This months matchup between Wood and Polanski gives us one of the larger gaps between the directors. After looking back it appears that Chaplin vs. Anderson had a longer stretch between actual dates of films but I felt that Chaplin back in the 20s had a more modern mindset in filmmaking than most directors we’ve seen. But Sam Wood did not. In fact Wood may be the oldest feeling director I’ve seen.
Chinatown (1976) – In all honestly I think I need to reveal that Chinatown is one of my all time favorite films and is one of the films I would point to if I needed to produce a perfect American film. While the plot doesn’t sound all the different from a thousand films that came after it Chinatown did it first and in most cases best. JJ Gitts(Jack Nicolson) an LA detective gets hired by a woman to investigate her husband who may be cheating on her. Nicolson in one of his most recognizable characters ever quickly uncovers a hidden secret that leads him down a rabbit hole of LA sleaze, power, and corruption. Notable performances come from Faye Dunaway playing the femme fatale and John Huston a director we’ll see later in the contest playing the iconic Noah Cross.
Nicolson is the perfect blend of brilliant fool doing a half Phllip Marlow half arrogant prick that has the audience constantly looking the wrong way only to realize in the end just how over his head he really is. Polanski’s script somehow feels fresher today than it did when I first saw it in my teens and if possible is perhaps even more innovative after watching 10 years of half baked rip-offs. There isn’t much more to say here that hasn’t been written a thousand other places so I’ll just skip all the gushing praise other than to say that if you haven’t caught this one it should be the next movie you watch.
King’s Row (1942) No matter what we watched from Sam Wood it wasn’t gonna match Chinatown but King’s Row really showed a class difference between the two directors. King’s Row is the story of a small New England town that beneath the idyllic surface has just as much evil coursing through its veins as any large city. The plot centers around a pair of friends Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings) and Drake McHugh (Ronald Regan) whose lives head in completely different directions following childhood. The two are childhood friends who grow up together one going to medical school becoming a psychologist and the other the town’s woman chaser. Mitchell has a strange incident where his girlfriend is murdered by an overprotective father and McHugh’s life takes a strange turn after a bizarre train accident where a former girlfriend’s father decides to unnecessarily remove his legs to prevent her from marrying him. These plot points may sound strangely interesting but the execution is sloppy and most of the tense moments are overacted to the point of ridiculousness.
The film for me was most notable for its inability to mention sex in any way despite being filled with characters obviously having sex. Apparently the book the film was based on was a steamy bestseller but the self imposed Hayes code of the 1930s and 40s prevented the film from mentioning sex or sexual acts so what you end up with is a jumbled mess.
The Pianist (2002) By 2002 almost every film you could make about the Holocaust had already been made. Almost a decade had passed since Spielberg’s epic and emotional Schindler’s List, half a decade since the “dark comedy” Life is Beautiful, there had been about a dozen versions of Diary of Anne Frank, and Europa Europa had shown the near unbelievable story of a Jew turned undercover Nazi.
So by the time Polanski, who himself escaped German persecution as a child, turned the camera around to that subject matter he would really need to search to do something different. He decided to go with the personal story of Władysław Szpilman (Adriane Brody in the Best Actor winning performance of his career) a Polish_Jewish pianist who barely survives the Holocaust. To be honest I was a little disappointed with start of this film. We start with Szpilman at the beginning of the German occupation and watch his family slowly coming the realization of what the Nazis are doing. Unfortunately Polanski decides to do this by having the family going through bland dialogue detailing each moment of what the Germans are doing. But what this film will be known for are the long tracking shots of destruction and personalized battle scenes and of course Brody’s intense physical acting as he becomes near unrecognizable near the end. The scene that I think will stick with me the most is where Brody is running to escape a squad of Germans turning flamethrowers on houses and he struggles to climb a stone wall revealing miles and miles of destroyed buildings off into the distance. Based on the way it was shot I am convinced there was no CGI used or only used sparingly and Polanski must have found a way to destroy 10 city blocks worth of buildings.
Pride of that Yankees (1942) – This is possibly the most disappointing film I’ve seen since the showdown started. Considering this film led to a Best Picture nomination and a best actor nomination for Gary Cooper and one of the film’s most iconic movie lines I cannot believe how bad this was. The film is a bio pic of Lou Gehrig and for those who don’t know Lou Gehrig was the first ballot hall of fame first baseman for the New York Yankees probably best known for his streak of 1000 plus consecutive starts and for being an all-around no drama good guy who died at a young age of a disease that would eventually be named for him. To be honest there is really nothing worth noting from this film. The director seemed to make every wrong decision and that acting is horrible. I think the biggest problem is that the film was completed and released within 17 months of Gehrig’s actual death and absolutely every frame of this film seems to be dedicated to preserving his heroic iconic status. For the first two hours of this film Gehrig is simply going through life succeeding at everything he tries, doing everything honestly, and always seeing the bright side of everything not that he has anything to grumble about. Then Gehrig discovers what will eventually kill him and he struggles through that and dies gracefully. I’ve never seen a film that made the life of an elite pro baseball player seem boring. Bottom line: This film has the depth of a Sesame Street episode.
Polanski runs away with it in what might be one of the most lopsided contests we’ve had yet.
