The General

Buster Keaton starred in and co-directed The General, a silent 1927 film loosely based on the famous 1862 Civil War episode in which Northern spies stole a Southern train (named the General) and were pursued by Southern troops. (The episode is known as the Great Locomotive Chase). Keaton plays a train engineer named Johnnie Gray whose locomotive is stolen. Annabelle, the girl he loves, is accidentally aboard the train, checking her trunk, and when the northern spies take the train she goes with it. This 75-minute film is fun to watch, and it rarely flags. The General is not what I would call a slapstick film, but there is plenty of comedy, most of it visual comedy involving Keaton walking back and forth on top of the train, jumping from car to car, once even riding up and down on the side rods that drive the locomotive. Taken individually, most of the stunts are not that impressive. Taken all together, however, they constitute a seemingly endless and intricately varied series of jokes, stunts, tricks, pranks, and pratfalls—effortlessly, naturally executed. The film is highly entertaining.

The General is told from a southern point of view, but this is only because Keaton's character is a Southerner. Other than the mere fact of whose side he is on, there is little that makes this film southern or northern. The issues and causes of the war have nothing to do with this film, nor is there any romanticism attached to the conflict between north and south. When the war begins, Keaton tries to enlist in the Southern army but is refused by the enlistment office because, they say, he can do better service as a train engineer. His girlfriend mistakenly believes he refused to enlist, so she stops talking to him. When his locomotive is stolen by Northern troops, he has a chance to do service to the southern cause and win back the heart of his girl at the same time. That's about all there is to this film--sight gags, action, constant motion (the trains are in pursuit of or attempting to escape each other throughout the film), ingenious comic stunts, valiant and quixotically incompetent efforts by Keaton's character to thwart the spies, and a dramatic battle and train wreck at the end. The Northern troops are defeated, the Southern troops win, Keaton wins back his girl, and he is allowed to enlist.

Show Boat

The musical Show Boat has often been held up as the first modern American musical, in part because of its focus on a social issue: racism. The one time I saw the stage play, it struck me as long and static. By the end of the first act, Joe has finished singing "Old Man River," by far the strongest moment of the show, and Julie LaVerne has been evicted from the show boat with her lover after it is revealed she is half black. Then the musical drags on for another long act. Once Julie LaVerne leaves, the stage play (as I remember it) lacks much tension or dramatic excitement and instead becomes a kind of pageant play about the private and public life of Magnolia Hawks. The emphasis is cyclical—people are young and romantic, they have ambitions and love affairs, they grow old and disappointed, and their children enter into the same cycles on their own. The stage play did not strike me as particularly cheerful.

There are three film versions of Show Boat, one made in 1929, another in 1936, and the third in 1951. In the 1951 version, the garish Technicolor hues are unnaturally bright and bizarre. Although the film's focus in its first 40 minutes on miscegenation may be a sign of what passed in 1951 for a social conscience, this is hardly the main focus. Once Julie leaves, she is largely forgotten until she appears briefly later in the film in Chicago and then again in Natchez. Julie is a version of what used to be termed in American literary studies the tragic mulatto—a character whose mixed racial heritage becomes a source of tragedy and suffering in a society that cannot tolerate racial mixtures. In the film, the people on the show boat are apparently accepting of Julie, but when a spurned lover betrays her to the local sheriff, he enforces the local laws against love between the races. Although the cast and crew on the show boat protest, the sheriff is determined to enforce the law, and she leaves. Is Julie's situation tragic because of society's racism or because she is half black? Is society's racism held up as worse than the fact that poor Julie is part black, and therefore (in the view of the film) inferior--in which case the film itself is racist? This is one of the fundamental issues in stories concerned with racial mixed characters who come to bad ends. The play shows its inability or unwillingness to confront this question by simply dropping it. The focus then falls squarely on Magnolia (Kathryn Grayson) and her romance with the river gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Howard Keel). The film then turns into a romance about show business and disappointment in love. The film also significantly changes the latter half of the play.

