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Paul Schrader's Guilty Pleasures

Schrader, Paul. Film Comment15.1 (Jan/Feb 1979): 61-62,80.

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Abstract
Even if Scorpio Rising did not have the mesmerizing appeal of private logic, it would be notable for (at least) three brilliantly conceived cinematic sequences: "Blue Velvet," "Party Lights," and "Torture." (Besides, I can't bear to read another piece about film noir.) To tell the truth, I remember almost nothing about The Heart is a Rebel, except that, toward the end, Ethel Waters sets a little white boy on her lap and sings "His Eye Is on the Sparrow."

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List-making itself is a guilty pleasure, like Twinkies or Fritos. The junk food of criticism - who can resist it? Not me. When asked by FILM COMMENT to do a "Guilty Pleasures" article, I was instantly suckered (even though I found the title redundant). I've selected only a dozen films, more or less at random and for reasons I don't fully comprehend. I could have selected a hundred more forbidden favorites, but who wants a three-course meal of Twinkies and Fritos? Besides, anything Scorsese can do, I can do less. Scorpio Rising (1963, Kenneth Anger). Without doubt this is the most influential (and rippedoff) experimental film ever made. Scorpio has a brilliance that only private logic can provide. Anger so deeply believes the gay/biker ethos that his belief is in itself seductive. He is the Cline of the cinema. In the film, Anger plays a leather boy Hitler who exorts his fellow bikers onto the final run. Even if Scorpio Rising did not have the mesmerizing appeal of private logic, it would be notable for (at least) three brilliantly conceived cinematic sequences: "Blue Velvet," "Party Lights," and "Torture." I have seen Scorpio more often than any film, more often than Pickpocket. Wavelength (Michael Snow). I think Snow would be pleased to see Wavelength included in a "Guilty Pleasures" list. Wavelength was so self-consciously conceived as high art that it is a credit to its greatness that it can also be appreciated as low art. When I first saw Wavelength I hated it (perhaps because, as P. Adams Sitney wrote, it is a film that can be understood only after it is over). I thought it was a manipulative gimmick, a one-dimension insight, a sight gag. But it so upset me, I decided to see it again. And again. Now I feel it is profound

profoundly one-dimensional. Snow's films remind me of Ad Reinhardt's paintings. They lack the spiritual transcendence of Bresson or Rothko, but instead have a simple yibrance which at times seems very much like transcendance. In either case, I look forward to seeing it again because I know when the camera closes in on that still photo of the sea and I hear the waves pounding, my heart will beat faster and my soul - even if it doesn't leap - will at least stutterstep. Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964, Herschell Gordon Lewis). When I first saw Two Thousand Maniacs! on a double bill with Blood Feast at a drive-in in Zeeland, Michigan, I knew I was neither a well nor a healthy person. I loved it. The plot is simple: two carfulls of attractive Northern couples arrive in a southern town on the one-hundredth anniversary of that town's Civil War defeat. The 2,000 locals make their visitors honorary guests - and proceed to torture them to death in increasingly gruesome ways. In one scene a Southern beau takes a yankee girl on a picnic where, tenderly holding her hand, he cuts her thumb off. Later, her boyfriend is treated to a barbeque of her arms and legs. Another couple is invited to a "barrel roll." After the yankee couple crawl into their barrels, their peckerwood hosts drive long spikes into the barrels and push them down the hill. In a 1973 interview, Lewis stated that his films anticipated the style of Peckinpah and Bonnie and Clyde. He was right. The Heart is a Rebel (1958, Dick Ross). This film, which was made by Worldwide Pictures, part of the Billy Graham organization, was one of the first I ever saw. Someone should do a study of religious films. They are commercially far more successful than most cineastes realize. They deal, however simplisticly, with metaphysical problems - subjects far more serious than most "serious" films. If Close Encounters can be discussed as a spiritual film, then Born Again deserves the same consideration. There's a lot to be learned from a sociological and structural study of this genre. (Besides, I can't bear to read another piece about film noir.) To tell the truth, I remember almost nothing about The Heart is a Rebel, except that, toward the end, Ethel Waters sets a little white boy on her lap and sings "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." For that reason alone, I'd love to see it again. True Heart Suzie (1919, D.W. Griffith) meets all the specifications for a guilty pleasure: a mawkish melodrama which equally touches the heart and appalls the intellect. Suzie is not the best or most exciting Griffith - my candidates would be Intolerence, Broken Blossoms, and Dream Street - but it is the purest, and hence my favorite. Although set in Indiana, True Heart Suzie is Griffith at his old-Kentucky-home sincerest. Griffith was a film revolutionary and a moral reactionary. He was always on the search for new ways to validate outdated morals. By 1919, Griffith's love for his protagonists, Lillian Gish and Robert Harron, was as estranged from public opinion as Anger's love for his bikers was in 1964. The final tide of Suzie is a testament to Griffith's aggressive nostalgia: "And we may believe they walk again as they did long years ago." Decision at Sundown (1957, Budd Boetticher) is probably the worst of the justifiably praised Ranown cycle of "B" westerns. (The title "Ranown" derives from the fact that they starred Randolph Scott and were produced by Harry Joe Brown.) They were all directed by Boetticher and written by either Charles Lang or Burt Kennedy. The Ranown cycle also includes

