Earlier this morning, TCM ran one of the greatest of all the early sound films, and one of the greatest of all films, period, M. It stars Peter Lorre in a performance that, during his climactic witness box tirade, is as powerful and awe-inspiring as any performance you’re likely to see in the history of cinema. If you doubt Mr. Lorre’s acting chops, and I see no reason why you should but if, in fact, you are the rare breed of person that does, his performance in M should dispel all doubt. His character, a man who murders children (he may, sickeningly, do more but the movie only makes clear that he kills them), has not a single redeeming quality unless you count as redeeming that he acknowledges he’s awful but wonders if the gangsters who have put him on trial are any better. They kill for money, he kills due to uncontrollable compulsion. In his eyes, their choice and his lack thereof makes them worse. Either way, it can be safely said that, of the primary characters, there are few redeeming qualities and, at the end, no redemption for the parents of the children that have been slain. One such mother even says aloud that, basically, none of this will bring her child back. The movie offers no redemption nor do I expect it to. Sometimes, however, that runs counter to how a lot of people view the cinema.
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Occasionally, though hopefully not often, you may hear someone complain that a movie didn’t work for them because the lead character was so unlikable. I once heard this opinion in reference to Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (in the sense that the movie couldn’t truly be good if the lead character had no admirable qualities). The lead character of Jake LaMotta is despicable in just about every way and, for some people, that keeps them from either liking or accepting the movie on its own terms. LaMotta makes plenty of mistakes but when the movie ends, his realization of his own awfulness is only vaguely hinted at. He recites Brando’s monologue from On the Waterfront to the mirror, grunts and moans as he shadowboxes (in a brilliant visual reference to the opening of the film in which he shadowboxes – always fighting phantoms, this guy – gracefully and silently in slow motion), puts the cigar in his mouth and walks out the door. Then the screen shows an inspiring passage (“once I was blind and now I can see”) and, I guess, we’re supposed to take from that that LaMotta finally saw the error of his ways. Or not. I’ve never looked at the end of the film as inspirational in any way or as some direct statement that, see, he does change, we’re just not going to show it on camera. I’ve always viewed Raging Bull as the unblinking portrayal of an awful, rotten brute. It doesn’t seem Scorsese or writers Mardik Martin or Paul Schrader or lead actor Robert De Niro had any desire to present a movie with a feel good ending where LaMotta apologizes to everyone in his life nor should they have. And what’s wrong with that?
Really, what’s wrong with making a movie about a horrible person? Nothing, I’d say. Sometimes, great cinema is the result of presenting such unblinking portraits. Take Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. In that movie, Bill Munny is, by the conclusion, in the relative terms of the characters presented, the apex of moral certitude. His friend, Ned Logan, who couldn’t bring himself to shoot someone in cold blood, is executed by the local sheriff and hanged outside of a saloon as a message to others. Munny exacts his revenge in a way that can at least be explained away as justice for his friend but the fact that he shoots and kills so many may negate that argument. The sheriff, on the other hand, is just trying to protect his residents and uphold the law and, as such, doesn’t think he deserves what he gets. As anyone who has ever seen the movie knows, deserve’s got nothing to do with it. So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with a movie where we can’t really point to the main character and say, wow, what a great guy! We can’t even really pretend that he has any kind of principles because, despite exacting revenge for his friend’s death, the whole reason he was there in the first place was to kill men who had been involved with another man who cut up a prostitute. He doesn’t know the prostitute and doesn’t care about her circumstances or what the law says, he just wants to get the money he’s promised if he kills the men. In other words, no matter what the reason, if Munny can get paid to kill someone, he’ll kill them. That’s not really someone we can hold in high regard. And none of this makes for a bad movie, or a bad movie experience, in any way. Indeed, I think Unforgiven is one of the best movies of the nineties and I believe that’s because it doesn’t back down from what it’s about and that’s the difference. And this isn’t about happy endings versus non-happy endings, just about sticking to the story. Some stories demand a happy ending, some not. Unforgiven, if we’re to be honest about the characters, has a happy ending because Munny gets his revenge, gets the money, and gets a new anonymous life. So it’s a happy ending but not one that offers its characters, or the audience, any real sense of redemption. We’re not left with the impression that Munny has fundamentally changed who he was, just that, maybe now, he has the means to suppress it and live a different life. That’s all.
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Hollywood, and especially Warner Brothers, specialized in movies with unpleasant and unredeeming lead character during the thirties and forties. The gangsters in movies like Public Enemy and Little Caesar had no redeeming qualities but the movies gave the audience the satisfaction of seeing them killed as a kind of morally-approved happy ending for the censors. Years later, Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo refused to do so in The Godfather films and let Vito Corleone, an awful man who built an empire on murder, despite the lovable family side we get pushed on us throughout, die a natural death, happy in his garden, playing with his grandson. His morally wretched son, Michael, also gets to live a long life, dying an old man in his garden as well. But not punishing them or giving them some sense of acknowledgement that they’re awful doesn’t diminish the movies in any way, it makes them stronger. I don’t expect redemption from the movies I see nor do I demand likable characters. I simply want to see the characters that have been chosen for the story presented honestly and openly. There’s much to be learned from every story out there, and as long as the stories don’t back down from what they’re saying, I’ll happily go along with them for the duration. Great cinema is redeeming in and of itself. I don’t need the characters to be the same.