Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Tucker: The Man and His Dream was another of the offbeat, ambitious films made by Francis Ford Coppola in the 80s and 90s. It was a box-office failure, although not on the same scale as One From the Heart.

It’s based on the real life story of Preston Tucker, who attempted to challenge the automotive giants of Detroit with a highly advanced futuristic new car design. The attempt was a fiasco, only 50 cars were ever built, and Tucker was lucky to avoid a long prison sentence for fraud. Tucker’s supporters have always insisted that he was the victim of a concerted plan by the established car-makers to destroy a possible competitor.

Coppola’s movie certainly presents a very romanticised and idealised depiction of Tucker as a visionary genius and as the heroic little guy fighting against impossible odds.

The Second World War has just ended and Preston Tucker (Jess Bridges) has decided that the time is right to make his dream a reality. He will build the car of the future for Americans. The Tucker Torpedo is a daring innovative design with a host of advanced features that would not in reality become common for decades. It’s a car for a society about to enter the Jet Age.

Unfortunately all Tucker actually has are a few drawings and some ideas. None of the ideas have been properly worked out. He has no money at all. And no factory.

With the help of financier Abe Karatz (Martin Landau) he sets out to raise money, by methods that are imaginative and risky.

He gets a factory, in fact the biggest factory in the world. And now he has a major problem. The Tucker Torpedo does not exist. There is no prototype. It hasn’t even reached the model stage. Building a prototype will take at least nine months and Tucker has just 60 days. The prototype is built, but corners have to be cut.

Tucker doesn’t realise that immensely powerful corporate and political forces are massing against him.

The movie portrays Tucker as a hero, but also as something of an innocent. And wildly over-confident and over-optimistic. He just cannot or will not understand that he hasn’t got a chance. But the odds against him don’t worry him. His enthusiasm and his belief in his dream are unshakeable.

This is a movie that could not possibly be made today. It doesn’t have the right kind of overt political messaging. In this movie the mega-corporations are the bad guys, but the government and the bureaucracy and politicians are the bad guys as well.

Tucker is a celebration of traditional American values - hard work, determination, the old-fashioned can-do spirit. It’s a reflection of the optimism of the postwar period with the belief in unstoppable scientific and technological progress. And it’s a joyous celebration of the traditional American family. Tucker’s marriage is happy and successful. His wife stands by him without question. He is a good father. His kids like and admire him.

Like One From the Heart and Dracula, 1992 this is a movie that glories in its artificiality. It uses some of the innovative and unconventional techniques used in One From the Heart.

Interestingly Coppola uses innovative techniques but also makes extensive use of classic 1940s filmmaking techniques.

Coppola was aiming for a very 1940s feel, but not a gritty 1940s film noir feel. He was aiming for the feel of promotional advertising films of that era. In fact large parts of the movie are ostensibly Tucker promotional films.

Everything is pastels. Everything is lust and pretty, and deliberately so. And it works.

Coppola makes no concessions to realism. And this is a movie entirely and refreshingly free from irony.

Coppola’s original idea was to do this movie as a musical and it does have a great deal of the breezy romantic whimsical fantasy feel of so many 1940s musicals. Although we know that his car was never going to be a success Tucker’s unquenchable spirit makes it an odd kind of feelgood movie. This is a movie about failure, but it's about heroic failure.

All the performances are good. Jeff Bridges adds some real complexity to Tucker - he’s a good guy, but visionaries can be difficult and they can be self-destructive.

It’s obvious that Coppola felt a very strong kinship with Tucker. Coppola is also a man who follows his dreams and like Tucker he refuses to allow commercial failures to dishearten him.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is in its way inspirational. It’s a movie with real heart. Very highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray looks terrific (this is the kind of visual feast movie that needs Blu-Ray presentation). I have to say that Francis Ford Coppola does delightful audio commentaries for his movies.

Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)

Someone to Watch Over Me is a 1987 Ridley Scott thriller which flopped badly at the box office.

This is very much a movie intended to be about class.

