The Horse's Head

December 27^th, 1995: The NFR is in 7^th Heaven in their seventh year of film inductions, adding another 25 films for a new total of 175. Having finally watched all 25 films, here is my recap for the class of ’95:

• Blacksmith Scene (1893): “We can go ahead and give ‘Blacksmith Scene’ credit for motion pictures as we know them today, because why the hell not?”
• Rip Van Winkle (1896/1903): “the film that put Biograph Studios on the map”, “an entertaining (albeit not intentionally so) viewing experience.”
• Fatty’s Tintype Tangle (1915): “represents the talent of a man whose work has sadly been sidelined”
• The Last of the Mohicans (1920): “I really can’t find a compelling argument to preserve this film.”
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921): “a bit of drag.”
• Manhatta (1921): “encapsulates a specific time in American history”
• 7^th Heaven (1927): “another ‘minor classic'”, “holds up well…but I’m not singing its praises either.”
• Fury (1936): “Not [Fritz Lang’s] best work, but…keeps getting better as it goes along.”
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938): “checks off all the boxes you want from a Robin Hood movie”
• Stagecoach (1939): “a quintessential western…lives up to the hype.”
• The Philadelphia Story (1940): “a must-watch for classic movie lovers”
• Jammin’ the Blues (1944): “a fun, quick entry…a more raw form of jazz”
• Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950): “a good story with inventive animation, which is really all you can ask for.”
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): “the best kind of science fiction”, “a call for peace”.
• The Band Wagon (1953): “not the best Fred Astaire movie…but it is still very entertaining.”
• All That Heaven Allows (1955): “Yes, it’s a highly-stylized melodrama, but it has that Douglas Sirk touch to it that keeps it watchable.”
• North by Northwest (1959): “The movies don’t get much better than this.”
• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962): “a beautifully told, wonderfully filmed story about perspective and tolerance.”
• The Hospital (1971): “I don’t understand this movie or why it’s on the NFR.”
• Cabaret (1972): “a notch above your average movie musical, if not one of the untouchables of filmdom.”
• American Graffiti (1973): “an enjoyable coming-of-age tale that comes straight from the heart.”
• The Conversation (1974): “an exhilarating movie experience”, “those willing to seek it out will not be disappointed.”
• To Fly! (1976): “a fun, visually engaging movie, and a natural choice to represent IMAX on the NFR.”
• Chan Is Missing (1982): “continues to inspire more varied depictions of Asians throughout our popular culture.”
• El Norte (1983): “one of those movies the NFR is all about.”

The Plot: Siblings Rosa and Enrique Xuncax (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando) are indigenous Mayans living in San Pedro, Guatemala during the Guatemalan Civil War of the mid to late 20^th century. When government agents murder their father Arturo (Ernesto Gómez Cruz) and capture their mother Lupe (Alicia del Lago), Rosa and Enrique decide to flee their homeland and make the dangerous journey north through Mexico to America (“El Norte”), where they hope to live out the fantasy American dream they have been told all their lives. After several setbacks in Mexico, Rosa and Enrique arrive in Los Angeles, taking any menial job or day labor while trying to avoid Immigration. “El Norte” is a sobering, heartbreaking account of the ongoing struggles for immigrants, even after they have arrived in “the land of the free”.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film a “sweeping story infused with Mayan folklore” and quotes the Variety write-up declaring the film the “first American independent epic”. An essay by Ithaca Teaching Fellow Matt Holtmeier focuses on the film’s visual motifs and evergreen themes.

But Does It Really?: “El Norte” is one of those movies the NFR is all about. I was drawn into the world of “El Norte” almost immediately, feeling and hurting for these two characters every step of the way, and by the end I truly felt like I had been on this journey with them. The film walks a fine line of sympathy without sentimentality, with an artistic style that still feels grounded. This straight-forward, compelling approach helps an audience more readily accept this film’s depiction of the immigrant experience. I can’t recommend “El Norte” enough, and I’m so glad the NFR inducted this film in only its third year of eligibility.

Everybody Gets One: Gregory Nava was raised in San Diego and crossed the US-Mexican border several times throughout his childhood to visit family in Tijuana. The drastic differences between San Diego and Tijuana (separated by a mere fence) were the germ of what became “El Norte”, which Nava wrote with his creative partner (and then-wife) Anna Thomas. Fun Fact: While Anna Thomas was studying film at UCLA, she wrote the cookbook The Vegetarian Epicure, which helped ignite the vegetarian movement of the 1970s!

