer Matt Noller wrote: “Pacino’s work in the first two Godfather films, the second in particular, ranks among the finest performances in film history. They came during a time when the young actor still knew the benefits of subtlety, and his performance is an exquisitely balanced combination of strength, dignity, doubt, and moral decay, all accomplished with next to nothing in the way of histrionic displays.”

De Niro won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as young Vito, although you could argue that several other thespians in supporting parts were as deserving of that statuette, particularly the outstanding John Cazale (Fredo’s come-to-Jesus meeting with Michael—in which the anger and shame of being the passed-over middle son is expressed in a surprising outburst, followed by Michael’s pitiless renouncement and banishment of Fredo—represents the best sequence in Part II because of its dramatic gravitas and pitch-perfect performance. Ponder that Cazale had a perfect batting average in cinema, appearing in only five films before his untimely death, but with all five being masterpieces). Michael Gazzo as Pentangeli, the legendary Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, and even Gastone Moschin as Don Fanucci also particularly shine in their parts.

Part II also delights with the sudden appearance of unexpected faces we can more easily identify 50 years later, like Harry Dean Stanton as an FBI man, Danny Aiello in a tiny part as one of the Rosato brothers, and filmmaker Roger Corman (who gave Coppola his start) as one of the Senators during the congressional hearing.

The second chapter would be nowhere near as compelling without Nina Rota’s insightful music: hauntingly beautiful and appropriately evocative of the first film. Additionally, the period details—vintage 1950s automobiles and apparel, evoking the hardscrabble tenement architecture in 1917-era New York, substituting the Dominican Republic for Cuba to recreate the look of that pre-revolution country—all ring true and add world-building veracity to the film.

Surprisingly, the movie garnered mixed reviews upon its original release, although its reputation significantly rose eventually; today, Part II is now regarded as one of the finest pictures in history. In 1997, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 32nd greatest film in American cinema, and it held onto this spot in the AFI’s list a decade later. It slotted at No. 9 on Sight & Sound's Directors' list of the top 10 films in 1992 and No. 2 in 2002, with critics placing it at No. 4. In Sight and Sound’s 2012 list, the film was ranked No. 31 by critics and No. 30 by directors. The screenplay came in 10th best on the Writers Guild of America's list of the greatest screenplays in 2006. Additionally, The Godfather Part II was listed No. 7 on Entertainment Weekly’s "100 Greatest Movies of All Time" and was ranked No. 1 on TV Guide’s 1999 list of the "50 Greatest Movies of All Time on TV and Video." The Village Voice placed it at No. 31 on its 1999 poll of the "Best Films of the Century," and it appeared on the National Society of Film Critics’ "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" list in 2002. In 2017, it was ranked No. 12 in Empire magazine’s reader’s poll of "The 100 Greatest Movies" and No. 19 in their 2008 poll of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time." Finally, it ranked No. 10 in the BBC's list of the "100 Greatest American Films" in 2015.

Better than the original?

Part II was the first sequel and one of only two sequels to win the Oscar for Best Picture. That honor certainly helps elevate this movie above rivals for the title of all-time greatest sequel. Contenders for that crown include The Bride of Frankenstein, The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, Terminator 2, The Two Towers and The Return of the King, The Dark Knight, and Mad Max: Fury Road. Tellingly, The Godfather Part II is the only title among this throng that isn’t a genre-heavy sci-fi/fantasy/action picture.

“I think it’s every bit as good as (Godfather) One,” said film critic Kenneth Turan. Peter Bradshaw, film critic for The Guardian, wrote: “It is even better than the first film, and has the greatest single final scene in Hollywood history, a real coup de cinéma.”

“One of the best American films of its generation got one of the best sequels ever made - hardly something that obviously had to happen, and it speaks immensely highly over everyone involved in making Part II that they so consistently took the hard path to making something that could stand head and shoulders with the original, deepening it and expanding it while hardly ever repeating it,” per Alternate Ending writer Tim Brayton. Part II is “a more focused and intensified experience than the first movie, and pretty much everything works towards making sure we feel that intensity.”

“The director somehow managed to turn Part II’s weakness into strengths,” posits RogerEbert.com contributor Gerardo Valero. “For instance, few film series by nature have lost as many characters during their first entry… but their substitutes turned out so well, we don’t end up longing for these alternatives all that much…When trying to assign each of these films their rightful place, the most important factor to consider is that they tend to be even more interesting when looking towards the interior of the family as opposed to when looking outside, and Part II comes second to none in this regard.”

Defenders argue that Part II has more depth and a wider sweep, essentially telling two stories in one with the flashbacks to young Vito in Italy in the early 1900s and crosscutting back to his son Michael in the United States in the late 1950s. That makes it essentially a prequel and a sequel, all in a single package. The dual narrative and more sophisticated structure make this work even more fascinating to many viewers and critics than its predecessor.

