HARLAN COUNTY USA - #334

What a compelling and relevant time capsule to unearth in these modern times. The 1976 documentary Harlan County USA should be required viewing for every politician and voter demanding more coal jobs. It might make them think twice about the issue, and how maybe we failed our coal workers by not looking to transition them into something less harsh and dangerous forty years ago. It should also be viewed by...well, just about everybody. Anybody on either side of the voting booth who thinks they don’t have much in common with the other side. Watching these Kentucky working men and women stand up for their rights, banding together against an oppressive corporation, even when it becomes clear that the law, the government, and even the church are not on their side, serves as a reminder that it doesn’t matter where you’re from or how you believe, we’re all just trying to get by and the forces that get in our way are essentially the same.

In this case, the main foe is The Company (a.k.a. Duke Coal, but let’s just call them The Company, like a true supervillain). And not just the owners of the coal mines in the early 1970s, but the owners going all the way back. As director Barbara Kopple (Miss Sharon Jones!) and her crew spend more time with the striking miners, they uncover a tradition of struggle extending at least as far into the past as the 1930s. A fight for fair wages, for safe conditions, and to generally be treated with respect.

The strike at the center of Harlan County USA lasted more than a year, but its particular origins are in the late 1960s--a deadly explosion that could have been prevented and potential betrayals by union leader Tony Boyle, the latter of which is a narrative that contains twists straight out of a mob movie. The workforce in Harlan are seeking increased wages and better health benefits. Older miners are forced to work well past a healthy age to get their pensions, and not enough is being done to help them with ailments like “black lung.” Profits are up--particularly as oil companies have moved in and taken over operations--but conditions for the actual workers remain the same. When The Company refuses to recognize their right to organize, the miners seize it, staging a walkout and starting a picket line.

One thing that’s important to keep straight: Harlan County USA is not a hippy-dippy product of a protest-happy ’60s. The people here are as real as it gets, a genuine community of hard working folks whose connections to the area and the occupation go back generations. Kopple talks to young and old alike, and when she can, to people on both sides of the picket lines. Naturally, the scabs and thugs hired to break the strike aren’t eager to get in front of the camera, but when they do, Kopple gives them the microphone to state their case--for as much good as it does them. The opposition merely offers vague enemies (commies) and misguided rationalizations (a raise means a rise in coal costs, one suggests, absent any consideration of actual profits). As an older coal widows declares, everyone has a side to choose, and it’s baffling that these other men have chosen to support the profiteers.
I mention the coal widow, and it should be noted that throughout Harlan County USA, the women are standing alongside their husbands through the whole thing, and in many cases, far more vocal and organized. A couple of men learn the hard way, you don’t fuck with the ladies of Harlan. Hell, the wives are the ones who, when they see the Company thugs packing heat, insist on starting to carry guns themselves. Even the Sheriff backs down when the women stand up.

It’s impossible to oversell how vital and moving Harlan County USA  remains. This is classic documentary filmmaking: in and of the moment, unadorned, with a minimum of editorializing, but with the filmmakers understanding how to properly choose what to show and when. In many ways, Harlan County USA is a rallying cry for a country full of working men and women who need a reminder that they aren’t in this alone. One of the most memorable interactions in the film is between a picketer and a police officer assigned to watch over the protest. A group of the miners have gone into the city to picket directly outside Company headquarters. The two men compare stories, and the cop not only sees how the miners are being screwed, but also how ridiculous it is that he’s watching over them and not the fat cats who are essentially robbing them of their labor. Who knows if these two would have ever met otherwise, but whatever gap is between them closes as soon as they forget where they came from and start a conversation.

And that’s all that is needed, a start to the conversation. Which is what Harlan County USA has always been and will continue to be. Given how the media is so often vilified as being out of touch and our current administration makes noise about putting restrictions on the new, here is an example of how important journalism can be to spread the word. When the Company spokesman stands at a podium and lies about the causes of black lung, it requires a journalist to expose the lie. The only ones here that have cause to fear the camera being trained on them are the ones ready to do wrong. Then and now: different but the same.

THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN - CRITERION CHANNEL

Capsule review from The Portland Mercury, May 2011:

Sergei Eisenstein pretty much invented cinematic language in his 1925 silent film about rebellion on a Russian cruiser, but don’t mistake watching The Battleship Potemkin as akin to reading a textbook--it’s as stirring today as it was nearly a century ago. The dizzying battle sequences and iconic riot on the Odessa stairs (you’ve seen it ripped off hundreds of times) turned what would’ve otherwise been a standard propaganda film into tension-filled art.

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written in 2010 for DVDTalk.com. 

"Never dismiss the legends, Pandora..."

The tale of the Flying Dutchman is a ghost story. A haunted ship travels through the night, its lonely captain cursed to sail the empty seas for eternity. Having committed an heinous crime against love, he must now roam the waters until the day he finds a woman who loves him so much, she is willing to die for him. Love, we are told, is measured by what you will give up for the person you hold most dear. Thus, the irony would be that if the Dutchman were to ever meet the woman who loved him enough to die on his behalf, he would likely love her in equal measure and thus will give up his own salvation so that she may live.

Albert Lewin's 1951 romantic curio Pandora and the Flying Dutchman takes place on a strange dreamscape somewhere just on the other side of the expatriate fiction of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is set on the coast of Spain, in a town called Esperanza--the name translating as "hope," which is all that remained after Pandora opened the box of horrors in the Greek myth. Lewin casts Ava Gardner as his Pandora, an American nightclub singer who leads a bored life by the beach. She is fawned over by the male transplants in the village, and they are all too ready to be manipulated by her. There is the drunk socialite Reggie (Marius Goring) and the renowned bullfighter Montalvo (Mario Cabré), and also a race car driver that is so taken with Pandora, he pushes his car into the sea on her urging. It doesn't matter that Steven (Nigel Patrick) is engaged to another, he's now engaged to Pandora.

Fittingly, Steven's car was named for his paramour, and the night the four-wheeled Pandora is dumped into the drink, so too does the two-legged Pandora see an unfamiliar yacht in the harbor. Intrigued by this fresh prospect, she leaves her new fiancé and swims out to meet the mysterious Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason). The Dutch sailor is alone on his boat, where he is marking time by painting a portrait of the mythic Pandora; only, she has Ava Gardner's face. It would appear that destiny is pushing these two tragic figures together, but we can tell by the way Lewin and cinematographer Jack Cardiff (Girl on a Motorcycle [review]) shoot their meeting that having that much tragedy in one place can only cause further imbalance. While they are on the ship, the image rocks up and down, subject to the caprice of the waves.

Since the basic premise of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman has its roots in classic literature, Albert Lewin gives his tale of doomed romance a literary framework. The main story is shown in flashback, narrated by a scholar (Harold Warrender) who is also caught in Pandora's web, but who has been relegated to the role of confidante and witness. He is the one who finds the old manuscript that purports to be the real diary of the Flying Dutchman, and so it is he who puts two and two together and realizes that van der Zee (whose name literally translates as "the sea") is the eternal wanderer from the folk tales. With the Dutchman swearing he will set sail the night before Pandora is to marry Steven, this realization is like the Dutchman's ever-present hour glass--it initiates a countdown to zero. The love of Pandora has unleashed all kinds of danger. Some suitors will survive, some will not, and it remains to be seen what either she or the Dutchman might give up in order to love the other.

Lewin is no stranger to literary films, having directed my favorite cinematic version of Dorian Gray in 1945. In that movie, he audaciously experimented with color, inserting full-color shots of Dorian's infamous portrait into an otherwise black-and-white film. For Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, the director goes all out, working with Cardiff to extend and expand upon the marvelous Technicolor landscapes the cameraman previously created for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in Black Narcissus [review] and The Red Shoes [review]. Those films dealt with passion, spirituality, and art in their own ways, making them sort of distant cousins to Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. There is a breathless unreality at work in these movies, and the effect is hypnotic. Watching them is like stepping into a painting depicting a particularly vivid dream.

Unlike the Powell and Pressburger films, however, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman never quite finds its narrative footing. It remains as off-balance as those early shots of van der Zee's boat. Though the movie is always impressive to look at, it does tend to wander. The pacing is often slow, lacking the feverish rush that the story demands. Likewise, for as beautiful as Ava Gardner is, her performance is far too morose to get too worked up over. For an irresistible leading lady, she's a lot easier to resist than one might think.