Wow, That’s Dated: “El Norte” is another NFR film that highlights how much easier air travel was in the 20^th century. You could walk right up to the gate!

Seriously, Oscars?: Despite being an independent production with a limited theatrical release, “El Norte” managed to break through at the Oscars with a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Facing such eclectic competition as “Beverly Hills Cop“, “Broadway Danny Rose”, and “Splash”, “El Norte” lost to “Places in the Heart”, a Best Picture nominee whose major contribution to pop culture was from its win in another category. To date, the “El Norte” screenplay nomination is the only Oscar recognition for either Gregory Nava or Anna Thomas.

• The secret to the movie’s success is how fully immersed we are in Rosa and Enrique’s perspective. The first hour of “El Norte” is spoken in K’iche’, and the film’s first act is spent entirely in San Pedro with the Mayans and their customs. Once English language is eventually spoken, it is jarring enough to make you understand how foreign English is to Rosa and Enrique for the rest of the film.
• After an understandably tense first act establishing the character motivations and stakes, we get some much-needed levity in the second act. Before arriving in Mexico, Enrique is told to claim to be Mexican so they won’t get deported back to Guatemala, and that the best way to pretend to be Mexican is by infusing his vocabulary with frequent profanity. The first line spoken by a Mexican character in the movie is “Motherfucking tire!”, and this stereotyping gets a very funny pay-off later.
• “El Norte” gives us not one, but two border crossing scenes, filmed near the actual US border with cooperation from Border Patrol. The second is the longer and more harrowing of the two, featuring Rosa and Enrique crawling through a sewer pipe. It’s now impossible for any film buff to watch this scene and not hear Morgan Freeman narrating about “smelling foulness I can’t even imagine.”
• As if the sewer scene wasn’t unpleasant enough already, we get rats! So many rats! According to an article by Roger Ebert, those were actual rats used for the scene, and Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez insisted on performing the scene herself despite her fear of rats. Hats off to Gutiérrez and Villalpando; you couldn’t pay me to do a scene like that.
• The scene where Rosa and Enrique see San Diego for the first time is shot like Dorothy and her friends arriving at Emerald City. I know it’s meant to be a beautiful, pivotal moment for these two, but thanks to the likes of “Anchorman” the city of San Diego is an immediate punchline for me.
• The film’s third act in Los Angeles introduces two characters played by NFR stalwarts. It was a pleasant surprise to see Trinidad Silva in another NFR movie, especially after his character in “¡Alambrista!” unceremoniously disappeared. And at long last this blog has entered its Lupe Ontiveros era, with the late great actor playing Nacha, Rosa’s guardian angel who gets her a job cleaning houses. Ms. Ontiveros has five films on the NFR, four of which have been inducted since I started The Horse’s Head in 2017.
• I found this film’s depiction of White people very interesting. First off, there are mercifully no White saviors. The White characters are not here to help or support Enrique and Rosa; they have their own agendas and are completely unaware of what these two have gone through. The other intriguing aspect was that the White characters – especially Enrique’s wait staff co-workers – all have clever banter with each other, as if we’ve stumbled onto a Neil Simon play mid-performance (Simon also gets name-checked by one of these characters).

• In addition to the obvious comparisons to ¡Alambrista!”, “El Norte” shares a lot of DNA with another NFR movie: “The Grapes of Wrath“. I spent my viewings of both “Grapes” and “El Norte” worried at every point that something bad would happen to our protagonists on their journey to find a better life in California.
• The final few scenes are appropriately devastating, but not in a drawn-out or overly depressing way. Enrique’s last-minute ultimatum is a tense addition, and Rosa’s final monologue is a genuine heartbreaker. Without getting into spoilers: one interpretation of the final shot is that a character has committed suicide, but I think it is there as a reminder of the Guatemalan genocide, which was still very much going on in 1983, continuing through 1996.

Today’s oversimplified history lesson: the Great Plains and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. As always, I’m just here to talk about the movie, but I encourage further research into these expansive topics.