Detective Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) is newly assigned to the Homicide Squad, in fact he’s newly assigned to the Detective Bureau. He lives in a cruddy house in a bad part of Queens, with his wife and kid. They’re far from rich but it’s a happy marriage.

Claire Gregory (Mimi Rogers) is a super-rich Manhattan high society type. She lives in a luxury apartment in Manhattan. Luxury is a pitifully inadequate word to describe it - she lives like royalty. She lives like a princess.

One of her super-rich friends was murdered by big-time gangster Joey Venza (Andreas Katsulas). Claire witnessed the murder. She’s not just the State’s key witness; she’s their only witness. And she’s the one whose evidence could send Venza to the big house for a long stretch.

The cops have to keep Claire safe but at the same time they cannot let her know how much danger she’s in. She might get cold feet about testifying. So they lie to her and tell her there’s no real danger.

Mike Keegan is assigned as one of her babysitters. He’s uncomfortable because he knows that Claire has been lied to. He doesn’t believe that the cops can keep her safe.

Claire and Mike are from different universes. Claire can spend the equivalent of a years’ salary for Mike on one dress. They’re like aliens to each other.

Mike is inexperienced and to be honest he’s not a very good cop. He makes a rookie mistake early on making an arrest. This is his first case as a detective and he’s already being hopelessly unprofessional, getting personally involved with a material witness in a murder case. He’s in way over his head.

Of course Claire and Mike sleep together, of course his wife finds out and of course his career at risk.

The plot is strictly by the numbers. There’s not a single original twist.

This is TV-movie stuff, both in terms of plot and visuals. Competently shot but there’s nothing here to dazzle. It looks like a well-made TV-movie.

So what about the class angle? It’s there but it’s handled in an uninteresting trite way. OK, it’s tough for a working-class stuff and a wealthy socialite if they fall in love. Now that’s an earth-shattering revelation.

The big problem is the two leads. Tom Berenger is boring. He has zero charisma. He has the emotional range of a coffee table.

Most importantly, he’s a passive pathetic whiney loser.

There is no way a rich society dame is going to fall for a guy like this unless he exudes huge amounts of masculine sexual electricity. This guy is about as exciting as a librarian. She already has a rich passive whiney boyfriend. Why would she dump him for a poor passive whiney boyfriend?

Mimi Rogers is also a problem. A married man is not going to be tempted to go after a woman way outside his league unless she’s sexy and glamorous and exciting. Claire is none of these things. It might have helped had she been put in glamorous slinky dresses, but she dresses like a teacher at an up-market community college.

There is zero sexual chemistry between the two leads. And zero passion and zero romantic chemistry. When they kiss for the first time we’re surprised, since they’ve given no indication of being the slightest bit attracted to each other. We just don’t buy the idea that they have become sexually and romantically obsessed with each other.

This is not an erotic thriller. It could be described as an un-erotic thriller or an anti-erotic thriller. It could also be described as an unromantic thriller.

It’s also not a neo-noir since Claire is way too bland to qualify as a femme fatale. She fails to give off any femme fatale vibes.

It’s the casting that sinks this movie. With someone like Richard Gere or, even better, Kurt Russell, it might have worked. We could imagine a rich society dame going weak at the knees for Kurt Russell as a tough masculine working-class cop. And as the female lead, maybe Kim Basinger or Sharon Stone (not yet a major star but she’d had a couple of leading roles by this time). A man might sacrifice everything for a woman like Basinger or Stone.

I really can’t recommend Someone to Watch Over Me to anyone but a Ridley Scott completist.

Breathless (1983)

Breathless is a 1983 neo-noir based on Jean-Luc Godards’ 1960 À bout de souffle. It was directed by Jim McBride.

Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is caught up in a spectacular self-destructive spiral but he doesn’t know it yet. He has to get from Vegas to LA to collect some money so he steals a Porsche.

By the time he reaches LA there’s a dead cop lying by the side of the highway.

He collects his money but to his horror it’s a cheque, not cash. If you’re a regular law-abiding citizen and it’s clean money a cheque is no problem. If you’re a gambler who has not always been on the right side of the law and it’s dirty money a cheque can be a huge drama.

