TAKE THE CANNOLI
by Daren Foster

ALSO ON SITE

TAKE THE CANNOLI
By Daren Foster

I’ve had occasion recently to watch some movies from the 1970s. Not due to any nostalgia trip down memory lane; I haven’t yet reached that stage of middle-aged angst. Although, I did find myself surprisingly touched when I heard Billy Joel a-crooning about Cuban skies a few days ago and I loathed Billy Joel back in his heyday. Maybe there is something to the claims of hormonal changes during manopause slightly skewing our delicate sensibilities.

No, the reasons I sat down to watch a couple old movies were two-fold. One, TV was at its summertime barren worst and two, nothing was drawing me out to the big screens. Besides, they were films I either hadn’t seen for a long time or at all. There was Stanley Kubrick’s period piece, Barry Lyndon, and an engaging heist flick, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. I wouldn’t classify either film as great but both were highly watchable for completely different reasons.

The more I watch or re-watch Kubrick, the more he strikes me as a master technician with a cold, cold, cold heart. His misanthropy shines through everything he does making it impossible to form any emotional bond with his characters, leaving you to simply admire his film making skills. This may well have been his intention. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was Michael Cimino’s directorial debut and starred Clint Eastwood. Structurally, technically and cinematically ordinary, the movie’s appeal was due almost entirely to the performances. Eastwood was at his easy going best, making me wish he’d concentrated exclusively on acting and foregone his highly inflated directorial career. Jeff Bridges, channelling the spirit of a Breathless era Jean-Paul Belmondo, is easily the most under-rated actor of his generation.

Before you jump to the conclusion that I’m going to adopt the “back in my day” stance and start beating my chest about how great the 70s were, let me interject. (It is, after all, my column). As someone born in the 60s but with my formative adolescent years firmly planted in the 70s, I will admit to having a soft spot for the decade. Part of the reason is that the Smiley Face, Me Generation is my generation, so I’m a little protective of it. Sprouting up in the shadow of the overweening, triumphalism of the 1960s crew, the 70s got a bit of a short shrift, especially given how poorly the ‘Make Love Not War’ generation has aged, morphing into its present-day ‘Make War and Money’ incarnation.

That’s not to say my decade doesn’t have lots to answer for. From a creative standpoint, there’s not much to crow about if we look at, say, television. Aside from a few exceptions (off the top of my head, there’s Mary Tyler Moore, Barney Miller, Fernwood/American Tonight), 70s TV has dated poorly. Musically, like most eras, it wasn’t nearly as bad or as good as anyone will tell you. Disco is better than I remember. Prog Rock most definitely isn’t. Any decade, though, that can hold up someone like Joe Strummer as its spokesman can’t be all that bad.

The 1970s, though, can claim a degree of superiority with its movies. In this writer’s humble opinion, this was the last golden age of Hollywood films. While not a particularly novel or isolated thought, it isn’t simply empty conventional wisdom. For a brief, shining moment, studio (read: producer) clout was waning and a group of filmmakers was allowed to run riot and make the movies they wanted to make with little outside interference. Ultimately, this led to calamitous results and some terrible movies during the process but, year in and year out, from 1970 through to 1980, greatness was regularly achieved.

None greater, arguably, than The Godfather.

You can take your Casablancas and your Citizen Kanes and all your French New Waves and Kurosawas and Charlie Chaplins. If I were laid out on my deathbed tomorrow, I wouldn’t pause for a moment to regret not having time left to see any of those films again. But, I would definitely feel a slight twinge at the thought of never sitting through another viewing of the first two Godfathers. (Please note I said ‘slight twinge’. On my deathbed, I’d have much bigger, deeper regrets and feelings of remorse. Bemoaning a movie would be a fair way down the list, arrived at only with a particularly long, lingering death).

Both 1 & 2 are the very rare collision of high and pop art. Adapted from a pulpy best selling novel, The Godfather is a testament to the maxim that it is easier to make a good film from a bad book than a good one. It takes the well-established Hollywood gangster genre and bulks it out to truly epic proportions. Rather than the old school gangster movie trope of needing to show “good” prevailing and the “bad” guys getting their come-uppance, The Godfather expands on the revisionism that began a few years earlier with films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch, exploring much more gray, murkier ethical territory. Yes, the “bad” guys do wind up getting their just desserts in the end but it isn’t at all gratifying or uplifting. It’s tragic. The American Dream of upward mobility, perverted through the prism of unwavering, unquestioning loyalty and honour without morality.

The Godfather is one of few films that I consider flawless, creatively churning on all cylinders. From top to bottom, the performances were top notch. Many of the actors -- some already stars, some heading for stardom -- were never better or would never be that good again. The cast list now reads like the proverbial who’s who. Marlon Brando. Al Pacino. Robert Duvall. James Caan. Diane Keaton. And as the sad sack Corleone ne’er-do-well, Fredo, it’s always a little gloomy watching John Cazale who was one of the best character actors ever, knowing that he died only 5 years after the second instalment -- far, far too early.

The art direction of the movie is truly glorious, evoking a half-century or so of Italian-American life on both sides of the Atlantic and has not dated more than 30 years after it was shot. Both script and editing are master classes on what to use, what to leave out. Everything in the story is exactly where it should be when it should be there. There simply isn’t an artistic misstep in the entire film.