The Plot: “The Plow That Broke the Plains” is the story of the Great Plains; the 1.1 million square miles of flatland that stretches across 12 states in the Midwest, and how it was nearly destroyed in just a half-century. We begin in the late 1800s as settlers arrive and start developing the grassland. As those settlers continue westward, the remaining farmers start plowing the fields, despite the area’s lack of rivers and rain. The land gets a boost when World War I breaks out and there is a demand for wheat. This excessive growth continues through the 1920s but hits a breaking point with stock market crash of 1929 and the Dust Bowl and ongoing droughts of the 1930s, making the land virtually unfarmable. If only there was an off shoot of the US government that could help rehabilitate this bounteous land. Brought to you by your friends at the U.S. Resettlement Administration.

Why It Matters: Both the NFR write-up and the accompanying essay by Lorentz expert Dr. Robert J. Snyder rehash Pare Lorentz and the film’s production.

But Does It Really?: This is a situation we come across every so often on this blog: two films that cover the same ground (so to speak). Like Lorentz’s other NFR film “The River“, “Plow” is a government funded documentary short about a piece of endangered American land, narrated by Thomas Chalmers, and scored by Virgil Thompson. While they’re both equally compelling, neither is more famous or impactful than the other, which makes both being on the NFR a bit of a headscratcher. Although “The River” was made two years after “Plow”, it was added to the Registry first, and I suspect “Plow” was inducted nine years later as Lorentz’s stepping stone movie. On its own, “Plow” is an effective, dramatic look at nature’s destruction by humankind, but as an NFR entry it seems redundant. However, Lorentz is far from the only obscure filmmaker with multiple entries on the Registry, so I’ll shrug my shoulders and give “Plow” the same pass I gave its cinematic younger sibling. But if I see one more Pare Lorentz movie on this list, NFR, you and I are going to have a talk.

Everybody Gets One: Pare Lorentz started his career as a freelance writer in the 1920s, eventually being assigned as a film critic for Judge magazine even though he had no interest in films. By the 1930s, Lorentz had relocated from New York to Washington DC, and became fascinated with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal campaign, writing about it at length during Roosevelt’s first term as president. These writings caught the eye of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, who arranged for Lorentz to meet with Rexford Tugwell (great name) of the newly formed Resettlement Administration. Originally hired as a film consultant, Lorentz agreed to direct a short about the Dust Bowl, a topic that interested him greatly. Unfortunately, his lack of filmmaking experience caused him to lowball his budget, requesting and receiving only $6,000 (about $135,000 today) from the government, and paying with his own money for the extra costs – another $14,000 ($316,000 today).

Wow, That’s Dated: As I said in my “River” post, “this whole thing is pure New Deal propaganda”.

• Like many a New Deal program, the Resettlement Administration was dissolved in 1937, becoming the Farm Security Administration, which begat the Farmers Home Administration, which begat the USDA Rural Development.
• As for the Plains themselves, things finally started picking up in the 1950s thanks to concentrated efforts to better irrigate the land. While the Great Plains are nowhere near as populous as they were before the Dust Bowl, they contain plenty of usable farmland, and in more recent years have shifted their focus to wind power.

The Plot: “Flowers and Trees” lives up to its title as an animated tale of anthropomorphized flowers and trees…well, mostly trees. As dawn breaks in an idyllic forest, a Boy Tree woos a Girl Tree with a harp made of vines. All this wooing angers a nearby Old Man Tree, who wants the Girl Tree for his own. Boy Tree easily wins a fight for Girl Tree’s honor, and Old Man Tree retaliates by starting a forest fire. But all ends happily in this Disney Silly Symphony; the first film (animated or otherwise) to utilize the new technological marvel of three-strip Technicolor.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives the short its technical achievement, singling out the film’s “vibrant Technicolor”.

But Does It Really?: “Flowers and Trees” is a pleasant, agreeable short, though ultimately its technical innovation is what pushes it into the “important film” column. As a lifelong Disney history buff, I have seen “Flowers and Trees” before and was aware of its significance in Disney history, but even that wasn’t enough for me to include it on my own NFR nomination ballot over the years. Still, it’s nice to see that other people advocated for its NFR inclusion, and it’s refreshing to know that there’s at least one Disney short from this era that can go on Disney+ without any disclaimers or backlash. A pass for “Flowers and Trees”; an important, though not monumental, moment in the history of color film and Disney animation.

