More Human than Human: A Look at Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Blade Runner: The Final Cut

            Science fiction has existed as a film genre since as far back as 1902 with Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon. Science fiction often contains fantastic elements like space or time travel, robots, and aliens though they are often presented in a way grounded in reality. That is to say that these fantastic elements are often explained in a way that uses what contemporary knowledge we have of science and where it is headed. Other times they are not really elaborated on at all and are based more on fantasy, like Star Wars. Despite all the technological wizardry and complex science presented in science fiction films, science fiction at its core is most frequently used to explore humanity. Two movies that are excellent examples of this are the classical Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and the baroque Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982, 2007).

Classical science fiction was usually set in a much less complex world than later entries in the genre. The films usually had a contemporary setting where some sort of outside or alien force would make its presence known, for example, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing from Another World and War of the Worlds. Over time science fiction would be set more and more in a futuristic world where humanity would seem more and more out of place in an increasingly cold universe. These types of films often depict a 1984-inspired dystopian world with little hope or warmth, like Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and The Matrix. The major contrast between the classical and the baroque seeming to be the place of the science fiction elements themselves. Whereas in the earlier movies it was often invasive, in the later films it became the natural and humanistic that tends to be out of place in a mostly technological world. Even so, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to The Wrath of Khan, the most interesting aspect of all these films is how they explore humanity and being human.

Today both Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Blade Runner are considered to be major entries in the science fiction genre, although in their time, Body Snatchers was somewhat of a low budget film and Blade Runner was a financial flop. Invasion of the Body Snatchers would go on to be remade multiple times, whereas Blade Runner would go through multiple revisions and "director's cuts" over the years. As mentioned before the two films are largely about humanity and they each explore this theme in different ways. Body Snatchers takes place in a contemporary 1950s small town in California where the people are slowly being taken over by alien pods. The pods assume the place of the humans, turning them into efficient automatons. The film is very allegorical which has seen many people to attach political connotations to it; some seeing it as a condemnation of communism or its antithesis, capitalism. Whereas Body Snatchers dealt with the loss of humanity in society in an allegorical way, Blade Runner takes a more direct approach. Set in the future, 2019 Los Angeles to be exact, Blade Runner is about what it truly means to be human. Science and technology have advanced to the point that we are able to create synthetic human beings; androids, or replicants as they are called in the film. The film chronicles a cop whose job it is to execute a group of rogue replicants who have come back to earth seeking to understand themselves and prolong their soon-to-expire life. At all times throughout the film the question of what it means to be human is present, and even the main character's humanity is called in to question.

Blade Runner and Invasion of the Body Snatchers belong to other genres as well. Blade Runner combines science fiction with film noir and Invasion of the Body Snatchers is just as much a horror film as it is anything else. In fact science fiction has a history of intertwining with these two genres. A big reason why science fiction lends itself to noir and horror so well is once again, the genre's dealings with humanity. In Body Snatchers people are in danger of literally having their humanity taken from them. The most horrifying moment in Body Snatchers being when the hero looks down and realizes that the woman he loves has completely changed. Despite all the people changing this one hits the hardest because it is the most personal, and that is humanity at its core; the relationships between people. In Blade Runner the existential questioning of what it means to be human is straight out of film noir, although it too is in a different and more literal context with replicants struggling with their existence and the motto of the company that manufactures them being, "more human than human."

             Now, getting down to the actual quality of the films. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was directed by Don Siegel at his very best. Siegel had a history of working in Hollywood, learning his craft before taking the reins and becoming a director himself. Siegel, at his best combined art and intelligence with expert craftsmanship on every level, and he may not have directed a better film than Body Snatchers. The film too excels on every level, with expert characterization and believability, pacing and rhythm. Being a horror movie it is at moments truly terrifying, which is amazing considered how long ago it was made. Horror films have a tendency to become cheesy with time and that has not happened here. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a great work of science fiction, a great horror story, and above all a great film.