Within a few hours he’s carried out a minor robbery and stolen another car. He should be keeping a law profile but Jesse is just not capable of doing that. He’s extravagant and wild and crazy and he attracts attention everywhere he goes.

He’s intending to head for Mexico with Monica (Valérie Kaprisky) but Monica doesn’t know that yet. He and Monica had a brief but exciting fling in Vegas. Jesse just knows that Monica is the girl for him. Monica is not at all sure that Jesse is the man for her. She’s about to take her degree and begin a successful career. The last thing she needs is to get involved with a crazy irresponsible loser like Jesse.

On the other hand Jesse is a very good-looking sexy bad boy and what girl can resist a guy like that?

Jesse qualifies as an authentic film noir protagonist. He’s a bit of a bad boy but he’s not really evil. He thinks his problems are due to bad luck but in fact they’re the result of his character flaws. The key to Jesse’s character is that he’s a loser who thinks he’s a winner. He’s ludicrously over-confident. He thinks his charm and his confidence will keep him out of serious trouble. He makes one bad decision after another and he has no idea just how deep a hole he is digging for himself.

Richard Gere’s hyperactive charisma-overload performance is perfect. He captures Jesse’s obliviousness to reality very neatly.

Jesse is not conventionally likeable. Having Jesse in your life would be a nightmare. We care what happens to him not because we like him but because he is a hunted animal and all the odds are stacked against him and we know he’ll just keep doing dumb things. He can’t help it. He’s not so much breathless as hopeless and clueless. He’s so dumb and hopeless that we feel that it’s cruel to hunt him down like a feral dog. And somehow Gere manages to persuade us to be on his side.

Monica is not a femme fatale in a conventional sense (she is not scheming or manipulative) but she is a disastrous choice for Jesse. She is way out of his league. He should just head to Mexico without her. Rich respectable girls will always get guys like Jesse in trouble. And Monica is at heart respectable.

Valérie Kaprisky has had a lengthy successful career in France but Breathless seems to have been her only significant Hollywood role.

This movie is as hyperactive as Jesse. This is the only Jim McBride-directed movie I’ve seen but based on this the man knows how to make a wild rollercoaster of a crime thriller. There are definitely touches of dark humour. It’s like Jesse himself. It dares us not to enjoy ourselves.

I love that at one point our couple on the run end up in a movie theatre and the movie that is playing is Gun Crazy, the greatest couple-on-the-run movie ever made.

Jesse lives in a fantasy world in which he’s the hero. He loves comic books and the world of the Silver Surfer is more real to him than the real world. And the movie to an extent takes us into Jesse’s fantasy world. We’re seeing the world the way Jesse sees it. We’re seeing Jesse trying to be a comic-book hero. The movie takes place in a kind of heightened reality.

Apart from that interesting detached from reality vibe this is also a hugely entertaining movie.

Breathless is great stuff. Very highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray includes an appreciation by Mark Kermode which is very worthwhile. I love his enthusiasm for this movie and I share it.

Underworld Beauty (1958)

Underworld Beauty, released in 1958, is one of Seijun Suzuki’s very early film noir-inflected yakuza/crime movies made for Japan’s Nikkatsu Studio.

It doesn’t have the wild visual extravagance and experimental boldness of his masterpieces Branded to Kill (1967) and Tokyo Drifter (1966) but don’t be put off by that. In its own way it’s a very cool visually impressive movie with at least a touch of Seijun Suzuki craziness.

Miyamoto (Michitarô Mizushima) has just been released from prison. His first act was to retrieve something very important. A bag of diamonds. He needs them to pay a debt. Not a monetary debt.

Three years earlier he was involved in a robbery. As a result his friend Mihara (Tôru Abe) was crippled. Miyamoto needs to make amends. He may also need to make amends to Mihara’s kid sister Akiko (Mari Shiraki).

Now the diamonds are gone. Well not exactly gone. Everyone knows where they are. Retrieving them will be the problem.