On the other hand, James Mason is quite good as van der Zee. He embraces the role with such utter seriousness, his performance almost turns campy. It makes it all the more sad that Lewin didn't get more ridiculous with this story. Mason's stone-faced delivery could have sold whatever the writer/director sent his way. The sillier the events, the more starch in Mason's shirts, the better for all of us.

Then again, Lewin may be playing it smarter than I am giving him credit for. By withholding the histrionics and playing the more fantastical elements close to his chest, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman perpetually feels like it has something waiting just around the next edit, that there is a strangeness just out of frame that one whip pan will reveal. And, really, the story does escalate as it goes. The bullfighter's mother adds to the anxiety by predicting that death is coming for the men in Pandora's life, and so every rash action they take could be their last. Steven pulls his race car out of the water with the intention of making it roadworthy again and setting a speed record, while the hotheaded Spaniard has a date with a hotheaded bull. They both want to show Pandora what men they are, but it's Montalvo who takes us into the third act by escalating events and clearing the way for Lewin to deliver on all the hints and teases with a delirious finish. Myth collides with fairy tale, making for some unequaled cinematic magic.

THE THIN BLUE LINE - #753

Errol Morris’ influential 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line is both film as political activism and true crime. Like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood but with the journalistic rigor of 60 Minutes.

The Thin Blue Line is the story of a 1976 killing of a policeman in Dallas, Texas. Just past midnight on Thanksgiving weekend, Officer Robert W. Wood pulled over a car driving without its headlights. When the office approached the driver’s door, the man behind the wheel pulled a pistol and opened fire. About a month later, just before Christmas, Randall Dale Adams was arrested for the crime. Though he insisted on his innocence all the way through, Adams was eventually convicted, primarily on the testimony of David Harris, a 16-year-old delinquent who claimed to be hiding on the passenger side of the vehicle that evening. Adams contended that Harris picked him up when he ran out of gas, and though he and the teenager spent the day together, he had returned to his hotel a few hours before the homicide and never saw Harris again. Adding weight to his defense: the kid admitted to having stolen the car and the gun that was used to shoot the lawman.

Despite a flimsy case, Adams was convicted and sentenced to death. Morris picks up the story nearly a decade later, and retraces all the steps taken that landed Adams in jail. He examines both the prosecution and the defense’s arguments. In addition to Adams and Harris, he interviews police investigators, lawyers, the judge, and key witnesses. The director approaches each aspect of the case from one angle, and then another, and then a third still--however many it takes to get all sides. Each interview subject is getting a chance to state their truth, and then Morris impeaches that truth or finds support for it. Other people editorialize, the director does not. While one can guess that perhaps sympathy for Adams is what inspired Morris to undertake The Thin Blue Line, one doesn’t get the sense that any of the documentary’s conclusions are considered foregone.

On the contrary, the thrill of watching The Thin Blue Line is how many twists and turns this narrative takes before finding its way to the closing credits. Morris’ camera is akin to a noir detective in that its always having to adapt to new information; every time it settles on one answer, a new question pops up, so it can never maintain a single line of interrogation. In terms of technique, Morris relies mostly on participant testimonies, which he illustrates via re-enactments. The central crime is shown over and over, but with each change in the account, we see it a slightly different way. The use of these staged sequences is engaging without being manipulative. The switch-ups have a Rashomon-like effect. Every version could be true, or none of them. In fact, as The Thin Blue Line draws to a close, the truth is still up to us. The audience, in this case, is the jury. In both approach and effectiveness, The Thin Blue Line is the granddaddy to the Paradise Lost trilogy and Making of a Murderer, both of which owe Errol Morris a huge debt.

There is a level of restraint here that is kind of remarkable. As David Harris emerges as a more intriguing character than initially thought, it must have taken every ounce of control that Morris could muster not to rush ahead, to expose all the secrets immediately, or convert his winding path to a more direct route. It’s a credit to what a good storyteller the filmmaker truly is. Because even if you go in knowing the outcome, you’ll still be completely drawn in waiting to see how Errol Morris is going to get us there.

