According to Screencraft, there are six essential elements to a Christmas film: nostalgia, magic, family, atmosphere, hope, and redemption. These can all be easily applied to festive classics we know and love, such as the iconic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), the joyous Elf (2003), and the British household staple Nativity! (2009).

Even so, there has been debate upon debate about whether certain films can be entered into the yuletide Hall of Fame, the most prominent of these being Die Hard (1988). One film that should be considered but seems to fly under the radar is Steven Spielberg’s 2002 crime caper and comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can.

Released on Christmas Day, the film is based on the true story of how teenager Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) successfully pulled off confidence schemes worth millions of dollars by impersonating a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, all whilst evading the clutches of FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks).

Doesn’t sound very Christmassy, right? Wrong!

Spielberg’s caper immediately establishes the film’s sense of nostalgia through its period setting of the 1960s. We are transported back in time to when banks didn’t have high-tech security, Pan Am was the kingpin of American air travel, and Frank’s ugly orange knitted vest was considered fashionable. These are all nostalgic for the people who grew up in and around the 1960s, and that group would have been the target audience for this film back in 2002.

The film’s sense of nostalgia still holds up today. There is a scene in which Frank, in the midst of his pilot con, goes to the cinema to watch the iconic James Bond film of the era Dr. No (1962), then it cuts to him having a suit measured. What name does he give the tailor? Ian Fleming, the author of James Bond.

In a way, it’s magic. Which is, of course, a key ingredient of a Christmas film.

Whilst the magic isn’t depicted in the stereotypical manner of wizards and fairy dust, Frank is represented as an immoral magician, right from the moment he steps into his classroom in a new school and hoodwinks his class into thinking he is the substitute teacher. We buy into the grand scale of Frank’s ongoing mastery of disguise and sleight of hand, and it makes for entertaining viewing even if certain elements of the true story have been widely disputed.

As with most Spielberg films, one of the central themes is a broken home and the effects it has on the children involved. If anything screams “Christmas film” it’s the idea of family and themes of reconciliation and repairing broken relationships.

We are introduced to the tight-knit Abagnale family, with Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken) receiving an award as his wife Paula (Nathalie Baye) and son Frank watch on in admiration. We then cut to a scene in which Frank watches his parents dancing by the family Christmas tree, as Frank Sr. recounts the story of how he and Paula met. From here, the idyllic family life takes a turn when Frank Sr.’s tax problems and Paula’s affair ultimately lead to their divorce. Upon being forced to choose which parent to live with, Frank rebels by running away from upstate New York to the City, thus kickstarting his career as a high-stakes con artist.

Throughout the film, we see Frank meeting up with his father, hoping that the money he has made will convince his parents to reconcile and make their living situation go back to the way it was. Frank Sr. resists this idea, having moved on and accepted what happened. This upsets Frank, who plunges deeper and deeper into his scams.

The film’s heartbreaking climactic moment comes years later, as Carl tells Frank that his father has died whilst they are flying back to the US. Distraught, Frank escapes the plane and finds the house of his mother, who has a new family. This prompts Frank to finally stop running and to surrender to Carl and the FBI.

In the climax, Frank sees his mother’s new family on Christmas Day, where there are fairy lights and a tree just like the one in the start of film. He looks on through the window, excluded from the life he used to have and desperately longed to have back. The beautiful tones of Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” underpin the emotional weight of the scene, with the warmth of the classic song heavily contrasting Frank being left out in the cold.

Christmas Eve itself is a recurring motif throughout the film. Frank calls Carl to provoke him to send a team to chase him and apologise for their last encounter. Carl sees through this, realising that Frank has nobody to talk to. A few years later, Frank calls Carl on that day to tell him that he wants a truce, as he is getting married. Carl declines, saying that he will be caught and put in prison. Their final interaction on this day comes when Carl tracks Frank down to Montrichard, where his father met his mother on Christmas Eve. Frank is subsequently arrested by French police.

Hope is another seasonally relevant key theme throughout Catch Me If You Can, as Frank’s schemes are based upon his hope that the rewards will prompt his parents to get back together. The naivety of this notion makes the film’s climax all that more heartbreaking. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in this regard is phenomenal, as he is able to shape-shift from a cocky kid playing the part of an adult into an anxious young boy going through a traumatic change in his life when he is on the brink of adulthood. It is certainly a gamble to cast a 32 year-old as a 16 year-old, but it paid off. Spielberg is able to utilise the actor’s talents to convey this loss of childlike hope over time, presenting a type of coming-of-age we often see in Christmas films like Elf and Meet Me In St. Louis.

At the end of the film, after Frank is sentenced to 12 years in prison, Carl offers him an opportunity for redemption, as he realises that Frank’s conning skills can be utilised to help the FBI detect fraud. Frank accepts serving the rest of his sentence by working at the FBI, but finds that an office job is incredibly tedious. Frank prepares to impersonate a pilot one last time, but Carl finds him in the airport, saying nobody is chasing him. He tries to question Carl about his family, as Carl reveals that he is the father in a broken home, with a daughter not much younger than Frank himself. At that moment, we think Frank is going to go through with the con, but he appears back at the FBI and the film ends with him and Carl discussing one of the cons in great depth. This is a bright, feel-good ending reminiscent of any number of great Christmas films, and one that arguably ties their father-son-like relationship together, revealing to us a found family staple of a deeply unconventional nature but a wholly Christmas one nonetheless.

Written by Grace Laidler

Follow Grace Laidler on Twitter: @gracewillhuntin

These debates are of relevance to this article because, in reality, the identities of the two clashing cultures (that of the Osage, and the all-consuming wave of capitalist USA) are largely irrelevant to the thematic core of the story. They are relevant in that they are only tangential to the beating heart of the point of the film. This specific filmic presentation of this storyline uses the Osage and white USA as two sides of the coin, but you could transplant this to colonial Africa with Britain exploiting the native peoples of those nations and it could be the same frame with differing cosmetics. Put a French colonial power in Vietnam or Morocco, and the same is there. Go to Tasmania and look at the occupying forces there, as Jennifer Kent did with her revenge western The Nightingale. The principals remain constant, an examination of the deliberate exercise of colonial, oppressional power over the native inhabitants of a land. This is what the surface level of Killers of the Flower Moon would have us take away.

Whilst KOTFM is based on a book (“Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”, by David Grann), which is in turn based on real events, it is the specific presentation of events in Martin Scorsese’s film which are of discussion here. This film’s narrative, detailing the marriages and assassinations of Osage people at the hands of white locals in order for the white people to strategically inherit their oil-rich land, is not the centre of the film. It is not what it is all about. As is often the case, the plot and the story are different levels of communication.

Instead, the film is actually about the relationship between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and William King Hale (Robert De Niro), and the exploitation of a malleable, weak individual by a stronger, more ambitious, and more ruthless mind. The plot goes along, but what drives it is the obedience and defiance of Burkhart to his powerful uncle. De Niro is the snake whispering in DiCaprio’s Eve of an ear with the promise of power from the metaphorical tree of knowledge. It is about evil corrupting those who are on the fence, and dragging them down to the ground. Once we realise this, we see that much of KOTFM plays out as a reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, written over 400 years ago. Not everything lines up perfectly (that’s how reinterpretations work; Akira Kurosawa had the three witches changed for a single medium in Throne of Blood, for example), but there are enough similarities to line up fairly nicely.

Macbeth, warlord for King Duncan of Scotland, begins the play having just taken out Macdonald, an usurper to the throne. His penchant for violence is well noted, and in killing Macdonald, ‘unseam’d him from the nave to th’chops’. In KOTFM, Earnest Burkhart may not be quite that violent, but he does return at the film’s opening from WWI, so they both have that ability in them, having both returned from national combat. In Macbeth, the titular character is told of a prophecy that he will one day be king, which he expresses with his wife. Lady Macbeth then takes charge, constantly whispering to him that the prophecy will come true, that he will be king. She already has a plan. Everything will be OK. She tells her husband ‘look like the innocent flower,/ But be the serpent udner’t.’ The mention of flowers here is obviously mere coincidence in connection with the film’s title, but it is exactly this notion of being the evil hiding in plain sight under a notion of goodness which both Ernest and King act out in KOTFM. King is constantly giving out grants and finances to the community, and is fluent in the Dhegihan Siouan language of the Osage. Lady Macbeth, in Duncan’s words, is ‘our honour’d hostess!’. The similarities are plain to see in the setup. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband into carrying out murders so that he will become King and inherit the country, and make her queen by default, which is what she is really after. In KOTFM, Ernest is manipulated by King to carry out murders so that Ernest will inherit the wealthy land, and King will get some of the wealth as a result. Once more, the whisperer in the ear is not so much concerned with the wellbeing of their familiar, but what their understudy’s success will mean for them.

