(“Quick Vu” is a new subset of my movie reviews. The name denotes that I give a review based on only a single, recent viewing; or based on memories of past viewing[s]; or based on cursory or otherwise distracted viewings. This is usually for movies of a generally shallow or well-known nature for which interrogating the phenomena and unpacking the concepts are not essential to appreciating [or understanding] them.)
[Edits, some pretty necessary, done 9/22/12, 9/23/12, and 9/28/12. Edit 8/28/13.]
The original Cape Fear
This 1991 film figures in a weird juncture in Scorsese’s career: he was emerging from a late-1980s semi-fallow period, after the Paul Newman–starring The Color of Money (1986), and after he finally made his labor of love, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Because of Universal Studios’ support and distribution of Last Temptation (as he says in Cape Fear DVD comments), he did Cape Fear Cape Fear
The 1991 Cape Fear sounds a little like—from the producers’ perspective—yeoman’s work meant to rake in a quick buck (for the studio and for Scorsese), and from a consumer’s perspective it could be anticipated to be genre slag for a single Saturday night’s scream-fest viewing (especially when we know the 1991 version is more a horror film, and the 1962 more a suspense film). But it’s interesting how powerful the 1991 film is nonetheless, though in a way in which it is sometimes esthetically at odds with itself, and when it is obviously (especially in its excesses) a genre piece. Its main problem is it sometimes seems close to self-parody or to a sort of “meta” quality.
The original novel, by the way—The Executioners by John MacDonald—is apparently inferior to either version of the movie, according to VideoHound’s movie-review compendium. Meanwhile, the 1991 version has a lot of details concerning forms of legal relief available to deal with stalkers that I would like to be able to comment on, which are more thorough and realistic than what you see in the broadly similar Fatal Attraction (1987; my May 25 review). But I defer comment on those due to space.
Scorsese brings his virtues to bear, yet with mixed results
As I get older, I find there are some very general categories that pop art seems to fall into, particularly when you consider how your tastes change with age. In popular music (rock, country, blues, dance music, etc.), two very broad categories (which I propose provisionally) seem to be (1) “confection” versus (2) “heartbeat-expressive” or “made for moving”: in the “confection” category might fall The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and the second side of Abbey Road, and groups like Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, Yes, 10CC, and the Electric Light Orchestra. In the “heartbeat/movement” category might be much of The Rolling Stones’ work from 1968 through 1972 or so; much of The Beatles’ “White Album” and the album Let It Be; arguably, all sorts of American country rock; and R&B and anything else meant for dancing. You could say that many young people (teens, early twenties), newly cutting their teeth on pop music, are more impressed by the “confection” stuff, while they might agree that some of the most esteemed work by the more esteemed artists combines the best, compatible traits of both “confection” and “heartbeat/movement.” When you’re older you might value the “movement” stuff more, while still esteeming material that mixes the two categories, with maybe some bias toward the “movement” side of it.
Something of the same thing can be said about movies; when you’re young, “confection” aspects impress you more, you’re endeared to them more (as if they represent the highest standards of film). But as you age, you find the best movies combine both “confection” and some sense of the throbbing and ambiguity or richness of life (which is why the best of Francis Ford Coppola’s films work well—both the visual “confection” aspects and a sense of raw life combine to make effective art).
All this is to say that while Scorsese is fairly widely considered our best currently productive director, if not near the very top—and I don’t broadly disagree with this (there is always something interesting to check out in a new release of his)—my main problem is that, in his lesser works, there is a definite “confection” element—a quality as if this is mainly what gives the film much value—that impresses on first viewing. There is a lot of flash, tinsel, titillation; but this can cover up (not entirely successfully) a weak story or a mixture of premises/angles that is fundamentally flawed in some way.
