Some have called it one of the worst films ever made, and a Pulitzer Prize winning writer called it a masterpiece. I couldn't remember why I had vague notions of dislike attached to the movie--dislike from others, I mean--until I started wandering around trying to find out why. It wasn't hard; a lot of people seem to think the movie is just irretrievably awful, though it's the only film Sam Peckinpah ever had final cut on, and the one he apparently called his most personal. It's to be expected--just look at the title!--that this is not a film that was going to do anything to shake his nickname of Bloody Sam. I have seen many Peckinpah films, actually, which is unusual when I'm reviewing something by a director whose name is so well known, but this time I can point to reviews of The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Ride the High Country, and say I've also seen The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Straw Dogs and The Getaway.

Theresa (Janine Maldonado) is the young daughter of the clearly powerful El Jefe (Emilio Fernández), who summons her with tough guys who say her father is asking for her. She's pregnant and the way she clutches at her belly makes it clear that this child is relevant to her summons. Taken in hand by the two men, Theresa is held roughly and El Jefe demands to know who the father of her child is. Shrinking in no way from finding this out by any means necessary, he pries the name from his daughter--Alfredo Garcia. He offers a million dollars to whoever brings him the head of Garcia, a veritable caravan of eager, greedy bounty hunters leaving his estate to find the man. Spreading out, Quill (Gig Young) and Sappensly (Robert Webber, more on him later) wander into a bar after trying numerous other leads, and find a man behind a piano (Warren Oates), playing and chatting up the customers of the bar. They latch onto this man, Bennie, when no one else will give them any information. They offer him a miniscule chunk of cash for his services, and he accepts, following his own local contacts. He's told that Elita (Isela Vega) is most likely to know Garcia's whereabouts, which leads him to a swearing bout, because Elita is his girlfriend (albeit a prostitute). Elita tells him that Garcia is already dead because of an accident, and so Bennie decides to gamble for more money from the bounty hunters. He argues them up to ten thousand, and heads off. Unknowingly, he and Elita are followed by two of the other bounty hunters already on Garcia's trail.

It's worth noting that the Pulitzer Prize winning writer is deserving of it for his writing skill, but it's also worth noting that he's a colossal moron. I'm speaking, of course, of Roger Ebert. The unfortunate fact of this is that he's not consistently wrong OR right. He hates movies for stupid reasons, or praises them for worse ones. So, that does not mean that I should have felt dread if I'd known he said this was a masterpiece, nor excitement. I don't know Michael Medved's opinions or qualities very well, so I have little to say about his claim that this is one of the worst movies ever made, except that I was pretty sure he'd seen enough movies to have actual bad ones on such a list. Shows what I know about him, I guess.

This (as the "Peckinpah Scholars" commentary suggest repeatedly) is not an easy film. It's not a fun film--though it can be funny--and it's not a pleasant one. It's dark and it's violent (most people expect these things if they know Sam, though, at least) and it's thoroughly unrelenting in its cynical feeling about humanity and the world. Many people die (the trailer claims 25, I feel that's probably rounded, even if it's rounded up, but am not the type to go back and count), there are some unpleasant scenes of brief torture and assault and the like, and a pair of bikers (Kris Kristofferson and Donny Fritts) come upon Bennie and Elita in the wilderness only to take a liking to her--with an obvious end intention. Bennie and Elita are sympathetic characters, even if likable may or may not be the right word, to it's not a hollow or detached set of unpleasant events either. That isn't to say that the film is just crushingly depressing or hopeless in tone, but rather in its "message" about the world. It moves along and doesn't leave you with that feeling that you just want it to end because it's so horrifically awful, but you are still shaking your head and hoping something goes just a little better. There's a secret satisfaction that this hinges on, as we do have a protagonist to get through the whole movie with, after all. We know we've got Bennie to the end for sure, because this story can't continue without him.

Oates is not an actor whose work I know very well. I've seen small roles from him in 1941 (and considering I've forgotten most of that movie, it's no surprise, I think, that I don't remember him in it), Badlands, Shenandoah, Ride the High Country, Stripes and In the Heat of the Night. I honestly couldn't tell you where in any of those, so I'm left primarily with The Wild Bunch, where I still don't have a role held down in my head. He's fantastic here, allegedly playing a version of Sam himself, an ex-pat in Mexico who thinks of himself as a tough guy but who stumbles when faced with actual tough men. He doesn't lack the actual skill (he's pretty good with a gun), but he is miserable at the attitude and the mannerism. Gig Young and Robert Webber show the opposite, both cold and calculating in their approach to the whole business, disinterested in anything else and willing to do anything to get what they want. This was a bit disorienting when Webber's face kept floating through my head as someone with glasses and an easy, friendly manner of speech. I couldn't identify the role until I looked back through his work and there it was: 12 Angry Men. He was the ad-exec with funny anecdotes who didn't pay attention at first. This is essentially a complete opposite role, as he is absolutely creepy and terrifying as a clearly psychopathic sadist. Vega has the right balance to match Oates, an outward vulnerability of sorts--playing on accepted social conditions for women--that hides a superior strength, unlike Oates' attempts to be a tough guy that make him look ridiculous.