A common misconception with Macbeth’s character is that he is a tyrant and ambitious warlord right from the start. He may well have ambition, but most of his actions are as a result of the persuasion of his wife, and then being in too deep to pull out. Macbeth asks before murdering the king what happens ‘If we should fail?’, and Lady Macbeth has to reassure him to ‘nail your courage to the sticking place,/ And we’ll not fail.’ He constantly questions whether what he is doing is right, hallucinating the murderous dagger before going to kill Duncan, his mind already fracturing under the pressure. After one murder, everything runs away from him, and he has no choice but to keep going. He must kill his friend, Banquo, not only because of the witches’ prophecy that Banquo will sire a line of kings, but because of Banquo’s tendency to sit on the fence about absolutes. Banquo is unsure about the intentions of the witches, ‘oftentimes, to win us to our harm,/ The instruments of darkness tell us truths,/ Win us with honest trifles…’ and even muses to himself as part of a soliloquy to open Act 3 Scene 1, about Macbeth becoming king, that ‘Thou play’dst most foully for’t…’ It’s clear that Banquo would never be on Macbeth’s side, for as much as he is Macbeth’s friend and similar in many ways (he is also a great warrior on the battlefield, and fought alongside Macbeth against Macdowell), he is always on the side of justice and so must be silenced. Macbeth therefore pays two assassins to take out Banquo to keep himself in power. After this, when Macduff flees, Macbeth brands him a traitor and must kill his family as a warning against uprising. He rules with the sheer intention of holding onto the power he was (to an extent) pressured into. With his wife’s persuasion, he has dug a hole, and he refuses to stop digging, instead continuing down in the hopes of an escape.

Ernest likewise finds himself executing more and more murders in order to maintain his position and keep himself close to King. He pays to have Harry Roan killed as part of King’s plan, but it goes wrong, showing that Ernest isn’t as completely in control of things as he would like to think. He later hires for the murder of more family members, which begins to put his wife Molly into a kind of surrogate role for three characters; that of Duncan (the one who holds the power), Banquo (someone he must kill, and appears, ghostlike, to haunt and prevent Ernest from keeping himself completely on the dark side), and eventually Macduff (when she goes to Washington to bring reinforcements to out the tyrant). Note that like Macbeth, Ernest is often reticent to kill himself, and on multiple occasions gets others to carry out his dirty work for him.

It is, tangentially, interesting that a deliberate highlighting of King’s membership to freemasonry is made in the outcome of the botched assassination of Roan, as this implies a belief in a supreme being. There are a lot of supernatural moments in Macbeth, from witches to prophecies to apparitions to ghosts, to the appearance of Hecate (for almost no reason except to tell the witches to go somewhere and have a musical number; got to maintain audience interest somehow). But Lady Macbeth also clearly believes in spirits, through her belief that the prophecy must come true, and explicitly in her speech calling to them; ‘Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts…’ Once again, more parallels appear.

In the second half of Killers of the Flower Moon, the new Bureau of Investigation is brought into the scene by Molly, Ernest’s wife, fulfilling her role as a partial avatar for Macduff. Led by Jesse Plemons’ Tom White (who plays the military side of Macduff), a kind of army from a land far away (Washington standing in for England, in a twist of irony for American history), arrives in the town. The BOI is not exactly the moving copse of Burnham’s wood, but what is interesting is not necessarily the arrival of the cavalry, but what this does for Ernest, who the plot centres around.

In the final reels he undergoes a constant turmoil of emotions. This mix has been seen throughout in relation to his seemingly genuine affection for his wife, Molly, and at one point he swallows some of the poison he has been putting in her insulin. The similarity to Macbeth Act 3 Scene 2, where Macbeth is tormented by what he is doing, beautifully demonstrated by the famous line of ‘full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’, is interesting, as scorpions are known for their poisonous sting.

Three points are of note in the finale of the film and play in relation to this turmoil. Firstly, Ernest is initially convinced to fight on and defend King by the townsfolk (the white ones, at least), in order to preserve their way of life; after all, King is a great benefactor for the town. In Macbeth, despite the army marching toward them and the apparent tyrannical rule of Macbeth (Macduff describes him as the ‘fiend of Scotland’), he still has servants and doctors attending him, messengers, and so on. However, overcome by sorrow for his child who has passed away, Ernest decides to testify against King. This idea that the battle is perhaps lost is mirrored in Macbeth’s final soliloquy, where he stares into the abyss of time and finds life meaningless, the fighting pointless, the murder empty. Life, he says, ‘is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.’ However, there is still a little of that bitterness in him. Macbeth still fights on, despite Macduff telling him that the prophecy has come true and Macbeth can die by his hand. He says, ‘I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff;/ And damn’d be him that first cries ‘Hold, enough!’ Similarly, Ernest can’t admit to Molly, when she has recovered and she knows he was poisoning her, even with prison just around the corner, that he was putting the poison in the insulin. Like Macbeth, there’s still that initial grain of darkness left inside him. It’s not a big, eye-popping finale as seen in Justin Kurzel’s direct 2015 adaptation, but it is a moving finale nonetheless.

This article hasn’t been to say that Scorsese deliberately set out to make a new version of a classic Shakespeare tale with this film. It’s not even to say that Scorsese must have been deliberately conscious of Macbeth when adapting the script. Indeed, most of the elements (though shifted and changed a little for dramatic purposes), were based on the real serial murders of innocent people – the real Ernest Burkhart and William King Hale were despicable individuals. For all of the extraordinary influence of The Bard, he didn’t create these people. Additionally, by saying that this presentation of the narrative echoes Macbeth should not in any way be taken as a suggestion that it reduces these figures to caricatures. Real lives were lost needlessly and cruelly by individuals hellbent on murder for their own material gain.

What it does hope to show, however, is how much William Shakespeare was able to put a finger on human nature, and how he was seemingly able to immortalise it in a narrative that has its unconscious echoes throughout time, to be rediscovered in the most unlikely of places. The real history and folklore that inspired Shakespeare to write Macbeth were not invented by him, but he found a way to use it to shine a light on the folly of humankind, and the corruption underneath polite society. That these narrative ideas find their way across the centuries, across the waters, to Scorsese’s film (which did have script changes in development, showing that differing perspectives and angles even to real events are possible), proves if nothing else that cinema as a medium has harsh truths inside its beams of light. That these stories are still relevant, redigested, disguised, and re-presented, is both a damning proof of humanity’s inability to learn from its past, and a testament to storytelling’s continued effort to plead with us to listen.

Recommended for you: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) Review

Some of the most famous movie scenes of all time feature originally composed music or lift pieces from older films and recontextualise them for a modern audience, such as Tarantino pinching all of Ennio Morricone’s back catalogue. But what happens when you abandon this approach in favour of utilising a soundtrack of pre-released popular songs? It’s an idea that has been utilised as a directorial trademark by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, but it is widely acknowledged to have been popularised in western cinema by Easy Rider (1969) and specifically the films of Martin Scorsese. The latter has many a trademarked needle drop in his repertoire, but his use of soundtrack was arguably at its height in his 1990 gangster thriller Goodfellas.

In Goodfellas, the meticulously chosen selection of 50s to 70s music plays a huge hand in creating the memorable moments that have stayed with us (and reached new audiences) across the past thirty-plus years. In an interview with Esquire, the film’s music editor Chris Brooks claimed that Scorsese “[…] knew every one of those songs two years before he shot a frame of film.” It clearly paid off…

Although primarily told in chronological order, Goodfellas opens in media res, with the three central protagonists – Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) – driving to dispose of a body in 1970. During the sequence, they realise the man is not dead, so they brutally murder him. After the job is done, Henry delivers the legendary opening line of “as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster” and slams the car boot down. This is where we hear the first needle-drop: the late, great Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches”.

The lively brass selection that creates the opening of the song submerges us into the glamorous lifestyle of the gangster, allowing us to gaze with Henry’s childlike wonder at these powerful mobsters, making us forget about the brutality we just witnessed in the opening scene. As we are transported back to 1953, the lyrics of the song, coupled with the richness of Bennett’s voice, establish the running theme of the film: the ascent to, and descent from, power.

Through the use of doo-wop and crooner tunes popularised in the 1950s, we see Henry’s journey from a bullied neighbourhood kid into a fully-fledged mob associate.

Despite the flashy violence often seen in his films, Scorsese is an auteur renowned for authenticity, whether that be capturing Tibetan spiritual leaders, Gilded Age high society or Jesus Christ himself. When it came to Goodfellas, Henry’s upbringing mirrored Scorsese’s own in 1950s Italian-American neighbourhoods in New York. Therefore, the sequences of Henry’s childhood were soundtracked to Italian-language songs, reflecting the tradition and values set by the mobsters that Scorsese himself would have encountered.

The jump-cut to adult Henry takes us to 1967, significant in both the film’s timeline and the progression of music. In the 60s, music producer Phil Spector pioneered what is known as the Wall of Sound technique, where he would utilise studio recordings to make rich, orchestral tones that were designed to be played on jukeboxes and radios. With that, Spector used his formula to popularise several girl groups, including The Crystals.

