ROCKING MY WORLD
A Couch
With a View
Video offerings from
Lovell Mahan-Moutaw

Dogfight (Nancy Savoca, 1991).
River Phoenix is Eddie, a newly anointed Marine. Lili Taylor is a waitress named Rose, working in her grandmother Rose's diner with her mother, um, Rose. It is 1963, and Phoenix has one night of liberty before he ships out to help "advise" the Vietnamese in their struggle against the "commies." For some reason, his buddies decide to stage a dogfight - that is, get the ugliest girl they can find, convince her to go to a party, and then win the pot if she is the ugliest of the lot. Phoenix finds and convinces Taylor to go with him. He seems to have cold feet before the party, but nevertheless wins honorable mention when Taylor vomits after drinking too much. She finds out about the dogfight, has a fit, tells him off and leaves Phoenix to go home and nurse her wounded ego, and, possibly, her wounded heart. Phoenix ditches his friends to go and apologize to her, and spends the evening with her instead of with his buddies. Surprisingly, this is a love story.

Taylor, as usual, is magnificent. If you can get past the fact that her added weight is screamingly fake and she carries herself like a thin woman in a fat suit, you'll be entranced by a sweet, infinitely watchable performance. Phoenix seems stilted (although I think this is on purpose) as the gung-ho Marine who is too young to really know what to do with himself and too shortsighted to see that his decision to enter the Corps was not such a good one. The film doesn't seem like much - just an odd little love story, not anything you would expect to rock your world. Nevertheless, you are satisfied, if more than a little sad, at the end.

The Great Race (Blake Edwards, 1965).

Tony Curtis is The Great Leslie, a daredevil a la Evil Kneivel, mixed with Harry Houdini. He always wears white and he always gets the girl. Jack Lemmon is Professor Fate, The Great Leslie's evil rival who has an idiot sidekick in Max, played by Peter Falk. Natalie Wood is Maggie DuBois, a sufragette who wants equal rights between men and women. They all enter The Great Race, an automobile race across three continents.

This is supposed to be a madcap comedy where nothing is taken seriously. Instead it seemed simply silly, and way, way, way too long. Lemmon has some moments, particularly as the Crown Prince look-a-like of Professor Fate, but Curtis is remarkably fey here, and has no discernible sense of comedy. I found the whole thing tedious. I wanted to turn it off. I pleaded with the powers-that-be to have them sink on the iceberg. If it weren't for Wood's clothes and the Crown Prince, I would have found nothing to recommend it. It rocked my world, but not in a good way.

Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963)

Based on a Larry McMurtry novel, this is the story of a cattle rancher (Melvyn Douglas) and his son (Paul Newman) at the end of an era - when ranching was bigger than oil in Texas, just barely. The father, Homer Bannon, is the personification of all that is good, moral, and right, and his son Hud is just the opposite. The characters and drama are so complicated and good-naturedly ugly that you want to close your eyes and shut your ears, but you can't. You just can't.

If someone asked me to declare what was best about Hud, I wouldn't be able to do it. The crisp, fine writing (Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch)...the impeccable acting...the amazing, absolutely brilliant cinematography (James Wong Howe)...okay - I might say cinematography, but then I'll remember Douglas standing on the steps and I'll say acting, and then I'll remember such lines as "Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire," and I'll say writing.

As the story unfolds, Douglas, representing the past (the good old days of ranching, building things, growing things, nurturing things, being a man and standing up for yourself) is slowly edged out by Newman representing the present (oil, money, greed, corruption, selfishness) while Hud's 17-year-old nephew Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde), seduced by Hud while admiring and loving Homer, watches, hopefully representing the future.

The wild card in the deck is the housekeeper Alma (Patricia Neal), the only woman amongst these men...she is attracted and repulsed by Hud, nurturing of Lonnie and respects Homer. But when it comes to a head, she is the drama's catalyst, even though she really doesn't want to be. Her final confrontation with Hud (if you can call it that, since it is so good-natured on the surface, but boiling, tense and horrid underneath) is unbelievably brilliant.

Douglas, Neal, and Howe all won deserved Oscars. Hud really is a magnificent piece of work, and not as well known as it should be. It rocked my world.

©2002 Lovell Mahan-Moutaw
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