John Huston Triple-Feature: Beat the Devil (1953), Wise Blood (1979), and Under the Volcano (1984)

Introduction 

“[John] Huston is still coasting on his reputation as a wronged individualist with an alibi for every bad movie … Huston has confused indifference with integrity for such a long time that he is no longer the competent craftsman of The Asphalt Jungle, The Maltese Falcon, and The African Queen, films that owe more to casting coups than to directorial acumen.” — Andrew Sarris, “John Huston: Less than Meets the Eye” in The American Cinema (1968).

“People often ask if I have any regrets over my rankings of directors in The American Cinema. Actually, there have been shifts and slides, rises and falls, all along the line. Film history is always in the process of revision, and some of our earliest masters are still alive. The American Cinema was a very tentative probe designed mainly to establish the existence of a subject worthy of study. The rest is refinement and elaboration.”— Andrew Sarris, “Billy Wilder Reconsidered” in You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet (1998).

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

For the bulk of my college career, I tended to avoid the films of Roman Polanski. I always tried to validate my blind spot as morally motivated by Polanski pleading guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor and subsequently fleeing to France. Yet, I came to the realization that this would ultimately write off a work of art, crafted by many people, to the poor decisions of one. Also, I was employed as a teaching assistant for a film noir class at UCLA and we had to show Chinatown (1974) and I could no longer avoid the absence of Polanski in my knowledge about film.

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Richard Connell’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” has always held a special place in my heart. Having read the story in one of my high school English classes, I was determined to adapt it into a screenplay about a crazed Scottish hunter who breaks a man out of prison, only to hunt him down for sport. While writing the screenplay, I came to realization that even with madness serving as a motivation, this recreational sport can be hard to characterize as it either bleeds into serial killer territory or becomes the Van Pelt (Jonathan Hyde) character from Jumanji (1995). Needless to say, I gave up screenwriting and threw The Fox Hunt (Second Draft, 2002) in a filing cabinet somewhere. Watching Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1932 adaptation only crystallized my rationale behind my abandonment of the project.

The Hunger (1983)

In Tony Scott’s Domino (2005), Mena Suvari plays an entertainment executive who describes her boss’s (Christopher Walken) attention span as being one of “a ferret on crystal meth.” Ironically, this throwaway line of dialogue effectively describes the editing style of its director. Commonly employing two editors on each of his films, Tony Scott’s films are essentially case studies of an ongoing series I would like to title “When MTV Editing Goes Wrong.” Keep in mind that I am not criticizing film style or shorter shot lengths here. Rather, I am criticizing film style when it is used as a crutch to overcompensate for the deficiencies of a film. The depressing realization I came to while watching the opening of his debut film The Hunger (1983) was that, for a brief moment, Tony Scott actually knew how to use editing for engaging purposes rather than visceral ones.

Welcome: A Declaration of Principles

Bernstein: You don't want to make any promises, Mr. Kane, that you don't want to keep.

Kane: These will be kept. 'I'll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them...'

Jedediah: That's the second sentence you've started with 'I'.

Kane: People are gonna know who's responsible. Now they're gonna get the truth in the Inquirer, quickly and simply and entertainingly and no special interests are gonna be allowed to interfere with that truth. (Continuing with the Declaration.) 'I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings. Signed, Charles Foster Kane.'