The Return of Jonathan Demme, Pt. 1

(Posted by Aaron Aradillas)

One of the traps critics (including myself) sometimes find themselves in is welcoming back a filmmaker when he hasn't gone anywhere. Inevitably the phrase "...a return to form" is used to describe an offering that reminds said critic of said filmmaker's "heyday." Robert Altman's The Player, John Frankenheimer's 52 Pick-Up, Sydney Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead are a few examples of this trend.

Why do I bring this up? Because Jonathan Demme's latest is about to bow at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I get the feeling critics are dying to welcome back one of their darlings. Rachel Getting Married feels like one of Demme's great early '80s humanist comedies like Melvin and Howard, and less like one of his post-Silence of the Lambs intimate epics. The funny thing is Demme has been with us all this time. His post-Lambs output has been quite remarkable, if stylistically different from his earlier work.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to look at the evolution of one the most singularly American filmmakers of the last 40 years.

Caged Heat (1974)

Demme was part of a generation of young and hungry filmmakers who cut their teeth at The Roger Corman School of Filmmaking. (Fellow classmates included Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Kaplan, George Armitage, Allan Arkush, Ron Howard, Joe Dante.) Working during arguably Corman's most excitingly creative period--the 1970s--Demme displayed early on his gift for in-depth characterizations, compact storytelling and direction, and a affection for Pop that was refreshingly sincere.

Caged Heat was the best of the Women-in-Prison movies that Corman developed an affinity for in the early '70s. The movie tells the story of a relatively innocent girl who gets sent to the "hoosegow" and has to learn to adapt. The highlight of the movie is Barbara Steele's wheelchair-bound Warden McQueen. A special mention should be made of the original music by John Cale. Also, Caged Heat was the first pairing of Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto.

When Pauline Kael wrote, "...if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in [movies]," she could've been writing about Caged Heat.

Crazy Mama (1975)

I admit to not having seen this one. A sort-of conpanion piece to the previous year's Corman production Big Bad Mama, Crazy Mama was forced upon Demme after the original had a falling out with Corman. Demme was all but told he'd have to direct it if he wanted to Corman to produce Fighting Mad. Nevertheless, Crazy Mama combines three key elements that are hallmarks of some of Demme's best work: rock 'n' roll, the open road, and crime. In some ways Crazy Mama was a workout for Demme's great 1986 outlaw comedy Something Wild. Crazy Mama also has some of the odd casting that Demme would incorporate in his later, more mainstream movies. Where else can you find Ann Sothern, Cloris Leachman, and...Dick Miller in the same movie? (Actually Dick Miller's presence in a movie almost makes it worth at least one viewing.)

Fighting Mad (1976)

(Sorry, but there doesn't seem to be any video clips of this movie available on the World Wide Web.)

In fact. I can't seem to find much on Fighting Mad. Even The New York Times review is not available on their site. Like Crazy Mama, I have to admit to not having yet seen this movie. It seems it is ripe for discovery for an entire generation of film buffs, seeing as the movie isn't available on DVD.

Handle With Care (1977)

An almost forgotten cracked American comedy classic, Handle With Care (a.k.a. Citizen's Band) should have been the movie to put Demme on the map with other major American filmmakers of that time. Instead, the movie never found an audience. (It still hasn't. It has yet to be released on DVD.)

Working from a screenplay by Paul Brickman (Risky Business, Men Don't Leave), Demme captures the uniquely American impulse of the need to create a new identity only to shed it in favor of a better, more outrageous one. Handle With Care's depiction of the CB craze is like a low-tech, less hostile version of today's IM'ing.

By chronicling two love tirangles--one involving bigimous trucker Chrome Angel (Charles Napier in the non-Russ Meyer performance of his life) and his wo wives Dallas Angel (Ann Wedgeworth) and Portland Angel (Marica Rodd), and the other involving squabbling brothers Spider (Paul Le Mat) and Blood (Bruce McGill) and the object of ther affection Electra (Candy Clark)--Handle With Care shows, in a startlingly non-condescending way, shows a (sub)culture of America where gadgetry--and love--can drive you a little crazy.

Last Embreace (1979)

Demme's first "serious" movie is really a blatnat attempt at a "Hitchcockian" thriller. Last Embrace is one of those titles on a director's filmography that causes people to pause because they forgot the director actually made it. (The Bedroom Window by Curtis Hanson is another example of this.) It's more of a technical exercise where you can see early sketches of scenes and situations that will be better executed in later movies.

Like Roman Polanski's Frantic, Last Embrace is about paranoia. The always reliable Roy Scheider plays a guy who may work for the CIA who thinks people are trying to kill him. The movie moves at a clip, leading to an amazing finale that almost convinces you the movie is better than it is.

What you can see is Demme putting togehter a crew that he would return to in following years. Both cimematographer Tak Fujimoto and title designer Pablo Ferro contribute typically good work. (It should be noted that Hollywood high-roller Scott Rudin served as Last Embrace's casting director.) Along with Scheider's fine Everyman performance, you get good work from John Glover (Raimy from 52 Pick-Up) and Christopher Walken.

