Escape from Alcatraz, a film I
didn’t like when it came out — I’m sure it was just too dry for the seventeen
year old me, proved both fascinating and exhilarating on a re-view a few years
ago. Cinematically speaking, its Siegel’s most expressive film. During his days
in New Hollywood, while no Corbucci or Peckinpah, Siegel shot some terrific
action scenes. The final fatal shootout for Richard Widmark’s Madigan. The pool
hall fight (a real showstopper) in Coogan’s Bluff. The entire school bus
sequence in Dirty Harry, as well as that film’s action introduction of hot dog
Harry vs. The Black Panthers (the scene suffers a little now due to its obvious
backlot quality. Are they in San Francisco or Hazzard County?).
The machine gun shootout in The
Black Windmill (explosions of muzzle flash, bullet casings, and splintered
wood). The actual action part of the bank robbery in Charley Varrick. The
attack of Henry Bascomb of Bascomb Auto Repair (Siegel regular John Mitchum),
the first of the sleeper agents that Donald Plesance wakes up in Telefon. Yet
unlike Leone, Peckinpah, Hyams, and De Palma, Siegel never engaged in cinematic
set pieces, until the beautiful, practically wordless opening sequence of
Escape from Alcatraz. The sequence not only takes its time, it seems to go back
in time. On one hand, it feels like the no-nonsense fifties Siegel of Baby Face
Nelson & Crime in the Streets – though tellingly, not like the docu-style
of Riot in Cell Block 11.
But on the other hand, never
before and never again would Siegel engage in this type of cinematic bravura.
From Eastwood’s first appearance as Frank Morris, being led off the ferry in
the pouring rain onto the isolated island in his raincoat. To the older but
still virile Eastwood (who looks as if he’s been chipped from granite rock as
much as the penitentiary) being walked into processing in his old school grey
suit (back in the day when people went to prison in suits and it wasn’t a
statement), being made to strip while the prison doctor examines his mouth like
livestock. To being marched naked through the cell block (brilliant), the sound
of his bare feet slapping out a rhythm against the cold concrete floor that echoes
against the stone walls of The Rock. To the final moment when Morris is placed
in his cage, the cell door is slammed shut, and the guard says the first real
line in the film; “Welcome to Alcatraz” , punctuated by a Mario Bava-like
thunder clap and lightning bolt. “Bravo!”
His next film after the critical
and financial success of Escape from Alcatraz would be his Burt Reynolds caper
comedy Rough Cut (if only Siegel had retired then, like Phil Karlson did with
Framed, he would have ended his career on an iconic high point). On that film
Siegel would end up getting fired by the producers, and writer Larry (tv’s
M*A*S*H) Gelbart would have his name removed from the credits. In Burt
Reynolds’ autobiography he mentions the elderly Siegel spent half the movie
asleep in his chair. And when you see Rough Cut, you can believe it (that may
be the reason he was fired). But as the opening sequence in the Eastwood
picture proved, not only was the old man wide awake, but fully engaged, and
inspired to test his craftsmanship and technique. I suspect the reason for
Siegel’s full engagement on the Alcatraz picture, as opposed to Telefon before
it, and Rough Cut after, was on the Eastwood picture Siegel had something to
lose.
What do I mean by that? We’ll get
into that in a minute, but first, leaving Escape from Alcatraz for a moment,
let’s discuss his Charles Bronson espionage picture prior to the Eastwood
prison drama. Why would Siegel waste his time on the three-quarters-boring,
one-quarter-silly (the best part) Telefon? As Willie Sutton might say; the
money, stupid. This was bore out when I recently
met the film’s producer, Kubrick’s former partner James B. Harris. When I asked
him why he and Siegel did Telefon, he said they didn’t like the script but felt
one gains opportunity by working, not by not working.