Part II also benefits from better character development, tracing Michael’s arc and ascendancy to greater power while navigating complex and often dark family dynamics. This debatably makes The Godfather Part II a more thematically rich and psychologically interesting film. Here, the filmmakers get an even bigger canvas—202 minutes versus 175 minutes for part I—to tell the story and weave their cinematic magic.

That 202 minutes makes Godfather Part II one of the lengthiest movies in film history. Other than John Frankenheimer’s adaptation of The Iceman Cometh, released in 1973 and running one minute shy of four hours, Godfather Part II had the longest runtime for an American narrative film since Patton (1970, 170 minutes), a runtime that wouldn’t be surpassed until Heaven’s Gate in 1980. It was also one of the last American films to include an intermission. Interestingly, Coppola and/or De Niro collaborated on six of the lengthiest movies of the 1970s: Patton, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, 1900, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now.

So, which reigns supreme: Part I or Part II? Head to head, the critical scores are close. The Godfather garners a 97% fresh rating and a 9.2 out of 10 critical score on Rotten Tomatoes versus Part II’s 96% fresh rating and 9.8 out of 10 critical score; at Metacritic, the original boasts a 100 Metascore compared to 90 Metascore for Part II; and at IMDB, The Godfather earns a 9.2 out of 10 versus a 9.0 out of 10 for its sequel.

Tracing Part II’s wide influence

The Godfather Part II broke new ground with its dual narrative, blending Michael Corleone’s cold-blooded mob leadership in the 1950s with flashbacks of his father Vito’s more sympathetic rise to power years earlier. This bold structure offered viewers insight into how the past shaped the present, crafting a complex, layered story that inspired future filmmakers to use nonlinear timelines and parallel storytelling to enhance character depth and thematic richness.

Later movies that would emulate the nonlinear narrative approach that utilizes interwoven flashbacks and dual storylines include The Deer Hunter, Once Upon a Time in America, Pulp Fiction, Memento, Kill Bill: Vol. II, Mama Mia: Here We Go Again!, and The Irishman (interesting that De Niro appears in several of these), as well as multiple seasons of so many popular modern television shows including Lost, Boardwalk Empire, Cobra Kai, Westworld, and Better Call Saul.

Especially before and during the early 1970s, when sequels weren’t as common as today, subsequent chapters were often viewed as cash grabs. The Godfather II set a new gold standard of excellence for sequels that may never be topped.

Consider how the color palette, art direction, and overall nostalgic-tinged look of the flashback sequences have been emulated by many films depicting vintage early 20th century New York, as evidenced by copycat aesthetics in films like Ragtime (1981), Annie (1982), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Newsies (1992), Far and Away (1992), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Immigrants (2012).

This was also the first major American film to use the words “Part II” in its title.

A triumph for Coppola

Victor Fleming released both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in 1939, the same year as John Ford’s Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mowak. In 1957, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries debuted. Spielberg had two crown jewels in 1993: Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park. Yet in 1974, Coppola released not only The Godfather Part II but also The Conversation; his output in '74 may represent the best year ever for a major director.

Of course, Part II holds up in large part thanks to Coppola's filmmaking savvy. The director capitalized on more creative control, greater filmmaking freedom, and less studio interference from Paramount, which didn’t grant him that latitude for the first picture. The filmmaker helms one fantastic scene and performance after another, from the first communion party and Vito’s arrival in America to the fall of Cuba to the murders of Hyman Roth and Fredo. The sequence where Vito stealthily tracks Don Fanucci through the Feast of San Gennaro street celebration and then shoots the mobster outside his apartment is exemplary, and the Senate Hearing segment when Pentangeli sees his brother in the courtroom and changes his testimony offers another masterclass in direction; there are a lot of moving parts in that latter sequence, and Coppola sticks the landing beautifully.

But probably Coppola’s greatest achievement with Part II was his choice to use and successful execution of the crosscutting narratives and alternating timelines. The director said his concept for this film was to "juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael ... I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties and I would integrate the two stories ... In order not to merely make Godfather I over again, I gave Godfather II this double structure by extending the story in both the past and in the present."

The challenge in presenting both a prequel and a sequel in one film: Where and when do you choose to cut between the two timelines? Choose wrong and you can upset the rhythm, tone, and pacing, as Coppola discovered when preview audiences rejected his first cut of the film, forcing the filmmaker to re-edit the movie and shift less often between the past and present stories.

Per co-editor Richard Marx: “When you shorten the story and keep cutting away from it, you limit emotional involvement. And Francis’ ultimate decision was that we would try and cut back and forth fewer times to keep the audience involved.”