There are assorted yakuza chasing after the diamonds. Akiko’s artist boyfriend wants them as well. The current location of the diamonds introduces the hint of craziness. The plans devised to get hold of the stones add more craziness.

There is a very important fact about diamonds which on two separate occasions becomes a vital and very clever plot point.

These noirish crime movies were hugely popular in Japan in the late 50s and on into the 60s. Arguing about whether these movies such as Underworld Beauty qualify as pure noir is fairly pointless. They were clearly immensely influenced by film noir. The Japanese were able to capture the feel and the look of film noir perfectly - both thematically and aesthetically noir appealed to Japanese filmmakers, and Japanese audiences shared that taste.

In an American movie Miyamoto might have been a man in search of redemption but that’s a rather western Christian concept. Miyamoto is Japanese and he’s a yakuza. He has incurred a debt to Mihara and it must be repaid. That is the yakuza code, which was the yakuza version of the warrior code of bushido. If you owe a man a debt and cannot repay it directly you can repay it to his family. Miyamoto cannot repay Mihara, so it is proper to discharge the obligation to Mihara’s sister. The fact that he does not approve of Akiko is entirely irrelevant. The debt must be paid.

Michitarô Mizushima is excellent. Mari Shiraki is a delight as Akiko - it’s an energetic playful performance. Akiko is not a femme fatale. She’s not a good girl and she’s not a bad girl. She’s just a bit wild but her more likeable side slowly becomes apparent. She’s still a prickly character but (like Miyamoto) we start to admire her spirit.

There are certainly plenty of noir ingredients but there’s also a marked touch of absurdism. Not the touches of surrealism that we get in later Suzuki movies but more a low-key absurdism at time verging on black comedy.

The most remarkable thing about this movie, given that it comes so early in his career, is just how very very Seijun Suzuki it is. It’s not as flamboyant as his great mid-60s films but it’s filled with Suzuki touches and it’s consistently visually exciting. He just had a knack for making every shot look interesting.

It’s shot (beautifully) in black-and-white in the ’scope ratio, a combination that always works for me.

There’s an absolutely superb climactic extended action set-piece.

Despite the noirish touches Underworld Beauty is not quite film noir. It’s a crime movie that is hard-edged at times but with a few romantic touches and it’s just unconventional enough to be really interesting. It’s a truly wonderful movie and it’s very highly recommended.

The Radiance Blu-Ray looks lovely.

I’ve reviewed Suzuki’s two masterworks, Branded to Kill (1967) and Tokyo Drifter (1966) and another of his excellent early Nikkatsu noirs, Take Aim at the Police Van (1960).

And I’ve reviewed other Japanese noirs from this period - the magnificent A Colt Is My Passport (1967), Rusty Knife (1958) and I Am Waiting (1957).

Topaz (1969)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz came out in 1969 and it’s a movie that was doomed from the start for various reasons that we’ll get to later.

It’s a spy thriller based on a novel by Leon Uris. He’s now entirely forgotten but was once hugely popular. His books were immensely long and there are good reasons that he’s forgotten.

It is 1962. The Americans have a top KBG defector and he’s told them how to get the information they need about what’s happening in Cuba. The problem is that the necessary contact cannot be made by an American. This contact will only deal with the French.

So CIA bigwig Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe) persuades his friend Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) to make the contact. Devereaux is a French spy, but he can only act unofficially since the French have no desire to get mixed up in America’s problems.

Devereaux has to travel to Cuba, with unexpected personal consequences. He is having an illicit affair with the influential but fiercely anti-Castro Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor). She’s also involved with the Cuban chief of security, Rico Parra (John Vernon).

That KGB defector mentioned Topaz but refused to give any information. No-one knows who or what Topaz is, but it’s something very important. And Topaz will also have personal consequences for Andre Devereaux.

There are therefore two espionage plots running in parallel.

