directed by Alex Cox
written by Alex Cox and Abbe Wool

Criterion #20.

As this one approached, Beth warned me repeatedly that I wouldn’t like it. Turns out she was wrong! But I can’t blame her. In fact it surprises even me, to think that I enjoyed this. Nothing about it would seem to be much to my taste. Either this movie has some uniquely transcendent quality hiding below the surface, or else this was just one of those fluke experiences where circumstances conspire to trick me into having a good time that I should never have had.

Doing something arbitrary like watching the Criterion collection in order encourages a certain kind of wide-open-mindedness, particularly given the extreme eclecticism of this particular list — and having an open mind is, unfortunately, more or less the same thing as exorcising oneself of one’s personal tastes. For better and for worse, that’s part of what drives me to do stupid things like this. And I don’t want to understate the simple satisfaction of seeing the next movie on the list after having invested it with several months of anticipation. I have perused the first several pages of the list many times, at this point, so all the titles start to seem like they will be special treats of one kind or another.

So that’s probably the why of it. But in any case, I found this compelling viewing despite having no interest in the subject matter nor any affinity for the implicit worldview (of the characters or of the type of people who would be moved to make a movie about them). The crucial saving grace was that the movie felt to me like it had absolutely no agenda, nothing to sell — not even the idea that this was a story worth telling. There was plenty of room left for me to have any thoughts I wanted about these people, up to and including that they were people of no significance and that their story was of no significance. And under the circumstances I felt tremendously grateful for that space.

Even the more poetic, romantic filmmaking gestures were presented quite coolly; I never felt that my experience was being prescribed. Of course, maybe I never felt that because some hormone or other was low in my brain that day, and not because of the movie, but that’s the way it went down.

I’m gonna put the music selection up here so I can talk about it as it relates to this thought. This little cue, track 20 for your imaginary album, kicks in behind the movie’s signature shot, where the two leads kiss in an alley while garbage falls from above in slow motion. (The music is by Dan Wool, the screenwriter’s brother, credited here as “Dan Wül” of “Pray for Rain.”) There’s not a lot of score in the movie, but what there is is in a similar vein.

On the one hand, this sort of music has a clear, strong emotional impact. But to me, the characteristically 80s aesthetic out of which this music comes is actually sort of pre-emotional, or sub-emotional — the feeling it creates is not of a particular kind of meaning, just of the impression of meaning itself, of lines that extend forever in a space that precedes reality. The Romantic message behind such music might have been meant as “their love was tragic and their story is forever,” but to me at least, it says, rather, “this story, like all stories, is just a kind of a pattern, to which we might try to apply meaning, but in truth it is something geometric and alien.” That depersonalizing tendency of the 80s vibe, intentional or not, put this movie into a relatively pure place, for me. I can’t think of any positive claim that could have been made about these two wretched people that wouldn’t have turned me off the movie. But in the absence of any explicit claims, I was able to feel my own heart, and let it touch down on what I was being shown, however tentatively or ambivalently. And that makes for a positive movie-watching experience, even when all you’re watching is some people being incredibly pathetic.

At first I thought the point of the movie was to depict “punk” — its culture and its ideals — and that these two characters were just convenient historical hooks. My sense was that people probably didn’t live exactly like this, but that they lived somewhat like this and toward the same ideal, and that this movie was giving us a sort of ideally streamlined “punk” milieu, where (as Greil Marcus points out in the commentary track) the historical context is left completely unexplained and the mindset is depicted in itself, without any external cause or purpose.

That mindset, as portrayed in this movie, seemed to be something like that of the Underground Man — these people are offended by the obligation to do just about anything other than exist. They smash things not out of any kind of political protest but simply as a way of acting out against the responsibility not to smash things — the responsibility to protest would be just as much of an imposition.

Generally, the offensive thing about youth cultural movements like these is not their nihilism or irresponsibility so much as their their implicit arrogance. These people invented nothing, discovered nothing — Dostoevsky lived 100 years earlier, after all — so their stridency is undeserved. Yet, at least in this cinematically perfected punk world, they do not in fact want attention or fame or respect; they want nothing other than freedom. Not even the implicit obligation to seize that freedom if they can. And so there is no arrogance, just pure, filthy being. Their stridency is only a part of their disdain for anything other than their momentary impulses — if the disdain includes themselves, it can’t count as pride.