Julie LaVerne's character, played by Ave Gardner, possesses certain coded characteristics that are linked to African American stereotypes. She is passionate, she becomes an alcoholic, is involved in a series of love affairs, and when we see her towards the end of the film she is haggard and dissolute. She is the only woman in the film who in any sense seems sensuous, while the other young white women are prim, proper, and antiseptic. Julie also carries out a sacrificial function by giving up her role in a stage review when she learns that Magnolia is trying out for the role--that is, the black character sacrifices herself for a white character. Her sacrifice is also an act of self-destruction. Late in the play, she plays a key role again in bringing Ravenal and Magnolia back together. Once she departs from the main focus of the film, she fulfills an essentially subservient role. Therefore although the film may portray racism as regrettable, it also seems to portray Julie's partial blackness as less than desirable itself.

Early in the film, as the show boat approaches the riverbank for the first time, we see several scenes of African Americans working happily in the fields and lolling in a carefree manner around the decrepit, broken-down shacks in which they live. These early scenes do not suggest that the film takes an especially enlightened view of issues of race.

Although the film illuminates the racism of the society it portrays, it does not suggest a possibility for change. Instead it expresses a fatalistic sense of social determinism—as if racism, bias, the victimization of one group of people by another, are inevitable, inescapable conditions of life. The most powerful expression of this idea in the play and film comes in the song "Old Man River." Whatever one may think of the play or the film, or even the message of the song itself, "Old Man River" is powerful and moving. William Warfield as the African American stevedore Joe sings beautifully. Essentially "Old Man River" is a black man's lament about the sorry condition of human existence. It complains about hard work ("tote dat barge, lift dat bale"), about victimization by a society and a set of laws over which one has no power ("get a little drunk and you land in jail"), and the mortal, limited nature of human existence in general ("tired of living and scared of dyin'"). The ballad is the play's way of explaining away the sorry circumstances of Julie LaVerne's expulsion from the river boat—racism is just the nature of life, the film and the song imply, you have to accept it. Neither the film nor the play offers any alternative explanation. The song is an expression of determinism, pessimism, of the notion that these moments of oppression must happen and there is no changing them.

Both the play and film explore a parallel circumstance to racism--the victimization of women by the men they fall in love with and marry. Julie has a series of increasingly unhappy love affairs. Magnolia marries a riverboat gambler whose luck goes bad and who abandons her. Again the film suggests this is the condition of life. There's no changing it.

I found the central portion of the film, which focuses on Magnolia's marriage to Ravenal, tedious and predictable, like the play. The 1951 version of Show Boat offers a set of final scenes that are true tear jerkers. As sentimental and hackneyed as they were, they certainly had me reaching for the tissues. Ravenal meets Julie on a riverboat. She attacks him for her abandonment of the pregnant Magnolia, and he protests that he did not know Magnolia was pregnant. From Julie, Ravenal learns that Magnolia and their child are on the show boat in Natchez, where the riverboat on which he is travelling is about to dock. He finds his child playing with a doll, pretending that it is her father. He suggests that they pretend he is her father, and he sits her on his knee.

From a 2008 perspective this is a creepy scene—a little girl approached by a man she does not know who offers to play with her and then sits her on his knee. The film is wholly impervious to these resonances that are apparent to us only because in 2008 we are so jaded. Then Magnolia finds her daughter with the husband who abandoned her. After twenty seconds of gazing at each other, Magnolia and Ravenal embrace and reunite. Everything ends in happiness.

Glory

Films that portray history, in my opinion, have an obligation to be accurate, whatever viewpoint towards history they may take. Although Glory (1989) deviates in many details from the facts, it is in general an accurate account of the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment. One might argue that from an ideological standpoint accuracy is less important than political content. Glory celebrates what for many may have been a forgotten but important episode from the Civil War.

Glory is not really a film about the south. It is a film that occurs both in the north and the south, and it certainly has pertinence to the south, but it is more concerned with national issues of history, race, and the struggle for freedom and equality. The racism portrayed in the film is mostly that of Northern soldiers and officers. Col. Robert Gould Shaw believes the men in his regiment can be as successful at soldiering as white soldiers. He meets a number of officers who do not share his opinion. A quartermaster refuses to supply shoes for the men because he regards them as soldiers who will do manual labor and never go into battle—therefore they don't need shoes as badly as men who are likely to see battle. Another officer encourages his black platoon to pillage and burn Darien, Georgia. When one of the soldier strikes a white women, the white commanding officer shoots the soldier. The film emphasizes that most of Shaw's fellow officers believe that training black soldiers for battle is folly.