So what went wrong? Firstly, there’s no star power here. No star power at all. John Forsythe is the only cast member who had any profile at all in the U.S. and he’s OK but it’s a minor supporting role. Frederick Stafford is dull. He has no charisma. In fact he has negative charisma. John Vernon is great fun but he was not an A-list star. Karin Dor was a huge star in Germany and a fine actress but was pretty much unknown to American audiences. Dany Robin (as Andre Devereaux’s wife Nicole) was a minor star in France.

With zero star power there was no way of effectively marketing this movie. There is a fascinating rumour that Hitchcock wanted Sean Connery and Catherine Deneuve.

The second problem is that it feels so old-fashioned. Hitchcock revolutionised the spy genre with North by Northwest in 1959 but three years later the first Bond movie, Dr No, came out and immediately made Hitchcock’s style of spy movie seem ridiculously old-fashioned. Dr No felt faster, more energetic, cooler and sexier. And Dr No helped to usher in the whole Swinging London thing.

Hitchcock’s 1960s spy movies, Torn Curtain and Topaz, feel very 1950s.

In Topaz the problem is made worse by the fact that it was made in 1969 but set in 1962 which made it seem even more outdated.

The third problem is that at 2 hours and 23 minutes it’s very very long.

A lot of the problems probably go back to the source material. Leon Uris saw everything in simplistic good vs evil terms. As a result the Cubans are portrayed as cartoonish villains, there’s no questioning of the morality of the manner in which the Americans deliberately lie to their French allies and there’s no questioning of the morality of the appalling manner in which the Americans deliberately lie to their French allies and there’s no questioning of the morality of Nordstrom’s manipulation of a man who is supposed to be a friend. I get the impression that Hitchcock was trying here to make a serious hard-hitting spy movie but I think the script needed more work.

On the other hand it’s a superbly crafted movie. There are so many very Hitchcockian very stylish visual set-pieces. They’re not violent action set-pieces and they are perhaps the sorts of subtle visual flourishes that a mainstream audience will miss. The initial escape is very nicely done. And there’s that one superb moment which I won’t spoil for you, involving the use Hitchcock makes of a blue dress.

On more than one occasion Hitchcock shoots dialogue scenes in which we cannot hear a single word. It’s a clever touch and it works. We can imagine what is being said.

And then there are the endings. Three of them were shot. There’s a ridiculous cartoonish ending, the “duel” ending. That was the original ending but preview audiences hated it. Hitchcock shot a different much bolder ending (the “airport” ending) which he preferred to the original. Eventually a third very conventional ending was chosen. The Blu-Ray gives us the airport ending which makes sense since it’s the one Hitch liked. The others are included as extras. Depending on which ending is used Topaz becomes three different movies, with the airport ending version being by far the best.

Topaz is superbly crafted. Hitchcock had lost none of his visual touch. It’s not a bad movie at all but it’s too slow and it needed more energy and it desperately needed some star power. Certainly not top-tier Hitchcock but worth a look.

You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

You Were Never Lovelier is a 1942 musical starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. It includes absolutely every ingredient you could ask for in a bubbly musical romance.

Robert Davis (Fred Astaire) is a famed New York dance star and he’s in Buenos Aires and he’s just lost his last dollar at the racetrack. He needs a job pronto. He figures he can talk his way into a dancing gig at the Sky Room, the swankiest night spot in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately the Sky Room is owned by the irascible Eduardo Acuña (Adolphe Menjou) who takes an instant dislike to the New Yorker. But then Acuña doesn’t get along with anybody.

Acuña has his own problem. He has four daughters. They’re lovely girls but family tradition demands that they should get married in birth order. The oldest has just been married. That means it’s the turn of Maria (Rita Hayworth). And Maria isn’t interested in marriage.

Maria has the reputation of being an ice queen. The truth is the exact opposite. She’s a wildly romantic girl. That’s why she hasn’t fallen in love. She is waiting for a dashing man to sweep her off her feet.

Acuña has cooked up a crazy scheme to make Maria think she has a secret admirer. To his horror Maria gets the idea that Robert Davis is her secret admirer. Acuña thinks Davis is a scoundrel.

All the expected romantic complications and misunderstandings ensue. Robert did not expect to fall in love with the girl.