Seriously, Oscars?: At the 5^th Academy Awards, “Flowers and Trees” was the first winner in a brand-new category: Best Short Subjects, Cartoons (now known as Best Animated Short). Oscar rules at the time gave the award to a short’s producer, not its director, so Walt Disney collected the first of his eventual 26 Oscars (which is still the record). Disney also received an Honorary Oscar that evening for the creation of Mickey Mouse.

The Plot: Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott) is the Chief of Medicine at a Manhattan teaching hospital who finds himself at a moral crossroads. His hospital is crumbling both literally and figuratively, with overall mismanagement issues, protests from the community, and several staff members mysteriously turning up dead. In addition to these external issues, Bock is privately dealing with the end of his marriage, his suicidal contemplations, his chronic alcoholism, and his impotency. The only bright spot comes from Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg), the daughter of a comatose patient (Barnard Hughes), who gets Dr. Bock to open up during an intimate late-night conversation. Will Dr. Bock leave the hospital and move to Mexico with Barbara? And are these deaths the work of malpractice or murder? As they say in another movie, “That is one nutty hospital.”

Why It Matters: The NFR praises Arthur Hiller’s balance of “comedy and tragedy, the real and the surreal”, and heralds Chayefsky’s “vision of health care that looks frighteningly prescient.” It’s also worth noting that “The Hospital” entered the NFR one year after the unrelated but similarly titled “Hospital“. Confused yet?

But Does It Really?: I don’t understand this movie or why it’s on the NFR. “The Hospital” has some wonderful dialogue and a great cast, but it never gelled for me the way a film with this pedigree of creatives should. Additionally, “The Hospital” is nowhere near as memorable or impactful as the rest of either Paddy Chayefsky’s or Arthur Hiller’s filmographies, most notably Chayefsky’s other, significantly more iconic middle finger to ’70s decay: “Network“, which wouldn’t make the Registry until 2000. I suspect “The Hospital” is another one of those “you had to be there” movies of the early ’70s that I can never seem to fully comprehend, but even that argument falls through considering this film’s overall absence from pop culture or film discussions in the last 50 years (even “Two-Lane Blacktop” has its share of supporters). As it stands, I’m left scratching my head and wondering how “The Hospital” made the NFR this early in its run, or at all.

Everybody Gets One: Born in Edmonton, Alberta to Polish immigrants, Arthur Hiller started acting in his parents’ Yiddish theater company as a child and was inspired to become a film director after seeing Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City”. Hiller started directing episodic television for the CBC before making the move to America, where he directed episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, “Gunsmoke”, and of all things, the first episode of “The Addams Family”. Hiller’s film career started strong with such films as “The Americanization of Emily” and hit its peak with the 1970 megahit “Love Story”. Arthur Hiller was Paddy Chayefsky’s first choice to direct “The Hospital”, but United Artists insisted on newcomer Michael Ritchie, who was fired during pre-production due to “differences” with Chayefsky and was replaced by Hiller.

Seriously, Oscars?: “The Hospital” received two Oscar nominations, with Paddy Chayefsky winning his second Oscar for its screenplay. Although George C. Scott lost Best Actor to Gene Hackman in “The French Connection“, his nomination is notable for occurring the year after he refused a nomination and eventual win for his work in “Patton“. Clearly the acting branch of the Academy didn’t hold grudges.

Other notes

• After a very successful run as a writer throughout the ’50s (including his first Oscar for “Marty“), Paddy Chayefsky stumbled throughout most of the ’60s. With a string of flop plays on Broadway and unable to get his original screenplays produced in Hollywood, Chayefsky took jobs adapting other people’s work, including “The Americanization of Emily”, which underperformed at the box office, and several projects he was quickly fired from. Inspired by his wife Susan’s recent trip to a hospital (and its less-than-supportive staff), Paddy pitched a TV series set in a hospital to producer Howard Gottfried, which evolved into a film script that represented, as Chayefsky put it, “a microcosm for all the ills of contemporary society”. Chayefsky and Gottfried formed their own production company – Simcha Productions, named for the Hebrew variation of Paddy’s birthname Sidney – to ensure that Chayefsky would have creative control during production and that the final film would match his screenplay.
• The opening prologue about the fates of Mr. Guernsey and Dr. Schaefer in Room 806 sets the film up as a delightful black comedy, which I don’t think the rest of this movie fully delivers on. Part of my problem with this movie is, through no fault of its own, the abundance of quirky hospital media that has come out since this film’s release. I’m sure this film’s depiction of hospital life was more original and outrageous in 1971, but with “St. Elsewhere”, “ER”, “Scrubs”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, etc. none of it seems too out of place nowadays. And yes, that is Paddy Chayefsky as the prologue narrator, a temp recording that found its way into the finished film.
• George C. Scott is, as always, terrific in this, though of his five NFR performances this is the least flashy or memorable. Dr. Bock is such an internal character it doesn’t give Scott much to play with, although we do get one of his trademark rage monologues early on. Side note: Having never seen “The Hospital” before, I was under the impression this was the movie where George C. Scott growls “It is NOT in the file!” to a nurse. Turns out that’s “The Exorcist III”.

