Rod Steiger

  • Giù la testa [Duck, you Sucker aka A fistful of Dynamite] (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2021) It really doesn’t take a lot of time to understand that Duck, You Sucker isn’t your typical western — after all, it opens on a quote from Mao and immediately jumps in an opening sequence that takes aim at post-revolution “elites” mocking the lower classes, followed by violent retribution. Clearly having something to say about the false romanticism of revolution (“Revolution is confusion” is a key expression), this last Sergio Leone spaghetti western feels disjointed at times, because it seems intent on having a lot of fun before bringing the hammer down to achieve its dour thematic objectives. Much of the film’s immediate appeal comes from the interplay between Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit and James Coburn as an explosive-dispensing Irish renegade. Coburn is all cool here, and the film wisely features plenty of stuff blowing up real good considering that it has an explosive expert as a protagonist. There’s a lot of banter between mismatched leads, and an ironic arc in seeing a cowardly character stumbling into heroism. Much of the film’s first half feels like a pleasant, entertaining romp, helped along by using a western look in a much later period (1913), allowing for cowboys and locomotives but also motorcycles and German-issued military equipment. (If you’re looking for a halfway-plausible cowboy-versus-Nazi film, this is still your best bet.)  But Leone has a much more dispiriting destination in mind, and so the second half of Duck, You Sucker gets darker both visually and narratively, leading to a conclusion that clashes with the comic first half. It’s also, very much in the Leone tradition, quite a bit too long for its own good. (Also, that “Sean-Sean” song? Eh.)  It’s still quite an unusual film — I’m not sure there’s anything quite like it elsewhere in the traditional Western filmography (the closest example that comes to mind is the South Korean “kimchi western” The Good, the Bad, the Weird). It does feel substantially different from the other Leone Westerns it’s usually bundled with — misleading marketing aside, don’t go in there expecting a fourth Fistful of Dollars.

  • Back from Eternity (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) I’m at a point in my exploration of Classic Hollywood where Sturgeon’s Law is finally reasserting itself. As a reminder, Science Fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said that “ninety percent of everything is crud.” This is relevant to classic Hollywood in that most people who dive into the era will first see the classics — and over the forty-year period from 1927 (sound cinema) to 1967 (New Hollywood), there are a lot of them. But sooner or later, you run out of the best and have to tackle the rest, and that takes us to Back from Eternity, a rather disjointed survival drama that takes forever to get going, eventually making its way to lifeboat ethics that it tackles with disturbing gusto. The premise of the film has an airplane crash-land in South America, with nine survivors doing their best to repair the plan and survive the local headhunters. My TV guide log entry helpfully adds, “…but the repaired plane can only hold five people,” which pretty much gives away everything but the last three minutes of the film. As with other stories manipulating a plot to end up in an ethical quandary about lifeboat survival (seriously: Why five rather than eight when you’re dealing with an airliner? The pilot’s fiat declaration carries a lot of weight here), the screenwriter goes straight to logic and reason as arbiter of who should live or die, which usually leads us straight to arbitrary decision based on the screenwriter’s morality. Blech. This being said, there are many, many other problems with Back from Eternity even before it finally gets to its final reel — the interminable setup that ends up with very little payoff being the worst of them. Much of the film’s publicity material makes a bit deal out of Anita Ekberg as the film’s pin-up girl, but the most interesting role here goes to a bearded Rod Steiger as a moral criminal with nothing to lose in making decisions for others. The black-and-white cinematography is a disappointment given the lush jungle setting, although it probably simplified the process of shooting most of the film on a soundstage. All in all — Back from Eternity is far from being the worst film ever made, but it’s still a disappointment considering the long setup and the disappointing payoff. But then again, most movies are crud.

  • The Pawnbroker (1964)

    The Pawnbroker (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Part of the way Hollywood movies changed during the 1960s was a turn from the grandiose to the mundane, focusing on small personal stories rather than grand sweeping spectacles. The other part of the change was being able to portray America closer to what it was rather than the bowdlerized version imposed by the Production code. You can see both of those tendencies at work in The Pawnbroker, a rather intimate take on post-WW2 trauma, as seen through the eyes and actions of a Harlem pawnbroker revealed to be a concentration camp survivor. His detachment from everyone around him is what gets hashed out over the course of the film in a series of small sequences and confrontations. What does make director Sydney Lumet’s film feel slightly more modern is a relatively true-to-life portrayal of the neighbourhood in which the story takes place: As pointed out by various film historians, The Pawnbroker features things we now take as commonplace — a diversity of ethnic characters with different agendas (fittingly for its upper Manhattan setting); a confirmed homosexual character; artistically-justified nudity (apparently a first); and a portrayal of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. Rod Steiger got nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of a man with strong internal conflicts, but much of the interest of The Pawnbroker goes to the supporting cast of characters, each with short but striking roles giving a good amount of credibility to the film’s setting. It’s not a spectacular film — most of the conflict is internal until a climax that lets the tension erupt outwardly. While not a fun watch, it does act as a turning point of sorts for those who want to track the ways in which late-1960s Hollywood was an entirely different place than early-1960s Hollywood.