In Goodfellas, Henry has seamlessly adjusted into his glamorous gangster lifestyle and his new challenge is his relationship with Karen Friedman (Lorraine Bracco). Whilst he was originally disinterested in her, her fiery attitude and “great eyes like Liz Taylor’s” prompted him to take her on a date to the notable Copacabana club. To emphasise his importance in the mafia world, Henry takes Karen through the back door of the club and through the kitchens before the waiter miraculously produces a table out of thin air for them to sit right next to the stage. This sequence is shot in an unbroken long take and accompanied by The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me”. It is a sweet and romantic song, where context reflects that both the music and Henry are in a new stage of life.

This new stage of life culminates with Henry and Karen’s wedding montage, as The Harptones’ dreamy “Life is But a Dream” plays throughout. The Harptones were a fairly unsuccessful group, never breaking into the top forty, but their song is the perfect choice for how Henry and Karen’s lifestyle was too good to be true.

From this point, we rattle through Henry’s day-to-day mobster business, reflected through the use of more of the same doo-wop, adult standard tunes. Significant hits being Dean Martin’s “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” (a song originally written to be in the 1960 version of Ocean’s 11) and Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin’s “Baby I Love You”. Even when Henry and his associates are arrested, the breeziness of prison life for a gangster is reflected by “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin. The singer’s voice is as cool as you like.

When Henry takes a turn for the worse, however, the soundtrack keeps up with him. During his time in prison, Henry becomes mixed up in the drug trade. We see him snorting cocaine with his new girlfriend Sandy at her apartment, soundtracked by the Scorsese Staple “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones. Used again in his films Casino and The Departed (twice in the latter), the brutal anti-war ballad is a stark contrast to the easy-listening previously heard within Goodfellas, signifying how Henry has strayed from his original path of gangster to dealer.

What was there from the 60s and 70s still remains, but only just. Christmas tunes from Spector’s acts The Ronettes and Darlene Love play when the mafia are celebrating their Lufthansa heist victory. However, the joy is short lived for all three protagonists: Tommy is murdered to the sound of the piano exit from Derek and the Dominoes’ “Layla”, and Jimmy silently decides to murder all of his crew to the sound of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”. These iconic rock songs accompany pivotal and iconic scenes in the film, and all incidentally feature Eric Clapton, whose career spanned from the 60s and into the 70s. When filming, Scorsese played “Layla” on-set to synchronise the staging, blocking and camera movement with the instrumentals.

The climax of the film sees us hurtling into the 80s, as Henry has the day from Hell trying to juggle his family life, gangster life and drug-dealing life, until it all blows up in his face. The sequences from the chaotic day are amplified in tension by the use of high-octane songs from rock legends Harry Nilsson, The Rolling Stones, The Who, George Harrison, and Muddy Waters. The glamour is gone, Henry’s life is over; rock n’ roll is here to stay.

And so, that leaves us with the final song. The last shot sees Henry living as a ‘schnook’. Stuck in witness protection to save his own skin, Henry laments that everything he worked for was for nothing and that he is confined to living a boring, meaningless existence. Scorsese chooses to close the film with Sid Vicious’ cover of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”. This is a spectacular song choice to end the film with as it is an imitation of a legendary crooner song associated with glamour and elegance, performed by an artist known for his notoriety and vulgarity. In the end, Henry becomes Sid Vicious, the outcast, desperately longing for the glamour that Frank Sinatra had.

The Goodfellas soundtrack is one for the ages. It illustrated how Martin Scorsese’s careful crafting of a soundtrack comprised of pre-released songs can elevate plot points, convey narrative changes, reinforce or signal developments to themes, and add a great deal of authenticity to a film’s world.

Alexa, play “Gimme Shelter”.

Written by Grace Laidler

Follow Grace Laidler on Twitter: @gracewillhuntin

During LaMotta’s fight against Janiro, blood spurts from the latter’s face in an unrealistic, exaggerated way – one that resembles a burst pipe more than a wound. The judge’s table is doused with such velocity that blood appears to have been hosed from behind the camera. We then see the glasses of ringside photographers simultaneously splattered with blood in an absurd, cartoon-like fashion. Expressionist techniques, of which these are an example, seek to diverge from objective portrayal and distort visual reality in order to convey the psychological states of characters. In this case, the exaggerated presence of blood acquires thematic value to illustrate LaMotta’s excessive appetite for violence. Kasia Boddy points out that exploding flash bulbs and powerfully amplified punches not only act as ‘scoring music’, but make the violent display even more ‘surreal and abstract’.

The use of black-and-white dampens the appearance of graphic violence by making blood less visually prominent than if it was red. The monochromatic, high contrast duality embodies the motif of LaMotta’s internal struggle between good and evil. Even in the most nauseating instances of violence, monochrome gives the film something of an aesthetic quality, evoking early cinema such as German Expressionism and Film Noir. To give blood a stark appearance, Scorsese used Hershey’s Chocolate – the same material used in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The classical opera that underscores much of the film, most notable of which is Pietro Mescagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, instils Raging Bull with an artistic sense of grandeur.

But aestheticizing violence is not the same as glorifying it. Despite the use of conventional Hollywood techniques to make fight scenes engaging, such as fast cutting and amplified punching sounds, Scorsese presents violence unfavourably. This is done by aligning our subjectivity with the characters on the receiving end. After LaMotta knocks Janiro unconscious, a slow-motion descending pedestal shot follows his fall to the ground. Starting at eye height, the camera descends at the same speed as Janiro’s fall, rotating ninety degrees in unison with his head as it hits the canvas. By forcing us to incur Janiro’s subjectivity, somewhat of a shared experience is created between him and us, furthering our detachment from LaMotta.

Expressionist temporal manipulation is used in the Sugar Ray Robinson fight. The shot of LaMotta waiting for Robinson to stand after being knocked down runs in slow motion, conveying LaMotta’s impatient subjectivity as he waits for the violence to resume. Similarly, slow-motion shots from Jake’s point-of-view are used when Vickie interacts with other men at the bar, conveying Jake’s paranoid gaze. Through Jake’s perennial eye of distrust, Vickie’s interactions appear longer than they are in objective reality, making all men she speaks to a self-perceived threat to his marriage.

After LaMotta’s loss to Robinson, a hazy shot shows his anger at the judges’ decision. The visual distortion resembles the blurry mirage of hot air above a fire. This rippling technique, accomplished by lighting a flame beneath the camera, creates the impression that the film stock itself is alight. This not only symbolises LaMotta’s anger, but evokes imagery of his ring as a hellish inferno.

Despite the monochrome majority of the film, the home video scene is shot in colour. This found footage sequence was deliberately desaturated and optically degraded to mimic the fading effects of older films – Scorsese even scratched the negative with a hanger to bring about the grainy, aged look. We see the LaMottas’ happy moments, such as barbecues, weddings or children playing. These warming shots are the only parts of the film where the family appear happy, offering the audience brief respite from the antagonism everywhere else. The sequence is interspersed with black-and-white shots from LaMotta’s boxing career. Two consecutive shots show Jake with his hands raised as if in victory – one after a boxing contest and the other at a family gathering. If the colour footage represents what Barbara Mortimer reads as Jake’s ‘fantasy and idealisation,’ then the failed father and abusive husband’s only victory is in the ring.

The use of these aesthetic techniques is one of the film’s ambiguities. We are not given a stable, external portrayal of LaMotta. Instead, our perspective oscillates between his subjectivity and a more neutral one. Steve Neale argues that our identification with characters is ‘multiple, fluid and contradictory.’ By forcing viewers to briefly witness the destructive, frightening subjectivity of LaMotta with expressionist techniques, Scorsese draws a clear image of LaMotta’s warped psyche. During his jail cell soliloquy, a tearful LaMotta insists, ‘I’m not an animal.’ His behaviour throughout suggests something different.

Written by Callum McGrath

Website: Reel – Studies in Cinema

Bibliography
Boddy, Kasia, Boxing: A Cultural History, London: Reaktion, 2008
Mortimer, Barbara, ‘Portraits of the Postmodern Person in “£”Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy”, Journal of Film and Video, 49.1-2 (1997), 28-38, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20688131.

That seemed to be the only story on offer.

Your goodies were good, and your baddies were downright evil, there was no context or grey areas. Female jealousy seemed to be enough to turn a queen into a witch. The villains in early Disney were quite often women. Jealous and catty, sure, but so powerful. Rich and assured of themselves. What a great aspiration for the young girls of the 40s and 50s. Their employment opportunities were terrible, but they felt confident they could rock a cape and pair of horns.

Nowadays, the offerings from Disney are more progressive, and much more representative. Encanto (2021), Luca (2021), Strange World (2022) and Turning Red (2022) certainly explored complex and diverse storylines and characters, especially when compared to the studio’s earlier offerings. And while modern Disney princesses are still often found in ballgowns, young audiences are well-accustomed to them being adorned with weaponry as well.

So, what does a child with a decidedly modern palate make of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959)? While they continue to be favourites for many Disney fans, it is easy to argue that there isn’t much about them for a feminist… or a nine-year-old who’s being raised by a feminist (let’s call her E).

Up until this point, E hasn’t seen these particular films because there just seemed a bit too much cleaning up after men, falling head over heels with them before anyone’s got to know anyone properly, and getting kissed while unable to give consent for it, to be a suitable tale for a 21^st Century lass.