            The visuals in Blade Runner are some of the most beautiful in film. Blade Runner was only director Ridley Scott's third film after a career as a director of TV commercials. Sadly that shows. While Blade Runner is in fact great and touches on some very interesting themes, it is not a great film. As beautiful as it is to look at, it gets monotonous because the film is really just close up after close up. The images never have a chance to breathe. Scott's previous career probably had a lot to do with this, as directing for TV is different than directing for the big screen, and directing a commercial is even more different than a film. Here, stylishness comes at the expense of everything else, and outside of the art direction and music the film is not even really that stylish. Aside from that, Don Siegel does so much more in relating the audience to the characters in 80 minutes than Scott does in 2 hours. It stands as a wonderful artistic achievement yet it lacks the cohesiveness of Invasion of the Body Snatchers that comes from being well crafted and takes something good and turns it into something great. But oh well. Both films are very interesting and are definitely worth seeing multiple times.

            The extreme context of science fiction shows that at the end of the day humanity is most interested in humanity. That is not a criticism, but an observation. From Fritz Lang's silent epic, Metropolis, to the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix, the stories that seem to resonate the most with people feature questions of humanity at their core. The technological aspects only serve to amplify and isolate the qualities and questions of humanity for better examination. This theme is not always present but it has a significant place in the best and most interesting science fiction films because despite all our understanding of the universe we still have little understanding of ourselves and who we are. As stated in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, "the mind is a strange and wonderful thing, I’m not sure it will ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe, everything except itself."

Fury

"I could smell myself burning."

Fury was made by director Fritz Lang for MGM Studios in 1936 after he had fled from Nazi Germany. It was his first American film and with its dark subject matter quite unlike anything previously produced by MGM, which usually turned out extravagant dramas and musicals. It is fitting then that the film begins and ends on high notes because in between Lang takes the viewer on a chilling probe in to the disturbing mindset of a lynch mob, the likes of which MGM would never again produce.

Fury starts out simply enough in Chicago with Spencer Tracy’s Joe Wilson seeing off his fiancée, Katherine Grant, played Sylvia Sidney, at the train station. She’s headed south for a better job as a schoolteacher, and as soon as he can afford it, Joe plans to meet up and marry her. A year goes by, and during that time Joe and his two brothers (whom he talks out of working for the mob), work hard and are able to own their own gas station. Joe buys a car and heads south to marry Katherine. Katherine patiently waits for Joe at a diner. But Joe never arrives. He matches the description of a kidnapping suspect and is stopped by a deputy as he arrives in town. Joe is held at the jail on suspicion of kidnapping until the district attorney can examine him. People around town begin to gossip and one thing leads to another and finally a mob is formed with the intent of taking the law into their own hands. The mob is unable to get into Joe’s cell so they set fire to the jailhouse. Katherine arrives in time to see Joe screaming for his life just before some dynamite is thrown into the fire and the jail is blown apart.

But wait there’s more. After somehow surviving his attempted lynching, the once easy-going, likable, everyday guy, Joe Wilson becomes twisted and bitter in his lust for vengeance. He remains in hiding to everyone but his brothers to make sure that the men and women responsible for his supposed murder are convicted and legally executed for their crime.

Working in Hollywood for the first time, Lang had to tone down the expressionist visual style he had become known for in Germany. Lang is forced to blend his German expressionist style with the comparatively mundane Hollywood look. Rather than becoming a hindrance, this heightens the quality and effect of Fury. The sparing use of abstract camera techniques hold more meaning and emotional power working as contrasts to the more traditional Hollywood style acting as a backdrop.

Nothing Lang does is ever superfluous. Seemingly minor character building details become major plot devices later on. Sylvia Sidney is wonderful as Joe's grieving lover and beacon of hope, and Spencer Tracy’s transformation throughout the film is both believable and in a way infuriating. The true power of Fritz Lang’s best films is in the mirror they present to us, and this is one of his finest. The audience is made to feel the way Tracy feels, outraged at the injustice he suffers, thirsting for the same retribution. In mobs people do not think as individuals, they think and function as a group, which is what makes Fury as powerful and as frightening as it is; the audience becomes a bloodthirsty mob bent on retaliation for a crime committed.

