BRIAN'S SONG (1971) - win one for Pic, or Dick Butkus will get angry and bite you on the arm

Gale Sayers was like a ballet dancer that could move from pirouette to grand jete to a waltz in one continuous, fluid motion, without ever slowing down. He was extremely fast, quick, fluid, and nimble, but what made him one of a kind was his ability to accelerate to top speed seemingly in an instant. No other running back that ever lived could go from 0 to 60 in zero seconds (although Barry Sanders was awfully close), and no one else exemplified poetry in motion on the gridiron quite like the Kansas Comet.

"Give me eighteen inches of daylight. That's all I need."
-Gale Sayers

His vision was also impeccable, as he was seemingly able to see the entire field at all times, and operated like a surgeon, using holes and angles instead of a scalpel. Would be tacklers often flailed helplessly in his direction, like scared children attempting to corner a moth.

Gale won rookie of the year in 1965, setting NFL records for touchdowns and all purpose yards in a season. On one spectacular December afternoon, on a mud soaked field, Sayers scored a record tying six touchdowns against the 49ers. A horrible knee injury shortened his career, but he still managed to end up in the hall of fame when all was said and done. Gale Sayers was a comet, all right, one who lit up the night sky in one fluid motion, shining brightly for only a brief period; a once in a lifetime cosmic event.

***

Of course, to portray Gale Sayers on film, they get SLOW ASS BILLY DEE. Mr. Williams is a good actor, properly filling the shoes of Mr. Sayers in the emotional department, but doesn't even remotely convince during the sprinting scenes during practice. However, this extremely minor issue is really the only complaint I have against the film. I guess it's hard to look like a world class athlete when you spend your down time pounding cans of Colt .45 in your trailer.

Colt .45...IT WORKS EVERY TIME! So, if you drink enough Colt, you'll get drunk. That is one sophisticated ad slogan. You know, if you huff enough lighter fluid, you'll get high too. IT WORKS EVERY TIME!

I honestly forgot Fab 5 Freddy existed. Now that I think of it, what the fuck is the "5" in his name supposed to mean? I understand that Freddy is "fab", and he wants to notate so within his own name. You add in the "5", and I'm thinking that Freddy is supposed to be a member of Michigan's Fab Five, but he clearly wasn't. Maybe he's like the sixth member of the Fab Five, sort of Chris Webber's personal assistant. Who the hell knows.

This last commercial is easily the raddest of the bunch. I defy you not to watch it and run down to your corner liquor store and grab some Colt like a desperate lunatic.

"WHERE'S MY FUCKING .45? I'M PARTYING LIKE FUCKING LANDO OVER HERE! Oh wait, they called the cops. No, wait, I mean beer, not some kind of gun. Uh oh."

It's time to get the fuck outta dodge, Kansas Comet style. Those goddamn sexy Billy Dee commercials sure are effective.

***

"Ernest Hemingway once said that every true story ends in death. This is a true story."
-George Halas

Brian's Song is the story of rookie running backs Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo (James Caan), and the true friendship that develops across racial (and athletic) lines. Since that Hemingway asshole already spoiled everything, I'll point out that Brian develops cancer and eventually dies in the end, and this makes everyone sad, especially Gale and Brian's wife. And I mean EVERYONE. Every tough member of the Chicago Bears, every coach, and every single solitary human being that has ever watched the film. Yes, even lawyers. Everyone, that is, except Brian Piccolo. He maintains his upbeat attitude and sense of humor (and this dude is actually damn funny) despite the rampaging asshole that is terminal cancer.

Having partially grown up in Chicago, I saw this movie twice during my school days. It is a mandatory part of high school curriculum in Cook County, for some reason. I first saw it in gym class, and have seen it many times since, and it still gives me goose bumps. As a Bears fan, there is the authentic setting and the use of real players and coaches (look fast for Dick Butkus in the mess hall), as well as the Gale Sayers clips sprinkled throughout. However, it is the combination of this central relationship, combined with the superb Michel Legrand score, that gets me every time. Caan and Billy are both perfect foils and perfect teammates, the brash funny everyman and the quiet phenom.

"I'm gonna whip you Sayers, but you gotta be at your best, or it won't mean a thing."
-Brian Piccolo

Their relationship really builds to the next level when Gale injures his knee and Brian helps him to recover. Piccolo was buried behind Gale on the depth chart, as any mere mortal would be, but his injury opened the door for Piccolo. A lesser man might thank his lucky stars, but Piccolo is hell bent on nursing Gale back to health. They are in a competition, yes, but true competitors not only want to compete with the very best, but want to face them at their peak, and not while they are sunk in a valley. From true competitors, to true friends, to genuine non-homo man love.

In the canon of tearjerkers, there may be only one grand champion capable of turning even meathead males into blubbering schmucks. Yes...Every Which Way But Loose. But coming right behind in second place is, yes, Brian's Song. It's sort of the It's a Wonderful Life of the football season. It's also one of the most cancerific films ever made. It's positively cancertastic, I dare say. Remember, every time you cry at the end of Brian's Song, Pic scores a goal line touchdown in heaven on a two yard trap play. I swear he does.

