The infamously obtuse New York Times film critic Vincent Canby (who died long before his body stopped moving) wrote of this film,
Watching the film is like listening to someone use a lot of impressive words, the meanings of which are just wrong enough to keep you in a state of total confusion, but occasionally right enough to hold your attention. What is he trying to say? It takes a little while to realize that maybe the speaker not only doesn't know but doesn't even care to think things out. He hopes that if he continues to talk he may happen upon a truth as if it were a found object.
I would counter that stolid film viewers like Canby were simply deaf, or so attuned to another, inferior, wavelength that when a Cassavetes unfurled a great film like this at them they were so deafened by listening to hard rock (or Richard Wagner) that the subtleties of a Carole King (or Erik Satie) were not even heard, much less actually listened to.
Also, one of the overlooked reasons for the popularity of "gangster films", from the Jimmy Cagney era on, is that the suburban white middle class (that which bourgeois critics like Canby embodied and pandered to) loves to thumb its collective nose at the impoverished classes whose organized crime entanglements so mirrors their own evils in corporate boardrooms — save the overt violence. This film does not play into that lowest common denominator urge. This lower class guy, this man a half step above a pimp, does not lash out the way a Jake La Motta does, in primal urges. Instead, much of the middle part of the film shows him actually ruminating on the murderous act he’s being asked to commit. This is the epitome of character driven rather than merely plot driven art.
The film ends with Cosmo being double-crossed by the thugs who sent him to kill the Chinese bookie. They expected him to fail because they told him that "the Chinaman" was just a small time crook, when really he’s the head of Chinese organized crime in the City Of Angels, but they did not realize Cosmo was a skilled killer from his days in the Korean War. Now, with him alive, and his having to not only kill the bookie-cum-don, but two of his cohorts, they know the heat is on, for the gangland triple murder is all over television. Cosmo killed the naked gang head in his Jacuzzi, and two of his goons, but the old man’s young lover got away, and knows what Cosmo looks like. So, the gangsters send a couple of their goons to take out Cosmo, but one of them relents. He is Flo, who earlier wanted Cosmo dead, but learns to respect Cosmo for his successful hit, and refuses to kill him. He tells Morty Weil (Seymour Cassel) and another guy to do the deed. But the other two prove no match for Cosmo. He kills both of them. The second one dies offscreen, in a great bit of editing and elliptical narrative that throws us right back into the flow of the film as Cosmo, shot himself, and bleeding, tries to deal with his physical pain and the knowledge he has killed five human beings for no real reason.
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
I learned a lot from your review, which is thoughtful and specific and generous, and will most certainly lead me to add this to my queue. After I see it, I will likely read this piece again.
Unfortunately, I had a problem with your smug tone. Because Cassavetes set himself up against the studios, his acolytes have (and have always had) this annoying tendency to assume that a) everything he did was pure, unblemished art and b) if you don't agree then you're part of the problem, a "bourgeois" imbecile who doesn't get it because you spend too much time feeding at the Hollywood trough -- and if you do get it you'll probably still need the help of an expert cineaste, as great films need "someone to explain to the masses why they work." (Bourgeois? Masses? Did you eat a whole box of Das Kapital for breakfast?)
Cassavetes has been a personal hero of mine ever since A Woman Under the Influence -- the first film I ever reviewed, which was for a high school paper. Since then, I've tried seeing his work when available, and it's been hit or miss. Gloria and Love Streams were great; on the other hand, I've yet to make it to the end of Faces, which I thought was a terrible argument for improvisational acting. (On the other hand, I think Cassavetes himself was a great film actors, and his role in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky one of the greatest ever. And I still love seeing him get blown to shreds in the Fury.)
Have you looked up any Vincent Canby lately? As a daily working critic goes, his body of work looks better and better. I don't always agree with him, but he's very often smart, very often sees details others miss. He was way ahead of the pack, for example, regarding the work of Fassbinder. Read his review of Katzelmacher, in which he is very open to a film many people find hard to watch; not only enthusiastic about the innovations (while nonetheless acknowledging the Godardian derivation) but capable of seeing the humor, the depth, and the humanity. Hardly the work of a middle-class guy from the burbs patronizing his own class.
2 - Dan Schneider
Rod:
I think you are reading a political argument into the piece where none exists. My main point of contrast is vs.Scorsese's work, and artistically, not politically.
That you see smugness in a defense of art is unfortunately too typical these days.
When reviewing older films I always check what the old timers wrote- Canby, Kael, Crowther, Ebert, etc. The very reason I started reviewing films is because, with the exception of Ebert, the reviews are all poorly written, and all are fairly stolid, and inflect their biases into the review, as you did in your post.
I am no acolyte of Cassavetes. He's very hit and miss. Minnie and Moscowitz is not good, and Influence is overrated. Faces, however, is very good.
Canby, however, is stolid. In many reviews he misses the most manifest things. As a writer, I try to navigate the middle between Lowest Common Denom reviews by his likes, and the masturbatory film theory sort of crap that is proliferating online.
Again, while I think this is a great film, I recognize that not all he touched was gold. Shakespeares wrote a dozen great plays, but he also wrote a dozen that are amongst the worst plays ever published. That makes him far more interesting than unadorned deific greatness.
Finally, I loathe armchair artsy intellectual Leftists (MFA scum), but that does not mean that some crits they bring of society - i.e.- that the masses are drooling idiots, are not correct. In pointing out flaws, one must not broadbrush in the inverse way your opponent does.
Thanks for the reply.
3 - Rodney Welch
No problem. I always like encouraging young people.
4 - Dan Schneider
Well, I'm middle-aged, but the thought remains. Last point, one needs to get beyond the 'talking points' style of dialectic, where key words like 'Bourgeois', or the like, dredge up connotations that are not there.
5 - free bet
bourgeois indeed
6 - roger nowosielski
You're an interesting cat, Mr. Schneider.