But if the ethos is some kind of inverted Buddhism — the transcendence of earthly cares through an all-encompassing bitterness and anger — then why did these people form bands, dress up, do anything? They too had ambitions. The fact is, there is no such thing as the unchecked id — the pursuit of that kind of purity is a recipe for becoming a hypocrite. Someone’s slogan seen lipsticked on a mirror in one scene: “NO FEELINGS.” By falling in love the characters betray the cause and are doomed. I don’t feel like the characters are hypocrites but I feel like the writers might be.

Ah, but these thoughts mostly refer to the first half of the movie. In the second half, the movie more or less reveals the impossibility of the ideal, as it shows Johnny Rotten moving toward normal society and Sid Vicious dropping below any kind of willful punk insolence into pure heroin-addled degradation. Good.

The movie doesn’t seem to care all that much about the Sex Pistols as a band, and the performance scenes feel dutiful and a little drab, which is unfortunate because there are quite a few of them. But had they been truly charismatic, they would have been harder to think about. Of course, maybe I just don’t get how charisma works in this world — Greil Marcus specifically says that the performances are surprisingly effective as performances, moreso than in most rock and roll movies. More on my probable incomprehension below.

The young Courtney Love, we are reminded all over the internet (when we google Sid and Nancy), was very seriously considered for the role of Nancy, and was given a bit part when the producers insisted on casting an established actor. When she appears, there’s the clear sense that there are two viable Nancys onscreen. I couldn’t help but think, “oh, Courtney Love would have been so much more appropriate.” She has the actual vampy drugged-out quality that would seem to be in order, whereas Chloe Webb is all whining and screaming and seems like the most annoying crazy person in the room. But I’m not necessarily saying the movie would be better. Having watched the clip of the real Sid and Nancy that is included on the DVD, I can see that what Webb does is conscientious and, perhaps, a more interesting distillation of the real Nancy than something less grating would have been. Her performance is absurd and unpleasant but she pushes through to the point of being sort of engaging as such. If the characters were any less transparently pathetic, the focus wouldn’t be as clear.

For the first time in a while, we have a full-featured DVD, with various extras and a good solid commentary track, which I enjoyed. Gary Oldman seems a little reserved and above it all but is game to say a few words; Chloe Webb is loosely, extrovertedly thoughtful in an actor-y way that, in my dealings with actual actors, I have come to find sympathetic. There are a couple other people on there, but the most memorable, as evidenced by my references above, is historian Greil Marcus. Yes, his tone is a little bit pretentious, but most of what he says is pretty compelling, right or wrong. Basically, he talks about his thoughts as an audience member as he tries to work out what this movie conveys, which means that he is speaking directly to my experience. His need to tie everything to historical precedent feels a little like a tic developed during a career of trying to give weight to denigrated popular art, but his cultural-critic attitude serves him well in making his comments relevant to the viewer. Unlike the guys on Amarcord who seemed like victims of the delusion that “analysis” means “puzzle-solving” and that academically legitimate criticism consists of extracting symbols and archetypes until you can say something that seems “socio-political” enough. Ugh.

However: Marcus’s perspective is very much a fan’s perspective: it takes for granted that this material is of great mythic weight of one kind or another. At one point he praises the movie for showing that these characters were not making grand generational statements but were simply motivated by normal desires to have the money or drugs that they wanted. But that’s only an interesting point to people who are pre-inclined to read a grand story in rock & roll doings. Otherwise it’s kind of a duh.

It’s possible, in fact, that the reasons I found the movie approachable and interesting — because, essentially, it eschews any kind of muddled rock pantheon mythology — are also why I actually don’t get what this movie really is, because it’s a movie by and for people who love the Sex Pistols. The real point of the movie, I suspect, is in its exact balance of myth-making and demythologizing, and since I come to it with no preconceived myths whatsoever, I may not be seeing what I am supposed to see. I think that in this case, since I enjoyed it anyway, I can live with that.