There's a lot to be said about the film in terms of its expressions of love lost or unrecognized, the possible costs of greed, the nature of revenge and trying to achieve it (and I mean this in the Chan-Wook Park sense, incidentally). This is most of what makes it unhappy as a film, because we see a certain madness encroach on Bennie, as well as the circling whirlwind of violence that surrounds the search for Alfredo Garcia's head. Not everyone harmed is even involved, some are completely innocent, but the greed and vengeance drive violence into their vicinity and bring violence into their lives anyway. Bennie manages to maintain his "innocence" in the audience's eyes not by avoiding moral transgressions, but by justifying them. Not justifying in a way that makes them acceptable, but in a way that tells us both that he is trying to convince himself and believes what he says after a fashion, and that he is really not completely sure, but has devoted himself to this and to trying to get this, this last chance to escape his dead-end job.


So, was Ebert wrong? Not this time, not at all. The film is clearly doing exactly what it intends to, with all of its violence and darkness, and it does it very, very well.

I'm always a sucker for any film at least three decades old that receives some kind of special features-heavy DVD release, if it looks like the studio behind it really put their backs into moving things onto the discs. If I've heard of the film, I'll probably pick it up if the fancy edition drops to a price I consider reasonable. It doesn't guarantee I'll like it, but it generally means it's a film I "should" see. It's worse when it comes to musicals, which depend on someone's interest in the songs to a degree, or can, for some people. That means asking for opinions can be an iffy process, and that it's sort of a crapshoot picking such a thing up. Doesn't generally stop me, of course, as I have to treat musicals as crapshoots most of the time since I've watched so few in the first place, due to an early dislike of them.

Tevye (Chaim Topol, usually credited, like here, as just Topol) is the father of five girls in the village of Anatevka in Tsarist Russia. He introduces us to the village and describes its general nature and overall attitude toward the world, any white lies he tells easily countered by the scenery and characters behind him. Tradition is established as the order of the day with the first song, and then there is a brief interlude for the credits, after which we learn of the village matchmaker Yente (Molly Picon) and her news of a match found for Tevye's oldest, Tzeitel (Rosalind Harris), the rich butcher Lazar Wolf* (Paul Mann). The daughters closest in age to Tzeitel are excited at the idea of news for her because it means they're next, and next eldest Hodel (Michele Marsh) and Chava (Neva Small) sing of their hopes, only to have Tzeitel interrupt with her cynical fears that infect the rest. Tevye's wife Golde (Norma Crane) is the one who speaks to Yente and sends Tevye to meet with Lazar Wolf and attempt to broker an agreement for the arranged marraige. Tzeitel, though, wants to marry the poverty-stricken tailor Motel (Leonard Frey). Tevye is confronted with this affront to tradition that he values so much, and has to decide whether to relent, only to have his other daughters follow in her footsteps. Drifting revolutionary Perchik (Michael Glaser) catches the eye of Hodel, while the gentile Fyedka (Raymond Lovelock) catches Chava's. Interrupting this is also the encroaching policy of pogroms, brought about through the local Constable (Louis Zorich), who attempts to be reasonable within an unreasonable set of orders.

There's certainly more to the plot, and of course songs push the running time until it ends up just a tiny bit over three hours in total. This is no surprise for a musical from a stageplay, really, because many of those run such lengths anyway. It doesn't feel too long, though, and in fact runs about as quickly as three hours can. Not exactly "Really? Three hours?" sort of quick, but not "Ugh, is this over yet?" at all. There was complaint when the film was being made that Zero Mostel was not being cast as Tevye, because he had originated the Broadway role, but Topol did at least originate it in London. It was really Topol who put my foot into the door of watching this; I caught a flash of it once, about six years ago, while at the home of a friend of my then-girlfriend's parents** and was intrigued (but more interested, at the time, in my girlfriend and the--I think it was Christmas, that or Thanksgiving--dinner that was awaiting). I found him intriguing and interesting. He's not a perfectly pretty face, but has a strong voice and character. The dancing used in "If I Were a Rich Man" was what I caught, and I found it terribly interesting. Apologies to Mostel, but I can't separate him from The Producers in my head, and that just seems a bit weird for Tevye in my brain (though it probably wouldn't be if I saw it, really).

Topol is definitely the best part of the movie as a whole. When the story shifted to Perchik and Hodel in particular, I cringed a little. Occasionally Glaser looked a bit too much like he was picked for his looks, as did Marsh. Glaser and Lovelock both had the obnoxious--usually seemingly stage-born--habit of enunciating by edging in a hint of a posh British accent (stretched R's, for instance). It's grating, especially when surrounded by people working with Yiddish accents and mannerisms (Picon probably being the most enthusiastic about taking on such cultural mores). Neither really had the charisma, background or fire to really sell this, either, so it's a little nudge at the suspension of disbelief (or maybe a child jumping up and down on the bridge--suspension and all that). And Marsh's singing voice made me think she was only considering the song and singing, and not the character. This is one of the things I find offputting in musicals when it occurs, so it made the scenes with Marsh and Glaser the most uncomfortable. These are just nudges though, thankfully, especially because they are nowhere near the leading roles. Mann is probably the next most exciting actor, with a nice whiplash-inducing mood change in him.

