Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Movies, the Desperate Art 1
From I Lost it at the Movies
The Glamour of Delinquency 25
The Golden Coach 40
Shoeshine 44
Breathless, and the Daisy Miller Doll 46
West Side Story 51
Lolita 58
Jules and Jim 64
Billy Budd 70
Yojimbo 75
Devi 80
Hud, Deep in the Divided Heart of Hollywood 90
From Kiss Kiss Baig Bang
Laurence Olivier as Othello 107
Marlon Brando: An American Hero 110
Movie Brutalists 118
Tourist in the City of Youth [Blow-Up] 127
Movies on Television 135
Orson Welles: There Ain't No Way [Falstaff / Chimes at Midnight] 146
Bonnie and Clyde 154
From Going Steady
Movies as Opera [China Is Near] 177
A Minority Movie [La Chinoise] 182
Faces 190
A Sign of Life [Shame] 194
Trash, Art, and the Movies 201
Saintliness [Simon of the Desert] 235
From Deeper into Movies
The Bottom of the Pit [Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid] 245
High School 251
Fellini's "Mondo Trasho" [Fellini Satyricon] 257
Notes on Heart and Mind 263
The Poetry of Images [The Conformist] 273
Pipe Dream [McCabe & Mrs. Miller] 279
Helen of Troy, Sexual Warrior [The Trojan Women] 284
Louis Malle's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog [Murmur of the Heart] 290
Urban Gothic [The French Connection] 296
The Fall and Rise of Vittorio De Sica [The Garden of the Finzi-Continis] 303
Stanley Strangelove [A Clockwork Orange] 310
Alchemy [The Godfather] 316
Collaboration and Resistance [The Sorrow and the Pity] 323
From Reeling
Tango [Last Tango in Paris] 331
Pop Versus Jazz [Lady Sings the Blues] 340
The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book 347
Days and Nights in the Forest 353
A Rip-off with Genius [Marilyn] 358
After Innocence [The Last American Hero] 367
Everyday Inferno [Mean Streets] 376
Movieland-The Bums' Paradise [The Long Goodbye] 384
Moments of Truth [The Iceman Cometh] 393
Politics and Thrills 400
Survivor [Sleeper] 409
Killing Time [Magnum Force] 414
Cicely Tyson Goes to the Fountain [The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman] 420
The Used Madonna [The Mother and the Whore] 426
When the Saints Come Marching In [Lenny] 432
Fathers and Sons [The Godfather, Part II] 440
Beverly Hills as a Big Bed [Shampoo] 448
Coming: Nashville 456
From When the Lights Go Down
The Man from Dream City [Cary Grant] 465
All for Love [The Story of Adèle H.] 500
Walking into Your Childhood [The Magic Flute) 506
Notes on the Nihilist Poetry of Sam Peckinpah [The Killer Elite] 511
The Artist as a Young Comedian [Next Stop, Greenwich Village] 520
Underground Man [Taxi Driver] 525
Sparkle 530
Notes on Evolving Heroes, Morals, Audiences 533
Hot Air [Network] 545
Marguerite Duras [The Truck] 552
A Woman for All Seasons? [Julia] 557
Shivers [The Fury] 564
Fear of Movies 569
Bertrand Blier 586
The God-Bless-America Symphony [The Deer Hunter] 596
Pods [Invasion of the Body Snatchers] 606
From Taking It All In
Why Are Movies So Bad? or, The Numbers 615
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith 630
The Man Who Made Howard Hughes Sing [Melvin and Howard] 638
Used Cars 647
Religious Pulp, or The Incredible Hulk [Raging Bull] 652
Atlantic City 659
Hey, Torquemada [History of the World-Part I] 666
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer [Blow Out] 671
Pennies from Heaven 677
Shoot the Moon 684
Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip 691
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 695
Up the River [Fitzcarraldo, Burden of Dreams] 700
Tootsie 708
Memory [The Night of the Shooting Stars] 713
From State of the Art
A Masterpiece [The Leopard] 723
The Perfectionist [Yentl] 730
Golden Kimonos [The Makioka Sisters] 737
From Hooked
Out There and In Here [Blue Velvet] 745
Irish Voices [The Dead] 753
The Lady From the Sea [High Tide] 758
From Movie Love
Unreal [Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown] 765
A Wounded Apparition [Casualties of War] 769
Satyr [My Left Foot] 779
The Grifters 783
Sources and Acknowledgments 787
Index 789