Steven Spielberg said in an interview: “Godfather Part II maybe is more Francis Ford Coppola’s movie because it takes huge chances in changing the form of storytelling and altering the common narrative…It was more a Hollywood tradition in the storytelling of Godfather I, and there was an anti-Hollywood approach to the telling of the second Godfather story.”

“His decision to do a simultaneous sequel-prequel, thus juxtaposing the father, Vito, as a young upstart who makes his way to wealth and power and the son, Michael, who is losing his grip on it and lamenting the burden he has taken, may be Coppola’s greatest achievement as a filmmaker and storyteller,” according to Soham Gadre, an essayist for The Spool. “The same visual elements exist from the previous film, however the compositions are more wide-angled, and there is a lot more space to the scenes. Coppola is clearly more enamored with world-building than the previous movie… the flashback sequences perfectly exemplify what the first film had missed, which is a sense of connection and confrontation of the immigrant experience in America.”

A complex but fulfilling dual narrative

The intricacies of Part II’s plot also necessitate sturdier concentration but reward watchers who pay attention. For example, ponder the attempted hit on Pentangeli. Who orders the hit? Roth, not Michael. Why? It’s been speculated that Roth resents Michael for past killings, like the killing of his old friend Moe Greene in the first film, and knows he must play three-dimensional chess with the Corleone family to win in this game of power. Pentangeli, caught between his issues with the Rosato brothers (Roth’s allies) and his loyalty to Michael, becomes a pawn in this game. When Michael hints to Roth that he suspects Pentangeli may have plotted against him, Roth seizes the chance. He instructs the Rosatos to attack Pentangeli, framing it to look like Michael’s betrayal. This scheme aims to shake Pentangeli’s loyalty and push him to testify against Michael, giving Roth a legal edge since killing Michael had failed. In the end, Roth's plan backfires as Pentangeli reaffirms his loyalty to the Corleones, leading to tragic results.

Also, ruminate on Fredo’s betrayal. How and why does Michael’s older brother backstab him? By secretly agreeing to assist Johnny Ola and Hyman Roth during tense negotiations between Roth and the Corleone family, although the exact nature of his help remains unclear. This betrayal enables Roth’s men to make an attempt on Michael’s life at home. It has been conjectured that, with Michael out of the way, Fredo could take over the Corleone family business, which would please Roth, although it’s doubtful Fredo would have agreed to have Michael assassinated. The thing that trips up Fredo is later, while in Havana, when Michael discovers his brother is the traitor when Fredo inadvertently reveals he met Ola, despite previously denying it.

A small point, but consider why Corleone soldier Rocco Lampone is ordered by and agrees to assassinate Roth. Rumors abound that he betrayed Michael by secretly killing the two men who shot at Michael through the window to hide his involvement in that hit. Recall that Michael asked Rocco to find the assassins and keep them alive, but Rocco says “We’ll try.” Perhaps Michael knew the two assassins would be killed by a traitor in the family. Rocco was present when the bodies were discovered. While we know Fredo is the traitor, he isn’t a killer. Rocco possibly accepts the suicide mission of killing Roth in front of the FBI because he faces a similar fate as Pentangeli—having plotted against Michael and failed, he chooses to die in a way that protects Rocco’s family.

Life lessons from the Corleone family

Part II is richly imbued with fascinating themes and subtexts that suggest multiple interpretations. One key reading? The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. In The Godfather, when Vito said, “There wasn't enough time, Michael. There just wasn't enough time,” he was expressing his disappointment that Michael couldn't fulfill his dream of achieving legitimacy and becoming a respected political leader, like a senator or governor. Vito had hoped that, unlike himself, Michael could avoid a life of crime and instead gain power in respectable circles, free from the mafia’s influence. However, with Sonny's death and Fredo's shortcomings, Michael felt forced to take over the family business, trapping him in the same life Vito had wanted him to escape. This lost dream haunted Vito, and as the sequels reveal, Michael would never fully escape the dark legacy of the Corleone family.

Often, the shifts in timelines between the younger Vito and his mature son Michael present undeniable parallels that suggest an inevitable generational heritage of crime, corruption, and evil initiated by the father and continued by his son. These juxtaposed visual and contextual associations present both similarities as well as differences between father and son. When the timeline swings back to the past, the look and feel are somewhat nostalgic, presenting young Vito as a likable figure who ascends to early power through intrepid crime and violence but steadfastly and consistently appears devoted to his family. In contrast, we witness Michael at the peak of his potency and influence yet continually pushing his family away from him, alienating loved ones, and ignoring his children. Recall some of the key compares and contrasts:
  • Revisit the scene where Michael is told Kay had a miscarriage, immediately followed by the scene of a concerned Vito watching his wife tend to their young, sick baby.
  • Think back to the sequence following Vito’s murder of Fanucci where he returns to his wife and young children sitting on the steps and, holding his new child, says “Michael, your father loves you very, very much”; after a brief intermission, the next thing we see is the adult Michael returning home after his crimes, but to a cold, quiet, and empty house occupied only by Kay, sewing away obliviously in the next room—tellingly, the two don’t talk or embrace.
  • Recall the last two scenes, in which we first flashback to December 7, 1941, and observe tight yet tense family dynamics between him and his siblings, who leave him sitting alone while they go embrace father Vito in the next room; we then cut to the final shot of an utterly solitary Michael in the story’s present day, sitting outside and presumably reflecting on all he’s lost.