Mr. Arkadin: The Comprehensive Version

Mr. Arkadin was Orson Welles’ seventh “finished” film. I say that because for various reasons, (many of them financial) Welles was forced to abandon numerous projects throughout his career. Mr. Arkadin was actually never finished, as it was taken from Welles by the producer during the editing process and several different versions of the film now exist. Part of the problem was that the story is supposed to be told through flashbacks and this caused lots of confusion for anyone editing it who wasn’t Orson Welles. This version of Mr. Arkadin was composed from pieces of the different edits and is supposed to be the version that most accurately adheres to Orson Welles’ personal vision as the director.

Now all that trouble is what most likely accounts for all the problems there are in this film. Even so this is by no means a bad film. At times, particularly near the end, it is absolutely marvelous. Yet, throughout the film, Mr. Arkadin feels fragmented and rushed. The film opens with multiple story hooks that draw you in immediately. The plot structure leaves you in the dark and guessing and wanting to know more. However after a little while the story advances much too quickly and a little confusion ensues as the viewer is hit with a bit too much too soon. You wonder why all of a sudden the main character has gone across the ocean and back in two minutes. Part of this is acceptable as parts of the story are being quickly relayed in flashback from one character to another. Knowing the history of the film, the rest can probably best be explained by the confusion of the multiple edit jobs. Just a few more minutes of discovered footage could have really helped. The movie also suffers from a multitude of seemingly random, Third Man-esque camera angles. They disrupt the flow of some scenes almost as much as the erratic editing issues.

The story chronologically begins with a dying man relaying some information to a smuggler named Van Stratten, played by Robert Arden. This information leads to Van Stratten trying to find his way into the world of mysterious millionaire, Mr. Arkadin, played by Welles. Apparently Mr. Arkadin cannot remember anything before 1927 when he found himself in Zurich with 200,000 Swiss francs and built his fortune from there. Thus Mr. Arkadin commissions Van Stratten to delve into his past and discover who he is. BUT NOT ALL IS AS IT SEEMS, and as Van Stratten pieces together the details of Mr. Arkadin’s life, the people of his past continuously wind up dead. At the same time Van Stratten is falling in love with Arkadin’s daughter. The story appears to be quite simple, but there is an underlying depth in the way it plays out. If really fleshed out many of the scenes are so juicy that they could be turned into the basis for an entire separate script on their own. This is due not only to the writing of these scenes, but also to their visuals that are screaming out to be part of a film more worthy as a whole.

Unfortunately all of the issues with this film caused Orson Welles to describe Mr. Arkadin as the “biggest disaster” of his life. There are just so many continuity issues with how the film unfolds, as well as some creatively suspect, although inventive, exposition issues. Fortunately for us it is an impressive "failure" with flashes of real brilliance.

Jeremiah Johnson

Seriously, the best thing about this movie is the DVD cover.

It only makes sense that the pitch for Jeremiah Johnson went something like this:

“Okay so we have this guy come out to the Rockies to get away from civilization because he’s tired of people for some reason or another, it doesn’t really matter why. Anyway the guy tries to live in the mountains but he gets interrupted by some Indians killing some people. He upsets some more Indians, and they kill his Indian wife. By the way he marries an Indian; it’ll be hilarious. Now for the next few years an Indian will show up every now and then to try to kill him. He tries to kill them too but he really just wants to be left alone. Eventually the Indians are cool with him because they respect him and that’s that.”

“Okay, sounds good. Let’s write a script.”

“No, that is the script. The whole thing.”

“How’s that going to fill two hours?”

“I don’t know. It’s going to be boring as hell. We should probably get Robert Redford. It doesn’t matter that he can’t act. He just has to walk from point A to point B constantly and he’ll look damn good doing it.”

“Good idea! People will definitely pay to look at Robert Redford for two hours."

"Since we don’t have much in the way of a movie lets get someone really great to direct it and see what they can do with it.”

“Or we could just get Sydney Pollack to do it. He knows how to point and tell people where to stand. We need a simple director to tell a simple story. He won’t muddle up the film by making it more interesting or let quality get in the way of Robert Redford looking good.”

“Nice. Let’s do it."