Will the films prove E’s mother wrong? Or will they be the heteronormative, stereotype-riddled dinosaurs she suspects them to be? Will E be swept along by the romance of it all and demand to watch on repeat forever more?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Snow White and Seven Dwarfs Review

When Disney released Snow White in 1937, it became an instant classic, and to this day it remains critically acclaimed and revered as one of the greatest animated films of all time. Snow White became lore and left ripples of influence through every Disney film that followed.

‘You can tell that’s drawn,’ was the first thing E had to say about Snow White (1937). This is actually a selling point of the movie, the incredible feat of the animators who crafted each image (up to twenty-four for every second of film) and created that beautiful, dreamlike effect. But for a kid whose first Disney experience at the cinema was Inside Out (2015), Snow White might as well be carved in stone.

The second thing the modern miss could not get her head around was the clipped affected tones of a 1930s Hollywood starlet. In fact, the story of Adriana Caselotti’s employment is particularly unfeminist too. Disney blocked her from other voice work so not to disrupt the illusion of Snow White. E struggled so much with the willowy wisp of her voice that subtitles had to be employed. The explanation that some women used to make themselves sound like that to be more appealing just didn’t compute.

‘But why?’

One extremely troublesome line in the film is ‘I’m so ashamed of the fuss I’ve made.’ This is uttered immediately after someone our heroine trusted has attempted to murder her. Fortunately, E was still so concerned about the voice that she hadn’t quite focused in on what was being said yet. It is hard to imagine Esmeralda or Anna saying anything quite as timid.

Snow White is at least proportionately realistic for a thirteen-year-old girl, which in a world of Barbies, Auroras, Belles and Elsas, is definitely worth something. Snow’s sensible eyes should get a mention here too, something the later princesses lack. It’s a wonder that Rapunzel can keep her head up, quite frankly.

In films that followed after, the magic of true love’s kiss is acknowledged, it’s mentioned, it’s prescribed. Because Snow White was the first, that means that Prince Charming, apropos of nothing, went out for a stroll and snogged a girl he thought was dead. How romantic.

Because E has seen those subsequent films, she knows that true love’s kiss will wake you from a poison apple coma (duh), so she wasn’t too perturbed by the notion of the prince kissing Snow. Her mother still doesn’t like it though.

The thing that struck E was that there were lots of boys in it, ‘even though it’s for girls.’ She has obviously never been told that Snow White is for girls, but she has been in Primark, she knows the boy section doesn’t have hoodies with Snow White, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty on them, so she knows it’s not for them…

Cinderella (1950)

Cinderella (1950) is another film where the leading lady falls head over implausibly-tiny-heels in love with her guy within moments of meeting him. But at least she speaks to him before he shoves his tongue down her throat. To be fair, he seems equally besotted.

Cinderella is far sassier than Snow White, but does the film fare any better under the watchful eye of E and her reluctant mother?

While Cinderella is vocal about her unhappiness, she is entirely dependent on whether the men in her life can rescue her. Whether that’s a prince, a mouse or a dog. Cinderella has little autonomy besides deciding whether to change Anastasia’s sheets before Drizella’s, or not. But that is something.

Actually, E didn’t really see the sexist stereotypes at play in Cinderella (1950). Maybe this is because she has been raised in a house that constantly refutes them, or simply because she has had the choice to see Disney women lead armies across China, fight ice monsters, choose not to marry, or break family curses through sheer stubbornness. Watching a woman in a domestic role is a rarity for her, so it literally can’t be a stereotype.

She didn’t see the mouse saying ‘leave the sewing for the women’ as problematic, only that those women must be better at sewing than those particular men. Her mother felt Gus Gus could probably have had a crack at it – he would’ve probably still been better than Flora, Fauna or Merryweather.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

In one of the earlier text versions of Sleeping Beauty, the young woman is actually woken by her baby breastfeeding. Her second baby born since she’d been put to sleep by the curse. While the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty (1959) does have a more PG wake up routine, there is still a palpable lack of consent (unless betrothal counts?). Like Cinderella, at least Aurora had met and spoken briefly to Philip before deciding that he was the one for her. And unlike Snow White’s Charming, Philip is told explicitly that his kiss will wake the princess and restore the kingdom. Slightly less gross. Also, pressure.

E found Sleeping Beauty (1959) ‘a bit too lovey’ and ‘quite boring.’ For children used to ‘Minecraft’ Creepers, and those mind-bending goggles from Incredibles II, Maleficent’s raven doesn’t quite bring the chills it might have done in the sixties. If the main peril doesn’t feel perilous, and the main thing driving the protagonist (falling in love) isn’t exciting enough, then the film is going to fall flat.

On the face of it, Sleeping Beauty (1959), has more to offer. Dragons, sword fights and sarcastic fairies. But, of the three films, Aurora has the least autonomy. Yes, Snow’s choices were bad – never take apples from obviously evil crones in the woods – but they were her own. Whereas Aurora doesn’t decide to be cursed, she doesn’t decide to leave her family home and bunk in the woods for 16 years, she doesn’t decide to prick her finger on a spindle, and she doesn’t even get to decide when she wakes up. The one thing she does decide is that she is madly in love with the first man she ever meets. A 2D character in every sense of the word.

Sleeping Beauty also seems to be the turning point for the animators’ choice to make these teenaged princesses figures hourglass and unattainable. True, Cinders looks smashing in her gown but looks slightly more realistic in her brown smock. Aurora’s forest garb seems to include a corset.

But why?

There is something almost pure about watching early Disney, when the films were the focus. The stories were the only thing on offer. Watching these three films with a modern child was interesting, not that E had particularly nuanced wisdom to share but because they really proved how far Disney has come. E has no interest in watching Snow White or Sleeping Beauty ever again (a damning review), which suggests that they don’t offer what a growing girl needs. It might also suggest that her mother was vindicated in thinking these films were unsuitable.

Nowadays, it’s harder to separate out Disney films from the commercialism that comes with them. Is another Toy Story needed, or is it just an excuse to sell toys? But given that children have got content coming at them from so many sources, the films the studio produces have to be incredible. They have to be capable of grabbing attention that is pulled in many directions. Even with awkward product placement and exorbitant park prices, the stories have developed and continued to be a spectacle (Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014), aside). Not only do the films have to be engaging, they have to be engaged. Modern films have to reflect modern appetites and sentiments.

It’s always good to acknowledge what came before. Cinderella waltzed so that Merida could run. Kids learning to love Disney films today get to access worlds with stories that stretch far beyond romantic love and castles. And that can only be a good thing. Much to E’s mother’s chagrin, Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora will never be fully obsolete. Nostalgia will keep them alive for generations to come. Just perhaps not in E’s house.

Recommended for you: Animated Disney Villains Ranked

Threads introduces us, in deceptively mundane fashion, to the day-to-day life of Jimmy (Reece Dinsdale), Ruth (Karen Meagher) and their families in Sheffield. Ruth has discovered that she is pregnant, and the young couple plan to marry. Preparations for the baby are underway. Together, they strip the ‘old-fashioned’ wallpaper from their new shared apartment whilst Ruth’s Mother knits baby clothes. Jimmy drinks with his friend in a local pub, capitalising on his last days as a ‘free man’. The irony is palpable. All seems normal in this naturalistic illustration of working class Britain, if you can ignore the news reports which indicate, with increasing severity, the looming threat of nuclear war. And when the bombs drop, no-one will be spared.

Threads is the love child of phenomenal English writer Barry Hines and renowned director Mick Jackson. Barry Hines, known for his exploration of the socio-economic struggles of northern working class England, lent to the film’s script a disturbing realism that would quite literally traumatise a generation. Authentic dialogue ensures his characters feel like real people, reacting to the events of the film in a way which is true to their background and environment. When a mushroom cloud rises in the distance, Jimmy’s friend Bob (Ashley Barker) exclaims ‘Jesus Christ! They’ve done it… They’ve done it!’, whilst Ruth’s Father (David Brierley) simply shouts ‘Bloody hell!’ These genuine British reactions to a nuclear bomb drop are disturbingly effective in their simplicity and colloquialism.

Such realism is only enhanced by the direction of Jackson. Threads was shot on location in Sheffield using, for the majority of the film, handheld cameras and natural lighting; techniques which created a terrifying sense of immediacy and visual authenticity. Prior to shooting Threads, Jackson worked alongside famous American and British scientists to ensure his film would be as accurate as possible in depicting the aftermath of nuclear war. Thus, under the deft direction of Hines and Jackson, Threads was able to blend scientific exactness with believable drama.

Threads vividly depicts the indomitable spirit of ordinary people confronted by an impending nuclear attack; families who, despite their best efforts, will be wrenched from the domestic comfort of their homes and torn apart. To a contemporary audience, Threads offers a brutal reminder of just how close the story contained in this film came to being a reality during the Cold War. In 1983, just one year prior to the release of Threads on the BBC, the Soviet Union’s nuclear warning system reported the launch of missiles from the United States. If it were not for engineer Stanislav Petrov’s decision to wait before issuing a retaliatory nuclear strike, the Soviet system’s ‘false alarm’ would have likely led to full scale nuclear war. This example is just one of many that brings home the oppressive sense of dread that permeated the lives of those growing up during the 70s and 80s, and explains in part the disturbed testimony of those who watched Threads when it first aired on television.