Also, contemplate how imagery and events in Part II echo similar shots and sequences in Part I, such as:
  • Michael eating an orange (Vito ate an orange during his death scene);
  • Vito stating he’ll make Fanucci an offer he can’t refuse (Brando’s most famous line from the previous film); Fanucci’s killing during a religious festival (the Feast of San Gennaro), which harkens to the murder montage at the conclusion of Part I when Michael bumps off multiple enemies while his baby son is baptized in a church.
  • The lavish first communion party Michael hosts, during which Michael conducts backroom dirty dealings with Senator Geary—remember that Part I also began with his family celebrating a sacrament, Connie’s wedding, and included closed-door meetings with the family patriarch and his supplicants.
  • The ailing and vulnerable Roth in the hospital who escapes an assassination attempt, which reminds us of Brando’s Vito lying helpless in a hospital bed yet protected from his assassins by Michael.
Part II espouses another irrefutable truism: the costs of corruption and cruelty. Michael’s victories against his enemies come at the expense of his loved ones and the utter loss of his humanity. In a key scene, he asks his mother if, by being strong, you can lose your family. She replies no, you can never lose your family—yet Michael tragically does by the end of the film, opting to kill his brother, alienate his wife Kay, ignore his children, and treat Tom and Connie with coldness and detachment. The last image of the completely isolated family patriarch ruminating somberly on his state of affairs while sitting outside in the thick of dead leaf-strewn autumn—also the autumn of his life—suggests his dramatic fall from grace, the tragedy of his trajectory away from his father’s ethic (ever working, even if illegally, to help his family), and an empty, soulless man who has forfeited everyone dear to him despite triumphing against his adversaries. Vito, were he still alive, would not be proud of the legacy he hath wrought.

The second chapter is also, certainly, a meditation on the dark side of the American dream. “It is the ghost of the American Dream that haunts the first two-thirds of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic gangster saga, the broken promise of a new life for those who crossed the ocean to free themselves from the poverty and violence of their homes just to find more of the same,” Slant Magazine’s Matt Noller postulates. “Coppola’s gangsters speak coldly about their world, like politicians or CEOs. It’s a pure expression of a capitalist society that values the bottom line above all else: Profit is the goal, and the shootings and stranglings are simply a means to an end. Emotions don’t—or shouldn’t—come into play. ‘It’s not personal, just business,’ the mantra goes.”

They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, and therein lies a further evident theme. Godfather II reminds us that there is no honor among thieves and that it’s not enough to simply “let me wet my beak a little,” as Fanucci says. The powerful and greedy will always want more and are inclined to betray their partners for a bigger slice of the cake (recall how Roth carves up a cake decorated to resemble Cuba, a metaphorical carving up of the country). A solid gold telephone, a hedonistic nightclub act, and a pat on the back from Roth telling Michael that he’s rich and formidable enough to influence an American president are all examples of the avaricious hubris demonstrated by these powerbrokers who secretly shape the fates of many.

A further thesis? Living life as a high-stakes game of chess. Michael adopts his father’s lessons to “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” and “try to think as people around you think.” That means, to vanquish and outwit his foes, he has to cleverly remain several steps ahead of rivals and anticipate their next moves (not easy when Roth is an even craftier chess player). Yet he also has to sacrifice relatives and allies as pawns in this game and play with a remorseless ruthlessness that results in the deaths of his brother and several minions and in Michael being estranged from his wife, kids, and extended family. In the end, his gamesmanship savvy, brilliant maneuvering, and insistence on not wiping everyone out, “just my enemies,” solidify Michael’s power and wealth but at a great cost to his personal life.

A cinematic gift that keeps on giving

The biggest present Part II bestows on us is its trusty ability to dispel the myth that all sequels suck. Whenever that pessimistic axiom is levied against Hollywood and its crassly commercialistic byproducts, the correct retort is to simply cite The Godfather Part II as the exception to the rule. It’s a quick way to shut up the naysayers and remind cynical cinephiles that, with the right creative TLC, film follow-ups can do more than exceed expectations—they can actually outshine their predecessors.