Seven Men From Now, The Tall T, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lone- some, and Commanche Station. Decision at Sundown is my emotional favorite be- cause it comes directly to the point. In each of the Ranown films, Randolph Scott, a lone moral man, seeks revenge for a dead or missing wife or friend. In Sundown, Bart Allison (Randolph Scott), while holed up in a barn with sidekick Noah Beery Jr. , learns that the dead wife whose honor he is avenging was in fact a loose Civil War piece of ass. But he will hear none of it; his revenge is too pure to be influenced by reality. He goes on to kill the villain whose only crime is that he was one of several to screw Allison's wife during the war. For a man like Allison, revenge is platonic. The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1963, Joseph Green). A surgeon (Jason Evers) artificially preserves the decapitated head of his lover while he searches for a new body for her. Meanwhile, her head grows to hate him. Need I say more? Peeping Tom (1969, Michael Powell) succeeds in spite of itself. Although designed as a cinematic trompe l'oeil (with a film-within-the-film, inside jokes, obvious symbols, and cameo roles), it succeeds as a character study. Through the maze of Powell's gamesmanship emerges a true character: Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), a secretive, lonely, passionate young man for whom voyeurism, cinema, and violence are the same. Peeping Tom is a cineaste's secret treasure. Every pale, overweight, lonely film student who has spent hours in dark rooms watching old movies cannot help but identify with this film. I, the Jury (1953, Harry Essex). Lousy movie (Biff Elliott trying to play a British Mike Hammer), but great cinematography: John Alton. Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais). Film critics have spent so much time in recent years dumping on this film as the prototypal, vacuous "art" film that we've forgotten how dazzling and seductive it is. Fess up, film buffs: Marienbad, for all its obfuscation, is a lot better than any film that Nick Ray ever made. Fifteen years ago, critics led the backlash against European art films in favor of the American cinema. It is ironic that it is now the filmmakers, not the critics, who are leading the counterbacklash against American films toward European cinema. A growing number of American films are turning to the European classics for their stylistic inspiration. The ones that come immediately to mind are Bobby Deerfield (A Man and a Woman), The Driver (Le Samurai), Interiors (Cries and Whispers), Taxi Driver (Pickpocket). While watching Interiors, I warmly remembered the opening lines of Marienbad: "Once again I walk on, once again, down these corridors, through these halls, these galleries, in this structure. ..." Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967, John Huston). This, like One-Eyed Jacks and The Friends of Eddie Coy Ie, is a wonderful American film which has been shuffled off into the far reaches of trivia. Brian Keith's characterization of Lt. Col. Langdon is the best work he's done in film - a major performance. And the short scene in which Brando applies makeup in front of the mirror is a classic in itself - in its way, the equal of all of Last Tango. Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953, Charles Lamount). I agree with Scorsese and Michael Chapman on this one and recommend that it be retired into the permanent collection of "Guilty Pleasures."

And beyond these twelve, I would include any pornography whatsoever; or, barring that, Taxi Driver, the best epitaph a guilty pleasure-seeker could ask for. AuthorAffiliation Paul Schrader's second film as writerdirector, Hard Core, is scheduled for February release.

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Indexing (details)
Subjects Title Authors Publication title Volume Issue Pages Number of pages Publication year Publication Date Year Publisher Place of Publication Country of publication Journal Subjects ISSN CODEN Source type Language of Publication Document type Document Features Subfile ProQuest Document ID Document URL Motion pictures Paul Schrader's Guilty Pleasures Schrader, Paul Film Comment 15 1 61-62,80 3 1979 Jan/Feb 1979 1979 Film Society of Lincoln Center New York United States Motion Pictures 0015119X FLMCAU Scholarly Journals English Commentary Photographs Motion pictures 210243154 http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/

docview/210243154?accountid=10226 Copyright Last updated Database Copyright Film Society of Lincoln Center Jan/Feb 1979 2010-06-08 3 databases -ABI/INFORM Complete -ProQuest Central -ProQuest Research Library

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