One IMDB user recalls watching the film in 1984, when they were just 12 years old; ‘I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. I wanted to run from the room in fright, but couldn’t. For better or worse, this film showed in full, unflinching, uncompromising detail exactly what it would be like if your home town got nuked, and gave us graphic realism in spades’. But Threads was not the only film of its time to play on contemporaneous fears and anxieties. Body horror films like David Cronenberg’s 1986 masterpiece The Fly is said to have represented fears regarding the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, whilst technological paranoia found its expression in seminal films like 1984’s The Terminator. So what makes Threads special? Where Threads stands out from other films of its time is in its refusal to engage in the conventions of fictional, Hollywoodised filmmaking. Threads does not set out to entertain; it was created, as Jackson stated, to provide politicians with a ‘workable visual vocabulary for thinking about the unthinkable’.

And though modern viewers likely do not hold the same deep-rooted fears of nuclear annihilation, Threads retains its impact. This is not only because of the impressive verisimilitude that Jackson and Hines achieved on such a low budget. Threads’ portrayal of a world brought to the brink of destruction addresses current fears surrounding global warming and environmental degradation, with its focus on the breakdown of society after a catastrophic event hitting all too close to home. The COVID-19 pandemic will be fresh in the minds of viewers today, and with those memories comes a renewed fear when watching Threads; we observe the fragility of modern civilization with alarm. Whether it is the feeling of close proximity to the characters in the first half of the film conveyed by Jackson’s use of the handheld camera, or the practical effects depicting the gruesome onslaught of radiation poisoning, Threads stands the test of time and possesses the ability to strike terror in the hearts of viewers even today.

The build up to the bomb drop in Threads is uncomfortably akin to global reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most readers will remember with vague amusement the panic buying of toilet paper during the early days of the Lockdown Era, but Threads reminds us that in the moment we were genuinely afraid; and perhaps we had cause to be. In supermarkets across Sheffield, panic buying ensues as families desperately seek to stockpile goods for their homes. Articles in newspapers explain how people can best protect themselves against a strike, with Jimmy’s Father painstakingly following instructions to build a makeshift shelter out of mattresses and the kitchen door. Even the most optimistic of viewers knows his endeavour is a pointless one. At 8:30am in England, disinterested documentary-style narration declares a nuclear detonation over the North Sea, damaging communications across Britain. A second attack wipes out military targets, and the third and final attack confirms the instant death of 12-30 million people in the UK. Here, the true horrors of Threads ensue.

As depressing a watch as Threads may be, director Mick Jackson’s attempts to ‘visualise the unthinkable’ are as successful today as they were 40 years ago. Threads does not only set out to shock with gruesome depictions of radiation poisoning; it displays, in grim docudrama fashion, the long-term breakdown of British society. Ruth is, from the two large families we connect to at the start of the film, the only survivor of the initial bomb strikes. Stumbling out of her family home into the rubble that Sheffield has been reduced to, she walks past people made unrecognisable by radiation. The camera’s unsympathetic gaze observes a woman with her face burnt off clutching the corpse of her dead baby. We are reminded of Ruth’s own pregnancy, and the hopelessness of her situation. Considering our current cinematic landscape, littered as it is with dystopian heroines like Katniss Everdeen, it is important for contemporary viewers to recognise that Ruth’s post-apocalyptic existence is not confined to fiction. Wrapped in grey rags and dusty with nuclear fallout, Ruth may be reminiscent of the hero of a dystopian survival film, but Threads makes it clear that nuclear war is not something any of us would want to live through.

The second half of the film is sparse in dialogue, relying on intermittent title cards that document how much time has passed since the strikes, as well as information about the ongoing struggles the survivors face. Here, the powerful imagery of director Mick Jackson and the understated yet dynamic performance of Karen Meagher as Ruth shines through. Created with a budget of just £250,000 and shot over the course of 17 days, Threads is truly one of a kind. Combining archive footage with staged shots, Jackson blurs the lines between reality and drama to extraordinary effect.

Utilising miniatures and hand-painted backgrounds, Jackson was able to portray nuclear devastation in excruciating detail. Long shots depict cremated British countryside and towns and cities fallen into irreparable ruin. As society breaks down, we see Ruth give birth alone in a shack. Her daughter will grow up in a world that is unrecognisable. As nuclear winter sets in, she must barter for rats to eat. It is in stark contrast to the cosy life she enjoyed with her middle class family that we observe, with despair, Ruth’s relentless drive for survival in a world without hope.

The ending of Threads adheres to the same unremitting hopelessness that persists throughout the film’s second half. Hines refuses to provide viewers with catharsis, and instead ramps up the film’s horror in the final scene where Ruth’s young daughter Jane stumbles into a crude hospital, reminiscent of a cattle shed from the 14th century, to give birth. Threads ends on a freeze frame as, handed the deformed body of her stillborn child, Jane looks upon her baby with confusion, then opens her mouth in a silent scream. The message here requires no deciphering; society has regressed back to medieval times, and the long-term effects of nuclear radiation will be suffered by generations to come. Life as we know it is fragile, and the delicate threads that hold society together easily torn apart. Here, we are reminded of the first shot of the film; documentary-like footage of a spider spinning a web.

The bold ending that Threads delivers appears almost like a challenge to its viewers: ‘I have shown you what will happen if we enter into a nuclear war; do you want this?’ For anyone who has made it through the film’s two-hour runtime, the answer will be a resounding no. And whilst Jackson almost certainly anticipated such a response, he could not perhaps have anticipated the enduring legacy of Threads; his unflinching portrayal of a post-apocalyptic hellscape remains crucial today as a timeless cautionary tale about the devastating impact of nuclear weapons on humanity. As Vladimir Putin famously stated, there can be no winners in a nuclear war.

Written by Eleanor Wise

Recommended for you: 100 Unmissable BBC Films

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In the film, disaffected bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is tasked with shepherding the last pregnant woman in the world, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), to a safe haven to escape the calamity. By adopting a hyper-vérité style akin to what Gillo Pontecorvo employed in The Battle of Algiers (1966), Cuarón offers a merciless conviction in his direction, using the documentary-adjacent style to achieve maximum effect.

The film uses its action as a vital point to create friction and heightens it through sequences that apply constant pressure to the characters and each of us. Children of Men creates tension unlike any film of the new millennium by maximising its long takes through composed pacing, definitive choreography, and a hardened realism. By combing all of those efforts, the film leaves a lasting impression and raises the bar on the capabilities of modern filmmaking.

Long takes in the modern age have become something of a gimmick when the director wants to show off their prowess as an artist, and they can often leave you wanting more as they simply buoy through a scene with no real purpose. Children of Men has several long take sequences that are incremented together, but instead of being monotonous and drawn-out they are all-encompassing, kinetic, and well-paced. By spacing out the one-takes, Cuarón makes these moments more palatable for us instead of having it feel like one long slide down to the bottom.

This is perhaps best illustrated when Theo, Kee and Miriam (Pam Ferris) attempt to escape from the Fishes (an anti-fascist resistance group fighting for social liberation) after learning some troubling news. The camera carefully follows Theo at ground level as he leads Kee and Miriam around the compound in the early morning and, despite the natural jitters that come with shooting handheld, is done in smooth and guarded fashion. It never shakes too much for it to be nauseating, nor does it feel sluggish, moving step-for-step no matter how fast or slow. Accompanying that with the ambient sound of dawn, it makes every noise heard (near or far) sound deafening. It’s the sneaking around version of driving the nitro-glycerine trucks from Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953) – any mishap could be catastrophic, and momentum is crucial.

Pacing a take not only affects the action of the current moment but can also reflect the stylistic tone of an entire film. A couple of examples of rhythmic difference in long-takes from the last few years can be that of Sam Mendes’ British World War 1 epic 1917 (2019) and Romain Gavras’ modern French uprising film Athena (2022). Both effectively use long takes but harness wildly different pacing styles.

1917 is designed to look like one continuous shot (with some small digital edits), and uses a variety of crane and Steadicam shots to take in the scenery of Northern France in World War One. In contrast, Athena is shot frenetically, as the bedlam of every scene is accentuated by a handheld dexterity that hits like a bolt of lightning, as it augments the banlieue (French for “suburb”) Athena to new heights. If the pacing of 1917 is methodical and Athena’s dynamic, Children of Men is able to find the sweet spot of the two more often than not by ramping up and down the action when needed to convey sensitive information. Now, there are times when the camera perhaps lingers longer than it should instead of just simply cross-cutting, but it works to keep tempo stylistically with the rest of the film.

In addition to each of the long takes being well-paced, they are also immaculately designed and choreographed. The blocking that is on display ensures that everything in the frame gets used and there is no dead space being packed into the shot. The scene that highlights this the best is the Canterbury forest ride ambush, which happens relatively early but sets the stage for the onslaught our heroes will be encountering.