Glory is about free African Americans and former slaves fighting for self-worth, dignity, and freedom. They want to prove their worth as soldiers, and therefore as human beings, and they are willing to die to do so. In the film, Colonel Shaw volunteers his regiment to lead the charge against Fort Wagner in South Carolina. As they march towards the front lines, the white soldiers in other regiments cheer for them, acknowledging their bravery. Of course, all the principal characters in the regiment are killed in the brutal attack that follows. Historically, nearly half the regiment died or was wounded in the attack, which failed to take the fort. The heroism of the men, their willingness to die for one another as well as for the country they fought for, is the point.

When Shaw volunteers his regiment to lead the charge, their deaths are a foregone conclusion. What kind of favor is he doing for these soldiers he loves so well—to lead them to their deaths in a charge that accomplishes nothing? Such questions, I suppose, are not appropriate.

Robert Lowell's poem "For the Union Dead" extols the heroism and the memory of the 54^th regiment. At the end of the film as the credits roll close-up images of what appears to be the monument in Boston about which Lowell wrote his famous poem are highlighted.

One small galling deviation from fact: in the opening scene soldiers are preparing for the Battle of Antietam, which took place in September 1862. As soldiers ride down a road, we see dogwood trees in bloom. Dogwood trees bloom in the spring, of course.

This is an excellent war film. It never fails to move me. Matthew Broderick, not known when the film was made for his acting ability, is excellent as Colonel Shaw. Broderick's natural awkwardness and slightly mannered way of talking supports his portrayal of Shaw as a somewhat naïve but also fiercely idealistic and committed individual—committed both to the defense of his nation as well as to the soldiers of the 54^th Regiment.

Way Down South

In Way Down South (1939), directed by Bernard Vorhaus and written by African American actor Clarence Muse and writer Langston Hughes, we see an old Louisiana plantation that exemplifies all the romantic myths about the antebellum South: we see slaves working happily in the fields and around the plantation house. They sing and dance joyfully and gladly serve their white masters. In turn, their owners are kind and thoughtful to them. Despite the great expense, the plantation owner is planning to build new slave cabins, though he is warned of the expense by his financial advisor. His family prides itself on never having sold a slave. The plantation is a place of social and racial harmony. The white boy who is one of the central characters in the film has as best friends two slaves from the plantation.

When the old master Timothy Reid dies after being run over by a horse, however, things go wrong. His son is too young to run the plantation, so his father's financial advisor Martin Dill assumes control as executor, with assistance from foreman Charles Middleton. Dill immediately begins taking steps to bring efficiency to the plantation, but at the same time he appears to be draining money from the plantation for his own uses. He is not as kind to the slaves as their dead master was. The head house slave, Uncle Caton, played by Clarence Muse, explains that Dill "don't understand the South."

Dill decides to sell most of the slaves on the plantation, including Uncle Caton. Young Reid helps disguise Uncle Caton as an old woman and escapes with him to New Orleans, planning to buy him passage to the north on a riverboat. There is, of course, comedy in having a black man dress up in disguise as an elderly white women, although the film doesn't play this plot element for as much comedy as it might. There were historical incidents of slaves disguising themselves and escaping north. The most famous is that of William and Ellen Craft. Ellen, who was light-skinned, disguised herself as a white man, while her husband posed as her servant. They describe the incident in their narrative of their lives, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.

Before Dill is able to sell the slaves, young Reid convinces a besotted New Orleans judge than Dill is stealing money from the estate and that his plan to sell the slaves is contrary to what his father would have wished.

The two main settings for the film are the plantation and the inn in New Orleans to which Reid escapes with Uncle Caton.