  • The Big Knife (1955)

    The Big Knife (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) Considering my fondness for Hollywood stories about Hollywood, I’m surprised that I don’t like The Big Knife as much as I probably should. The story of an actor negotiating a new contract with his studio while blackmailed due to a few sordid stories (both past and current) sounds like something right up my alley. It’s not as if the film doesn’t have other qualities either: Ida Lupino is wonderful as usual, Rod Steiger chews a lot of scenery, and Jack Palance is sort-of interesting. But in the end, it’s the entire film that fails to impress—perhaps too bleak for esoteric reasons (blame playwriter Clifford Odet, who wrote the theatrical play from which this is adapted), perhaps too stuck to the florid dialogue of the original, perhaps a bit too sedate and stage-bound as the theatrical play itself. I’m not sure there’s a crowd-pleasing movie to be made about an actor declining a wealth-making studio contract, and certainly not in the way the film ends. Too bad, because there are flashes of wit in the dialogue, and some fun performances—just not the kind of material that transforms a film into something compelling. In the end, I just could not make myself believe in The Big Knife.

  • Doctor Zhivago (1965)

    Doctor Zhivago (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2018) I have little patience for anything these days, so getting me to sit down for three-and-a-half-hours to watch a Russian novel turned into an epic movie, even a David Lean movie, is asking too much. It took me four days to get through Doctor Zhivago, and I kept going only because the film is of some historical interest. Even then, the journey was gruelling. It’s not that the film is 193 minutes long—it’s that even for that amount of time, not a lot actually happens. It is a generational romance set against the backdrop of early-twentieth-century Russia, and yet it feels uncomfortably small, with a handful of characters bouncing against each other even in a country as large as Russia. To be fair, Omar Sharif is fantastic as the titular Zhivago, and Julie Christie isn’t bad as the lead female character. This being said, the show is stolen by smaller roles: Rod Steiger is delightfully evil as a well-connected politician, while Tom Courtenay has a great arc as the initially meek Pasha. Still, much of Doctor Zhivago unfolds slowly, with characters having intimate conversations while the country goes up in flames somewhere in the background. For an epic, it feels curiously small-scale and focused on melodramatic plot threads. Reading about the film, its troubled production and the historical context of the original novel is more interesting than the film itself—as I was wondering how a Russian film could be produced by a big Hollywood studio in the middle of the Cold War, the film doesn’t exactly act as pro-Soviet propaganda … and adapting the novel was seen as a big gesture against the USSR given that it had banned the book. Still, the result is an often-exasperating experience as nothing happens for a very long time. The film’s high points (such as the moments immediately preceding its intermission) aren’t, quite enough to make up for the rest, including an even more punishing framing device that adds even more minutes to an already bloated result. But at last it’s done: I have watched Doctor Zhivago and don’t have to watch it ever again in order to say that I did.

  • In the Heat of the Night (1967)

    In the Heat of the Night (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2017) Whenever I tackle an older film, I usually curse my lack of knowledge of the era and my imperfect understanding of the context surrounding the film. But in the case of In the Heat of the Night, I’m actually proud and thankful that I don’t have a deep understanding of the pervasive and violent southern racism that the film portrays. Built around a murder mystery in small-town Mississippi, In the Heat of the Night is really an issues drama, as a competent police officer from Philadelphia is semi-voluntarily asked to help with the investigation. The legendary Sidney Poitier stars as “They call me Mister Tibbs,” a gifted cop whose skills are dismissed by the locals due to his skin colour, and who gets into increasingly violent confrontations with those who wish he’d go away. The murder mystery is perfunctory, but it definitely takes a back seat to the social issues illustrated throughout the plot. Thankfully, there is some good character work along the way that helps make the film more than simply a moral lesson—The protagonist has significant flaws (pride, mostly) that are pointed out by other characters, and the lead sheriff’s (Rod Steiger) evolution from stone-cold racism to honest admiration is handled organically. Colourful minor characters help establish the torrid atmosphere of a southern town in the middle of a heat wave. Competent filmmaking, headed by director Norman Jewison (a Canadian, one notes), make much of the film look and feel just as compelling as it was back then. From a contemporary perspective, much of the movie, and the locals’ reaction to the protagonist, defies comprehension and almost approaches caricature—I’m glad to live in a world where that stuff isn’t as acceptable any more. In the Heat of the Night is a Best Picture Oscar winner and it’s easy to see why—even today, it blends genre entertainment with a strong social conscience, through compelling performances and good production savviness.

  • The Amityville Horror (1979)

    The Amityville Horror (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2017) Not all haunted house movies are created equal, and despite The Amityville Horror’s reputation, it ranks toward the low end of the scale. Part of it has to do with its familiarity: The haunted-house story has become a cliché at this point, and The Amityville Horror doesn’t renew much along the way, what with its hallucinations, Catholic curses, familiar plot points (save the dog!) and rather long duration time. James Brolin, Margot Kidder and Rod Steiger all do good work, but the subject matter is just tired—even more so if you’re not inclined to give any credence to the “based on real events” claim that surrounds the film. A few period details are intriguing (such as the acceptance of the paranormal by a supporting character) but much of it just feels dull, and some of the most promising material (the black ooze, for instance) don’t seem to pay off meaningfully. I used to think that the 2005 remake wasn’t very good, but it turns out that the original isn’t really good either.