The Horse's Head

The Plot: Ben, Hugh, and Lelia (Ben Carruthers, Hugh Hurd, Lelia Goldoni) are three siblings living in New York at the height of the Beat Generation. The siblings are all African American, though Lelia is light skinned and often passes for White. Both Ben and Hugh have musical aspirations, but Ben wastes his days loafing about with friends at the local bars, while Hugh’s act can’t catch a break, despite the efforts of his agent Rupert (Rupert Crosse). Lelia’s love life takes a turn when she starts seeing Tony (Anthony Ray), a White man who doesn’t realize she’s Black. But all of this is place-setting for a freeform character study completely improvised by the actors.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a rundown of the film’s production, and praises Cassavetes’ choice to make a film that “treats race and identity not as sociological discourse but as a sort of free jazz.” An essay by Cassavetes expert Ray Carney delves into the film’s theme of identity.

But Does It Really?: “Shadows” is one of those movies that needs a little explanation to fully appreciate. Unlike most movies, “Shadows” isn’t so much a piece of entertainment as it is the results of an experimental exercise, a filmed acting workshop. The results are far from the high production quality of many an NFR entry, but even with the film’s rough presentation, you can see Cassavetes’ love of the game: an artist determined to tell this story, whatever it ends up being. While I found the film a bit stagnant and unfocused, I get that without the film’s production context I wasn’t approaching it from the right angle. Still, I’m willing to justify “Shadows” on the NFR as an important “stepping-stone movie”: Cassavetes’ best work was still ahead of him, but none of those exist without “Shadows”.

Shout Outs: Look closely for a movie theater marquee advertising “The Ten Commandments“. Speaking of…

Wow, That’s Dated: Lots of marquee advertisements throughout for such ’50s films as “The Night Heaven Fell” and “Naked Paradise”, as well as the Broadway musical “The Most Happy Fella”. Also, we get not one but two shoutouts to Steve Allen, who at this point in his career had left “The Tonight Show” and was hosting his primetime variety series “The Steve Allen Show”. Hi-ho, Steverino!

Seriously, Oscars?: In a year dominated by “Ben-Hur” there was no way a little movie like “Shadows” was going to squeak into the Oscar conversation. The film did, however, fare better in Europe, winning the Critics Award at the 1960 Venice Film Festival and receiving four BAFTA nominations.

• Side note: Lelia Goldoni and Ben Carruthers, who play siblings in this movie, were briefly married shortly after this film was made. So that’s how it is in their family…
• Both Cassavetes and his wife Gena Rowlands make cameos in this movie: Cassavetes as the man helping Lelia outside the movie theater, and Rowlands as a nightclub patron. I must have blinked during that nightclub scene because I definitely missed Rowlands.
• This movie takes its time getting started, but when it does…it still takes its time.
• Things escalate quickly between Lelia and Tony, with Lelia losing her virginity to Tony just a few quick scenes after their first meeting. I’m sure 1959 audiences were scandalized by the film’s depiction of pre-marital sex (although we only see them post-coital with zero nudity), to say nothing of Lelia’s line “I didn’t know it could be so awful”. I don’t know if I can endorse a movie where a guy named Tony is secretly racist and bad in bed.

• Shout out to Rupert Crosse as Hugh’s agent Rupert Crosse. The character is nothing to write home about, but it’s worth noting that Crosse’s acting career would eventually lead to his work in the 1969 Steve McQueen film “The Reivers”, for which he became the first African American to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. That’s a milestone that gets ignored way too often. Get it, Rupert!
• The final credit reads “The film you have just seen was an improvisation.” Interesting choice, though I wonder if having this disclaimer at the beginning of the movie would have helped audiences understand/appreciate it more. It definitely would have helped me.

• As for the first cut of “Shadows”, the aforementioned Ray Carney spent over 20 years trying to track down the original 1958 version, a journey that eventually led him to an attic in Florida and the daughter of the second-hand shop owner who had inadvertently bought the missing film years earlier. The original “Shadows” was restored in 2004, though screenings of this version are scarce as the Cassavetes estate has questioned its legitimacy and have pursued legal action to prevent its release.
• With its structured improvisational format, can we claim “Shadows” as an influence on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”? I mean, there were a few episodes where Larry dated Vivica A. Fox’s character with disastrous results; the parallels are right there.

