CinÉireann May 2018 | Page 17

Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film feels like a full stop to the post-war western. Dedicated to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel the film is equally indebted to John Ford. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman seem to be playing the summation of various John Wayne and Woody Strode characters. Is Will Munny another version of Wayne’s character from The Man who shot Liberty Valance with a touch of Ethan from The Searchers? Is Ned Logan a bit of Strode from Liberty Valance and a bit of Strode from Once Upon a Time in the West?

The ‘print the legend’ question is brought up again here but this time the primal violence of the actions is heightened. The film seems to be asking us if we actually thought about the violence of the times, of the real, physical, consequences of these western ‘heroes’.

We get a reference to the famous final (or opening) shot from Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903) when The Schofield Kid shoots one of the targets whilst he sits in an outhouse. Jaimz Woolvett looks directly down the lens and points his gun at us. Eastwood is setting his stall out for the audience, trying to implicate them in the violence, trying to make us complicit. But, just like the opening attack scene where a similar shot is quickly utilized, we are merely put in the place of the victim, we are never asked to question our enjoyment of these scenes.

The film tries to have its cake and eat it. We still cheer at the end when Little Bill gets it. We don’t bat an eye when the prostitutes take the law into their own hands by hiring assassins in the first place.

The film is full to the brim of pathetic fallacy, of chiaroscuro lighting, of shotguns ratcheting. Eastwood masterfully exploits all the techniques available to him, from wide, poetic, landscapes to the carefully positioned shotgun above Ned Logan’s head.

Once again there is a contrast between exteriors and interiors. The autumnal pastoral images promise a world of nature, of possibilities and freedoms. The town, and particularly Little Bill’s house (another reference to Liberty Valance) are barely standing in the dark brown mud and grime.

The world Munny’s wife represents is only ready to emerge after the credits roll, and after we leave the cinema.

Some Like It Hot

A comedy, a gangster film, a commentary on sexuality, an ode to alcohol, an outrageous impersonation act. Billy Wilder’s 1959 film is all of the these.

This is one of those perfect texts for Leaving Cert students. A masterpiece that will speak to them in different ways as they encounter it through out their lives. How many will get the gangster references from the beginning of the film? The Cary Grant impersonation? The innuendo? How will they miss any of these once they’ve been pointed out?

A perfectly balanced script allied to an artist’s eye for composition result in one of the finest films to appear on the list since Citizen Kane.

Here is a farce where the exterior and interior is used not just for comedic effect but also as a plot device, as metaphor for character developments and even as an observation on societies proclivities.

If you plan on teaching this film, I recommend Tony Curtis’ book (imaginatively called The Making of Some Like It Hot).

This is the film that my students will be studying. (They won’t get a choice.)

The list of films has come a long way since 2001. A careful balancing act has developed over the years. We get auteurs, films from the canon, modern acclaimed indie movies and some added extras.

Now all we can do is sit back and debate about the merits of the various texts on the list (as English teachers love to do) basking in the knowledge that we weren’t given the thankless task of having to come up with the titles ourselves.

CinÉireann / May 2018 17

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