For most of the seventies the two
action stars that ruled the globe were Eastwood and Bronson. In America, the
third was Burt Reynolds, who, for a time (at home) eclipsed both Clint and
Charlie. So much so, they both tried to do their own version of a comedic Burt
Reynolds-like action flick.
Breakout for Bronson (good), and
Every Which Way But Loose for Clint (abysmal but successful). But Burt’s films,
while they did great in the states, and killed in the south, never travelled
well in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa as the Eastwood and Bronson
pictures did. In Europe that third spot would go to either Franco Nero or Alain
Delon, depending on the year. In Japan it would be Takakura Ken. The only real
serious threat to Bronson and Eastwood’s dominance would come from Hong Kong’s
Bruce Lee. But his untimely death stopped the competition before it ever really
got started. Believe it or not, even Christopher Mitchum was a big noise in
Spain, due to his pretty decent Spanish revenge picture Summertime Killer,
directed by Spaniard action maestro Antonio Isasi. But by the end of the
seventies, Bronson was looking a little long in the tooth – little did we know
then that Bronson still had more than a decade of action films in front of him.
So by the time he did his best picture during his tenure at Cannon Pictures, J.
Lee Thompson’s delightfully lurid Kinjite (the movie where Charlie shoves a
dildo up a guy’s ass in the first scene), it looks like an action picture
starring The Terror-era Boris Karloff. But during the time that Burt Reynolds
was kicking ass with Gator, Smokey and the Bandit, and Hooper. While Eastwood
was laying waste with The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Enforcer, and The Gauntlet,
Bronson was getting passé with mediocre efforts like St. Ives (above), Breakheart Pass,
and The White Buffalo (Breakheart Pass is much better than The White Buffalo).
In an effort on the studio’s part to keep Bronson from getting marginalized,
they wisely deduced that it wasn’t Bronson’s age that was sapping his energy –
considering how old he was, he looked remarkably good back then – it was his
habit of working with tired old hacks like J. Lee Thompson (I love Thompson and
Bronson’s Cannon Pictures of the eighties but their seventies movies are
lackluster), and Tom Gries (how did Ted Post miss the call?).
The last Bronson film to make any
real noise as a movie was his excellent turn in future action auteur Walter
Hill’s first film Hard Times. At some point Bronson being comfortable on the
set became more important than the movie, hence working time and time again
with his wife Jill Ireland, and helmers like J. Lee & Gries. So in an
effort to resuscitate Bronson’s waning career in the mainstream of commercial
Hollywood filmmaking, action master and Eastwood mentor Don Siegel was brought
in to pump some life into “the ugly one” (one of Charlie’s nicknames in Italy).
Unfortunately it sorta worked the
other way around. In his autobiography Siegel recounts his Telefon experience
with Bronson was prickly and the script was stupid. Which reveals all you need
to know about the take-the-money-and-run aspect of the endeavor. The wacky
Manchurian Candidate-like story tells the tale that in the Cold War fifties,
Russia planted a bunch of deep cover sleeper agents in America near important
military installations. The sleeper agents don’t know who they are, they’ve
been brainwashed into believing they’re Americans. But when a certain Robert
Frost poem is recited to them, it triggers their assignment, and they
suicidally sabotage military targets. The plan is abandoned by the Russians and
the sleeper agents are left where they are to live out the rest of their lives
as Americans.
Until thirty years later, an evil
rouge Russian mastermind named Dalchimsky (played by Donald Pleasence), with a
hard on for the world, has a list of names and is calling them on the telephone
(hence the title) setting them off. Bronson plays KGB agent Grigori Borzov and
Lee Remick plays a CIA agent who join forces to stop and kill Dalchimsky (the
only reason that Pleasence doesn’t just call all the agents in one hour, is
that if he did, there’d be no movie).
As I said, the idea is wacky. In
fact the Zucker Brother’s did a takeoff on it in one of the Leslie Nielsen
Naked Gun movies and didn’t bother to add any jokes. But just because the
premise is nutty doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, it’s far out enough that in
the right hands, it could have been a stone gas. But those right hands
definitely didn’t belong to old fart Siegel, who blew the picture’s chance for
success by de-emphasizing the kooky elements and emphasizing the dull ones.
