The International Language of a Man with a Movie Camera

Words do not seem sufficient to describe my experience watching Man with a Movie Camera.  Which, helpfully, seems to be the point of the movie.  It seems to be telling us what movies can do: that they can capture real life, which this does better than most, and what you can actually do with a camera, which appears to be everything that was possible in 1929 and even things that shouldn't have been possible yet.

The movie grabbed my attention immediately, but at first, I appreciated it in a detached sort of way.  I saw what it was doing and I thought it was clever.  Somewhere in the middle, I was hooked, transfixed, slightly emotional in a way I could not explain and still can't explain.  This is also the point of the movie.  Film can do this.

It was aided by a tremendous score in the version I watched by the Alloy Orchestra.  It is in fact so vital to the success of this movie that I am very curious what score played when audiences sat down to watch this in 1929.  It's propulsive and exciting and matches what director Dziga Vertov was trying to convey.

Stripped of the score, stripped of the camera techniques, and stripped of the message, A Man with a Movie Camera is at the very least worth watching for seeing everyday people in the Soviet Union.  From the homeless sleeping on benches to the working man to athletic and leisurely pursuits of the time, it truly tries to capture the working class. 

It also gives a very slight behind the curtain peak on how it was made, simply by filming the cinematographer setting up for shots and him actually filming shots.  You also see a little bit of the editing process, which must have been exhaustive and difficult.  Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova edited the film. 

If neither seeing how everyday people lived or a tiny peak at how films were made nearly 100 years ago doesn't appeal to you, then we are very different people.  The MLB Draft just happened as of me writing this, so forgive me when I say that this is what we call a very high floor when watching a movie.

A Man with a Movie Camera somehow makes me optimistic about humans, and I don't know why it does, it makes me marvel at the power of film, and it kind of makes me want to shoot a movie myself.  And it kinds of makes me believe I can against all objective evidence.

Vertov at the beginning of the movie, fearing it would get lost or ignored, tried to warn the audience what he was about to do.

"This new experimentation work is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature."

It was filmed in the Soviet Union, but it could have been filmed anywhere.  Honestly.  Nothing that happens in this movie, to my knowledge, wasn't also happening in the United States, in the United Kingdom, anywhere.  This film wouldn't really be meaningfully different if he decided to move to the US and film it in exactly the same way.

I now think I know why I was a little emotional, why it made me optimistic about humans.  Because, without my conscious knowledge, the film successfully conveyed that idea to me.  I understood what he was saying.  This is what film can do.  It makes you feel like, for at least the duration of a film, that there is hope we will overcome our differences and realize what makes us the same.

The Year in Movies: 1967 (Part Two)

 In case you missed it, I am doing a project where I watch five movies from every year from five specific categories: action, animated, foreign, horror, and romance.  The only real rule I set for myself is it must be from one of those categories.  I may, depending on the choices available, watch multiple foreign movies, seeing as there are obviously foreign action movies, foreign horror movies, and foreign romance movies.  It will not usually be my preference, but I'm sure it will happen.  Foreign is such a wide ranging category that I will also probably watch a foreign romance movie and a romance movie, if you catch me drift.  Can't be helped.

In part one, I put down my thoughts on the action movie Point Blank and the animated Jungle Book.  Those are the only two movies I covered.  If you don't want to click the link, I liked Point Blank and I did not like Jungle Book.  Should have kept that one to my childhood I suppose.  Today, I'll be covering the horror, foreign and romance movie selections of 1967.

Foreign

The Samurai (3/4 stars)

I had sort of assumed that foreign movies would be difficult to pick.  Just so many more potential options and less likelihood I have seen them.  But even so, 1967 was not an easy year.  1967 is considered one of the greatest years in film and that extends to foreign movies as well.  Roger Ebert has eight movies from 1967 in his Great Movies collection.  Five of them are foreign.  Just to give you an idea, he only has 381 movies total, ranging from 1915 to 2007.

Written and directed by influential French new wave director Jean-Pierre Melville, The Samurai is something of a misleading title.  It's not actually about a samurai.  It's about a hitman.  The plot is fairly straightforward, in fact I hesitate to say its' been copied because this plot may have been used before the movie.  A hitman kills someone, almost gets caught, the people who hired him try to kill him to cover themselves.  Truly one man against the world type of movie.

If one were being generous, one could call this movie deliberate.  If one were not so generous, slow would not be inaccurate either.  My only issue with the pace of this movie is the amount of time spent at the police station, which kind of just goes on forever and you know he's not actually going to get jailed.  Well that's not exactly correct.  It went on so long I started to wonder if the rest of the movie was going to be set in the police station, with him eventually being caught. 

As for the rest, well the devil is in the details and I think the deliberateness is both the point and appropriate.  That said, Ebert talks in his review about how action is the enemy of suspense, and how this movie builds suspense through character.  While I won't say I felt no suspense, I wasn't exactly on the edge of my seat for most of this movie.  So I do kind of feel the charm if you will didn't completely work on me.