The film illustrates the mythic Southern ideal of the kind and paternalistic plantation owner who keeps good care of his slaves and treats them as family—though clearly in the film the slaves are shown as relatively simple and in need of protection. The intrusion of outsiders (Southerners always liked to complain about the intrusion of outsiders) causes problems. The extent to which the Hughes/Muse screenplay added these elements to the screenplay is unclear—I could find no evidence in Arnold Rampersand's Hughes biography that changes were made to the script against the authors' objections--apparently Muse, Hughes, and the producer Sol Lesser agreed to the antebellum context of the film. Ampersand suggests Hughes saw the film as a compromise and hoped he wouldn't be criticized too harshly for it. (He did receive considerable criticism). Hughes and Muse clearly had much to do with the portrayal of the slaves and of the film's specific emphasis on slavery. Slavery itself is not shown as a particular horror in the film. More than anything else being sold away from the place they have lived for their entire lives is what they fear and dread. Dill's plan to sell the slaves is the dramatic center of the film.

African Americans actors and the slaves they portray are prominent in the film. The film's argument against slavery (or at least against the selling of slaves) is especially strong for its times. Yet the slaves are portrayed as stereotypical—often clownish and bug-eyed, singing and dancing and jubilating. No African American in the film breaks out of a stereotypical role. They love and speak kindly of their dead master and his son. Although Uncle Caton is accustomed to speaking his mind to his owner, even disagreeing with him, the film makes clear that this is permissible only because the dead owner permitted and encouraged it. When Uncle Caton speaks his mind to the executor, Dill immediately places him on the list of slaves to be sold.

Much of the entertainment value of the film centers on the singing of the slaves (the Hall Johnson Choir, a black musical group, provided many of the actors who played slaves in the film). The singing varied widely from what one would imagine to be traditional slave ballads to jazz-type music current in the 1930s, to popular ballads. Young Reid (Bobby Breen, a transient child star and singing sensation of the late 1930s) breaks into song on a number of occasions, often accompanied by the African Americans in the film. The film, of course, was conceived as a vehicle for displaying his singing talents.

It's difficult to make a case for the racial progressivism of this film. Although slaves are portrayed sympathetically, they are also shown as simple and subservient. Although young Reid helps Uncle Caton to escape when Dill decides to sell him, this hardly mitigates the rest of the film. There is no attack on slavery here—only on the mistreatment of slaves, on the practice of selling them away from the friends and families whom they have grown up with (whether the typical slave grew up with friends and family is a historical question I cannot answer). One might argue that showing slavery as an institution where slaves could be beaten, exploited, and sold down the river in itself is an attack, yet too often in the film slaves are shown behaving gratefully for their condition. Although the Hall Johnson Choir sings beautifully in portions of the film, they and other actors behave in shamelessly stereotypical ways. Uncle Caton behaves with dignity, yet he never acts independently, is always a servant, is always bowing to the white masters who love but also own him.

Crazy like a Fox

In Crazy like a Fox (2006) Nat Banks, 8th generation scion of a Virginia plantation family, faces the loss of his family home and estate. He's a quixotic and somewhat eccentric man who rides around his plantation declaiming Shakespeare (especially King Lear) and admiring his land and family heritage. He's deeply in debt, his home is on its third mortgage, and he's being forced to sell. The film is about how he resists giving up his home and quaintly and ineptly tries to get it back. Banks is played by Roger Rees, who puts his experience as a Shakespearean actor to good use in this film.

The film is a quiet comedy, usually not slapstick or burlesque. Nate has a wife and two children. His wife Amy (played by Mary McDonnell of Battlestar Galactica fame) is more down to earth than he is. She recognizes the pointlessness of trying to hold on to the house and land, and she presses her husband to sell. Though Nate is not a success as a farmer, and though he seems to have money and sunk more deeply into debt no matter what he tried to do, the film is entirely on his side. Land, family, and heritage trump everything.

There is something endearing about this awkward and amateurish film. Partly it is simply the awkwardness. The film exists in spite of itself, and one can only speculate as to who produced and underwrote it. The Virginia Film Office is listed in the credits, and the prominent use throughout the film of information about the pivotal role Virginia has played in the nation's history suggests the film may be something of a homegrown effort—how many times Nate happens to mention that George Washington was friends with his great grandfather several times removed I cannot count.