The filmmakers are apparently people who were such fans of the band, the music, the rock-and-roll-ness of it, that to them these characters were satisfying, meaningful, beloved characters… and in making this movie they felt they were making a fully rock-and-roll movie, because Sid and Nancy are a part of rock-and-roll. They’re like action figures from a set. But if you only have one G.I. Joe, is he just an anonymous soldier, or is he still fighting Cobra? This is like a movie about a Lando Calrissian figurine, and I’m someone who’s never seen Star Wars. If Lando Calrissian falls in the forest, does he make a sound? I’m here saying I appreciated the quiet, but maybe that’s just because I’m deaf.

See, I didn’t even know that the surreal scene where Sid sings “My Way” was based on a real video until I listened to the commentary and they referred to it as though it were common knowledge. Well, maybe it is, but it wasn’t to me. I just watched the original on YouTube. It made clearer to me the exact nature of what Gary Oldman is and isn’t doing in this movie. The real Sid Vicious comes off as pretty straightforward — a jerky, fucked-up kid being as much of an asshole as he can, on cue. Gary Oldman’s character is much less clearly motivated; he seems more pure and more unearthly, which basically entirely misses the point of punk. He acts like an asshole because that’s his part, but he never feels like he relishes being an asshole, the way a real asshole does. Sid Vicious’s real video makes him seem like a real asshole. Gary Oldman seems more like Edward Scissorhands — a visitor.

written and directed by Samuel Fuller

Criterion #19.

Fine, Criterion Collection, you win. This one made me grin.

This movie popped out of the same can of mixed nuts as The Naked Kiss, but it had a little more punch to it. It wanders even farther into deep left field, and though it may not have been “kind of amazing,” it was certainly a wide-eyed head-shaker. And I can go for one of those every now and then.

I try not to do plot summaries but in this case I think it will double as an aesthetic summary.

In order to solve a murder at a mental hospital, an overambitious reporter goes undercover: he pretends to be insane and intentionally gets himself committed. His ultimate goal is to win the Pulitzer Prize, which is mentioned frequently as the inevitable outcome of this adventure. He first spends a year being coached on how to impersonate a madman, and then puts the plan into action by having his girlfriend — a stripper — pretend that she’s his sister and turn in her “brother” for threatening her with his violent, incestuous impulses. The girlfriend does this but only under pressure; she hates the whole scheme and fears for the reporter, as well she should. Once inside, he turns his attention to the only three witnesses to the murder, each of whom is a delusional schizophrenic. Each has been driven mad by being the victim of a contemporary American problem — communism, racism, and the nuclear arms race, respectively — and is now in a bizarre state of denial that inverts the problem (for example: a young black man who couldn’t handle the pressure and abuse of attending a newly desegregated school now believes he is the founder of the Ku Klux Klan). But each of the three is eventually coaxed into delivering a looking-into-the-distance soliloquy that reveals his underlying true story, after which our hero spits out the unrelated question “who killed Sloan in the kitchen?” and gets some fragment of information just before the witness lapses back into his insanity. After a series of tribulations — which include receiving electric shock treatment (= montage treatment) and being brutally attacked by the inhabitants of the “nympho” ward — the reporter solves the crime, battles the killer in a prolonged pots-and-pans-everywhere brawl, and finally maybe wins the Pulitzer Prize… BUT AT WHAT COST? For, you see, in the process, he himself has gone mad. Ironic enough for ya?

It’s not? Really? Tough crowd.

The cockamamie concept and undisguisedly clonky three-bears structure wouldn’t be out of place in a comic book, or a radio play of 15 years earlier. Almost every element here feels like it was plucked from the mainstream of kitschy sensationalist hackwork. So once again, the absurd effect — and this one really does feel absurd — is mostly due to the heightened expectations that a feature film brings.