The second Godfather film is a marathon of a movie, true, but no scene seems superfluous, no performance feels out of step, no directorial choice appears self-indulgent. By the time it’s over, we crave more, and we’re intrigued to explore Part III and revisit Part I to identify even more of the connective tissue that masterfully links these works.

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Cineversary podcast celebrates 50th birthday of Godfather Part II

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Harlan Lebo and Glenn Kenny
In Cineversary podcast episode #76, host ⁠Erik Martin⁠ honors the 50th anniversary of the greatest sequel ever made, The Godfather Part II, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This time around he’s joined by Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy, and Glenn Kenny, film critic and author of Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas. Together, they explore what makes Part II an exemplary follow-up to the original, how the movie remains evergreen, key themes that resonate today, and much more.

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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That blue line may be thin, but the filmmaking wasn't

Monday, November 11, 2024

The Thin Blue Line, directed by Errol Morris and released in 1988, was a game-changing documentary for its time. For proof, consider that it was primarily responsible for getting a man wrongfully convicted for the 1976 murder of a police officer released from prison. It’s also one of the progenitors of true crime documentaries, helping to popularize this increasingly popular genre.

Morris’ film reveals that the conviction of Robert Wood Adams was based largely on flawed witness testimonies and questionable investigative practices. The filmmakers present a meticulous investigation into Adams’ case, raising serious doubts about his guilt and casting a critical light on the reliability of the justice system. Through interviews and the introduction of David Ray Harris, a key witness whose credibility and motives are suspect, the film questions the established narrative of Adams' guilt, prompting renewed interest that ultimately led to Adams' release in 1989, after 12 years in prison.

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


The Thin Blue Line proved innovative and influential as a documentary in several ways. First, the filmmaker’s novel approach is previsualized cinematography: Every shot is carefully created, which is a departure from the random and unplanned realism of cinema verite (a loose, raw, handheld style) often utilized in documentaries that aim for unpolished, spontaneous, on-the-fly footage.

Additionally, it doesn’t rely on voiceover narration to tell its story. Instead, it recreates supposed events through the accounts of the eyewitnesses and people involved via dramatic but artificial re-enactments that present conflicting testimonies and alternative perspectives on the crime.

Often, Morris’ go-to technique is to film objects related to the crime scene, such as gun, car taillight, or milkshake from different angles and viewpoints as further questions or clues are introduced. These recreation shots are illuminated with high key lighting and set against a bland black background, and the re-enactments, interestingly, don’t focus on the faces of any actors/characters. Slow motion is occasionally used for exaggerated effect, too.

The filmmakers employ other distinctive elements interestingly: maps, clips from the drive-in film, newspaper clippings, mug shots, close-ups of visual evidence, clocks, and an ashtray. The final gripping scene, in which Harris confesses, only uses shots of a tape recorder shot from different angles (this was a happy accident due to a camera malfunction), quite a curious way to capture a film’s most important scene.

Furthermore, the interviewees often make eye contact with the camera, creating a more intimate experience as if they are directly addressing the viewer; these subjects are also not identified with title text, and they are each distinctively framed within each shot.

And, unlike so many previous docs, The Thin Blue Line features a proper score written exclusively for the film (in this instance by Philip Glass).

Morris's approach redefined documentary filmmaking by using film as a tool for investigative journalism and by melding advocacy and art. Other documentarians and filmmakers adopted many of these stylistic choices in subsequent docs, police procedurals, and true crime dramatizations.

It’s fair to ask: Is The Thin Blue Line objective and impartial as many expect a documentary to be? You can make the case that Morris is not proselytizing Adam’s innocence but rather brings to light the flawed logistics and testimonies that resulted in his conviction. Morris also allows all sides to tell their stories. However, The Thin Blue Line goes beyond neutral reporting, using interviews, reenactments, and visual storytelling to challenge the prosecution’s narrative and cast doubt on key witness testimonies and investigative practices. These choices give the film a distinctive, critical tone, transforming it from an objective documentary into a compelling investigative critique.

Morris’s clear agenda, along with the haunting score by Philip Glass, creates an atmosphere of mystery and skepticism, which some rightly view as biased. Yet, this partiality is also what makes the film so impactful: It blurs the line between journalism and advocacy, aiming not just to inform viewers but to expose injustice and provoke change. By eventually leading to Randall Dale Adams’ exoneration, the film demonstrates how such a stance can serve an essential purpose in questioning flawed judicial outcomes.

Similar works

  • Netflix’s Making a Murderer series
  • Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
  • The Central Park Five
  • Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, another movie that tells the story of a crime from several different viewpoints and attempts to explore the nature of truth and reality
  • Countless crime scene and police procedural TV shows that have utilized the crime recreation approach with highly stylized, slow-motion footage and impressionistic shots of various objects, clues, etc.