It begins innocently enough, with Theo and his ex-wife/resistance leader Julian (Julianne Moore) playing a game of blowing ping pong balls into each other’s mouths and casually flirting, while fellow resistance member Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor) drives. As they move through the forest, they are swarmed by a group of armed deserters who go on the offensive against our helpless heroes as the camera oscillates inside the vehicle, capturing the madness.

Beginning from Theo’s perspective in the car, and switching and forth during the blitz, the sheer number of people converging on the vehicle is overwhelming and makes a typically open space feel claustrophobic. It’s as though the characters are drowning on dry land, and the mania amps up even more when Julian is shot by chasing motorcyclists. There might be some lingering questions regarding the legitimacy of a small group being able to overwhelm the car so ineffectively, but it does add thematic context to the story of showcasing hope (what little there is) against despair.

But staging and pacing can only be properly utilized if there is truly exceptional camerawork that can create a definitive realism. The camera team behind the film – director Alfonso Cuarón and his long-time friend/collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki – craft a raw and murky modernity that makes the characters and environments feel lived-in, ranging from the bureaucratic and consumer-obsessed metropolis to the confines of a secluded log cabin.

When describing why he wanted to shoot Children of Men in non-fluid long takes, Cuarón stated that it “was to take advantage of the element of real-time.” This harkens back to the documentary-like style mentioned at the top and how each shot, no matter how extreme, provokes a visceral and truthful reaction against an imperial obstacle in a way that is plausible and terrifying. It puts a mental timer on the viewer and makes each subsequent choice more pivotal than the last.

The sequence that features this as a focal point is that of the climatic refugee camp warzone, where Theo has to rescue Kee from the Fishes as they do battle against the British military. This is the point of the film where the battle between these two opposing forces reaches its most hysterical.

As the hand-held camera follows Theo as he traverses this makeshift battlefield in the hope of rescuing Kee, the sequence intoxicates as the descending tanks and constant gunfire capture the tumultuous and bombastic elements of a real-time war unfolding. What makes this long-take so effective is the velocity of the violence that is taking place. The bullets whiz through everything like paper and deal swift death, while the explosions are practical and create a large shock not just in Theo but in each of us too.

A moment that is particularly striking, though brief, is when Theo has to take cover inside a bus as an armoured tank approaches and blood gets on the camera lens. The scene evokes the same deadly speed and emotional stakes as Steven Spielberg’s taking of Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan (1998), developing in a way that is both realistic and colossal. The films also share the characteristic of having its lens be muddied with blood and dirt to showcase the magnitude of their skirmishes.

Even though Saving Private Ryan is a brutal depiction of battle and portrait of valor, there are a few moments where the bravado of the soldiers and the spectacle of war as a whole overtake it to the point of it becoming pure entertainment and losing its gravitas. In Children of Men, you get the opposite effect. There is no lionizing of the characters, they are all deeply flawed people who have to claw their way out of every hellish situation, with each scenario becoming more unforgiving and vicious than the last.

Putting it all together, Children of Men cements itself in cinema history as an awe-inspiring tour de force in science fiction action. It puts us squarely into the headspaces of its characters and does so with authenticity and conviction. Fusing that with the brilliance of Cuarón’s direction, it creates visual splendor with each shot and subverts action convention at every turn. It’s nothing short of an emotionally rich film, one that was game-changing when it was released in theatres and remains nothing short of a miracle today.

Written by Mark Serravalle

You can support Mark Serravalle on Twitter: @MarkSerravalle

It’s no secret that Marvel have had a monopoly on the cinema industry for well over a decade now. The superhero franchise, boasting its critically acclaimed (and extremely profitable) cinematic universe, employs a wide variety of techniques that keep audiences around the globe returning to their closest big screen with each and every release. But no strategy gets people quite as excited as the incorporation of cameo appearances from fan favourite characters and actors. This inclusion has been a staple of superhero cinema more or less since the beginning, with examples like Tony Stark in The Incredible Hulk in place to tease the next slew of releases, but it has undoubtedly been revolutionised since the 2021 release of Spider-Man: No Way Home.

What occurred in the fallout of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield making their highly anticipated return was nothing short of pioneering. Fans gathered far and wide on release day, brimming with enthusiasm in the hopes of seeing not one, not two, but three Spider-Men swinging, crawling and crime-fighting together. Unsurprisingly, the film was met with praise from critics and fans alike.

The Guardian, whilst carefully avoiding spilling the beans, referred to the film as “all very meta and self-referential; screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers hoover up memorable lines from past movies and serve them with a flourish and an exaggerated wink to the audience. It’s also a good deal of fun.” Just how exaggerated are we talking?

Meanwhile, rogerebert.com writer Brian Tallerico alluded to No Way Home’s big surprise by asserting: “there’s more going on here than the previews would have you believe.” He went on to say: “More than any movie in the MCU that I can remember, it made me want to dig out my old box of Spider-Man comic books. That’s a heroic accomplishment.”

Above all else, the numbers don’t lie. No Way Home brought in just under $2 billion for Sony and Marvel, a staggering figure postulating the film as one of the highest-grossing ever.

Approved by critics, lauded by fans, bringing in a king’s ransom. Cue the light bulb moment for filmmakers everywhere.

Since No Way Home, embracing cameos has become a leading approach for a fair share of films within the same genre. 2023 saw the long-awaited release of The Flash, the thirteenth instalment of long-time Marvel rivals DC’s own extended universe. Following various delays, ranging from director changes to COVID-19 to the controversy surrounding its lead, the film carried with it plenty of pressure. Cast alongside Ezra Miller was a returning Michael Keaton, reprising his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman after over 30 years. Unlike the Maguire and Garfield case of No Way Home, Keaton’s involvement wasn’t kept secret, however this didn’t prevent the veteran actor from taking a significant slice of The Flash’s overall appeal.

What director Andy Muschietti didn’t reveal prematurely was the host of surprise cameos that would feature in the film’s third act. Adam West, Christopher Reeve, George Reeves. These three actors share three commonalities: they all played DC superheroes. They’ve all passed away. They’re all in The Flash. In a brief but memorable sequence near the film’s conclusion, the aforementioned actors (through the magic of CGI) come to life onscreen in the hopes of thrilling viewers much like No Way Home did. The brevity of the scene suggests that this inclusion came rather late in the film’s development, most likely a swift response to Marvel’s monumental success two years prior. It’s important to note that this is all speculation, but it doesn’t take an Avenger to see it.

Yet there’s a key difference here. None of the surprise cameos have any dialogue, any direct involvement in the film’s overarching narrative, and barely any screen time at all. It feels like a cheap attempt at recreating the charm of a better film. And, taking into account that a majority of these actors have passed on, it also feels exceedingly insensitive.

This is a sentiment shared over at rogerebert.com, with writer Matt Zoller Seitz making reference to the scene in his review of the film: “And rather than find an artful, modest way to repurpose library footage from earlier adaptations of DC comics, the actors who originally played them, many of whom died long ago, have been scanned (or rebuilt) as vaguely three-dimensional but uncanny grotesques.”

Considering the lack of… everything in these cameos, why include them at all? Was there a fear that the story couldn’t stand on its own? Were the writers under too much pressure to live up to Marvel’s supremely high standard? Or was this a dreadfully sleazy attempt at cashing in on the hype?

If the latter is true, director Andy Muschietti and company have failed miserably. So far (as of 14th July 2023), The Flash has grossed a lowly $262.6 million against its $200 million budget, which coincidentally, is the exact same budget Sony and Marvel allocated for Spider-Man: No Way Home. In addition, the film, and its cameo sequence in particular, were received to every filmmaker’s worst nightmare: mixed opinion.

The Flash isn’t the only superhero film to exploit the new-age cameo, Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, despite being well received, also features a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Donald Glover, supplied with a one-line quip and no more. Less controversial, but also similarly useless. The third Deadpool film will resurrect Hugh Jackman’s Logan, but only time will tell if this move was made with sincerity or a lack of ulterior motive.

It seems this trend is, for now, here to stay. So far, none have succeeded in matching No Way Home in any department, and there’s a couple of reasons why. For the MCU’s third Spider-Man instalment, the fans and their wishes were paramount. Maguire and Garfield stealthily signed on to the film while it was halfway through production, as a result of heavy anticipation for their returns. Importantly, both actors signed on only after being assured that their involvement would be integral to the film, and not simply to bolster the film’s unique selling point. These factors are void in films like The Flash. Aside from Keaton, none of the cameos amount to anything more than a brief eyebrow-raising moment, abutted by a series of half-baked CGI fight scenes and an absence of decency.

This shortage of genuineness suggests fans and their enthusiasm are sadly being exploited for a quick buck. Whilst No Way Home took the cameo craze to an unprecedented level, it also inspired a shedload of dime a dozen copycats, indolent scriptwriting and an overt presentation of what cinema goers already knew about big budget filmmaking: profit is the first concern.

The Flash’s humble returns suggest audiences are at least becoming privy to this and are making it known in response that they aren’t satisfied. Superhero films are often renowned for their heart, and when such heart plays hooky, someone must be held accountable.

