Elvis acts… Flaming Star (1960)

When I was a child, one of the very first LPs I got was Elvis Sings Flaming Star (1968) by Elvis Presley. I knew it related to a film because of the cover but as I found out later, it’s a compilation and a mixed bunch at that with a raucous version of Tiger Man from the ’68 Comeback Special, along with a mix of all previously unreleased songs from various of his films recorded between 1960 and 1968. There’s the sublime blues of All I Needed Was the Rain and the rugged Chuck Berry cover, Too Much Monkey Business from Stay Away Joe (1968) (the latter unused), balanced against the saccharine Wonderful World from Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), then the more energetic The Yellow Rose of Texas, Do the Vega and Night Life from Viva Los Vegas (1964) plus the funky She’s a Machine from Easy Come, Easy Go (1967).

I was seven or eight but I knew Elvis was cooler than Herman and the Hermits, Englebert or Cliff… and, as I got older, I became the kind of Elvis snob who bemoans his work after the army years in favour of the Sun Sessions and his more “authentic” rock ‘n roll. Even his films seem to follow the same trajectory with Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole (1957) ahead of almost everything save the hyper-energies of Viva Las Vega (1964) and, bless you Ann-Margaret for that one!

But what of Flaming Star the film? Fifty-odd years on it was time for me to complete the picture and watch the film of the song and, whilst that’s a little bit of a depressing stat, I found a lot to admire in this one and not least, the performance of Elvis Aaron Presley. This film is perhaps the most serious and dramatic he ever made, dealing as it does with the issue of mixed-race with Elvis playing Pacer, the son of a white father Sam "Pa" Burton (John McIntire) and a native American mother, Neddy played by the sublime Dolores del Río who was born in Mexico. Presley has long been rumoured to have had native American forebears and this adds an extra edge to a film that at the time caused some controversy not just in the USA but also in the British colonies with South Africa initially banning it before showing it only in segregated cinemas for a white audience only. Elsewhere, the film was permanently banned in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, with colonial government officials concerned about the impact on the native community after the Mau Mau uprisings of the fifties.

The film was indeed bold in its treatment of miscegenation, which was and sadly remains, a hot topic in certain parts of the USA and it’s also nuanced in the ways that racism affects and is part of pretty much every character. Pacer and his elder half-brother Clint (Steve Forrest) are as close as siblings could be but even they are torn by the issue when growing tensions between the local tribes and the white farmers grow and the younger man must decide which side he’s on.

Steve Forrest, John McIntyre, Barbara Eden, Dolores del Río and The King

Up till now Pacer has been accepted as part of the community and the film opens with a get-together with the Burtons and their friends including the excellent Barbara Eden as Clint’s sweetheart, Ros Pierce and the always tightly wound Richard Jaeckel as Angus Pierce. After the dinner Angus takes his fiancé Dorothy Howard (Anne Benton) back to her parent’s home only for them to be slaughtered by a raiding party. Angus manages to escape but the incident sparks fear and racial hatred throughout the local community. When Pacer and Clint ride into town they are confronted by Angus and his father (Karl Swenson) as even Ros bitterly suggests that they need to take a side in the face of this brutality.

What makes the film stand out is the fact that there are no two sides here but two cultures in which fear of the other is ingrained; there are lots of decent folk, like Ros and, even Clint, who carry the assumption just below their sense of decency, that the “Indians” are fundamentally less civilised than the whites. On the other side, we see not only the kindness and consideration of Neddy but also her rejection by her own people when she and Pacer go to hear them out. Pacer is also given the same ultimatum by the new chief, Buffalo Horn (Mexican actor, Rodolfo Acosta), who with a long list of grievances, many of his fellows killed by the settlers, reasons the same way as the Pierces.

 

In the middle of all this acts Elvis and with Don Siegel’s direction he gives probably his best performance with this grittiest of roles. He’s believable and committed both physically – all that army training no doubt helping in the action sequences – but also in the moments between the anger and action. There’s only one song sung within the film, accompanying himself on guitar during the get together at the start of the film, and the rest is the rock star as actor. The pressure was on to include four songs by Siegel resisted and was at pains to insist that Elvis did not appear professional in this scene, he played and sang in character and the film is all the better for it… the audience is reminded what he can do but then get taken down a more challenging path.

Quentin Tarantino has described this as not only a “truly great” '50s Western but also “… maybe the most brutally violent American Western of its era…” and it doesn’t shy away from some horrific moments and the tension mounts as characters are killed off with some regularity. There’s an uncomfortable moment when two cowboys come to ask for food when Pacer and his mother are alone. They quickly start insulting the “red boy” and his mother and, when Pacer steps out for some wood, try to sexually assault Neddy who repels one of them with a quick thump of her ladle. They encourage the men to go and, without his mother noticing, Pacer goes out the back door to exact instant retribution. Don’t mess with Elvis.

The divine Delores

 

As the film races to its conclusion there will be no easy answers and enough is left unsaid or implied to keep the audience thinking well beyond the end credits. It’s a thoughtful film that ranks alongside even classics such as The Searchers and The Unforgiven in terms of its subject matter if not overall quality. Flaming Star also looks fantastic with cinematography from five-time Academy Award nominee Charles G. Clarke capturing the full breadth of the outstanding locations and Seigel’s vision with characters often silhouetted next to lonesome buildings or staring out across the vast space, vulnerable and alive amidst the backdrop of chaotic humanity.

54 years between the song and the film… who knows where the time goes but this film is certainly worth yours and mine. Happy New Year!

