Rest in Gab

Wise: Greetings, Werth!

 
Werth: Greetings, Wise!

Wise: Did you have a fun-filled Memorial Day Holiday?

Werth: Fun-filled? Wise, Memorial Day is supposed to be spent honoring our dearly departed.

Wise: So you didn’t go to a dinner party, flirt with a bartender for free drinks or spend hours soaking in your tub on your day off?

Werth: Of course I did! But I also thought about those sad moments when we lose people we care about.

Wise: You made a list of your favorite movie death scenes, didn’t you?

Werth: You betcha! And my number one favorite is Bette Davis croaking in Dark Victory.

Wise: Thanks for the spoiler.

Werth: What spoiler? She gets brain cancer... in 1939. She’s a goner. It’s curtains from the opening credits—but what a way to go! Her tragic acceptance of what she knows is coming but must hide from her husband is beautiful. Legend has it that Davis fought with director Edmund Goulding about her “death climb” up the stairs. Worried that film score composer Max Steiner would be orchestral-ly outdoing her performance she insisted, “Well, either I'm going to climb those stairs or Max Steiner is going to climb those stairs, but I'll be God-DAMNED if Max Steiner and I are going to climb those stairs together!"

Wise: I’m assuming there was a cigarette involved somewhere.

Werth: Whatever Goulding told Davis, in the end, Steiner and Davis climbed the stairs together to perfect effect. Davis, Steiner and the movie were all nominated for the top prizes at the Academy awards that year—but it was the greatest year in Hollywood History, so competition was very stiff with Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz ultimately snagging those Oscars.

Wise: Frankly, The Wizard of Oz ought to have snagged a few more Oscars that year, but it does contain one of the best death scenes ever filmed.  

Werth: I know where this is going...
 

Wise: Look, I love the chance to blubber when a movie character reaches his expiration date, but death is an experience full of uncontrollable emotions—some sad, some happy, some squirrely—and I like to have my cinematic terminations reflect that.  

Werth: Just get on with the Wicked Witch biting it.

 

Wise: Think about how great Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the witch is: that frustrated ambition, that out-of-control cackle tickling your spine with ice, that glee she takes in plotting the destruction of Dorothy and her friends.  But when the bucket of water hits and she realizes that the end has come for her beautiful wickedness, she literally dissolves into rage.  It’s really the only way for her to go.  Throughout the movie, she has been a constant threat, adding a razor’s edge to what could have been a Technicolor meringue, and only her death can exorcise her living menace.  It’s a catharsis, allowing Dorothy and her friends to earn their rewards, and has served as the model in the deaths of countless villains ever since.  

Werth: Before Wise breaks into a gospel version of “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead”, here’s a list of our other favorite cinematic death scenes:

Lance’s List

West Side Story

Terms of Endearment
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Imitation of Life

Moulin Rouge

Damien: Omen II
Dancer in the Dark
The Poseidon Adventure

Humoresque

The Manchurian Candidate 

  

Alan’s List
Rebecca 

Silent Light
Murder on the Orient Express 

One True Thing
The Royal Tenenbaums
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Good Earth 

Pan’s Labyrinth
Heathers

Like Water for Chocolate  

Werth: I like your death list, Wise.

Wise: I like your death list, Werth. Now what about you, Film Gab Readers? What are your favorite death scene movies?

Werth: And check back next week for a less deadly Film Gab!

I’m as Gab as Hell...

Werth: Hey there, Wise.

Wise: Hi there, Werth. 

Werth: Ever since Sidney Lumet died last Saturday, I can’t stop thinking about his movies.



Wise: He was a masterful, prolific filmmaker.

Werth: And one film in particular has stuck in my craw.

Wise: Should I call your internist? 

Werth: That won’t be necessary.  One of my all-time favorite movies is Network (1976), and I know everybody talks about it, but I don’t think its praises can be sung enough.

Wise: Cue the chorus.

Werth: Network’s log line could read: A news agency deals with ratings, revolutionary groups and a messianic newscaster—but the movie deals with so much more than that. Max Schumacher (William Holden) is an aging newsman who finds himself inside bars downing shots of whiskey and reminiscing about his days with Walter Cronkite. His pal Howard Beale is fired for poor ratings by corporate news muckety-muck Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) and ambitious succubus Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway).

Something in Beale snaps (or is illuminated by the truth) and soon he is ending his final broadcast by pulling back the curtain and exposing the bullshit wizards of the corporate news world with a mad soliloquy. His rallying cry, “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” is shouted from the rooftops and makes the ratings skyrocket. 

Wise: Faye Dunaway makes a lot of people scream from the rooftops.  