Written by Ibrahim Azam

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Alas, The Last Movie was almost a prophetic title. Instead of a straight forward narrative that bopped along on a striking soundtrack of rock and roll standards like Easy Rider had two years prior, The Last Movie was a disjointed, non-linear, visual and audio assault. The film was a condemnation of the exploitative nature and practices of Hollywood moviemaking and U.S imperialism, interference, and colonialism. Immensely disliked by the executives and financial backers at Universal Studios who had handed Hopper a one million dollar budget and complete creative control, the film was only given a two week opening stint in a select number of theaters and drive-ins. Although it was awarded the prestigious Critics Prize at the 32nd Venice International Film Festival, The Last Movie was buried and Hopper’s directorial career was considered over. Hopper retreated to his New Mexico compound, drank a great deal, took a lot of drugs, and entered into a sulk that would last for the next fifteen years.

As he was ostracized from mainstream film, Hopper spent the 1970s working as an actor in a wide-range of American independents and foreign films. The best of these could be considered Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Tracks (1977), and The American Friend (1977). The worst might be eurotrash obscurities such as Last In, First Out (1978), and The Sky Is Falling (1979).

However, The Last Movie would not turn out to be Hopper’s last directorial film. In a stroke of good luck, good timing, and an inexperienced director who bailed on the project, Hopper took control of the Canadian film Out of the Blue (1980). What was originally intended as a family-friendly television movie, Hopper repositioned as an urgent-two fingered salute from the punk rock generation to the hippies. The film didn’t have a wide release and due to its subject matter of familial destruction, substance abuse, and incest, was handed the same fate as The Last Movie; buried and left to be forgotten.

Thankfully, both these films, from the lost period of Hopper’s exile, have faced renewed interest over the past few years with restorations, reissues on DVD and Blu-ray, screenings at international film festivals, and extensive documentaries and articles re-examining Hopper’s iconoclast films.

From 1986 onwards, a clean, sober, and healthy Hopper reaffirmed his position within mainstream Hollywood and independent films alike. Three successive performances in Blue Velvet, River’s Edge, and Hooisers (all released in ‘86) introduced him to a new generation of film audiences (the hippies’ kids) and reminded those that were present during the 1960s what an extensive force of nature Hopper was. He was welcomed back with open arms.

It was inevitable that Hopper’s re-entry into Hollywood would offer him opportunities to direct films again. They came thick and fast, starting with Colors (1988) and proceeding in fairly quick succession with Catchfire (1990), The Hot Spot (1990), and his final feature film Chasers (1994). This quartet of films demonstrated Hopper’s quality, finesse, and expertise as a steady film director. They might lack the fire, passion, iconoclast tendency, political commentary, and capturing of the zeitgeist seen in the trifecta of Easy Rider, The Last Movie, and Out of the Blue, but, as demonstrated by Colors, Hopper knew how to sell the film to a younger, hipper, and more in-tune audience with the inclusion of a solid soundtrack of hip-hop standards. Colors should perhaps be regarded as a bridge between the works of independence seen in Easy Rider, The Last Movie, and Out of the Blue and the works as a Hollywood director for hire on Catchfire, The Hot Spot and Chasers.

The bawdy sex-comedy Chasers unfairly ended Hopper’s tenure as a feature film director. The film is technically Hopper’s very last movie. Yet it wouldn’t be the final time Hopper took up residence behind the camera. There are two directorial credits that follow Chasers. The digitally shot short film Homeless (2000) and the Gwyneth Paltrow-starring advertisement Pashmy Dream (2008). While both these short films don’t offer the bravado of previous works, they are worth investigating as a way to understand where Hopper might have gone if allowed to continue on his directorial path.

In Homeless, a young unhoused woman spends her days pushing a shopping cart of belongings around a seaside California town. In flashback we see that the woman was once an exotic dancer. Hopper doesn’t layer the film in any romanticism, and instead uses grainy and flat digital film to produce an up-close and voyeuristic documentary of this unnamed woman’s life. She glides through the city unacknowledged by passers-by. In the flashbacks of her days as a dancer, we see her dance semi-naked to music. Her face is made up and her blonde hair is gleaming and clean. In the present day, she looks more or less the same, but her body is hidden under tatty and baggy clothing. Her face is covered in grime and her hair is tattered and dirty. She is the same person, but she is invisible in her current guise. Her time as a dancer would have no doubt drawn a crowd who would have considered her attractive, but wouldn’t look at her now.

Homeless was produced as part of an online film festival that was to have been hosted and judged by Hopper and Quentin Tarantino sometime in 2000. The film was intended as an example of the type of entries they were looking for. With the cancellation of the festival, the film has instead entered (alongside his abstract paintings, sculptures, and photography) the lexicon of Hopper’s artistic works and was shown on a loop as part of his many worldwide exhibitions.

Homeless had been an idea of Hopper’s for a while. He had told American Film magazine way back 1988 that he was keen to direct a “a little, De Sica-like film about the homeless in Los Angeles.” Hopper’s referral to Italian director Vittorio De Sica hinted at an interest in telling stories from the perspective of the poor and the working class of American society. De Sica had taken this perspective in many of his films, most notably in his Oscar-winning Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1968).

Interest in the marginalized certainly extends to Hopper’s first four directorial films. He profiled the counterculture, the hippies and other societal outcasts in Easy Rider. Through the lens of Hollywood movies, he shone a light on the exploitation of indigenous populations in The Last Movie. In Out of the Blue he sought to explore the hardships of a working class family ripped apart by drugs, alcohol, and abuse in a small community torn apart by tragedy. And, while coming from the perspective of LAPD police officers, he gave exposure to the trend of gang membership, and the emergence of hip-hop music in Colors. These first four films show Hopper to be a canny social critic. Homeless comes from that same stance, but due to some obvious constraints the film isn’t given the space it needs to work as a serious commentary on homelessness and the policies that impact unhoused people. It is a nine minute film, with very little funding, and a lack of narrative. There is a notable lack of music or score which was something of a celebrated trait of Hopper’s previous films. His devotion to the use of popular music in Easy Rider, Out of the Blue, and Colors was intended as a signpost to the eras in which they were made, but also flagged to the audience the politics of the times.

While Hopper’s first four films are interested in the protagonist’s relationship to society and the wider culture, his last three films are more interested in relationships that occur between men and women. The social commentary is dropped from Catchfire, The Hot Spot, and Chasers in favor of sexual politics, streamy affairs, and rotten betrayals. While these films certainly have merit, they are not as fondly remembered, nor have they faced the same critical reassessment as Hopper’s first four films. They are certainly flashier, more expensive, and have a cast of familiar faces in lead and supporting roles. Hopper’s two last movies also exhibit this divide. Homeless comes from the avant-garde, cinéma vérité leanings, and improvisational, on-the-fly nature of Hopper’s earlier works. His final directorial piece Pashmy Dream shares far more with the lavish productions of his last three feature length films.

Hopper’s Pashmy Dream is a modern retelling of the story of Cinderella. In this case the glass slipper that is returned by a charming prince is a Tod’s pashmy bag. Cinderella is Gwyneth Paltrow playing a version of herself, and the prince is a handsome Italian journalist.

Paltrow wanders through an Italian market place and meets with the journalist for an interview about an undisclosed film that has just finished production. She is in Italy for an extravagant wrap party. As the interview begins, the table is suddenly swarmed by paparazzi. Overwhelmed, Paltrow flees the scene. The journalist sees that Paltrow has left behind her plush Tod’s pashmy bag and pursues her across the city with repeated cries of “Gwyneth, your bag!”

Unlike Homeless, which focuses on just one subject with very limited interaction with the surroundings, Pashmy Dream contains multiple performers, elaborate sets, and even music. While the focus is on Paltrow and the journalist, they both move through a vastly populated city and have numerous interactions. Eventually the journalist tracks Paltrow down to a lavish party attended by a multitude of well-groomed guests and circus performers. The journalist reunites Paltrow with her beloved bag and the two share a dance. A nice touch of consistency.

Hopper once stated that “All my films end in fire,” and indeed most of them do. Easy Rider’s last shot is a burning motorcycle, the last shot in Out of the Blue shows the cab of a rig in flames, The Last Movie shows the protagonist, Kansas, repeatedly getting shot and “going down in flames.” Surprisingly, Pashmy Dream ends with a fire breather from the wrap party blowing a flame across the screen. Hopper’s literal last movie ends in flames.

Homeless and Pashmy Dream may only exist as curiosities or footnotes in Hopper’s career as a film director, but they can be considered essential to Hopper’s creative output. They could also be considered as missed opportunities. A longer running time and an assortment of characters and challenges overcome by them could have made Homeless an intriguing document of the unhoused and ignored population of the cities we inhabit. A longer film could have been a damning indictment of the political unwillingness to engage with a societal issue that has only got more apparent and more rampant over the past decades.
Pashmy Dream on the other hand wraps up its premise satisfactorily within the time it’s given. There really isn’t much more meat on the bone to pull off. It borders on smugness which would possibly spill further into cringeworthy and irksome fluff if it went on any longer. Hopper’s aesthetic as a film director would not have gelled with a Hallmark-style romantic movie, which is the film’s only apparent outcome. The tired premise of a handsome man reacquainting a lost item to a beautiful woman has been repeated endlessly for centuries and doesn’t hold much intrigue. The film is, afterall, a prolonged advertisement for an expensive bag. Nonetheless, it’s an extravagant production that at least shows Hopper was able to juggle the numerous challenges that a big budget film would have brought.