Siegel not only wasted his time, he wasted the Stirling Silliphant and Peter
Hyams (who should have directed) script. The scenes where the sleeper agents
are activated are a blast (almost all Siegel regulars: Mitchum, Sheree North,
and Roy Jenson). And as stated before, Donald Pleasence, as he is in all of his
Siegel pictures, is terrific. Not to mention his reading of the Robert Frost
trigger poem, once heard, is never forgotten.
DALCHIMSKY:
The woods are lovely, dark and
deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Remember Nikolai, miles to go
before you sleep.
But in his book, Siegel admits to
finding the plot dumb, so naturally tried to not feature it. I’ve always
wondered why the film starts out such fun, only to turn into a snooze once
Bronson and Remick enter the picture. So MGM’s idea of bringing in a big
director gun to keep Bronson vital was a bust. After this film Bronson would
forever be banished to 2nd tier status.
So while Siegel took the money
and ran on Telefon, and took the money and slept on Rough Cut,
Escape from
Alcatraz gave him one last artistic erection. And, as I said before, on this
prison film Siegel had something to lose…. his reputation.
With Richard Tuggle’s taut
minimalist script, he had the best material for a cracking good picture in
awhile. Siegel was also returning to the playing fields of two of his biggest
past triumphs, the prison picture, and a Clint Eastwood picture. The old lion
always made it very clear he considered his docu-styled prison fifties
muckraker Riot in Cell Block 11 as his first real movie. I, happen to be, a
huge fan of Siegel’s first film, the Sydney Greenstreet-starring vehicle The
Verdict (not to be confused with the Sidney Lumet courtroom drama). Not only is
it an entertaining programmer in its own right, it predates the misdirection
that lies at the heart of Siegel’s storytelling strategy, as well as the law
officer who takes the law into his own hands to see justice served ala Dirty
Harry (as well as other Siegel law enforcement protagonists). From the
perspective of an auteurist critic, it’s a wonderful first work.
But in regards to a picture
that’s technique and intensity rises to the top of its field – be it prison
pictures, fifties crime films, or old movies playing late at night on local
television – Riot in Cell Block 11 is hard to beat. With this film, not only
did the Siegel reputation begin, so did his penchant for violence and
brutality, and his talent for (when left to his own devices) excellent casting.
Scary Neville Brand (the second
highest decorated soldier in World War II after Audie Murphy), and even scarier
Leo Gordon (who, while continuing to act into the seventies, made quite a
successful second career for himself as a go-to script writer for B-Movie
maestros – Roger Corman: The Wasp Woman, Tower of London, The Terror, Gene
Corman: Tobruk, You Can’t Win ‘Em All, & William Witney: The Cat Burglar,
Valley of The Redwoods) have as much to do with Riot in Cell Block 11 success
as Eastwood does with “Escape from Alcatraz”.
But, finally, the reason for Riot
in Cell Block 11‘s reputation is simple, it was the best prison movie ever
made. In his autobiography, Siegel speaks of Escape from Alcatraz scribe
Richard Tuggle telling him that Riot in Cell Block 11 (left) was his favourite prison
film.
But Escape from Alcatraz was also
his first collaboration with Eastwood since their phenomenal success with Dirty
Harry (it would also be their last). Magnum Force was written for Siegel (Ted
Post did it), and Eastwood offered Don Every Which Way But Loose, which he said
he turned down because he didn’t think Clint could pull it off (it turned out
to be Eastwood’s biggest hit up to that time…. ugh).
But after a few films with other
stars, Matthau, Michael Caine, Bronson, and John Wayne, this was a return to
the kind of picture the old man did best, with the actor he did it best with.