Other films by Errol Morris

  • Gates of Heaven (1978), about two pet cemeteries
  • Vernon, Florida (1981), about the inhabitants of a small town
  • A Brief History of Time (1991)
  • The Fog of War (2003), about war mastermind Robert McNamara

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Why Chain still reigns

Monday, October 28, 2024


Released 50 years ago this month, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper and co-written by Hooper and Kim Henkel, remains a fright film masterwork that dozens of movies have attempted to imitate but can never duplicate. The setup is brilliantly simple: We follow Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), and friends Pam (Teri McMinn), Jerry (Allen Danziger), and Kirk (William Vail) as they travel to rural Texas to visit the Hardesty family homestead. There, they encounter a family of cannibalistic killers, including the infamous chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen). As the friends explore the area, they become prey to Leatherface and his deranged family, leading to a series of chilling and brutal encounters that have made the film one of the most influential in horror history.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of this film, conducted last week, click here. To hear the October episode of the Cineversary podcast celebrating The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's 50th anniversary, click here


Why is Chain Saw worthy of serious celebration 50 years later? For starters, this film accomplishes so much with so little. Despite minuscule production values, a paltry $140,000 budget, a cast of unknowns, eyeball-rolling dialogue and subpar acting from most of the performers, a relatively inexperienced director, and extremely low expectations, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre instantly became one of the most terrifying movies in history, raking in over $30 million at the box office (adjusted for inflation, that would be more than $199 million today), and, over the years, increasingly garnered positive critical attention from many reviewers. (Currently, tit earns an 83% Rotten Tomatoes fresh score and an average critical rating of 7.6 out of 10; Metacritic, meanwhile, gives it a 91 out of 100 Metascore.)

But drilling down further reveals three key factors responsible for its success and timeless effectiveness: approach, circumstance, and reputation. Regarding the former, consider this evaluation from critic Richard Scheib: “Like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre redefined horror by stripping it of all classical motive. The assaults in the film come without rhyme or reason. Leatherface is not a monster of science or a demonic conjuration, he is even bereft of the cursory psychological explanations that the killers had in psycho-thrillers of the last decade such as Psycho or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and their numerous imitators.

Then, give thought to the circumstances during production. Hampered by a barebones budget and limited resources, director Tobe Hooper was forced to shoot for long stretches in a condensed time frame over 32 days in extreme heat and humidity, with on-set temperatures reaching 110°F. Consequently, the actors look extra stressed—obviously out of exhaustion and discomfort—and the atmosphere and vibe seem all the more strained.

Next, give credence to the film’s early and enduring reputation: Chain Saw was banned in numerous countries, including the UK, where you couldn’t see the film until 1999. This work became a word-of-mouth sensation across the world—the fear-inducing title alone aided that momentum—and was long talked about as one of the most disturbing and frightening horror films of all time.

This month, Variety published a 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time feature and slotted Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the very top. In its writeup, the Variety critics wrote: “There’s a reason “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” has cast such a shadow over the last half-century of horror films. As much as “Psycho” or “The Exorcist,” it created a mythology of horror, one that feels even more resonant today than it did 50 years ago. The film channeled the descent of the American spirit that we can now feel all around us. In the end, what “Chain Saw” revels in with such disturbing majesty, and what makes it more indelible and haunting than any other horror film, is its image of madness as the driving energy of the world: Leatherface, swinging his chainsaw around in front of the rising sun, his crazed dance of death not just a ritual but a warning — that the center will not hold.

The plaudits, of course, hardly end there. Time Out recently named the film as the third-best horror movie ever made, Entertainment Weekly voted it the second scariest movie of all time in 2022, it came in at #19 on Empire Magazine’s 2024 list of the 50 best horror movies and #199 on Empire’s 2008 ranking of the 500 greatest movies of all time, it currently sits at #94 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 200 best horror movies of all time and #5 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the scariest horror movies, and this film even places at #118 among 250 on the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films. Additionally, a 2022 YouGov survey of Americans found that Chain Saw was the sixth most loved horror movie by people who have seen it.

To fully appreciate how groundbreaking Chain Saw was in 1974, consider that it wasn’t a classically constructed horror picture. For its time, it lacked many of the normal tropes, stereotypes, and expectations of earlier terror fare and thrillers. There is no brooding music to warn us of what’s to come. Sex and nudity are absent. The victims aren’t deserving of punishment due to promiscuity, drug use, or criminal acts. There are no heroes or noble sacrifices—only a single survivor— and the monsters aren’t vanquished or killed by the conclusion. There is also no comic relief or “winking at the audience.” And the violence often occurs in bright daylight.

Furthermore, this horror is remorseless and lacks any kind of message about morality or redemption. The violence is sudden, random, and without warning. Surprisingly, there is very little blood or gore. Except for the opening shots, the camera doesn’t linger on dead bodies or severed body parts. Most of the killing happens quickly and occurs within the first half of the movie.

