This underseen Elmore Leonard-penned project about a prominent LA industrialist blackmailed for his infidelity cruises through the seedy LA crime underworld in the same way Chinatown and other LA-based noir films before it. But as a time capsule of the decade, for better or worse, it’s also burdened with the vulgarities of 1980’s cinema.
Grand Prix (1966) dir. John Frankenheimer
Starring: James Garner, Toshiro Mifune, Eva Marie Saint, Brian Bedford, Antonio Sabato
**
By Alan Bacchus
Grand Prix is an incredibly thrilling, unbelievably real dramatization of what it’s like to be in a real Formula One race, a film so authentic, a 15-minute reel compiled by director John Frankenheimer managed to convince the finicky owner of Ferrari to lend him all the rights to his team name, logo and even manufacturing facility. Impressive, but the film is also boring as hell and damned near unwatchable. Why such contradictory feelings?
The fact is car racing as fictionalized, dramatic entertainment just isn’t exciting. Secondly, whenever the cameras are not covering the races, it’s dull as dishwater. The characters, conflicts and relationships sag like soggy bellbottoms, inert and immobile like airless Goodyear tires.
Technically, it’s a monumental achievement. It was made in 1966, shot on the Super Panavision system in 70 mm and presented in CINERAMA! For strict authenticity, Frankenheimer had his actors driving real race cars on the same track used by Formula One racers and in some cases driving in an actual race. The bulky 70 mm cameras were strapped to the cars for the rugged, intense feelings of being inside an actual car. Helicopter shots cover the race with awesome epic feeling. What does this translate to? Some of the most spectacular imagery ever shot for a dramatic film. Watching Frankenheimer’s wide-angle lens in the pristine 70 mm format up close on James Garner’s face travelling at high speed around the track is stupendous.
This film, now in the height of race season, is available on pristine Blu-ray. It looks great, but by golly, how it must have looked in Cinerama! I will probably never get to experience this, and so without this medium of spectacle much of the film is lost on the small screen.
The actual narrative mostly serves as a coat hanger for the racing. Four racers, James Garner as the American, Yves Montand as the Frenchman, Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese and Brian Bedford as the Brit compete in a Formula One season. Some interpersonal relationships and sexual encounters add some mild spice to the mix, but clearly the film is built to show cars going fast.
Racing today uses the same camera angles as Frankenheimer did, and so with today's eyes Grand Prix is like watching a regular Formula One race. So what's so special about that? With historical context in place, audiences never ever saw the camera angles. It was a new world opened up and a highly dramatic effect we can't discount. But because of my young age, I can only guess at this. Either way, it's very difficult to truly appreciate the spectacle in the present.
So for gearheads and Formula One fans, this might be the last word on racing on film, and thus a worthy Blu-ray pick-up. But it’ll be a struggle through each and every minute off the track. Feel free to fast forward.
Grand Prix is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) dir. John Frankenheimer
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh
****
By Alan Bacchus
John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate predated the trend of cynical political films of the 1970s by eight years or more. Born from deep distrust of the actions of the American intelligence community during the Cold War, and in the 1960s, at a time when John F. Kennedy was about to be assassinated by the same establishment, it was at the time shockingly prophetic and powerful. Today, the film's skewered notion of heroism feels as dark, scathing and dangerous to the establishment now as it did then.
Frank Sinatra is Major Bennett, the leader of a platoon of soldiers captured by Korean forces. However, the platoon fights its way home, eventually winning a Congressional Medal of Honor for Raymond Shaw (Harvey). But when a recurring bad dream reveals itself to Bennett as a brainwashing experiment by the Communists while in prison, he is compelled to uncover the details of an astonishing plot of political assassination and government subversion
The picture was famously pulled and its theatrical released delayed due to the unfortunate timing of the JFK assassination. And this was even before the conspiracy theory connected with the CIA was discovered. This is just the background context and historical relevance of the film. As a movie-going experience in the present, John Frankenheimer’s cooly stylish direction is still as exciting now as it was then. At the time it was his third film after a long and successful career directing during the Golden Era of Television in the '50s. After all that experience with practically helping invent the medium, Frankenheimer brought a hip freshness to the big screen. His sharp black and white photography used the moody tones of film noir, as well as the deep focus visual aesthetic of Orson Welles. His editing was sharp and predated many of the experimental techniques used later in the decade.