What has always been intriguing about Dennis Hopper is the vast expanse of media his life covered. He was a prolific actor, a dedicated artist and photographer, a patron of the arts and an avid collector of artists ranging from Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Julian Schnabel. He appeared in big-budget Hollywood movies and self-funded indie films. He was also a recognisable celebrity with notorious stories of drug-related exploits that fueled the tabloids for decades. He even hosted ‘Saturday Night Live’. But his work as a director is sparse. Seven films spread over a four decade period is limited no matter how impactful one or two of them was to a generation of film audiences. There should have been more entries in Hopper’s arsenal of directorial films, and Hopper himself believed this and expressed regret that the opportunities fell through.

Dennis Hopper’s feature directorial work is just a facet in our understanding of what made him such a unique talent within almost all the creative fields he explored. Be it a cameo role in a Hollywood movie, a supporting role in an indie film, a series of abstract paintings, a collection of polaroids of gang graffiti, a TV spot selling life insurance or a sensible car, or a television advert for a posh bag starring a Hollywood actress. He surfed high art and low culture effortlessly. It is worth investigating even his smallest contribution to popular culture or art to further that understanding.

Written by Stephen Lee Naish

Stephen Lee Naish (he/him) is a writer and visual artist. His work explores film, politics, and popular culture. He often examines political undercurrents present in films and their potential for social commentary and critique. He explores a wide range of topics, including the impacts of COVID on theaters, the class war of the 1% upon the rest, and the climate crisis. He has written essays for various journals and periodicals, including Candid Magazine, The Quietus, Albumism, Aquarium Drunkard, Film International, and Dirty Movies. He is also the author of several books including “Create or Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper” (AUP), “Deconstructing Dirty Dancing” (Zero Books), and “Riffs and Meaning” (Headpress). His latest book is “Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency” (Newstar Books). He lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Linktree: Ste L Naish
Twitter: @RiffsandMeaning

One of the most popular acting schools in Hollywood is the Method. Popularized in the 1950s, the Method is a way of naturally embodying a role, becoming the person on screen rather than acting like a person. Marlon Brando is often associated with Method performance, and his work in On the Waterfront (1954) won him his first Oscar for Best Actor. But what was it about Brando’s performance that captivated audiences, critics and his fellow filmmakers? Why is his performance still recognized as great to this day? And what can be gleaned from the screen to demonstrate the Method in action?

While Brando was not a student of the prestigious Actors’ Studio, he is still an exemplar of the ideas behind the Method and how they changed film acting for years to come. What distinguished Marlon Brando as a screen actor in On the Waterfront is his training and preparation behind the scenes that led to a unique performance that only he could have given.

On the Waterfront tells the story of a community of dock workers under the thumb of a local crime lord, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). The workers play “deaf and dumb” when questioned about events related to Friendly’s more unsavory business. Brando plays Terry Malloy, a dock worker and associate of Friendly’s thanks to his brother’s work for the organization. Terry’s actions lead to the death of a character in the film’s opening, and he struggles emotionally with this throughout the film, especially when he begins spending time with the dead man’s sister.

It’s difficult to watch a performance to see exactly what effect the Method has had on an actor, as every actor’s goal is to fit naturally into the role they are portraying. What is different between the Method and more classical performance techniques is the source of the actor’s emotion, and how they embody the role. Classical performance is about becoming the character, using the experience of that character available within the source material; an “outside-in” approach that disregards the actor underneath in favor of what is required by the role. An actor playing Winston Churchill or Helen Keller would aim to recreate the actions, mannerisms, and tone of such an illustrious figure. The Method, popularized in the United States of America by Lee Strasberg, was more “inside-out”, using improvisation exercises and mental approaches inspired by psychotherapy. Affective memories might inspire an actor’s performance – when playing a scene in which a character is sad, the performer would actively conjure a sad memory that creates a feeling of sadness within the actor. It’s a more “real” way of reacting, by accessing actual emotional states that lead to the appearance of authentic feeling.

Marlon Brando’s style of Method did not come from Strasberg’s teachings, though. His success is attributed to Stella Adler who taught him to be relaxed and to separate himself from the character. “‘Drama depends on doing, not feeling,’ … [which] is to say that acting comes down to movement more than thought. … Thus her training included makeup, voice, mime, acrobatics, and the history of theater.” (Colombani, 10)

This led to a vast difference in performance for Brando across his filmography as he was able to transform into characters through physicality, tone, or makeup. James Naremore notes that his physicality as an actor is what made him stand out in 1950s Hollywood, calling his work a “deviation from the norms of classical rhetoric” with a slouch, mumble, and tendency towards gestures or actions that others might avoid like talking with a mouth full of food in One-Eyed Jacks (1961). (201) His style and training stands out in On the Waterfront, but exactly how is not obvious without that background knowledge.

Like with Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Brando brought his makeup training to the role in On the Waterfront. Terry has a distinct scar on his eyebrow, evidence of his former boxing career and a departure from Brando’s handsome, clean-cut look. Later in the film, Terry is brutally beaten by a group of gangsters. His face is covered in blood that Brando applied himself, and it makes the character distinct outside the age of Code-era Hollywood. The camera is put right in Terry’s face with him centered in the frame to give each of us the full extent of the violence, and Brando’s expression sells Terry’s pain with a mixture of anger, sadness, and desire to continue the fight. Terry’s bloodied walk from the pier is a powerful moment for his character – he staggers like a boxer resisting falling after a knockout blow, exhibiting Terry’s perseverance against the dark forces on the docks. The physical transformation from Brando to Terry to beaten Terry is made clear through the makeup, but it’s Brando’s action that is the real star of the show. 

The film presents a contrast within Terry that Brando plays to a tee. There’s the boxer – the tough, dumb guy at the mercy of those around him – and a sensitive young man who feels like a bum because his shot at success was taken from him. An early scene, in which Terry comes to see Johnny Friendly, demonstrates the former. He walks into Friendly’s bar, and Friendly greets him with some mimed boxing. Terry holds back because Friendly is his mob boss, but he gives a little bit of a pose to act as if he’s going along with it. He’s putting up a front and bringing his experience as a boxer into the stance he takes as Johnny approaches him. Friendly picks Terry up, and Terry walks off frame looking uncomfortable and shifting into a slouch, showing that Terry doesn’t like how their physical rapport recreates their power dynamic. There are layers to what Brando puts into Terry as he reacts to Johnny Friendly’s various actions, showing Terry’s background, feelings about the other characters, and how people act with multiple dimensions of thought. For Brando, acting is something we all do every day, and the question is how to express the different feelings someone has within a given situation because people are never just one thing.

Later on, Terry rescues Edie (Eva Marie Saint), the sister of the man whose death he feels responsible for, from a group of mobsters. He stands with his hands folded at his belt as he sees Edie off. A former dock worker recognizes the pair, and Terry gets physical with the man as he begins to talk about the dead man, a harsh switch from his non-threatening pose only moments before. Terry and Edie begin to chat about her brother and the convent she attends. Terry tells her not to be afraid of him, and one of the film’s most famous improvisations occurs when Terry retrieves Edie’s dropped glove. He picks up the glove, brushes dirt off of it, and places it on his hand while sitting on a swing set. It’s an image that demonstrates Terry’s innocence, his helpful, almost childlike nature that rests at his core. Terry is curious in their discourse, and Brando demonstrates this with his glances and inquisitive intonation. Terry has traded in the boxing gloves, a symbol of his tough front, for Edie’s glove, and the act of placing it on his own hand shows a desire for a more romantic self. It’s an embracing of the more traditionally “feminine” qualities of his character. It’s a brilliant moment that, when taken in concert with his mimed boxing and bloodied face, gives a full picture of the role of Terry. 

While many associate Marlon Brando with Strasberg’s approach of the internal brought to the forefront, his acting style is not so simply defined. His Method brings together many traditions that focus on losing yourself physically within a character’s mindset and expressing that internal self outward. Without Brando’s particular training and style of acting, Terry might have been played without so much nuance. It can be easy to fall into cliches with a dumb tough guy character, but Brando’s ability to show the nuances of Terry Malloy take him from a potential stereotype to a well-fleshed out character by way of performance. Even if it cannot be easily picked off the screen by a viewer, there is no doubt that Method acting comes through in the screen performances of Marlon Brando.

Bibliography
Colombani, Florence. Anatomy of an Actor: Marlon Brando. Translated by Lucy McNair and Brandon Hopkins, English translation, Phaidon Press Limited, 2013.Naremore, James. Acting in the Cinema. First edition, University of California Press, 1988.