But notice I said almost every element. When Constance Towers (yes, it’s her again) begins her striptease by singing a sexy tune through the feathers of a boa that completely encircles and obscures her head, looking like something from Mummenschanz, there is no getting around the fact that this movie and this director have, of their own volition, strayed from the road well-traveled. And a few touches like that go a long way; once you’ve seen a thing like that, it becomes harder to remember whether, say, a coven of haggard nymphomaniacs murmuring “he’s mine! he’s mine!” is a cliché, or whether it’s a brand new experience. The impression that this movie was a brand new experience hung in the air longer than it did with The Naked Kiss, and that was good enough for me. If the movie you are watching on TV with no expectations turns out to be Shock Corridor, you are in luck! (I offer this sentence as a clean press quote for the marketing people to put on the poster if they so choose.)

Once again, Fuller incorporates what seem to be his own 16mm tourist movies, inserting them whenever a character remembers having been to a foreign country. Economical and self-involved. The hero’s climactic fight with insanity is portrayed with the full force of Fuller’s art: first the reporter is seen flopping around in the hospital corridor set, as it fills symbolically with the rain in his mind. He shrieks and bangs helplessly on the doors; then he is zapped by animated lightning like Luke Skywalker and falls into a crazed Vertigo-style montage…. revolving principally around color home movies of Niagara falls.

That’s right, I forgot to mention: the home movies are in color, in the middle of a black-and-white film. To no particular effect. Apparently these had been separated from the rest of Shock Corridor until Criterion came along, so good for them. One character introduces his flashback by saying that he can see it now, “in color,” and another says that he dreams about it every night, “in color.” As usual, the choice itself might be weird and arty (and/or folk-arty), but the handling is pulp 101: everything must be stated and complete with exclamation points. These movies feel like the work of a very proud man.

So I’m supposed to talk about the themes? Like, “is modern America, what with all its problems and such, kind of like an insane asylum?” or “who’s to say who’s really sane?” No, sorry, not going to do that. I have my dignity.

People who make claims for the deep artistic quality of this movie because of the serious intent and serious issues at its heart: what’s wrong with you??? If I put on a 5-foot stovepipe hat with a sign on it, it doesn’t matter whether the sign says “the soul of the American nation is tormented by its own hypocrisies” or “eat at Joe’s”: no matter what it says, it’s still ridiculous. This movie is wearing a 5-foot stovepipe hat. I am not going to discuss the damn sign. Not in this company!

I will discuss this instead: just before administering shock therapy, a doctor grimly pronounces “puberty” as “pooberty,” which of course prompted me to look up the legitimacy of that pronunciation. OED and Merriam-Webster both say no way, never. But I did find plenty of people reminiscing about their embarrassing high school teachers — and Johnny Carson — pronouncing it that way. Sounds like it was a moderately widespread mistake in middle America 50 years ago. Considering the time and place, I imagine it was the sort of word for which many people had to guess the pronunciation, and then go for years with no opportunity to have an error be heard or corrected… at least not by anyone with more authoritative knowledge. And for the uptight, “pooberty” probably does seem like a more dignified reading. The y-glide in “pyube” seems vulgar in some vague Nabokovian way, whereas the Latinate syllable “poob” has ancient Roman associations.

Peter Breck looks sort of like Alec Baldwin in deadpan mode, and somehow he has just the right manner and magnetism for this impossible material. As with Alec Baldwin there’s the sense of a well-suppressed smirk, which, under the circumstances, is highly sympathetic. And he’s willing to shriek like a melting witch in nearly every scene, which is a plus. (Also he has a slight Han Solo quality, yes?)

I also want to single out the opera singer lunatic as having been engagingly naturalistic. I think my favorite moment in the movie was the color scene where he feeds our hero a lot of chewing gum in bed, telling him that chewing it will make his jaw tired and help him fall asleep. That guy’s performance is the closest in the movie to the style of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, to which I was tempted to make comparisons for a while until it became clear that none were called for.

Once again it seems likely that for most people, the trailer will be just about the right amount of Shock Corridor. Though be warned that this is one of those trailers that shamelessly misrepresents the movie. Luckily you’ve got my handy summary to set you straight.

Your track 19: Main title. Another middle-of-the-road mushfest from Paul Dunlap.