"I Love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him too."
-Gale Sayers

P.S. This was written as part of the 1st Annual Bronko Nagurski Memorial Football Flick Fest over at My Floating Red Couch. Check it out here: link

LA ROSE DE FER (1973) - a rose by any other name would rot and fade away

Here is the original French theatrical poster. It's pretty simple, but still way better than the floating head bullshit we get out of Hollywood these days.

I think my initial exposure to the films of Jean Rollin was a viewing of Requiem For a Vampire, the old U.S. Redemption DVD release. Considering the misleading cover, I was expecting something along the lines of one of the Jess Franco vampire films (like Vampyros Lesbos), but got something entirely different. I was immediately entranced by this nearly wordless fairy tale, taking place in and around a crumbling French castle, in a tangible world both darkly mysterious and beautifully decrepit; a fantasy of the earth. While not at all what I expected, I was instantly hooked, and sought out all of the films of his that I could find. Rollin’s films are often equated in terms of their sex and horror elements, as leisurely paced genre efforts, but I think this is a case of a director who works inside of a genre (the Euro sex/horror film) in order to do something of his own making, only containing several surface elements of what is normally expected of these kinds of films. La Rose de Fer (The Iron Rose) is seemingly free of any genre constraints (except for maybe a little nudity), and, for me, represents the purest expression of what makes Jean Rollin such a unique filmmaker.

Jean Rollin’s cinema is, in the most general terms, a poetry of image. In this definition, a “poet” uses words to express the raw reality of both man’s position within the universe and his relation to others. A storyteller, on the other hand, uses words to express a world already filtered through thought and language; a character in a place with a goal. A “poet of cinema” presents this raw reality with an unadorned camera eye, either with human beings positioned within this world, or as a direct point of view for the audience (a film like Baraka might qualify for the latter). A viewer may regard a film like this to be slow and lacking in plot, but this approach is about stripping away narrative in order to create something more physical than literary.

“In this language of images, one must lose completely the notion of image. The images must exclude the idea of image.”
-Robert Bresson

One such director who best conveys this idea of cinematic poetry is Robert Bresson. His cinema is one of getting at the physical essence of a story through cinematography, attempting to remove the distance between audience and image that is built from language and narrative structure. When watching the donkey in Au Hasard Balthazar, the unadorned physical presence of the animal, over the course of the running time, takes precedent over it's narrative function. That is, where did the donkey come from, where is it going, why are people treating it the way they do, why give a donkey a starring role in a film, etc. Here is a director that wants you to see things for what they are, and not as part of some extrinsic structural purpose.

I sorta look at Jean Rollin as a director who uses this Bresson-esque poetry of images to present a world of sensual decay, the crumbling remnants of man haunting those living wanderers who happen upon them. Withered headstones and crumbling statues haunt with the ghosts of humans past; the faint pall of dreams, desires and love from lives since decayed. To this, he adds surrealist fairy tale horror elements; mythical creatures (often vampires) and symbols and such. The result is a dreamlike discord between two worlds that normally don’t find themselves colliding.

Look no further than the opening scene of La Rose de Fer, where Francoise Pascal walks along a beach. She sensually takes in the natural physicality of it all, but finds a mysterious iron rose that has washed ashore, coal black and worn. Where did this come from? She finds it beautiful, holding it up and caressing it, but it also seems to reek of death. She throws it back into the sea and continues along the shore and out of frame.

This opening scene represents, for me, a wonderful distillation of Jean Rollin’s cinema. Here we have a reoccurring location (Rollin’s favorite beach, which pops up in many of his films), and a character in a trance like enchantment of it’s tangible beauty. She finds a symbol both poetic and decayed lying amidst this ephemeral portrait of nature. This scene is also a dream, a mystery that haunts the character throughout the film.

“Dying while he was sleeping, he experienced a dream. His dream was the wave, that would climb up the beach. The wave that descends. Your eyes in these eyes. Your lips on these lips. It is to you I would like to say farewell to life. You who will cry for me until I am in the mood to cry for myself.”

She notices a young poet at some sort of get together, and he recites the above poem while looking into her eyes. They quickly fall in love, playfully chasing each other in and around an old train. The contrasting primary colors of their clothing (red and yellow, respectively) cause them to stick out amongst these remnants of industrial society. They ride their bikes to a graveyard and enter, deciding to explore and have a picnic. The couple then make love in an underground tomb, but when they exit to the surface, they find that darkness has already descended, and fear sets in as they become lost trying to find their way out.

At this point, the film becomes a two person play, tragedy from within, as they become engulfed by this graveyard over the course of a night. He tries to impose his strength and logic on the situation, scoffing at the idea that these graves are sacred, that these people are in a better place. She, on the other hand, ascribes meaning and respect to these graves, and remains haunted by the vision of the rose as she becomes paralyzed with fear.

Inevitably, she actually finds an iron rose, the same as in her dream, and this sets off something within her. This eventually inspires her to recite her own poem, coming forth as if a spirit was speaking through her, an answer to the earlier poem that initially awakened this romance within her. His poem seemed to her to be a reflection of the dream, and, resultingly, fatefully pointed her to a brief love affair, the likes of which she had never felt. As this “spirit” world engulfs her, her poem and resultant actions become, in a crumbling mind, a fulfillment of this dream; a final response to this beautiful poem she sought, not just to listen to, but to physically explore.