Certainly in its values the film is homegrown. There's little subtlety. Crazy like a Fox defines the qualities of Southern living as gentility, community, veneration of the past, and love of the land. The North and the rest of the world are corporate greed and mindless urbanism. The South is agriculture and tradition. The North is commerce, banks, lawyers, and real estate agents. Not surprisingly, a lawyer and a real estate agent--they're married--decide to buy Greenwood. Not surprisingly, the lawyer is named Will Sherman. He has no sympathy for the feckless Banks, and as soon as he and his wife succeed in talking Nate into selling the house (with the promise that he can continue to live on the property as the farm manager) they evict him. Their plan, ultimately, is to raze the 200-year-old house and subdivide the land for a high-class subdivision.

Although the Shermans give their word about allowing Banks to continue living at Greenwood, about not tearing down the house, the film makes a point of the fact that they give their word as a matter of honor—the promise is not written down and therefore has no legal force. To the Southern real estate agent and to Banks their word of honor is enough. To the Shermans it is nothing—as soon as the deed of sale is signed, they announce their intention to evict Banks. The point here is that Southerners are people of honor while Northerners are not. I'd guess that few if any business deals these days depend on a word of honor, rather than a signed and notarized contract.

Nate's reaction to what he regards as betrayal and deceit is extreme. He begins to behave as if he has lost his mind. He finds the Civil War sword that once belonged to his grandfather, puts on the Civil War uniform given to his grandfather by General Lee, and begins riding back and forth across his land, waving the sword, reciting Shakespeare and Chekov. Though his wife and children move into town, he remains at Greenwood, living in a cave on a river bank, biding his time and looking for a way to defeat the Shermans. There is a clear connection here between Nate and King Lear—the old King is betrayed by two of his daughters and loses his power as a result; he wanders mad on the moor. Nate is betrayed by corrupt Northerners and loses his land. One wonders whether this connection will lead to a tragic outcome for Nate, but the film subverts any tragic connotations with a soundtrack that suggests that Banks behavior is comic and clown like, that he is more akin to Shakespeare's Fool than Lear.

People like the Shermans certainly do exist, but in this film they're so stereotypically drawn, so shallow, that it's difficult to take them seriously—even though they have the power to raze the house and sell the land. They have a home in Palm Springs and spend much of their time there. When Mrs. Sherman talks to the servants of Greenwood (whom Nate treats like family) she addresses them while sitting in a chair, in a distant manner, gives orders, and dismisses them by ringing a bell. Will is bombastic and arrogant and willing to do whatever it takes to get his way. Mrs. Sherman often talks about how the house at Greenwood is beyond repair. Greenwood for the Shermans is nothing more or less than a financial investment. The film makes clear that tradition and the abstract, tenuous notion of "land" as anything other than a financial commodity mean nothing to him.

While the Shermans are away at Palm Springs, the black housekeeper Mary Johnson (Myrrh Cauthen) tells Nate he should move back into the house. She regards the house without question as Nate's house. She believes the Shermans are hoping the house will burn because they have removed the pennies from the fuse box that kept electricity flowing in the house. Nate gradually convinces his family to return to Greenwood. The idea here is that while the Shermans are away Nate will make sure that the house is properly maintained. Everyone gleefully acknowledges this fiction. Nate and Amy hold a Christmas party—the entire town seems to be there. They all understand that Nate is living illegally in the house, but they don't care—regardless of the fact that someone else owns the house, it belongs to Nate and his family.

If the Shermans represent the North, then how does this film construct the South? The South is embodied in Banks himself, the patriarch of his family estate. He loves his heritage and his land, which he and his ancestors have gradually had to sell off in parcels to pay debts. Nate talks frequently about the importance of land and of farming, but we see him do little more than admire his property. He rarely works it. Maybe he has employees who work the farm, but we see little of them. (He even suggests at one point that making money off the land isn't the point of owning it. He tells Sherman that he could make money by raising chickens, if he wanted to.) Around Nate are arrayed other Southerners, the townspeople of the small town nearby, the African Americans who work in his house and who are absolutely loyal to him, the white employees who work for him. Although she at first resists, his wife Amy soon comes over to his side. In this small Virginia community everyone agrees that Nate should keep his land and house regardless of the fact that he can't pay his debts. They ostentatiously decline to acknowledge the Shermans when they pass on the streets. A local restaurant refuses to serve the Shermans; the owner describes them as trash.