There would be no sleeping in the chair on this movie. A bad movie from this
script would not only signal the old dog was washed up, it would tarnish both
the memory of Riot in Cell Block 11 and Dirty Harry, and Siegel’s privileged
place as the man who understands Eastwood – not to mention by this time, as
much as Clint respected Don, if Siegel fell asleep in his chair on the Alcatraz
set, he’d probably wake up to find Eastwood directing the picture. Eastwood, from the very beginning,
always had a clear understanding of his own iconic persona, and so did Siegel.
No other director, including Leone – judging by the harsh, insulting remarks
Sergio made at Clint’s expense during the publicity for Once Upon A Time in
America – understood Eastwood better, nor did Eastwood trust anybody with his
carefully crafted persona the way he trusted Don Siegel.
Siegel and Eastwood were always
in clever cahoots with how they exploited Clint’s iconic image. First as a
handsome young stud in Coogan’s Bluff and The Beguiled, then away from westerns
into urban crime dramas with Dirty Harry. With Harry Callahan, Eastwood was
brought up to date, and the only true western heir to John Wayne was turned
into the quintessential cop of the seventies, the decade where cops replaced
cowboys as the action film heroes of choice. And in Escape from Alcatraz, yet
again, Siegel and Eastwood had a new plateau to break through to. An older,
middle-aged Eastwood. And as was their way, they exploited the hell out of it.
Eastwood’s naked walk through the corridors of Alcatraz is simply a thing of
cinematic beauty. But it’s highly doubtful Eastwood would have trusted this
type of imagery with the other directors he was working with at the time, James
Fargo and Buddy Van Horn.
And while I don’t know this for a
fact, my guess is Eastwood might have been too self-conscious (i.e.
embarrassed) to direct himself in a scene like that. By this time in their
collaboration, many of the creative decisions are the joint decisions of two
simpatico minds. I can imagine Eastwood and Siegel in a script meeting
discussing how long can they go in the picture before Frank Morris says his
first line. Then how few lines can he speak after that. How few lines can all
the characters speak, except for Patrick McGoohan’s loquacious and sadistic
warden. And speaking of iconic persona manipulation, McGoohan tweaks his own.
The former Prisoner (Number Six) trapped on an island prison, is now in control
of the most famous island prison since Devils Island. Only this time McGoohan
gets to play “Number Two”.
And his opening speech to
Eastwood’s prisoner; “We don’t make citizens in Alcatraz, but we do make good
prisoners,” echoes the speech Patrick Cargill’s Number Two gives McGoohan in
episode 23, “Hammer Into Anvil.” What’s so intriguing about the way Siegel
opens the picture is that as bravura as it is, it also has a starkness – I’d
describe it as a cool boil – that seems appropriate for the film’s period
setting.
A genuine stylistic prison film
precursor to Escape from Alcatraz is the first film of the fourteen film
Japanese action film series Abashiri Bangaichi (1965) starring Japan’s answer
to Eastwood, Takakura Ken, and directed by Ken’s Siegel, Teruo Ishii. This
stark stylistic black and white snow-set prison escape adventure is a perfect
companion piece to the Siegel and Eastwood endeavor (it’s highly unlikely
Siegel would have ever seen Abashiri Bangaich but not unthinkable that Eastwood
may have viewed it for its possible remake potential).
Since all these World War II era
directors have moved on to that great honey wagon in the sky, period films
would never be the same. When George Roy Hill shoots The Sting, or Brian De
Palma shoots The Untouchables, or Martin Scorsese shoots The Aviator, the period
recreation is half the point (in The Age of Innocence, it’s the whole point).
An exception to this rule was Jonathan Demme’s wartime recreation of Los
Angeles in the film Swing Shift. It managed to look right, I’d even say spot
on, without being either a production or costume designer showcase.