Rather than Alfred Hitchcock's delicate, suspenseful manipulation, Hooper follows the lead of fellow independents George A. Romero and Wes Craven and feeds the audience through a mangle of unrelenting horror and violence. Once his film starts, it doesn't let up until the fade-out: other horror films are as frightening, but few are so utterly exhausting,” wrote critic Kim Newman.

Also, this work has a raw, documentary-like ragged quality to it, as demonstrated by the shaky camera, gritty film stock, use of actual decomposing animal remains and bones, and voiceover opening that claims the events are based on truth.

Influential predecessors include hixploitation, backwoods brutality, and primal folk horror films like Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), and The Last House on the Left (1972), along with movies wherein the violence and attacks are unprovoked, sudden, indiscriminate, and random, as in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), The Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Duel (1971).

Some critics and scholars credit The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as helping to pave the path forward for renowned horror franchises like Halloween, Evil Dead, and The Blair Witch. It certainly inspired later horror icons like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees with its depiction of a large, silent, faceless killer with no discernible personality, and it introduced the notion of power tools used as murderous devices.

Leatherface has proved to be a popular horror character, as evidenced by the fact that, to date, there have been nine films in which he’s featured, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986); Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990); Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (a 1994 quasi-reboot starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey); the 2003 remake sharing the original title; the prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006); Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), a direct sequel to the 1974 film that disregards other installments in the series; Leatherface (2017), a further prequel; and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), another direct sequel to the original. By comparison, Freddy Kreuger also has nine films, Jason has 12, and Michael Myers has 13.

Wes Craven paid homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with his 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, and Ridley Scott credited it as an influence on his 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien. French filmmaker Alexandre Aja also cited the film as a key early inspiration in his career. Horror director and musician Rob Zombie has also named it as a significant stimulus for his films House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005).

Other subsequent films that may owe a nod to Chain Saw include The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Death Weekend (1976), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), The Evictors (1979), Mother’s Day (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Southern Comfort (1981), Pieces (1982), Children of the Corn (1984), The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990), House of 1000 Corpses (2003), Wrong Turn (2003), Wolf Creek (2005), Hostel (2005), Hatchet (2006), The Flesh Keeper (2007), Slasher (2007), Backwoods (2008), and Ty West’s X (2022).

Hooper and company do an admirable job of creating unease right from the start. We begin with the “true story” screen crawl voiced by John Larroquette, creating false expectations that this will be a true crime recreation. We see the August 18, 1973 dateline to firmly anchor this narrative in a particular period, and then there’s a montage of shovel-digging noises and flashbulb-illuminated peeks at dead bodies before these unearthed corpses are revealed in full, dementedly draped around a tall tombstone as we hear a radio news report about graverobbing. Then there’s a jump cut to oversaturated imagery of sunspots and solar flares, and continued radio news reporting of an oil refinery fire, a suicide, and other disquieting mentions of violence and destruction. We observe armadillo roadkill in the foreground as a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine-like green van drives off in the background, soon to introduce us to our young adult protagonists.

Hooper effectively peppers the picture with portentous bad omen visuals and dialogue, as we listen to repeated horoscope warnings, see Franklin’s photo burned, witness the smeared blood on the van’s exterior, are shown a nest of undulating spiders, and catch glimpses of animal bones strewn about the decrepit cabin.

The filmmakers demonstrate unexpected cinematic savvy, despite the low budget and grindhouse aesthetics. Recall how Hooper sometimes employs a succession of quick cuts to ratchet up a scene, or the famous low-angle shot that tracks Pam from under the swing across the lawn to the front porch.

The director should be applauded, too, for not indulging in cheap titillation tactics. Again, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre contains no nudity or scenes of sexual assault (the latter would have made this film totally unpalatable to many), and the picture only uses mild profanity.

DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson wrote: “Although constructed to bring out audiences looking for transgressive, gut-wrenching horror, it demonstrates considerable restraint, generating almost an hour of creeping dread without resorting to a single cliché…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has good filmic architecture in the sense that form follows function. There are no extraneous scenes, filler or sidebar diversions; the camera hones in on the events without a let-up.”

Ponder, too, how Hooper creates surprising sympathy for Leatherface by inserting the shots of this character appearing severely distressed after dispatching with Kirk, Pam, and Jerry, as if he’s thinking, “Why have three strangers invaded my home, and are there any more coming?” We also see Leatherface bullied by his father (listed, simply, as “Old Man” in the credits).

The feat of “Chain Saw” is to make us empathize with its scariest figure without diminishing the disorienting, teeth-chattering horror. Few movies pull this off,” wrote Jason Zinoman of the New York Times.