Werth: Christensen knows good ratings when she sees them, and soon she re-organizes the nightly news with Beale’s ranting editorials, psychic hoo-haw, and a group of Symbionese Liberation Army wannabes—turning Beale’s cry for legitimate change into a program catchphrase.

Wise: Sounds like a day at the Fox News Network.

Werth: Exactly. Network is more than a smart, funny, pinpoint accurate satire of corporate news. It’s eerily prophetic. The emergence of nothing-is-sacred “reality news”, rabid, almost religious editorializing (whether it’s honest or not), and sacrificing hard news for ratings is so common now that it’s difficult to imagine the days when those elements were new inventions. Today in our 24 hour news cycle, the Cronkites, the Murrows and the Max Schumachers have all been eaten alive by the likes of Christensen’s new “whorehouse network.” 

Wise: What channel is that on Time Warner?

Werth: Paddy Chayefsky’s script is flawless. You could literally sit down and read it like a book. The performances by all the principles are pitch perfect (Holden and Ned Beatty were nominated for Oscars and Finch and Dunaway won). And the man who brought it all together, Lumet, was given his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. Like an experienced conductor, Lumet weaves together the different sounds of biting comedy (Dunaway’s orgasm scene and the contract negotiations with the Ecumenical Liberation Army),  manic passion (Finch’s inspired on-air orations), and nuanced pathos (Schumacher’s wife’s private and touching admonishment of her philandering spouse) without missing a beat, making a film that is still relevant, fresh and entertaining today. Network is a cautionary tale about a society where heroes are built-up and then chewed-up to appease us. It is an ugly reflection of our culture, one we should watch until we’re “as mad as Hell.” 

Wise: You know it’s funny because the Lumet film I’ve been thinking about this week examines many of those same themes—unlikely heroes, delirious arias about personal integrity, mistrust of talking heads—although in an entirely different way.  

Werth: Let me guess, The Wiz.  

Wise: No, The Wiz—wait, what?  How did you guess that?  Is it that obvious?

Werth: Let’s just say that like Lumet, you often return to the ideas that interest you most. 

Wise: I guess that is a trait all us geniuses share.  Anyway, after the success of the all-black Broadway musical version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, plans were made to translate it to film, and when Diana Ross expressed interest in playing Dorothy, the producers decided they needed to find a director of large enough stature to manage both the outsize production and Diana Ross’ fledgling acting career.  Lumet may not have been the obvious choice, but he certainly was an interesting choice because of the ways he transformed the project.  When it first appeared onstage, The Wiz remained much more faithful to Baum’s novel than did the beloved Judy Garland musical, albeit peppered with a jive-talking urban patois meant to reflect African-American experience.  Lumet brought on Joel Shumacher to write the screenplay—

Werth: You mean Joel “Nipples on the Bat-suit” Schumacher?

Wise: That’s the one.  Gone was pre-teen Dorothy and her life on the Kansas farm, replaced by the decidedly mature Ross playing an excruciatingly shy 24-year old elementary school teacher who is swept from her apartment in Harlem to a fantasy version of seedy 1970’s New York City.  This change makes an odd kind of sense in the story, although it necessitated further adjustments to the script to make it even more appropriate to Ross’ talents.  The film becomes even more focused on her emotional arc, often to the detriment of the other characters.  Most significantly, it is now Dorothy who convinces her friends of their unrealized gifts, leaving Richard Pryor’s Wiz to cower in the background instead of performing something like the good-natured flimflam mastered by Frank Morgan in The Wizard of Oz.  

Werth: Pryor looks like he had plenty to occupy him off-camera. 

Wise: Dorothy’s three companions in Oz—Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow, Nipsy Russell’s Tinman, and Ted Ross’ Cowardly Lion—each have marvelous moments even though their talents feel mostly underutilized.  Jackson, in particular, brings real warmth to his portrayal, true grace to the awkward Scarecrow, but he never has the opportunity to make the character fully real.  In his final good-bye to Dorothy, he is almost immediately brushed aside by Diana Ross instead of being allowed to connect with the audience before being shuffled away.  

Werth: Not even the Moonwalk can compete with Ross’ hinge-like, stick-leg, high kicks.

Wise: In some ways, it’s a shame that Lumet and Ross didn’t leave The Wiz to be made by someone else entirely while the two of them developed a film about a reluctant New Yorker who eventually allows both the magic and the mayhem of the city to release her inhibitions.  That would have been a picture ideally suited to Lumet’s affectionate dissections of the city and Ross’ twitchy drive.  

Werth: Maybe they could have called it Twitch and the City.  Or The Blair Twitch Project.  I know!  How about The Twitches of Eastwick?

Wise: Or maybe not... Check back next week for more Film Gab... and less twitching.

Werth: The Seven Year Twitch?