And those complications are handled skilfully and wittily and charmingly by the script.

Adolphe Menjou is delightfully scheming and cantankerous. He’s not villainous. He’s just used to getting his own way and thinks he can manipulate his daughter because he thinks that he understands how to handle women. In his own way he means well but he creates emotional chaos.

Fred Astaire plays another variation on the hyperactive but charming persona he had perfected at RKO in the 30s.

Rita Hayworth is breathtakingly gorgeous and adorable.

Of course if you’re going to be Fred Astaire’s leading lady you’re going to have to be able not only to dance but dance superbly. And Rita Hayworth most certainly could dance. Astaire was apparently very impressed indeed by her dancing abilities. Their dances together are terrific. As usual her singing voice is dubbed.

And they have good chemistry. The main reason to see this movie is most definitely to see Astaire and Hayworth together. It is a pity they only made two movies together.

It’s all delightful but somehow it just can’t quite match the best of the Astaire Rogers musicals of the 30. RKO gave those movies a distinctive aesthetic (with a touch of fantasy) which this movie lacks. The settings look good but a bit generic. It doesn’t have the same magical flavour.

These minor quibbles aside this is a charming lightweight escapist musical. Recommended.

I don’t think it’s had a Blu-Ray release but the older DVD release looks fine.

The Key (1934)

The Key (1934) is one of four pre-code movies included in the Warner Archive DVD set William Powell at Warner Bros. The Key was directed by Michael Curtiz. The script (based on a play by by R. Gore Brown and Jocelyn Lee Hardy) is by Laird Doyle.

The setting is Ireland in 1920. Ireland is a dangerous place. Tensions are high between the Sinn Fein separatists and the British troops. British soldiers are constantly being shot by snipers.

Captain Andrew Andy Kerr (Colin Clive) is a British intelligence officer and the stresses are starting to get to him. His wife Norah (Edna Best) worries about him.

Then Captain Bill Tennant (William Powell) arrives on the scene. He has just been posted to Dublin. He had a colourful career, full of brave deeds and scandals. The scandals invariably involve women.

Bill and Andy are old friends.

Things could get awkward, since Bill Tennant and Norah have a shared past - a passionate love affair before she met Andy Kerr. That’s all over now. At least that’s what Bill and Norah thought.

Dublin is more and more unsettled. It’s more or less open guerrilla warfare.

Andy’s task is to track down Sinn Fein leader Peadar Conlan (Donald Crisp). A very dangerous task indeed.

Bill and Norah soon discover that they’re still madly in love. Breaking this news to Andy is not going to be easy.

Obviously this could all end very badly, with plenty of emotional turmoil and the constant background threat of sudden death.

William Powell gets a rather nuanced role here. Bill has been a hell-raiser but now he’s thinking that he should have married Norah when he had the chance. Bill is a man who finds that he will to re-evaluate his life. Powell manages to make him sympathetic even while he’s stealing another man’s wife.

Edna Best is good. In this same year she landed her best-known role, the lead in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

As so often Colin Clive is the weak link. He’s as pompous and stuff as ever which is a problem because the audience needs to sympathise with him as the wronged husband.

Andy is a brave man but a man obsessed by duty. Bill has some sense of duty but given a choice between duty and love he will choose love every time. And given a choice between duty and friendship he will choose friendship every time.

The most pre-code element is that it’s made very obvious that while Andy was out hunting Sinn Fein leaders Bill and Norah spent the night together.

Although it was shot in Hollywood this film has a mostly English cast. The casting of William Powell as a British officer is neatly explained when we’re told he is a Canadian.

The subject matter was potentially dicey. The movies tries not to pick sides but since the two male leads play British officers we inevitably get more of the British viewpoint. It tries to be both a thriller and a romantic intrigue and does so fairly successfully.

William Powell is the reason to watch this one. It’s reasonably enjoyable. Recommended.

The Key gets a very good DVD transfer. I’ve reviewed other movies in this set - The Road to Singapore, Private Detective 62 and the excellent High Pressure.