One reading of the film is the death of the American dream. Per DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson: “With the closing of the frontier, the pioneers had no place to exercise their skills in conquering nature. Killing and eviscerating animals to survive had satisfied man's feral needs. Modern life deprives 'atavistic frontiersmen' of basic savagery… when corporate consolidation took away hundreds of thousands of jobs, Middle Americans had to take their dreams elsewhere. The days of a paycheck and a new car every five years were over, and some of the dispossessed turned to the Bible or to survivalist anti-government movements. Chain Saw shows one feral family that has regressed to practicing the pioneer skills it knows best: living off the land.”

Or, perhaps the film is a treatise on predetermined cosmic fate: Consider the solar flare footage shown at the opening, the close-ups of the full moon, the group discussing cautionary astrological predictions, and the ominous radio broadcasts, which relay nothing but bad news and disturbing events.

Hooper and collaborators certainly seem to underscore the consequences of living in violent, pessimistic, disillusioning times. Remember that this picture was made near the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The idealism of the 1960s was long dead. The public distrusted politicians, and the nation felt like a more violent, unkind place. Chain Saw examines the hidden savagery within man and the dangers of tapping into primal instincts—well-trodden subtexts in 1970s cinema.

Surprising to many, this film could actually have a vegetarian political agenda—a “meat is murder” message, if you will. After all, killing cows, pigs and other livestock for mass production of food is a cruel business that none of us want to learn the gruesome details about. While animals suffer and die in a commercialized industry of slaughter, we look the other way. Hooper was quoted as saying of this work: “It’s a film about meat.”

Many also believe The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is also about the usurping of the traditional nuclear family. Makes sense when you ruminate on how Leatherface and his clan represent an affront to our image of a loving and functional clan. Newman posited: “The nameless degenerates (they become the Sawyers in the sequel) are a parody of the sitcom family, with the bread-winning, long-suffering garage proprietor as Pop, the bewigged, apron-wearing Leatherface as Mom, and the rebellious, birthmarked, long-haired hitchhiker as teenage son. The house is a similarly overdone, a degraded mirror of the ideal home.”

Recurrence and déjà vu persist as crucial motifs. “Circularity and repetition are important structural components throughout The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” according to Slant Magazine reviewer Budd Wilkins. “The fierce red sun that dominates the opening credits is visually matched late in the film by repeated close-ups of red-veined eyeballs. At the level of the plotline, Sally circles back to the Last Chance gas station where she beseeches the Old Man for help, only to have him turn out to be one of the cannibal clan. Later, she runs circles around their rural farmhouse. And the film isn’t afraid to reduce its repetitiveness to absurdity either, as when Sally twice jumps through a window in an effort to elude Leatherface.

This movie’s greatest gift is arguably the last act. That’s when Sally is chased throughout the woods and the house of horrors by a chainsaw-wielding maniac for what feels like hours, takes refuge in the arms of the gas station attendant who shockingly abducts her and returns Sally to the same dreadful domicile, is held captive, and ultimately evades her tormenters—an unapologetically harrowing series of episodes strung together that form a bravura sequence of sheer terror.

Hooper best demonstrates his skill for scares during the nightmarish 11-minute stretch near the conclusion when Sally is tied to the chair in the dining room and tormented mercilessly by the Sawyer family. Here is where the increasingly distressing shots, blended with an unnervingly shrill sound design and actress Marilyn Burns’ psychologically stabbing screams, create an insufferable sensory experience for the viewer that cements Chain Saw’s deserved reputation for pure, unrelenting horror. Using vertiginously canted angles, extreme close-ups of Sally’s face (particularly her bulging bloodshot eyeballs), POV shots of the three men torturously teasing her, as well as the repugnant mini-segment when she’s bent over a bucket as the cadaverous grandpa attempts to sledge her skull in, the director and his collaborators create a hellscape sequence for the ages. It proves—as does the earlier scene where Leatherface hangs Pam on a meat hook and dices up Kirk with his preferred power tool without showing any actual body penetration or viscera—that you can accomplish a lot more with suggestion a la careful camera placement and clever editing than graphic gore and geek show special effects.

Two other unbelievably startling scenes still rattle viewers with every rewatch. First, there’s the unforgettable earlier sequence where Leatherface suddenly materializes in the doorway and pummels Kirk with a sledgehammer, after which we see Kirk flail about in a death twitch on the floor before his assailant quickly bashes him again and slams the metal door shut. The suddenness of this appearance and the lethal brute force conveyed by actor Gunnar Hansen in this character still steal our breath away. And the second example is the quite effective jump scare of Leatherface suddenly emerging from the darkness and popping out of the bushes with the chainsaw, which he uses to quickly attack Franklin: imagery powerful enough to give us Richter-scale nightmares.

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