The von Sternbergian exception of
my peers was Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, maybe the most bravura
costume-designed film since her father’s Dracula (by no less then Milena
Canonero, who’s practically an auteur herself). But since the subtextual
implications of the story underneath the historical record spoke so personally
to the princess director, it had the effect of both modernizing the emotions,
illustrating an inner truth, and revealing every other attempt at capturing the
French Revolution on screen as either a history lesson or wax museum tableaux
(Anthony Mann’s film noir-ish Reign of Terror aside). Now this truth may or may
not have been Antoinette’s (who cares?). Like a Norman Mailer novelistic
examination of a historical figure, be it Jesus Christ, Gary Gilmore, or
Marilyn Monroe, what’s important isn’t the subject, it’s the author.
I bring this up in relation to
Siegel’s Alcatraz picture because, like young Coppola, it’s his sensibilities
inside of the material that makes the difference. And since Siegel shot at the
real Alcatraz, they have one of the most impressive sets ever built (again,
like Coppola with Versailles). Also the costume design seems wildly original.
I’ve seen a few movies set in Alcatraz but I’ve never seen those blue pea coats
the prisoners wear in the yard before. Is it true, who cares? It makes sense (same
with the fresh fish naked walk) and it looks cool.
The story concerns the,
supposedly, true story of armed robber and prison escape artist Frank Morris’
arrival to Alcatraz in the early sixties. Almost everything about the movie
seems a throwback to another time (it was the film’s old school quality that
made me reject it at the time). The dry fifties-like staccato pull of the
picture. The way Eastwood seemed not like his normal self but like a fifties
tough guy actor (this is who he should have been when he played Thunderbolt.
The Cimino movie is wonderful but it’s attempt to hip up Eastwood always rubbed
me the wrong way). Yet in trying to think of an appropriate fifties equivalent,
I couldn’t. The most hard-boiled badasses of that Eisenhower era, like Ralph
Meeker and Charles Bronson, and laconic tough guys like Robert Mitchum, Brian
Keith, and John Garfield all talked a blue streak. Among those fifties tough
guys, only Alan Ladd knew how to keep his mouth shut.
But the diminutive Ladd could
never compare as a camera subject with the massive Rodin-chiseled Eastwood (few
actors wore forties and fifties suit fashions as well as Ladd. But the minute
you took him out of the suit coats he’d so stylishly swim in, and put him in either
regular clothes or western garb, he’d disappear). But where the throwback
quality is most profoundly felt is on the very genre of prison films itself.
Starting with Harvey Hart’s (underrated director) very filmic adaptation of
John Hubert’s play Fortune and Men’s Eyes, starring Wendell (The Sterile
Cuckoo) Burton and Zooey (I Dismember Mama) Hall in 1971, the subject of male
domination by homosexual rape was introduced into the genre. The subject was
timidly touched on again in the TV movie Truman Capote’s The Glass House.
But
the true reality of the racial implications of prison rage rape against the
machine wasn’t dealt with forthrightly until ex-convict Miguel Pinero’s play
and later movie adaptation Short Eyes changed the prison film genre forever –
the Robert Young-directed film was also re-released as an exploitation film,
retitled Slammer (which I saw at my favorite black cinema at the time, the
Carson Twin Cinema, on a double bill with Richard Pryor’s Which Way is Up?).
And this reality at the time was compounded by the landmark television
docu-special Scared Straight. From that day forward, not only any story about
prison had to deal with it, any thoughts you might think about prison had to
deal with it. The only reason Jamaa Fanaka’s shoddy prison pic Penitentiary,
made the same year as the Siegel film, was a surprise hit was the bustin’ the
new bronc cell fight, an exciting and compelling new addition to the genre.