The Big Red One

The Big Red One is the film that Samuel Fuller always wanted to make, and was finally able to in the twilight of his career. Fuller spent the majority of his career working with tiny budgets while still managing to turn out some truly great films that were really underappreciated in their time. Fuller started making films in the late 1940s and continued to do so until an 11 year respite (save for one made-for-French-tv movie) that began after 1969’s Shark and ended when he made the Big Red One in 1980. Now for some reason or another, this film has received a significant amount of praise and I can not understand why. The film is simply a mess.

Samuel Fuller based almost all of the scenes off of actual events that happened to him while serving as a soldier in the actual 1^st Infantry Division. And it’s a shame because while they play out really well in his autobiography, they just don’t translate to the screen. Lee Marvin plays The Sergeant who leads a pack of young men who call themselves the Four Horsemen as they battle all over Europe and Africa throughout World Ward II with one scene, the best scene, taking place at the tail end of the first World War. Curiously, Marvin’s character doesn’t seem to age at all over this 20-plus year period. But that’s not really a complaint. The only complaint I have regarding age is that most of the dialogue seems to have been written by someone still in middle school.

Everything feels awkward and forced. The movie keeps telling you how to feel and when to feel it. One scene in particular is so mishandled that I felt embarrassed for the director while watching it. Near the end of the film, the Sergeant and the Four Horsemen wind up liberating a concentration camp. One character, Griff, wonders off alone and stumbles into a room full of ovens. The ovens contain the bones of holocaust victims and one Nazi soldier whose gun misfires. Now throughout the movie we have been told over and over how much Griff hates killing, and there are plenty of scenes where he hesitates to fire his gun. Now in this scene, overcome with horror, Griff, shoots the Nazi. Again. And again. And again. He doesn’t stop. He even reloads his gun at one point and just goes on and on. It just becomes awkward because the film just keeps telling you how “powerful” this scene is supposed to be. But you never actually feel much of anything while watching it. You’re not supposed to tell the audience, you are supposed to show them. And the Big Red One never does that.

Not everything is bad though. There are some really satisfying scenes in the movie. The opening scene is beautiful. It’s just that the film is so uneven. Each time that the films is about to establish a nice rhythm it veers off with some awkward scene that doesn’t even fit. It is really disappointing that Fuller made such a disaster of a film. And even more so that critics ignore its bad quality. Fuller made the Steel Helmet and Pickup on South Street, two of my favorite films, and I think that because he has done such great work in the past, critics have felt that that some how vindicates this movie. It doesn’t. If anyone else had made this movie, nobody would care.

Band of Outsiders (Bande à part)

Basically you have a bunch of bricks. They are beautiful, finely crafted, sturdy bricks. Each brick on its own would be considered a work of art. So you stack these bricks up hoping to build a house, but you neglect to use any mortar to hold these bricks together. Finally you have built a house. Except that you haven’t. You’ve made a phony house and haven’t really put anything together. The “house” then falls down once the wind blows or you touch it, do to your outright refusal to actually make a genuine house. Bam. Band of Outsiders in a nut shell.

The shots in Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders are all great on their own. But they don’t add up. There is no connectivity between them, nothing holding them together. Every single shot in the trailer looks exciting and fun, and the trailer does a wonderful job of getting you excited for the movie if only so that you will ultimately be let down when you finally see it. The whole of the film is quite distinctly less than the sum of its parts. The race through the Louvre, the Madison Dance, the “minute” of silence; all these “legendary” scenes hold up so well on their own, but this movie just kills them when they’re added together. They mean absolutely nothing.

It is actually quite interesting that the trailer wouldn’t present an accurate representation of the movie, because the movie is nothing but false. It is pretentious and mean spirited. These aren’t real characters. There is nothing interesting about them. They are empty and if that is the point, then why would you expect me to enjoy myself watching these characters bumble around Paris for an hour and half talking about a robbery? The film is just simply made up of what are usually long takes with the camera pivoting around but never going anywhere, much like the characters. Every shot is composed just fine, yet they never lead to or mean anything. Oh I guess that’s the point. You got me, Godard.