METROPOLIS - FILMSTRUCK

This review was written for the theatrical release of The Complete Metropolis in 2010 and published at DVDTalk.com.

"There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator."

There are few films from early cinema that could even get close to touching Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece Metropolis in terms of its impact on pop culture. Lang's silent sci-fi parable is an imaginative, visually stunning piece of work. His creation of a future city and the lady robot that would bring it crashing down has influenced just about every future vision to follow, be it in movies, comic books, or even music videos.

All the more impressive, then, that this impact was achieved despite that fact that versions of Metropolis people have been seeing for the last 80 years are vastly different than the one Lang and his crew intended. The movie immediately ran afoul of German censors, who started making trims. Then Metropolis traveled overseas, and American censors and greedy exhibitors made even more cuts. Most of the footage that had been taken out was believed to be lost forever, so it was a gutted Metropolis or no Metropolis at all. If you can't quite grasp what that means, imagine if someone had taken a pair of scissors to da Vinci's Last Supper and cut out five of the apostles. It's a totally different painting, and one that's full of holes.

The story of Lang's film got a surprise happy ending recently when a nearly complete print was discovered in Buenos Aires. A restoration team seized upon this unearthed treasure and immediately got to work restoring more than 20 minutes of footage not seen since the movie's earliest showings. Though the title The Complete Metropolis is somewhat of a misnomer (we're still missing the showdown between Joh Fredersen and Rotwang, for instance), the new prints of the film that are currently touring arthouses is the closest to the full picture as we're likely to get, so I'm willing to go with it.

And my, what a difference this added footage makes! Metropolis is now a far more coherent and rich film, working much better as a narrative but without sacrificing the movie's legendary weirdness. Based on a novel by Thea von Harbou, who also worked on the script, Metropolis is the story of an industrial city in a far-flung future. The creation of businessman Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), this mechanized wonderland is built in correspondence with the social order. Fredersen and his rich pals live up high, their workers toil in the pits below, and all manner of life floats in between.

Fredersen is a widower, and his son Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) is living the life expected of a privileged heir. He frolics in a literal Garden of Delights, chasing potential wives through the foliage and around an opulent fountain. Things change the day Maria (Brigitte Helm) peeks into this paradise, bringing along a field trip of working-class children to see the world she believes they deserve. Intrigued by this luminescent beauty, Freder travels down into the lower factory in search of her. He ends up trading places with one of the workers (Erwin Biswanger) so he can experience what a common life is like, and once he is believed to be just another employee, his co-workers take him to a secret labor rally--led by none other than Maria herself.

Meanwhile, the scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is working on a mechanical man that will revolutionize the labor force. He shows Fredersen his invention and promises he will make the robot resemble a real person within 24 hours. He has dubbed her Hel, and he is building her in honor of Fredersen's lost wife. There is a history between these three, and Rotwang holds a grudge over the woman's death. So, when Freder demands that the machine maker make his creation look like Maria so she can topple the worker rebellion, he doesn't realize he is giving his rival the means for revenge.

Metropolis is a movie that is many things all at once. It's a political allegory commenting on worker's rights and the dangers of industry. It's a science fiction adventure that, despite its high-tech trappings, uses traditional storytelling tropes--a chosen hero, a damsel in distress, a misguided king--to create a cautionary future. Metropolis is also a religious parable, riddled through with Christian iconography and echoes of Biblical tales. There is a whole segment retelling the story of the Tower of Babel for the machine age, and the above and below of Fredersen's city represents Heaven and Hell, with the humans caught in between. The great machine that powers the whole thing is even given a mystical personification. He is Moloch, and workers shall be sacrificed in his bloody maw!

Amazingly enough, Lang's narrative is still relevant, and his vision is still dazzling to behold. He builds his Metropolis using elaborate sets, models, and matte paintings, creating a city that is massive in size and scope. The actual design of the architecture used contemporary art deco but advanced it to incorporate more industrial elements. At the same time, Lang recreated Biblical images, such as creating a whole stage show for the whore of a Babylon to strut her stuff. We're talking about a movie that has both a pageant featuring Death and the Seven Deadly Sins as well as an android woman brought to life via diodes and Tesla coils four years before James Whale would jolt Boris Karloff into action in Frankenstein. We may be in the 21st century, but we still haven't made our world look this damn cool.