 

 

Don't cry for me, Argento... Deep Red (1975)

Maybe you’ve seen something so important you don’t recognise… sometimes what you actually see and what you imagine get mixed up in your memory like a cocktail…

This collaboration features an urgent and unsettling Goblin score for Dario Argento, two years before Suspiria and the carefully paced, atmospheric mystery is very much a foretaste of that film. There are many cuts of this film but I watched the 126-minute L’Immagine Ritrovata restoration from 2014 which includes all of the graphic violence as well as the humour and you really can’t have one without the other can you; comic relief only heightening the punch/slash lines.

David Hemmings is on-hand as the audience cypher, a man who can't walk away from the evil he has seen and, like us, albeit with considerably more at stake, he just has to see it resolved. Hemmings is someone we saw growing up on screen, here he's a greying 34-year-old, still recognisably the cool photographer from Blow Up and a world away from his skinny youthfulness in the early sixties’ films like Some People and his childhood roles in the fifties. Before his voice broke, he was Benjamin Brittan's favourite soprano and he's a musician here again, albeit a jazz pianist. He's perfect for Argento, intense and alert with a quick humour which undercuts the tension only to propel it further forward as the moods change and the director's preference for shadowy spaces and natural dark rarely give us any respite from the mood and the menace.

Hopper-style Blue Bar with and David Hemmings

We're on our guard right from the get-go with a bloody death involving a child cut from a low angel leads us into the film as Goblin's mournful tones lead us through the titles to a rehearsal of Hemming's character, Marcus Daly's jazz band in what looks like a crypt. Even the stills look unsettling, bright lights on the players and darkness surrounding them and a white piano that looks like a tomb...

Its thoughts are of death… you have killed and will kill again!

We switch to a talk being given by a psychic Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril) and a Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri) in a half-empty theatre during which the former senses the presence of a purely malevolent mind. Almost in pain she reaches out to the person indicating that she feels their blood lust, their murderous intent and knows they will kill again. The meeting breaks up but we feel the presence of someone watching Helga as she’s helped on her way by Giordani and tells him that she may be able to identify the person…

Helga picks up the signals...

 

Meanwhile, Marcus walks into a huge square, with a piano bar highlighted like an Edmund Hopper painting - Nighthawks to be precise - darkness all around and yet the interior bright through large windows; one of those moments when you sit up and point at the screen, "Hopper!". Argento likes his bright interiors especially when locked behind glass and surrounded by the dark uncertainty of the late night. Marcus meets Carlo (Gabriele Lavia) a fellow musician but one reduced to playing at the Blue Bar and relying on tips. Carlo is drunk and has many demons but Marcus likes him and wants to help. He hears screaming…

If Argento likes illuminated interiors he also likes his murders witnessed through the dark and a murderee helpless behind the glass and this is exactly what we get as Marcus turns the corned and seeing a woman, Helga, fighting for her life on an upper story, her head smashed through the window.

 

 

He races up to her apartment, through a corridor crammed with art only to find himself too late and the woman’s body collapsed lifeless on the floor. The police arrive in lazy and almost comedic form as they go through the motions all too run down by the prosaic nature of murder and not expecting much from this witness. Then Gianna (Daria Nicolodi, Argento’s wife at the time and mother of Asia Argento), a journalist, arrives and begins to ask questions whilst also noting the handsome musician and snapping his photograph sensing a scoop.

 

Marcus and the Italian plod...

You won’t get away; I’ll kill you sooner or later…

Marcus and Gianna begin to bond and attend the funeral together sharing information. Unfortunately, she’s used the snap of him she took on the front page of her newspaper and the killer now knows that he’s the main witness… Their relationship has a screwball edge and, as her car is also broken, he sits very low in the broken passenger seat as she towers over him driving and he can only get in and out via the sunroof.  We also get to learn more of Marcus’ relationship with Carlo as he goes in search of him at the apartment of his mother Martha (Clara Calamai), who’s very welcoming and gives him the address of his friend Massimo Ricci (Geraldine Hooper, playing a male or transgender character). Here he finds Carlo drunk and full of self-disgust at his sexuality. It matters not to Marcus – he’s a jazz musician! – and the two end up playing a duet at the Blue Bar.

All this is done to distract though and Marcus is soon visited late at night by the dark figure in a black leather coat he witnessed leaving the scene of the crime. He manages to lock his door to prevent their entry and the growl the above threat through the wood… he's on borrowed time. But Marcus, aided by Gianna isn’t going to wait, he goes in search of a song he heard the night of the murder and this leads him to stories of hauntings as relayed by an author whom is murdered brutally before he gets to her… Everything seems to have ears around her, he says… but he ploughs on and the mystery will have not one but two classic twists before being resolved as Argento teases us with short clips of music, childhood dolls and eyes caked in black eyeliner.

 

Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi

 

And all the time he puzzles over the strange picture he saw out of the corner of his eye in the moments after the first killing: it disappeared when he next walkled the corrider, is it the clue to solve the case… maybe he imagined it, as Marco suggests at the top. Imagination and memory soon intertwine after all.

 

Dusty verdict: Deep Red is rightly regarded as a classic of Giallo Cinema and has enough strands to engage the modern audience along with great performances all round. The score is also excellent and its interesting to see that Argento tried to recruit Pink Floyd – as Antonioni had done for Zabriskie Point – before turning to the Italian Goblin whose leader Claudio Simonetti wrote two of the compositions in one night. Quick and effective workers, he signed them as soon as he could and, of course, they would work together in future.

 

Well worth watching on a windy dark night in the British winter… and take car in those seemingly safe city squares and streets.

 

 

 

Pretty collectible first Italian pressing soundtrack LP!

Edmund Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)