Comments

[Griff]

LAST EMBRACE is interesting, but the real highlights of the picture are Sam Levene's great supporting performance and a terrific late Miklos Rosza score.

[Allen Belz]

I saw Crazy Mama years ago on VHS and recall enjoying it well enough...much more cartoony than Handle With Care, but with a number of nice touches and plenty of charm. And speaking of Handle, I've always thought that should be the other way around: Citizen's Band (a.k.a. Handle With Care) as that second title was what it was renamed by some nervous studio type.

[MovieMan0283]

I haven't seen Demme's 70s & 80s work (except for Stop Making Sense, which I love), so I won't comment on his status as a critical darling. But all the praise heaped on Silence (great auteur dignifies genre exercise, etc.) strikes me as overblown. It's really not that visually creative of a film - certainly Mann's Manhunter blows it out of the water in that department (though overall, it was kind of a misstep).

[Mark]

Manhunter is a much more interesting film than The Silence of the Lambs, which is, as MovieMan0283 points out above, seriously overrated.

[Dan]

I disagree on "Silence" being overrated; it's a superb film. I think "Manhunter" is flawed, but the two films reflect the decidedly separate personalities that made them. Also, "Silence" gripped pop culture like the great movies truly do: I've been watching the first season of "The X-Files" and boy howdy, was "Silence" ever an influence on that.

[Aaron Aradillas]

Michael Mann's Manhunter is one of my favorite movies of all time. It rivals Psycho as the greatest thriller of the last 50 years. When released in August of '86, it was clearly ahead of its time. The attention to clinical details and almost literally placing the audience in the mind(s) of a psychopath, pretty much doomed the picture. (It is a great irony that star William Peterson has found success on a show that wouldn't exist without Manhunter. And, to all you Fincher geeks out there, Se7en owes a debt to Manhunter. Both Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker would admit that.)

The performances by Peterson, Noonan, Cox, Allen, Farina, Lang help to create a reality that is constantly on the brink of being shattered by a very human madman.

The opening pre-title sequecne remains one of the most frightening scenes ever filmed. The scene where Tom Noonan's Tooth Fairy freaks out is almost operatic. The final confrontation (scored to Iron Butterfly's signature song) is one of the most cathartic showdowns ever. Peterson, following his bracing star turn in To Live and Die in L.A., displays a quiet stillness that brilliantly acts as counterpoint to the bottled-up violence and madness that he uses to do his job.

(Edward Norton's take on Will Graham in Ratner's Red Dragon is one of the most squirm-inducing performances of the decade. The only thing worst than Norton was hearing Ratner say things like, "The first movie was a mistake. I went back to the source material." I think Mann simply said, "He must be kidding.")

Demme's take on the good Dr. Lector is more of a nuts-and-bolts manhunt thriller. What elevates it to Art is the interplay between Hopkins and Foster. (Brian Cox's Lector is no less scary--or charming--than Sir Tony's. This is a rare case of two actors' approaches to the same character can stand next to each other.)

The real bad guy in the Manhunter/Lambs showdown is Dino De Laurentis, who didn't take proper care of the Mnahunter negative because the movie failed to amke any money. Consequently, the movie will never look as good as Lambs on home video. Dino's short-sightedness also led him to pass on Lambs when the option for the book came across his desk.

[zxcvb]

"...if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in [movies]."

What a horribly pessimistic, irresponsible thing to say. If we cannot appreciate Big Macs, we have very little reason to be interested in food. If we cannot appreciate Britney Spears, we have very little reason to be interested in music. That sounds right....I guess?

It's philosophies like that that are responsible for the great amount of trash we get in American film today.

[Ray]

No mention of Demme's "Beloved"? I'll go out on a limb and say I thought it salvaged what was truly good in an overblown, overwritten (and wildly overpraised) book. Plus, Oprah was pretty cool in it--who'd have guessed she would be that good?

[Allen Belz]

He alluded to it: "His post-Lambs output has been quite remarkable..." As a big devotee of Demme pre-90s stuff the nagging thought has periodically arisen that the later period is ripe for reassessment, and I'm happy for the excuse to dive in.

[Brandon]

I've always wondered where Demme's more recent (negative) reputation has come from. Does this 'return to form' label have more to do with the generalization made between light-hearted early career and later uber-seriousness or does it have more to do with the fact that he's only made 5 features in the last 20 years, the first two perhaps overpraised and the last three perhaps overcriticized?

[Ahedoniac]

Um. I seriously doubt "Rachel Getting Married" will put Demme in the critics good graces again.
Has anyone seen the trailer? It looks excruciatingly awful.
I'd love to be proven wrong, of course

[Allen Belz]

Oh, and a bit of info...went shopping on Netflix for Demme flicks and found that Crazy Mama is on DVD.

[Nick]

I saw Citizens Band more or less when it came out and I recall Marcia Rodd's performance as being unbelievably good, a comic masterpiece. It's been along time so I might feel different now, but that's how I remember it.