• As someone who has seen “Network” dozens of times over the years, I can’t help but notice the similarities. Both are films about a middle-aged man going through a self-described “menopausal” crisis, watching the institution he has devoted his life to deteriorate around him, and taking solace in an intelligent, beautiful, significantly younger woman. Clearly Chayefsky (who was 48 when this film was released) was working out some things in his own writing. Ultimately, I feel like “Network” did everything “The Hospital” is doing, but with a sharper focus in its writing and execution.
• I do love any movie with a murderers’ row of New York stage actors. Among those showing up here in supporting roles: Frances Sternhagen, Nancy Marchand, Katherine Helmond, Roberts Blossom, and, in her uncredited film debut, Stockard Channing. Oh, and apparently Christopher Guest makes his film debut too as one of the resident doctors. Definitely missed that.
• There’s an extended sequence of Mr. Blacktree, an Indigenous associate of Barbara’s, performing a medicine dance over Mr. Drummond’s hospital bed. This scene goes on long enough without anything else happening that I think the joke is the mere sight of a medicine dance, a joke that aged so poorly I didn’t even recognize it as one. This kind of humor always makes me think of that “Simpsons” scene of Homer watching an Indian film with Apu: “It’s funny; their clothes are different from my clothes.”
• In her American film debut, Diana Rigg spends most of the film’s first half standing in the background of other people’s scenes, but once we get the late-night monologues between Dr. Bock and Barbara, she gives a knockout performance. Rigg didn’t make a lot of movies, and as much as I question this film’s NFR standing, I’m glad she’s on the list at least once (though I’m also holding out for “The Great Muppet Caper“).

• Speaking of Diana Rigg: I do love that they explain away her British accent by saying that Barbara went to Vassar. Good stuff.
• I spent a lot of this movie’s second half trying to put my finger on what exactly wasn’t working for me. I was ready to throw Arthur Hiller under the bus and say he couldn’t handle the material, but that notion went out the window once I started doing my research. I haven’t seen a lot of Arthur Hiller’s movies, but his filmography suggests he was one of those chameleon directors who could work in a variety of genres and service the story without putting any distracting “signature directorial style” on it. Plus, he had successfully collaborated with Chayefsky previously on “The Americanization of Emily”, and based on what I know about Chayefsky, getting along with him was no easy task, so being his top choice for director was a huge vote of confidence. As for this film’s NFR induction, I will play a bit of devil’s advocate and point out that Arthur Hiller was a member of the National Film Preservation Board in 1995, the year “The Hospital” made the list. Granted, Hiller is far from the only person to have one of their films inducted while serving on the board, but his presence certainly didn’t hurt.
• Critics at the time were divided over whether the film’s tonal gearshift in the second half works. While I didn’t completely hate it, it didn’t work for me either. For starters, Chayefsky would bring back the sudden spiritual epiphany storyline in “Network”, so it didn’t come as much out of left field for me as it would have for people in 1971. The main issue with this swing into farce is that the first half is filmed too realistically for the later, more satirical elements to work. “The Hospital” is in the grounded world of cinema verité shaky cam, not the polished, larger-than-life environment you need for a successful farce. Also adding to the confusion is Barnard Hughes playing two different characters: Diana Rigg’s father and one of the hospital’s surgeons. These characters have no connection to each other, and very little effort is made to distinguish the two. There’s not even a “wink-wink” acknowledgment of this dual casting within the film. Very weird.