The Plot: Mr. and Mrs. Moose (Charley Chase and Vivien Oakland) each have a problem: Mr. has unsightly buck teeth, while Mrs. has a nose so large it makes kissing her husband nearly impossible. Without telling the other one, each quietly saves up money to have a secret operation. When they run into each other post-op, neither recognizes the other and they begin to flirt, eventually ending up at a wild party hosted by Mr. Moose’s dentist (Charles Clary). As you might expect, this leads to a lot of mistaken identity and shenanigans courtesy of one of the silent era’s most popular, albeit overlooked, comedians.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up is a salute to Charley Chase, whom they call “underappreciated in the arena of early comedy shorts”. The short proper is praised for its “side-splitting series of sight gags”.

But Does It Really?: If there’s one thing the NFR loves, it’s obscure silent comedians who were famous in their day and all-but-forgotten now. “Mighty Like a Moose” is on this list to represent Charley Chase, whose filmography was finding a new wave of appreciation around the time he joined the NFR’s ranks. On its own, “Mighty Like a Moose” holds up well in the laughs department, if not so much for its overall subject matter. Ultimately, I found myself laughing quite a bit, a testament to Chase’s comic talents as both actor and writer. A pass for “Mighty” on this list; if nothing else its induction means that every so often someone attempting this NFR gauntlet will stumble upon the works of another underrated pioneer of film comedy.

Everybody Gets One: Born Charles Parrott, Charley Chase began his showbiz career when he was 19 playing bit parts in Keystone comedies. By the time he started working for Hal Roach, Chase was primarily a director, though he did star in his own series of comedy shorts, where he adopted the stage name Charley Chase. Although shorts like “Mighty Like a Moose” were directed by other people (in this case a 28-year-old gagman named Leo McCarey), Chase was always the muscle behind the scenes, contributing to his shorts’ writing, directing, and editing. 

Wow, That’s Dated: Turns out the practice of surgery has existed for centuries, though modern plastic surgery didn’t come to be until a few technological breakthroughs during World War I. Cosmetic surgery as seen in this film would have been relatively new in 1926, though nowhere near as commonplace as it is today. And that’s as much research on plastic surgery I’m willing to stomach at this time.

The Plot: The technological miracle of Vitaphone synchronized sound brings you the comedy stylings of Al Shaw & Sam Lee, aka Shaw & Lee! Straight from vaudeville, this comic duo performs a seemingly endless exchange of jokes and one-liners, as well as songs like “Don’t Forget to Breathe or You’ll Die”. Stick around at the end for a little soft-shoe, plus their famous hat swapping routine!

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a brief history of Shaw & Lee, stating “their brand of dry, offbeat humor is seen by some as well ahead of its time.” The write-up also includes a quote from critic Jim Knipfel: “If Samuel Beckett had written a vaudeville routine, he would have created Shaw and Lee.”

But Does It Really?: As much I enjoyed these two, I’m on the fence about this film’s historical significance. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed a lot at the unexpected absurdism of “The Beau Brummels”, but the NFR already has a Vitaphone short with a comedy team doing their vaudeville act: 1929’s “Lambchops” with the significantly more famous Burns & Allen (in fact, I’m convinced both movies use the same set). But if I’m going to nitpick, it stands to reason that if the NFR has enough room for more than one Marx Brothers comedy or Astaire/Rogers musical, then I guess there’s enough room for a second Vitaphone short. A pass for “Beau Brummels”: It’s not the most important film on the list, but it’s funny (and short) enough to warrant a viewing for the curious.

Everybody Gets One: Most of my information on Shaw & Lee comes from this very insightful article by historian Mary Mallory. Both Al Shaw & Sam Lee started in show business at a young age; Shaw in the music halls of his native England, Lee on the streets of his native New Jersey. Although stories differ on how Shaw & Lee met, we know that Shaw emigrated to America in 1907, and by 1911 the two were performing as a duo in vaudeville and burlesque. Originally, Shaw & Lee were a dance team, but over time they started adding their off-beat jokes into the act. By the early 1920s, Shaw & Lee were promoted to headliners, starring in several revues, including a few big ones on Broadway. When Warner Bros. started making sound shorts out of their recently purchased Vitagraph studio in Brooklyn, any famous stage performers with a ready-to-go act were brought in to film their routines, and Shaw & Lee got the call in early 1928. And for any future historians confused by which is which: Shaw is the shorter, clean-shaven one on the left side of the screen, Lee is the taller one on the right with the mustache.