In previous cuts of Metropolis, the story jumped around at random points, and whole subplots were dropped in favor of a shorter running time. For instance, when Freder takes over the work station, the man he replaces takes Freder's clothes and goes off to spend the rich boy's money. None of those scenes were on Kino's 2003 restored DVD, they were only explained in expository title cards. Now we can at last see what Georgy gets up to, alongside other side plots and fill-in scenes that add greater nuance to the overall story. Other versions of Metropolis were like skies full of flying cars racing every which way with nothing to guide the traffic; The Complete Metropolis is like those same fantastical skies, but now the cars have road markers telling them where to go.

If you've never seen a silent film before, don't fear. The Complete Metropolis is as fresh and exciting as any talkie. This isn't some worn-out relic more interesting for its historical importance than it is the actual entertainment. I have a feeling that if they give it a chance, this film will surprise a great many people. It's like a cinematic time capsule that most other movies are still running to catch up to, an imagined future that could still turn out to be our tomorrow. It's the motion picture experience eight decades in the making! If you are lucky enough to have it come to your town, don't hesitate. Get in line right now.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB - #905

This review was originally part of a write-up of the High School Flashback Collection, released in 2008. Go here to read the full piece, including my takes on Sixteen Candles and Weird Science.

For his 1985 film The Breakfast Club, writer/director John Hughes would hone his perception of the class structure of high school into a perfect diamond. Like a version of Sartre's No Exit set in detention, The Breakfast Club brings together what Hughes saw as the five iconic "types" that make up any high school: the brain (Anthony Michael Hall), the athlete (Emilio Estevez), the basket case (Ally Sheedy), the princess (Molly Ringwald), and the criminal (Judd Nelson). All five have gotten into trouble for various reasons, and all five have been assigned a special Saturday detention. Though none of them are friends going into it, they do all carry their preconceptions and have relationships that exist based on those lines. Over the course of their incarceration, they will cross those lines, get to know one another, and eventually reveal who they are based on what lead them to that room in the first place.

The Breakfast Club is deftly constructed, setting up its thesis right from the start with Anthony Michael Hall's voiceover about the categories the group feels they have been put in, and then promising to break those down. Hughes looks for the truth in those categories and builds real characters that conform to them while also being rounded out enough to bust the conventional wisdom about each. He starts with the outer trappings--the clothes they wear, the food they eat--and expands from there to show that these accoutrements bolster the outer masks--Judd Nelson's bravado, Emilio Estevez's machismo, Ally Sheedy's freakish demonstrations. These masks inevitably clash, but each time they do, a piece breaks off. Though each character lies about themselves, the fact that they demand honesty from the other students means they eventually have to own up, too. The bonding happens slowly over the course of the day, bolstered by their common situation and their common enemy, the principal stuck watching them (Paul Gleason). Arguments and pranks lead to deeper conversations, and it becomes clear that all the kids have real problems, and that most of those problems stem from the same insecurities about who they are, where they come from, and where they are going.

The last of the barriers break down in an emotionally intense scene that begins lightly, with the five enjoying their buzz after smoking out, but Hughes isn't content with an easy bonding session. Again, it's all about respecting the characters and the age group he's portraying, acknowledging their problems are real and not to be solved by the easy platitudes of an After School Special. Hall's character, Brian, asks if anyone will actually say hello to him in the halls on Monday, and the truth, as it often does, hurts. Once the honesty starts, though, there is no stopping it, and it paves the way for some final transformations that we might otherwise find unacceptable. Hughes leaves himself the escape clause that it might all be another ruse.

The ensemble cast here couldn't be more perfect. Hughes really was a genius of casting, and he gives his actors enough room to explore that they all invest their roles with authentic pathos. Every viewer enters the movie with a preconceived allegiance to one of the five but then leaves with sympathy for all of them. Judd Nelson has the showiest role, and he tears it apart. It's sad that he never had another part to quite match it. Ally Sheedy proves herself to be the most inventive of the cast, having the weirdest character to play and quietly indulging in all sorts of comedic business. Even when she is saying nothing, she is always lurking about, always watching. As the compulsive liar, she sees through everyone's images first, and being the true outcast, has no social consequence to face by drawing them out--except having to be social herself, the greatest and most subtle transformation of them all. (Well, pre-Extreme Make-Over.)