Looking back, few would argue that the lasting performance of the picture belongs to Angela Lansbury, the diabolical matriarch and puppet master of the big picture conspiracy at play. We can’t help but think of Mama Islen as a mix of Nancy Reagan and Joe Kennedy.
Watch the terrific editing in the dream sequences, during which Bennett and his troops are subjected to the terrifying brainwashing ordeal. Intercutting the two realities for the troops – the audience of communist officials watching the session in delight and the troop’s point of view of the elderly ladies book club – produces a delightfully terrifying scope of horror conducted by these powers that be.
The film magnificently reveals its cards carefully over its 126 minutes, ringing all the terror and suspense up to its violent and powerful climax in the end.
The Manchurian Candidate is available on Blu-ray from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
The French Connection II (1975) dir. John Frankenheimer Starring: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Bernard Fresson
**
The idea of making a sequel to “The French Connection” set in Marseilles, with Gene Hackman and Fernando Rey reprising their famous roles and directed by action-auteur/innovator John Frankenheimer is fascinating. But it’s no surprise this film has largely been forgotten in the discussion of sequels made from great films. While it expands on Popeye Doyle’s obsessive vulnerabilities and character flaws, it lacks most of the edge, pace and street-wise intensity for it to stand alongside the original classic.
As we remember from the first film ‘Frog #1’ escaped the clutches of Popeye Doyle’s chasing. In the final titles we were told that the real Alan Charnier escaped to France without ever being caught. In this sequel Frankheimer departs from the true-life story and uses Doyle and Charnier strictly as characters based on fiction. We see Doyle arriving in Marseilles and meet up with his French equivalent Barthélémy who has summoned Doyle to assist in their investigation. But immediately Doyle’s treated like second class, and revealed to be no more than a pawn used as bait to entrap Charnier.
Doyle just can’t hide his wild 'Ugly American’ go-for-broke, fuck-the-authorities personality as he quickly rubs the French the wrong way. In one of the most audacious and intense character obstacles I’ve ever seen written into a genre film, Doyle is kidnapped by Charnier and tortured by injecting him with heroin for 12 days in an attempt to get him addicted. Doyle eventually escapes, and after recovering from the ordeal, becomes even more maniacal in his desire to get Charnier. Like an unchained mad dog Doyle torches Charnier’s hotel literally smoking the man out of hiding for a final confrontation.
John Frankenheimer is no hack and, in 1975, had an impressive body of work – a unique mix of artistically-rendered mainstream films. The second act kidnapping scenes have Frankenheimer's distinct touch. We’re reminded of the mind-bending torture Frank Sinatra’s character is exposed to in “The Manchurian Candidate” and even Rock Hudson’s psychedelic headtrips in “Seconds”. Its placement smack in the middle of the second act and its near 15mins running time make it a laborious hump for audiences to cross over. It stops the film dead in it’s tracks unable to recover.
The Marseilles setting was a fresh way for Frankeheimer to distance himself from the original version and create his own vision. Frankenheimer retains Friedkin’s on-location shooting methodology though and even shoots the film with unaware bystanders freely roaming the streets. On a number of occasions we can even see the onlookers blocked off in the background and often catch the odd pedestrian looking right down the barrel of the camera.
Frankenheimer's action and chase sequences are adequate but never come close to topping the original. If “The French Connection II” were not a sequel to the greatest cop flick ever made, then we perhaps would not be as disappointed.
“The French Connection II” released by 20th Century Fox in Blu-Ray contains two commentaries, including one by the late Frankenheimer himself. Frankenheimer’s dialogue is interesting, as he describes his trepidations in filming a sequel to such a successful film and his relationship with Hackman who was one of the driving forces of the sequel.