Title Track: Much like the unrelated ’60s rock group of the same name, this film got its title from George Bryan “Beau” Brummel, a Regency-era Englishman who has become the cultural shorthand for high fashion. Shaw & Lee were known for performing on stage in nice suits, and advertisements for the two started referring to them as “The Beau Brummels” (although that was never officially the name of their act).

Seriously, Oscars?: No nominations from the newly formed Academy for “The Beau Brummels”. Create a shorts category, you cowards!

• “The Beau Brummels” got a restoration in the early 2000s from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with funding from the Vitaphone Project. While Shaw & Lee didn’t leave behind much of a legacy, “Beau Brummels” – along with “Going Places” – continues to be seen online and shared by new generations caught completely off-guard by their avant-garde style of humor.

When I started this blog in January 2017, the National Film Registry totaled 700 movies, and even as that number grew over the last seven years, my goal from the start was to hit that 700 milestone. It has been quite the journey getting to this moment, and it is with immense pride that I present…

The Plot: Joe Buck (Jon Voight) is a young, naïve Texan who moves to New York City with a dream of becoming a sex worker (“hustler” in his parlance) catering to rich older women. After an unsuccessful start with a bored Park Avenue socialite (Sylvia Miles), Joe meets Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), an impaired Brooklynite con man who takes him in and agrees to manage his hustling. As the months wear on and the weather gets colder, Joe’s business continues to be hit or miss, while Rizzo’s health worsens. Despite their bleak existence, Joe perseveres in the hopes of helping Rizzo achieve his dream of moving to Miami. It’s a story of survival in the Big Apple’s rotten core, set to the same Harry Nilsson song playing on a seemingly endless loop.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “gritty” and “frequently disturbing”, praising the “electric performances” of Voight and Hoffman.

But Does It Really?: Roger Ebert once said that no great movie can be truly depressing because a great film’s artistry can uplift even the most downer subjects, and that’s how I feel about “Midnight Cowboy”. While not the cultural touchstone it once was, “Midnight Cowboy” still has a compassionate quality that ultimately supersedes its gloomy subject matter to be a captivating experience. I attribute most of that compassion to Schlesinger’s realistic but never melancholy direction, as well as the compelling performances from Hoffman and especially Voight. “Midnight Cowboy” successfully tows the line of being timeless while simultaneously of its time, and the film is a no-brainer for NFR induction.

Shout Out: Among Joe’s possessions is a poster of Paul Newman from “Hud”.

Everybody Gets One: John Schlesinger was part of the British New Wave of filmmaking in the early 1960s, and one of the few openly gay film directors of the era. Following the international success of his 1965 film “Darling”, Schlesinger successfully pitched an adaptation of “Midnight Cowboy” to United Artists, who gave him total creative control and a budget of $1 million (which would ultimately balloon to $3 million). Screenwriter Waldo Salt got his start in the 1940s, but, like so many of his peers, was blacklisted in the 1950s after refusing to testify before HUAC. “Midnight Cowboy” was one of Salt’s first big projects following the dissolution of the blacklist. His daughter Jennifer appears in the movie as Joe’s hometown sweetheart Crazy Annie.

Wow, That’s Dated: Part of the sexual interplay between Joe and Shirley involves a game of Scribbage: the forgotten bastard child of Scrabble and Yahtzee.

Seriously, Oscars?: Although “Midnight Cowboy” didn’t enter the Oscar race with the most nominations of the year (“Anne of the Thousand Days” – 10) or win the most trophies that night (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” – 4), it received seven nominations and scored three very important wins: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, the only X rated film ever to win the top prize (more on that rating later). The film lost its Editing nod to “Z”, Sylvia Miles lost Supporting Actress to Goldie Hawn in “Cactus Flower”, and Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight lost Lead Actor to a very different cowboy: John Wayne in “True Grit”.