The 1991 Cape Fear falls into this category, but also because it mixes old-fashioned genre elements—which in themselves are worth a “taking in”—with newer esthetics, the final product seems a weird mix that puts you in an ironic mood toward the movie at times, if not quite ready to mock it. For instance, I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a “catcall” movie as I do Panic Room (2002; August 30 entry), because Panic Room largely tries to draw a plausible picture of “real people,” and to that extent is not quite genre barf, and its preposterous aspects are often in the details. But in Scorsese’s Cape Fear, the fact that it is genre (and rather creaky at that) is understood at the outset, and if we accept this, then the details aren’t so jarring; but what might cause objection is how far the film “ramps up” aspects of the original, which was pretty standard fare for its time (and which older version is definitely worth a look—perhaps first—if you also are interested in Scorsese’s version).
So Scorsese amplifies the original’s creepy suspense elements with a sort of “hyper Hitchcock” camera-and-editing style, and he includes sharp, mature performances amid enough modern horror details that this film is more of a shock fest than the 1962 version. And it even culminates in an action sequence (in the houseboat situation, which was so key to the 1962 film) that in the 1991 version can be seen on the overblown side. Also, as a key element, the 1991 film features De Niro in a performance that at times could be considered almost hammy if it wasn’t for De Niro’s being good at giving a morosely creepy edge to his monsters, and it hearkens to his own Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver (1976; my June 8 entry) and even to Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance of The Shining (1980).
But adding star power, the film also includes, as Leigh Bowden, the esteemed actress Jessica Lange—in general, a sort of equivalent of Debra Winger as a 1980s-90s actress who could be technically excellent, receiving an Oscar nomination for her title performance in Frances (1982)—and Nick Nolte as Sam Bowden, the attorney hunted by De Niro’s Max Cady. Nolte is a sort of “sturdy male presence”–type of actor (who had most of his starring roles in the 1980s and ’90s) who doesn’t have the wide emotional range of a Method actor; but he gives an adequate performance here as a professional and family man who is torn multiple ways, attacked (partly by Cady) in his role as a paterfamilias, as a lawyer, etc. Juliette Lewis plays daughter Danielle Bowden (whom Max Cady manipulates flirtatiously, adding a “pervy” element of horror that today’s parents so protective of their young would find especially odious). (Lewis in 1991 was an up-and-comer with previous work (mostly) in TV, and after years of movie work, she has much more recently has fronted a rock band, according to her Wikipedia bio.)
Scorsese’s version of Cape Fear, particularly following the lead of its screenwriter Wesley Strick, who speaks a number of times in the making-of doc on the DVD, adapts the original story to include not only conflict within the family (between husband Sam and wife Leigh, e.g., over a suspected extramarital affair; or between father and daughter over her juvenile “indiscretions”) but such changes as Sam having been Cady’s defense attorney, a public defender, who had elected to omit presenting within the court proceedings some inculpating evidence on the rape victim regarding whom Cady was brought to trial; this evidence might have reduced Cady’s sentence, which is 14 years in the 1991 film, while it was six (or eight?) years in the 1962 film, where Sam just helped the diligent prosecution. [I found by 9/28/12 that the Videohound review compendium says six years, but the 1962 film itself says eight years.]
Also, no longer the generic creep that Robert Mitchum portrayed so well in 1962, Cady is now (per Strick’s vision of what would be a real horror story to him as a New York area Jew, he says on the DVD) both an uncomprising wack job and a self-taught Pentecostalist/fundamentalist sort from some white trash enclave within the South (further listening to DVD comments shows that what clued the writer, and to some extent De Niro, to the type of Pentecostals they modeled Cady on was a sort that engaged in developing high tolerance for pain and handling of snakes or such). He went into prison illiterate, then taught himself to read, and learned some of the law and read his own case files to discover his public defender’s evidentiary misstep with him, hence his implacable, ultra-Nietzschean will for revenge. Finishing his time in his jail cell, which is decorated with heroes like Josef Stalin and General Robert E. Lee, Cady walks along with built-up muscles and curly black hair, looking none too willing to be anyone’s patsy.