WRITTEN ON THE WIND - #96

Dorothy Malone died this past week. A repeat performer in Douglas Sirk films of the 1950s, she was probably best known for her Oscar-winning turn in Peyton Place, or for her memorable scene as a bookseller in The Big Sleep [review]. Lauren Bacall, her co-star in Howard Hawks’ Chandler adaptation, was also her castmate in one of those Sirk releases, 1956’s Written on theWind--a textbook case where the supporting role is much juicier than the lead. Malone runs away with the picture.

The melodrama, shot from a script by George Zuckerman, centers on a wealthy Texas oil family. The Hadley’s are so rich, the town they live in was named after them. The company is run by patriarch Jasper (Robert Keith), a widower whose two children have not turned out as expected. Spoiled by their wealth, both Kyle (Robert Stack, To Be Or Not To Be [review) and Marylee (Malone) have taken more of an interest in liquor than oil and prefer carousing to work. Their best friend since childhood, Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson, Magnificent Obsession [review]), provides the only steadiness. He grew up with the Hadleys as a favor between fathers: Mr. Hadley hoped having a poor friend would keep Kyle grounded, and old man Wayne (Harry Shannon) believed it would provide Mitch with opportunities he never had.

The film starts with an engrossing flash-forward before jumping back a year, to when Mitch met Lucy (Bacall), the secretary to the head of the advertising agency that promotes Hadley Oil. Mitch tries to use Lucy as a lure to rein in Kyle, who has flown to New York on a bender--literally piloting his private plane--in search of his favorite steak sandwich. The scheme works, but it backfires at the same time. Lucy does get Kyle to straighten up, but Mitch himself has also fallen in love with her. His own plot causes him to lose the bride to his much more outgoing friend. After a quick trip to Miami, Kyle and Lucy are wed.

Upon their return to Texas, Mitch must stifle his feelings for Lucy while also fending off the advances of Marylee. The Hadley girl has loved Mitch her whole life, but he sees her as only a sister. Much of Marylee’s acting out is to try to get Mitch to pay attention to her. As we see in a spectacular barroom brawl, Kyle is ineffective in defending the family honor, it requires a bit more muscle. Dorothy Malone gets to show range here, from explicit seduction to pouty outbursts to genuine romantic despair. While Stack is a bit more exaggerated, Kyle’s daddy issues are also a bit underwritten; not so with Marylee’s hang-ups. She makes direct moves for Mitch’s affections, some of which likely pushed the strictures of the production code, but she also lays her feelings bare as necessary.

Not that Kyle’s predicament is all that innocent, either. After a year of sobriety, he goes off the wagon when his doctor leads him to believe he is unable to have kids. Here Sirk and Zuckerman’s drama takes on Tennessee Williams-level depths. Kyle has always had his manhood threatened by Mitch, and now he believes it to have a literal/physical manifestation. On the night in question, the one we entered the film on, the whole world adopts Kyle’s anger and anxieties, the Texas wind whipping up to a frenzy.

As is Douglas Sirk’s signature, Written on the Wind is colorful and emotional. His exquisite staging and remarkable sense of framing creates room for the actors to perform, but also the space for the drama to explode. You can tell how the relationships are faring by where the actor appears within the shot, like when Hudson is visible in a mirror that separates the newlyweds, Stack and Bacall. The four lovers are in a dangerous tango where two of the dancers are moving faster than the others--as symbolized in their flashy red and yellow sports cars. The script often swerves and kicks up dirt in much the same way the speedsters do. Written on the Wind may be Sirk’s tightest, most efficient narrative, rivaled only by Tarnished Angels, released a year after Written on the Wind, and also starring Hudson, Stack, and Malone, its black-and-white aerial theatrics providing a more knuckle-dusted sibling to its predecessor.

If there is any flaw to Written on the Wind, it’s maybe that it’s a couple of scenes too long. Sirk should have ended where he came in. While the final sequences do offer Marylee redemption--and Malone, naturally, handles the moment well--it cools everything down a bit too much. But so it goes...a classic doesn’t need to be perfect, and Written on the Wind is definitely one.