When Sherman seeks permission to divide Greenwood up into estates for a subdivision, the country calls a meeting and declines to give approval. In retaliation, Sherman hires a wrecking crew and begins to demolish the house. Nate rallies friends and families and they obstruct the wrecking crew. Nate has another party at the house attended by everyone in the area, including the judge whom Sherman approaches the next day in hopes of legal redress. The film suggests (or at least Will Sherman sees it this way) that everyone in the area is related and in cahoots. When the crowd gathers to support Nate in his resistance to the demolition of his home, his wife Amy suggests that they make a party of it: they go home and dress up in 19th-century garb and return to riding horses and sitting in carriages, as if the Civil War is being fought again.

Recognizing that they may become embroiled in a losing and long-term legal battle, the Shermans decide to sell the house and land and leave town. Nate and his family move back in, victorious. Their real estate agent tells them they can live there and take care of the place while he tries to sell it. The film ends. Some might consider the ending as less than satisfactory because although Nate is back on his land and in his house, they are still being sold out from under him. But perhaps the ending is supposed to imply that given enough time Nate and his friends may find a way to buy back the house.

Crazy like a Fox is like a pageant play. There is no real tension. One occasionally wonders whether Nate is truly going to lose his mind and run amuck or even whether he is going to be killed. But for the most part the characters go through their expected motions—the evil carpetbagger Shermans rapaciously planning to subdivide and sell the land; the good and virtuous Nate Banks and friends stalwartly refusing to surrender to the forces of capitalism and the North. It is as if all the film really wants to do is to make its point—that the values embodied in the South—as the film construes the South—are good and noble even though they are being devoured and reduced by the rest of the nation. The film's definition of the South is, of course, arbitrary and narrow, historically flawed, and politically retrograde. This is the South that the makers of the film want to believe in, not the South that actually exists. The film sees the South in terms of the noble landowners. Land is everything. Veneration of tradition and history matter above all else. If farmers don't make enough money to pay their debts, the fault isn't theirs but that of the corrupt modern system to which they are subject. Lower-class whites as well as African Americans respect the landowners and share their values. Southerners live by a code of honor, not of law—law for them is based on honor. The portrait of the South we have here is artificial and hollow and incomplete—even Margaret Mitchell and William Gilmore Simms gave fuller portraits. At least in their novels, written from a decidedly partisan Southern viewpoint, there was the sense of a three-dimensional society being portrayed. In Crazy like a Fox Nate Banks comes across mainly as a flat, shallow Don Quixote figure.

Crazy like a Fox takes itself seriously. It is earnest and well intentioned, even though it is clumsily made as a film and poorly conceived and executed as a narrative that seeks to make serious statements about the nation and its history. If the nation were dominated by men like Nate Banks, we'd all be in trouble.

Crazy like a Fox is reminiscent of the film Colonel Effingham's Raid (1946), based on the novel by Berry Fleming, in which a retired military officer leads the people of a small Georgia town in resistance against plans to tear down the county court house.

The Reaping

The Reaping (2007) is set south of Baton Rouge, supposedly in or near the swamps and bayous of Southern Louisiana. This is a Gothic film of the supernatural, and the rural Louisiana setting with swamp water and hanging moss and an isolated small town that no one has ever heard of named Haven evokes a spooky, mysterious setting. In fact, this story could be set anywhere—nothing in it is specific to Louisiana or the South. The supernatural trappings are generic—we could be in New England or Oregon.

The South in this film explains the willingness of the townspeople to believe that strange happenings are manifestations of demonic activity, and that a twelve-year-old girl is at their center. Haven is untouched by the outside world—the townspeople like their isolation. The first image we see when we arrive in the town is a religious sign. The main character Katherine (Hillary Swank) is the representative of enlightened reason, but she also has a gripe with God, whom she blames for killing her husband and daughter.