The approach Norman Jewison took in directing this (after reminding the producers who called him in that, despite the suggestive name, he's not Jewish) is the kind that works best in adapting stage musicals: he envelops the feel of the stage musical in film-dressing, giving it the kind of life that preserves its origins while giving it something that original medium cannot. Dancing is never a focal point in a scene (with the possible exception of Topol's solo dancing), nor is singing. It's never framed to say, "And now they're going to dance!" or "Here's an actor singing!" There's no way to make someone bursting into song feel completely realistic or believable (even if some people might actually burst into song in reality, it's rarely so perfectly relevant), but it is possible to make it seem less jarring. That's what's achieved here, with framing and filming done to treat most of these scenes like dialogue in the way actors play and in the way the camera follows them. There's a different rhythm and movement inherent in this because they are singing and not talking, but it's not the rhythm that really draws one's eye to the fact of the song. The minimal dancing usually takes place only where appropriate: characters dance at a wedding, or in drunken celebration at a bar, or to express joy in a way that is not overly choreographed in feeling. Probably the most constructed of these scenes is the bar, where a group of Russians comes in to congratulate Tevye on the upcoming marriage of his daughter. They reel out dances that are widely recognized as "Russian," and often do so in clear lines or groups, but it all comes off through its cultural association as a way of establishing the Russians and matched to the appropriate nature of dancing in the scene, it doesn't come off strangely. It's also filmed from peculiar angles, and always with stationary crowds around watching (usually the Jews, who are somewhat confused by and wary of this intrusion), many from under a table or chair, resulting in a focus on feet without following them in an unnatural way.

The extra techniques included were most clear whenever Tevye was faced with some kind of decision as to whether to let others encroach on the way his life was currently being lived. First Lazar Wolf is frozen while Tevye ponders "aloud"--though the freezing of course tells us it is not aloud at all--whether to agree to let him marry Tzeitel. It occurs again whenever confronted with his daughters, though now, instead of freezing, they are suddenly many yards away from where they just were, which was right next to him. It's a clever method of continuing Tevye's established habit of asides, first with his narration and later with his discussions with God, which is always filmed with Tevye in the foreground and simply looking out of the scene in some direction that is near the camera (without being the camera). It's very effective and feels right for the character--as does, curiously, his tendency to burst into song, or dance (which he mostly just does with "If I Were a Rich Man"). There's a moment that comes from not from the camera or Jewison though--unless he suggested it--but from Topol that was probably my favourite. It's strange and momentary, but it was a perfect encapsulation of the character of Tevye, or at least what I liked about him. He's about to sing "Do You Love Me" to Golde, and he begins to get into the subject by picking aimlessly at a door frame, almost as if he were a child preparing to tell his childhood crush that he liked her. Tevye is like this; he's stubborn and interested in tradition, but is an honourable and good man and measures things, discussing them with God and trying to get a feel for what the truth is--even if it violates his previously held beliefs.

The songs are not all as catchy as the ones that I think are the most famous ("If I Were a Rich Man" and "Matchmaker"), but that may be due to the fact that I have not heard them near so much. Still, none bear the marks of unpleasant musical convention for me--though they often happily end on the horn blast that marks the moment where the cast would freeze in some productions of any musical--perhaps thanks to John Williams' choices in arranging them, but I imagine more due to the songs themselves. This is perhaps the most important element of the film for some people, but not me. I like to think of musicals as a medium in the genre sense--a way of telling a story and conveying an idea (like the changing of traditions and the established way, in this case) rather than a showcase for the elements of the medium or genre. To draw an absurd comparison (albeit one that shouldn't be surprising from me), it's the difference between horror that uses the fantastic for itself and as part of a story, and horror that throws a story out as a showcase for gory setpiece murders. It's possible to blur the line (in horror AND musicals, I mean), but that's not at issue here. This is definitely more a story being told that happens to have good songs in it, which makes sense since it did come from stories originally. Regardless of the detail, though, this is how I like my musicals.


*I harp on the morons who wouldn't stop laughing at the dog named "Homo" in The Man Who Laughed, but I definitely heard this name and thought, "...I did not just hear that." I continued to think that for the rest of the movie, then read the credits and yes, barring a little spelling, I DID hear that. I did not, however, laugh aloud at it--even though I was by myself. It's weird, but it's a name that happens to sound like Laser Wolf. That doesn't mean it IS Laser Wolf. Even if that's exactly what you hear. Over and over.

**Sorry, unless I just made up the relation, I couldn't make that any simpler.