Well into the film, he is a ferocious, bloody-faced dybbuk, adept with anything usable as a weapon, unafraid to trample on fundamental family rights, and all too ready to portentously spout Bible quotations and allusions to legal concepts and procedure; he gets so unhinged that only De Niro could prevent this from looking like real camp. We might feel he was a classic Frankenstein monster, rampaging into rabid territory but ultimately a nightmare limited to movies, if it wasn’t that there’s one thing peculiarly prescient here: isn’t this type too well represented in today’s U.S. Congress?
(Another thing that strikes us differently with time: Cady is richly decorated with tattoos, but today tattoos are so widely used and acceptable by both sexes that even if a woman were to appear at a local A&P with a good percentage of Cady’s tattoos, she wouldn’t seem so shocking [though that is not to my own taste—I’m old-fashioned regarding tattoos, and think big ones make women look like sailors—not a compliment].)
The film mixes old and new: But how much is artistically fresh or smart?
Even more, Mitchum (died 1997), Peck (died 2003), and Balsam (died 1996) all have cameo roles. Mitchum is especially impressive with an authoritative baritone as a police lieutenant who is nothing like the leering Cady of 1962. In a brief sequence, Peck plays a seedy lawyer (“Lee Heller”) who reveals he has taken Cady’s case for a hearing for a restraining order that Sam has applied for against Cady, in a Kafkaesque moment in which Sam has tried to get the lawyer to represent him. At the hearing, Balsam is the sober-faced local judge who, to Sam’s surprise, rules to apply a restraining order against Sam to benefit Cady, not vice versa.
And Bernard Hermann’s music adds a certain dignity to the mix—though, as classically excellent as it generally is, it seems as from a “different era” than that of this film, making the film as much an homage to 1950s-early ’60s suspense as it is an “update” on an old picture. Elmer Bernstein (died 2004)—the score composer and conductor for this film, with a notable career in his own right (active over about 50 years)—used Hermann’s original score for this picture, though he matched passages of music to different scenes or sequences than in the original, and even added music that Hermann had wrote for Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), the film over which Hitchcock and Hermann famously parted ways.
The music—which in its grand, insinuating way, like Hermann’s best work, seems to stick in your imagination more than any other particular aspect of the film—rather gives a sense of “déjà vu”: you ask, is this an old film I am seeing? Or is it some weird mash-up combining old and new elements—and if so, from a critical perspective, do they always work so well together? The Hermann music, with its quality of elegant “echt horror/suspense” done with the rich tonal possibilities of a classical-music orchestra, is what most gives the flavor of “something old” to this film—young viewers might feel this music is too arch, or “pat,” as horror-angled music. Meanwhile, Scorsese’s vivid camera work and Thelma Schoonmaker’s tight editing are the “something new,” certainly keeping up the fear at certain points without seeming shlocky. Also for Hitchcock fans: production designer/art director Henry Bumstead (died 2006) worked on this film; he had also worked on Hitch’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958) and Topaz (1969).
Without “something borrowed and something blue,” this film is a marriage of differently captivating elements that tend to dignify (or try to) what in 1991 is otherwise a fairly routine piece of the macabre (and was a simpler suspense story in the 1962 version). De Niro’s 1991 Max Cady is so monstrous that, on preliminarily understanding how far he goes, we almost might ask whether we want to see this picture. But De Niro tarts up the stalker enough, and uses his intelligence to mold the character enough, that he almost makes us laugh at times.
This plus the film’s “scrapbooking of found objects” way of including Hermann’s music sometimes makes the overall work a bit of a self-parody, and other times a mixed “modern work” and tribute to an old B-movie beast. It also, not entirely to its credit, revels in modern horror types of vignettes or details (like the gross act of clumsily slipping in a big pool of blood, the sort of modern “horror” detail that is more pre-laughable shock that subtle horror).
In all, this genre mash-up reminds us how movies can play with expectations to very entertaining effect, and still need not mean a whole lot after we leave the theater.