Katherine teaches at LSU and her specialty is debunking miracles—proving they have a rational explanation. Five years earlier she went to Africa as a newly ordained minister to do missionary work with her husband and five year old daughter. The husband and daughter were killed by African villagers who blamed them for a drought. In response, Katherine loses her faith. She works with an African American man, Ben (Idris Elba), who is deeply religious, primarily because he miraculously survived a gang shooting when he was younger. The interplay of faith vs. reason, of Katherine vs. Ben and the villagers, gives the film some interest, for a while. But you can predict where things will take us. Mainly this film is a hackneyed mess.

The local science teacher (David Morrissey) summons Katherine to Haven when strange events begin taking place: a boy dies mysteriously; cows become ill without explanation, two miles of the local river runs red with what appears to be blood. The townspeople believe there is a cult worshipping the devil out in the woods, and that the 12-year-old is responsible for all that is happening to them. Katherine believes a bacterial infection, or pollution, is to blame. One event leads to another, and it soon appears that the same ten plagues that besieged ancient Egypt are assaulting the town, that God is trying to send some kind of warning or message, that something portentous is about to occur. Katherine soon gives up on reason and is convinced over the phone by a priest she knew in Africa that she is God's angel appointed to resist a satanic plot. There are surprises and twists and turns in the plot, but you expect such twists and turns in this kind of film even if you don't know what they will be.

We have our obligatory scenes in a graveyard, in a crypt, in a mysterious locked room, in a dark and ominous basement which of course Katherine doesn't hesitate to explore. Ben is the film's one African-American character, and as such we know he must die—the only question is when.

I was reminded of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," of the early Stephen King, of Nathanael Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. Mostly I was reminded that the film could not last forever.

Payday

Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville portrayed country music stars as largely cut off from their country roots. Nashville itself was shown as a modern city that only simulated at best the authentic country roots of its birth. Nashville was a satirical send-up of the American Bicentennial. It was more about America and popular culture than country music, which was a mere vehicle. Payday (1973) provides a portrait of country music that is simpler and more conventional. Yet the film is decidedly unromantic. Produced by Ralph Gleason, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, and with a cast and crew of virtual unknowns, the sole known presence in the film is Rip Torn, who portrays country music star Maury Dann.

Dann is a star either on the way up or the way down—which is not exactly clear. He tours nonstop with his band. They drive from gig to gig in a pair of Cadillacs. Maury quips, "You only go around once in life. You might as well go in a Cadillac." He's waiting for a big break, hoping for an appearance on the Johnny Cash Show, not counting on it. He's got to keep moving, keep performing, to stay alive and solvent. The film is structured around his travels from one point to another. He's always moving.

When the film opens he is playing a honky-tonk that brings in a box office of $600. We see members of Maury's band being paid $50 each for their efforts. This is part of the title's meaning: struggling to make ends meet, to make it to the next payday. But there are other meanings to the title. Maury earns a living by constant touring, never stopping to rest or get his bearings. While Nashville shows the glitz and glamour of the music industry, Payday shows the grueling routine and boredom. Only once in the film do we see Maury on stage. Rarely do we see him enjoying himself. Instead we follow him from one hotel to another, with stops along the way to visit his broken-down mother, his first wife and the three children whose ages and birthdays he cannot remember. Country music for Maury—life in general--is a constant grind.

Payday has a flat, documentary style. The cast seems composed largely of rank amateurs, though a few went on to modest television careers. Their Southern accents are often poor imitations of reality. Only Rip Torn gives the film any life. He seems to base Maury Dann on Merle Haggard, with a smidgen of Conway Twitty thrown in for good measure. He sings a passable imitation of Haggard, though it's parody too. Halfway through the film we notice that something is happening to Dann—things are piling up on him, closing and hemming him in. He constantly pops pills, often with shots of whiskey. When a young song writer he has hired complains of fatigue, Dann offers him a pill. When his mother complains that she doesn't have enough energy to get out of bed, he offers her a handful of pills.

Dann becomes increasingly abusive as the film moves forward. He mistreats and uses the people around him. He fires a band member who insists on buying his dog (Maury's mother is neglecting it). When a fan asks for autographs, he lures her into the backseat of his Cadillac. He tires of the girlfriend we see him with at the beginning of the film, and has sex with another girl in the backseat of the car where his girlfriend is sleeping. When she blows up at him, he orders his driver to pull the car to the side of the road and throws her out. He throws a wad of bills at her, drives off, then comes back and retrieves the bills, explaining "You haven't earned it."

