"The Outrage" (1964) directed by 'Martin Ritt'
I found everything about the Academy Awards alienating and bizarre so I turned it off and fired up the TCM app and watched Paul Newman give an amazing performance in brownface with a very over the top Mexican accent, and that was the least of the problematic issues with 'The Outrage' the incredible remake of Akira Kurasawa's Rashomon directed by Martin Ritt in 1964. This movie is amazing. It uses a framing device of three tough men of the wild west played by Edward G Robinson as an amoral chancer, William Shatner as a disillusioned preacher and an old-time prospector played by Howard Da Silva. These three men with radically different views on life are telling the tale(s) while trying to stay warm in a derelict train station in the old west on a rainy night among the cactus plants. These were my favorite parts of the movie a young Shatner and an older Edward G Robinson going head to head, I mean come on!
It's an old west version of Roshomon, which I first saw back in high school and again in a film class at SF State. I so enjoyed the camerawork and moodiness in this version. And the removal of the Japanese cultural layer, as appreciated as it was in the original just helped me as an audience member get at what this story and story form had to deliver. Its deep and its really not pretty, or easy to break down but I had so much appreciation for its respect for the audience's intellect. It works like a novel works and lets you as an audience member break it down and does the opposite of what today's Hollywood movies do. It doesn't chew your food for you. It throws real moral fucked-upness at you and forces you to confront and make sense of it yourself rather than beat you over the head and shove a message down your throat. It's the story of rape and murder from four different points of view. The acting here is intense and everyone is amazing. Sure Paul Newman tears it up as the bandit being tried for his crimes but the drama that goes down between the amazing Claire Bloom and Lawrence Harvey as the doomed couple in the story, southern gentility victims of rape and murder, it's way too hot for TV right now. No way could these moral angles be tolerated today. Apparently 'The Outrage is based on the stage play of Rashomon and it definitely shows. You can tell it's staginess both helps and hurts the film.
rape, murder, racism both inside and outside the story. and you can walk away from this one in a whole lot of directions. It is old, it isn't the first of its kind, it is fully politically incorrect but it's still brilliant enough to enjoy 56 years later.
It makes you consider the moral angles of that time, how split in point of view we are as a society on what the truth is, then, now and going forward to the future. It might have been the perfect counter-programming to the Oscars. But thats just my perspective.
It's an old west version of Roshomon, which I first saw back in high school and again in a film class at SF State. I so enjoyed the camerawork and moodiness in this version. And the removal of the Japanese cultural layer, as appreciated as it was in the original just helped me as an audience member get at what this story and story form had to deliver. Its deep and its really not pretty, or easy to break down but I had so much appreciation for its respect for the audience's intellect. It works like a novel works and lets you as an audience member break it down and does the opposite of what today's Hollywood movies do. It doesn't chew your food for you. It throws real moral fucked-upness at you and forces you to confront and make sense of it yourself rather than beat you over the head and shove a message down your throat. It's the story of rape and murder from four different points of view. The acting here is intense and everyone is amazing. Sure Paul Newman tears it up as the bandit being tried for his crimes but the drama that goes down between the amazing Claire Bloom and Lawrence Harvey as the doomed couple in the story, southern gentility victims of rape and murder, it's way too hot for TV right now. No way could these moral angles be tolerated today. Apparently 'The Outrage is based on the stage play of Rashomon and it definitely shows. You can tell it's staginess both helps and hurts the film.
rape, murder, racism both inside and outside the story. and you can walk away from this one in a whole lot of directions. It is old, it isn't the first of its kind, it is fully politically incorrect but it's still brilliant enough to enjoy 56 years later.
It makes you consider the moral angles of that time, how split in point of view we are as a society on what the truth is, then, now and going forward to the future. It might have been the perfect counter-programming to the Oscars. But thats just my perspective.
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