Eli Wallach

  • Baby Doll (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m not sure how many Tennessee Williams-inspired 1950s black-and-white dramas I still have to watch, but Baby Doll isn’t going to become one of my favourite Williams adaptations. Much of my reluctance comes from a refusal to engage with a story in which nearly everyone is nasty to everyone else all the time. That gets old, and I’m on the market for more uplifting material at the moment. The story takes us in deep rural Mississippi, where two feuding cotton farmers take escalating means toward each other – one burns the other’s field down, which is met by the other farmer seducing the first farmer’s teenage bride. But don’t feel too sorry for her given the bad treatment she gives to her husband and the overall nastiness of the film. As with other Williams-inspired dramas, Baby Doll was a bit of a sensation back in the 1950s – the topic matter went beyond what was considered acceptable, and having a teenage actress parade in a babydoll nightgown (legend has it that the film named the clothing) while the narrative repeatedly insisted on the seduction of the childlike character had authorities in a moral tizzy. (I suspect it would be even worse today.) Director Elia Kazan handles everything with his usual touch, allowing the three main actors — Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach—to bite into the dramatic material. Baby Doll is a drama all right, but it may take a specific frame of mind to get the most out of it.

  • Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo [The Good the Bad and the Ugly] (1966)

    Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo [The Good the Bad and the Ugly] (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, January 2018) The culmination of the Man-with-no-name trilogy is spectacular, grandiose and … a bit too much. While the original film clocked in at 90 minutes, The Good the Bad and the Ugly takes thirty minutes before even introducing its three main characters. Painting with a far more ambitious brush, this instalment tackles war drama and a much grander scale, but somewhat confusingly goes back in time for a prequel. But who cares when Clint Eastwood is still iconic as the nameless “Good” protagonist, while Lee van Cleef still steals the show as the outright “Bad” protagonist, with Eli Wallach’s “Ugly” wildcard bouncing between the two. It’s the apotheosis of the Spaghetti Western genre, especially when Errico Morrcone’s iconic wah-wah-waaa theme kicks in. At the same time, it does feel like a lot. It’s fun to watch, but a certain ennui sets in when it becomes obvious that the film will not hurry from one set piece to another. Writer/director Sergio Leone’s style is a Leone-ish as it gets here, with careful editing and close-ups doing much of the work in creating suspense. An expansive cap to a remarkable trilogy, The Good the Bad and the Ugly doesn’t leave viewers hungering for more.

  • The Holiday (2006)

    The Holiday (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2015)  Routine romantic comedies are usually best appreciated for their details rather than their familiar plot structure, and so it is that while you can read a synopsis of The Holiday (“two lovelorn women exchange houses for the holidays, finding love in the most unexpected places”) and have a pretty good idea of where the film is headed, but you may not suspect to which extent the film is filled with references to the world of movies.  Cameron Diaz play a movie-trailer editor (the fake for fake movie Deception, with Lindsay Lohan and James Franco, gets the film’s biggest laughs.) and thinks about her life via voice-over narration; Kate Winslet plays a British book editor on holidays in Hollywood, befriending an Oscar-winning screenwriter and getting movies at the video store (a sequence that actually reminded me that I do, on some level, miss video stores)  Some romantic comedy terms are explained, played with and sometimes even adopted wholesale.  Still, there’s a little bit more to The Holiday than movie stuff: The performances are pretty good (with Eli Wallach getting one last great role), the sentiments are heartfelt, the expected scenes happen roughly in the expected order.  In short (or rather; in long, since the film does run a bit too long), it’s a perfectly serviceable romantic comedy, fit to make the holidays feel even more like the holidays.