• Oh, and apparently one of the bus passengers on Joe’s trip is M. Emmet Walsh in his film debut? Definitely missed that.
• The film is a straightforward adaptation of the second half of the novel. The book’s first half is Joe’s life in Texas before he goes to New York, and while most of that is excised from the movie, the main points are featured throughout in flashbacks and dream sequences. The one thing I wish they had kept was Joe’s reasons for wanting to be a hustler. In the final film I get that his history with sex is complicated to say the least, but other than wanting to make money, they never clarify his choice. Still, I can’t begrudge a movie that doesn’t spell out everything.
• Shoutout to two of this movie’s behind-the-scenes talents. Editor Hugh A. Robertson’s Oscar nod for his work here was the first for an African American in that category. And as of this writing, the film’s costume designer Ann Roth is still with us, having recently won an Oscar for her work on “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and even more recently played the older woman on the bench in “Barbie”.
• This film’s depiction of New York City is the epitome of its seedy reputation from the late ’60s onwards. As seen in “Midnight Cowboy”, this is the dingy, cacophonous Manhattan where you will get pickpocketed immediately upon arrival; a city that turns everyone into a hustler of some kind. The film plays it all so realistically you accept that this is what New York must have really been like.
• A staple of Off-Broadway theater, Sylvia Miles makes quite the impression as Joe’s first “client”. As surprised as I am by her Oscar nomination (she’s in the film for about five minutes), I’m always in favor of anyone pulling a Beatrice Straight and getting a nod for a one scene performance. Unrelated, Sylvia Miles once dumped a plate of food on misogynist/critic John Simon’s head at a restaurant, which makes her my personal hero.

• As Rizzo, Dustin Hoffman is clearly trying to distance himself from Benjamin Braddock and establish himself as an actor with range rather than a clean-cut leading man. To keep Rizzo’s limp consistent, Hoffman allegedly kept stones in one of his shoes. To paraphrase Laurence Olivier, “Have you tried acting, dear boy?”
• Side note: Rizzo is in that co-lead/supporting gray area that confuses the Oscars, and I suspect putting Hoffman in the lead category hurt both his and Voight’s chances of winning.
• If you know two things about this movie, the second thing is Rizzo shouting “I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!” as he and Joe are almost hit by a cab while crossing a busy street. Both Hoffman and Voight attest that the cab was not supposed to be there and the whole thing was improvised, while producer Jerome Hellman insisted that the cab was always part of the scene, with Hoffman only improvising that specific line (there is a similar scene without the line in the original screenplay). Whatever the truth is, the actors’ version makes the better story, and as they say in another NFR movie “When the fact becomes legend, print the legend.”

• That’s Bob Balaban as the student who picks up Joe at a movie theater. Not so much a “Before They Were Famous” role as it is “Before They Were That One Guy”.

• The one element that seems to be absent in the novel is the film’s homosexual aura. There’s a lot of talk about Joe’s male clientele (always shown as desperation on Joe’s part), and unfortunately plenty of homophobic slurs. One interesting coincidence is that when Joe and Rizzo start arguing about masculinity they mention John Wayne!

• Also very dated: The Warhol-inspired “happening” that Joe and Rizzo attend. It’s a bit excessive (even Schlesinger admitted later he should have trimmed it down), but you don’t mind it as you get lost in this unfamiliar territory alongside Joe and Rizzo. Speaking of Andy Warhol, party host Gretel is played by Viva, who in real life was one of Warhol’s superstars. According to Schlesinger, when he offered Viva the role, she immediately called Warhol with the news and while they were talking, Warhol was shot by radical feminist Valerie Solanis.

• Although I haven’t seen a lot of her filmography, I always enjoy when Brenda Vaccaro pops up in things, and her performance here as Shirley, the playful partygoer who hires Joe, is a lot of fun. This is also your reminder that Johnny Bravo’s mom is on the NFR.