Dann's decline accelerates when he gets into a fight with a man at a restaurant—the companion of the autograph-seeking girl whom he lured into the Cadillac. They go out into the parking lot. The man pulls a knife, but Dann manages to deflect the blade, fatally wounding the man, who dies in front of him. Instead of taking responsibility for this accident, Dann says he doesn't have time to deal with the police and instead orders his manager to "take care of it." His manager pays off the restaurant manager and convinces Dann's driver, Chicago, to "stand in" for him—that is, to tell the police that it was he, not Dann, who was in the fight. Dann offers a job to the only other witness, a young and terrible singer and songwriter. This is a bribe, in essence, though the young man is too dimwitted to realize it. We suddenly become aware in a shocking way of the kind of man Dann has become—a man besotted with his own celebrity (or the hope of celebrity), relying on other people to get him out of trouble, to pay people off or to "stand in" for him. He consumes people—his girlfriends, his mother, the man on the pavement outside the restaurant.

A few scenes later, Dann finds himself back in his hotel room with two policemen, a district attorney, his manager, a promoter, and a songwriter. They all are making demands. He takes the songwriter and leaves the room, driving furiously out of the parking lot. They drive down a country road, sipping whiskey, and talking about what it was like for Dann to grow up on a farm. Dann says he hated farm life. They pass a cotton field, and Dann remembers how he hated to pick cotton. Then he suffers a heart attack and dies. The car runs off the road, coming to rest in a plowed field. The last glimpse of Dann is of his lifeless face, his eyes open, staring into nothing. The scene directly echoes the restaurant parking lot, where the man whom Dann accidentally killed lies dead, his eyes open and empty. This is the real payday towards which the entire film has moved.

It's clear that Maury Dann has talent. In a hotel room late at night, alone, he sings a few bars of a song that he presumably wrote. The song is beautiful and heartfelt. But he sings only a few bars and then moves on. His is a squandered talent and life. We see Dann in the context of the "country" roots that gave him his identity and his life. He goes bird hunting with friends in the countryside near his childhood home. He clearly enjoys himself. Yet he also enjoys his life as a singer, a life that has demanded a growing series of compromises and concessions, that draws him away from those country roots. It's possible to view Dann's decline as one created by the world in which he lives—the commercial music world that forces him to attend to his manager and give mindless interviews to disc jockeys and to worry about box office sales and album revenues. But the more convincing explanation for Maury is that as a man and an individual he's lost hope, he no longer believes he will get the big break, he rides the highways just to keep going, to avoid the conglomeration of debts, demands, sins, crimes, and failed responsibilities accumulating behind him.

Dann's payday is the day when all these burdens catch up with him in the field where his Cadillac comes to rest.

Dann's demise comes as the result of his desire for fame and celebrity, for his increasing immersion in the commercial side of the music industry. He's not in the industry to sing his songs or to share his feelings—he's in it for money, for fame. In the film's final scene, as he drives down the dirt road deep into the heart of the countryside, the countryside that presumably gave him his values, formed his identity, fueled his songs and his music, we're painfully aware—even before he dies—of how separated he is from those roots. In this sense Payday agrees with Nashville on the corrupting force of commercialism. One might compare Dann to Barbara Jean in Altman's film. However, there is a difference that makes Dann a more complex character than Barbara Jean. She's a true victim of the environment she lives in. She's emotionally fragile and apparently mentally ill—she's not aware of how she is being used. She knows only that she loves to sing and she relishes the attention an adoring audience can give. Dann is complicit in his downfall. His compromises and mistakes and self-indulgences are ones he chose for himself—including the pills and the booze that ultimately killed him.

Payday was filmed well before Elvis Presley ate and drugged himself to death. Yet it was also made in the wake of the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Gram Parsons, and others. The country music industry was well known for alcohol and drug abuse, for self-destructive behavior. Hank Williams' death in 1953 from drugs and alcohol seemed almost to set a pattern. Johnny Cash became notorious for his drug use in the 1960s. Self-destruction and country music—self-destruction and music as a cultural theme in general—are clearly a context in this film.