Escape from Alcatraz represents – at the height of this awareness – the last
time a convincing prison story could be told that didn’t dwell on those
aspects. And even this film couldn’t completely ignore it. The film’s most
unconvincing scene is a ludicrous attempt by some barrel-built prick to bust
Morris in the shower. In my day I’ve read a few books about The Rock. And while
homosexual relationships did exist, they were looked on with disgust by the
old-school hard timers (Machine Gun Kelly and his ilk). So instead of the
sexually violent and racially motivated survival of the fittest warped society
of subjugated felons, Siegel’s picture, maybe for the last time (without being
a thirties period piece), could dwell on old school prison genre concerns. In
the first half, the brutal isolation, monotonous regimented routines, numbered privileges,
and that character that had all but disappeared, the cruel sadistic warden
(except for women in prison films).
In the second half, the film
deals with something that has been all but ignored by the genre, a masterly
crafted, minutiae filled escape plan. It’s the minutiae aspect of the breakout
that’s so compelling. Most movie prison breaks are exciting high flying affairs,
milked for every second of nail-biting suspense. Oliver Reed’s and Ian
McShane’s prison escape at the beginning of British action maestro’s Douglas
Hickox’s crime film Sitting Target is a perfect example.
But Morris’ constant chipping
away at The Rock with a pair of nail clippers at first seems futile, then
impressive, then finally heroic. Almost everything about the escape strikes you
as unique. Morris’ first revelation that maybe he’s found a way off The Rock
isn’t presented the way we’ve become accustomed to. We don’t see Morris
moseying along the corridor, suddenly spotting a flaw in the stone fortress
that only he can recognize. Morris doesn’t have one big eureka idea. One small
tiny reveal reveals another minutia of opportunity. All the step-by-step
details of the escape become intriguing, and by the time you’ve put together a
clear picture of the plan, you’re fascinated. The constant chipping away of The
Rock, the collecting of the clothes for their moonlight swim (the faultiest
part of the plan, and what surely killed them in real life), the paper mache
heads they painstakingly paint and sculpt (the image Siegel uses for the
closing credits), the jury-rigged welding gun they build to cut the cell bars.
The plan takes such talent and intelligence that if they hadn’t died, you can’t
help but think it could have won them parole. On the same token, all the same
qualities involved in the escape attempt, discipline, skill, intelligence,
talent, daring, could equally apply to Siegel’s technique in depicting the
escape. In the same way that Morris chips away at The Rock, Siegel chips away
at Tuggle’s senerio. As simpatico as Siegel and Eastwood were as artists, were
as simpatico as Siegel and Morris are in methodology. Morris uses lifelong
learned methods of ingenuity, practicality, and experience to dig through that
rock wall. Siegel takes lifelong learned lessons of ingenuity, practicality,
experience, and skill and applies them to his use of montage. Siegel is almost
as silent as Morris, preferring to illustrate via montage than explain through
expositional dialogue. After beginning his career in the film business creating
montages for other director’s movies (Casablanca & The Roaring Twenties,
among many others), the first really significant montage he ever used in his
own work belongs to this late-in-life masterwork. The attention deficit
disorder and rapid eye movement stimulation of most of today’s AVID editing is
a world away from the steady-handed storytelling of this MOVIOLA master.
Did they escape?
I’m sure they
were dead ducks nineteen minutes after they hit the water. But the real true
life escape is that Siegel escaped letting his pal Eastwood down.
By 1982, the
fifteen yearlong era of New Hollywood would be over. And in this new era, with
two misguided comedic star vehicles (Rough Cut with Burt Reynolds & Jinxed
with Bette Midler), came the end of Don Siegel’s five decades long career.
These whimpers of a once proud lion have been almost completely forgotten.
What’s remembered, and can never be forgotten, is the artistic collaboration of
two men who owed each other more then that could ever repay. With Siegel,
Eastwood escaped flash in the pan status. With Eastwood, Siegel escaped
anonymity, becoming a major A-list Hollywood director fairly late in life. And
when these two old compadres, with a friendship based on mutual respect,
admiration, masculinity, and love did the impossible, escaped from Alcatraz,
they slammed the iron door behind them.
Don Siegel is no longer with us.
Eastwood flies solo now.
And Hollywood will never see their like again.