• Joe’s rate is $20, which in today’s money is about $170. I know nothing about sex worker rates, but I feel like Joe’s lowballing himself. Also, Rizzo’s cut is $1 for cab fare, which is only about $9 today. Wow, that’s dated.
• The ending was spoiled for me years ago, but I still found it devastating after seeing it in the right context. And yet, in keeping with this film’s MO, I also found it surprisingly beautiful, ending my viewing experience on a positive note. And for those of you keeping score, that’s two NFR movies that end with Dustin Hoffman and another actor sitting in the back of a bus contemplating everything that’s happened.

• Both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight spent the next few decades being movie stars, and coincidentally won consecutive Best Actor Oscars: Voight in 1978 for “Coming Home” (with the same producer and screenwriter as “Midnight Cowboy”), and Hoffman in 1979 for “Kramer vs. Kramer”. Oh, and they’re both in that new Coppola “Megalopolis” movie, the first time they’ve been in a narrative film together since 1969 (though I don’t know if they have any scenes together).

• Both “Everybody’s Talking” and “I’m walkin’ here!” have entered the pop culture lexicon thanks to this movie, to the point where I imagine most people don’t know what they’re referencing.

• The film has had a few parodies over the years, and I’m partial to this tribute from a “Seinfeld” episode with an appearance by Jon Voight!

• And finally, the Muppet character Rizzo the Rat gets its name from this movie’s “Ratso” Rizzo. So thanks to an X rated drama, you have a rat puppet co-narrating your favorite Christmas movie.

The Plot: Near the end of the Civil War, both sides discover that they can win if they obtain a load of gold from a Union mine in Nevada. While the Union entrust Captain Edward Logan (Montague Love) to retrieve it, the Confederate send their own spy Jack (Raymond Griffith) to infiltrate the Union base and get the gold first. A sly, sophisticated criminal, Jack manages to evade capture and stumble onto a stagecoach carrying the mine’s owner Silas Woodstock (Mack Swain) and his two adult daughters Alice and Mae (Virginia Lee Corbin and Marian Nixon). Jack’s covert operation faces many setbacks along the way, but he still finds time to simultaneously woo both Woodstock sisters! And the hilarity just keeps ensuing in this comic output from one of the silent era’s many forgotten stars.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up is mostly a tribute to Raymond Griffith, whose on-screen comic persona was “worlds away from the frantic, rubber-faced funnymen who stereotypically appeared in silent films.” An essay by silent film comedy expert Steve Massa is comprised of mini biographies for the major players of “Hands Up!”

But Does It Really?: When we think of silent film comedy, we think of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, as if these were the only three comedians at the time. While these three are the ones whose films have endured (both in a cultural and more literal sense), they are the tip of the iceberg for a plethora of comic filmmakers whose work is mostly lost to time. “Hands Up!” is on this list to represent Raymond Griffith, another popular comedian of the era. While “Hands Up!” is not without its faults, it made me laugh out loud a few times, and it was fun to discover Griffith’s work and talents. A pass for “Hands Up!”; an enjoyable, if not integral, silent comedy from an unsung artist.

Everybody Gets One: Raymond Griffith started out as a child actor in touring melodramas. Griffith would later claim that all the yelling he did in performances caused his unique raspy voice, though others have suggested his malady was caused by a case of diphtheria. Either way, he was a natural for silent film. His early film work with the likes of Mack Sennett was mostly behind-the-scenes as a writer, but by the 1920s he had developed his on-screen character: the unflappable, urbane dandy. “Hands Up!” was one of 10 starring vehicles Griffith made for Paramount from 1925 to 1927, and one of only a handful of his movies to survive.

Wow, That’s Dated: Well obviously the less-than-stellar depiction of a nameless Indigenous tribe in the middle of this movie. It’s a brief episode, but these are the stereotypical “savages” that all but defined Indigenous people in the early days of film (and by “early days”, I mean the first century or so).

• By the time Raymond Griffith died in 1957, his career as a silent comedian was all but forgotten. According to the Massa essay, interest in Griffith’s films was revived by theater critic Walter Kerr and his 1975 book “The Silent Clowns”, which devotes a chapter to Griffith among write-ups of his more impactful contemporaries. Although Griffith’s film legacy hasn’t measurably improved in the last 50 years, his surviving films are readily available online, and there are historians like Steve Massa willing to sing his praises.