Horror 

Wait Until Dark (4/4 stars)

There is some debate on whether this is technically horror.  This is not a debate I would care about, not specifically being a horror fan.  This being "not really horror but horror" would in fact be more of a reason I would like it.  However, the ending of this movie pretty clearly has the intended impact of a horror film and has influenced countless horror films.  So I'm going to land myself pretty firmly in the "is a horror film."

And I loved every minute of it.  One of the rare movies that is obviously adapted from a play that almost benefits from that fact.  The main character, played by Audrey Hepburn, begins to feel trapped and suffocated, and so do we.  A few things are quickly established in the movie and this is not a spoiler.  A doll with heroin inside finds its way to Hepburn, unaware of what is in the doll.  Three criminals go to retrieve it and can't find it.  So they create an elaborate plan to get the information out of Hepburn. 

The reason they can fool her at all is because she's blind, newly blind in fact.  She also has no idea where the doll is.  And the result is slowly escalating tension as you hope Hepburn figures out what's happening, and then hope she gets out of it.  In fact, this movie may be one of the most successful movies ever at building up tension gradually up until the climax.  And I really don't want to spoil it, but there's a scene - and if you've seen it you know the scene - that got me.  Maybe the first ever version of this.  I can't imagine how audiences in 1967 reacted considering I'm aware of the trope and it still got me.  Anyway, I highly encourage you to watch this immediately.  It's on HBOMax as of this writing!

Romance

Two for the Road (2.5/4 stars)

I honestly had no intention of watching two Audrey Hepburn movies in one year but I had already seen The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde and this was, from the information I had, easily the best choice on the docket.  It clearly fits the category.  I almost chose Belle de Jour, but the premise of that movie seemed to technically qualify here but seems to be a very different vibe from what you think when you think romance movie.

In any case, I had one major problem with this movie and one minor one: Albert Finney is a dick the entire movie.  He's a dick when they meet, he's a dick later in life, and all their problems in their relationship are related to him being a dick.  Which somewhat connects to my minor problem: Hepburn is falling in love way too easy for a supposedly realistic movie.  She falls in love with Finney based off an evening hitchhiking where he's not very nice to her frankly and then falls in love with the brother of her husband's client in ONE DAY.  This is hailed as a realistic movie, right?

Aside from that, it actually is fairly realistic, I'm just not totally sure Finney was supposed to be clearly in the wrong this whole time.  Maybe he is.  I don't know.  He's a playboy and acts like it.  He tells her it.  He clearly has no interest in settling down or having a family, and eventually they settle down and have a family and he's unhappy about it.  Shocker.  Like I said, the fundamental flaw in this movie is that I never understood what the hell Hepburn could see in him.

But it gets the grade it does because it's (500) Days of Summer 40 years before that movie came out.  We see their life non-linearly, only on times when they are on the road.  They're on the road when they meet, when they decide to get married, when they're newlywed, when they have a kid, and when they're on the verge of divorcing.  So creatively edited, creatively told, witnessing the highs and lows of marriage.  Fairly groundbreaking for the time.

The Year In Movies: 1967 (Part 1)

I want to watch a lot of movies.  More movies than I can actually watch.  So I need to figure out a system to watch movies, a trick to picking them.  There are simply too many movies out there that haven't been seen by me and it's hard to know where to start.

Thus, the creation of my latest project, a project that will take me a very long time if I actually see it to completion.  I will attempt to watch five movies - action, animated, horror, foreign, and romance - in a given year, starting in 1967 and ideally continuing for the next 50 years.  I will grant I may run out of steam well before that though.

Why 50 years?  It's a nice, satisfying number.  Why not start in 1972 and continue to the present day?  Well, by the time I finish this project, it will not be 2022 anyway and I'd be leaving at least one year on the table.  But more importantly, that's essentially the beginning of action movies in its modern day form.  The action movies of the past were Westerns or war movies.  It's an arguable starting date of course.  I was motivated to start this because of the excellent History of Violence column by Tom Behran over at AV Club.  He actually began his column with 1968's Bullit, but argued you could start with Point Blank.  So I started with Point Blank.

And if you're wondering why I picked these five categories.  The answer is simple: to address movie viewing blind spots.  I am not what you would call a horror movie fan.  I don't really understand the appeal of watching a movie to get scared.  However, I haven't really given them much of a chance for that very reason.  I changed my tune - or at least am willing to give them a fair shot - after I watched The Exorcist last year, which I now consider one of the greatest movies of all time.  How many great movies could I miss out on by ignoring horror?  That's why I'm doing this.

Animated is the one I'm most ambivalent about - there are definitely a few classics missing in this 50 year period that I haven't seen, but I've also seen a decent number of the obvious ones and I'm not sure I have anywhere close to a movie per year of animated movies to watch here.  I am willing to watch movies I've seen before if I haven't seen them for a very long time and barely remember it.  Or if I wonder if my opinion on a movie has changed.  Even still, I'm hoping I don't regret having animated movies as one of my categories.

Foreign and romance categories are easy enough to justify.  I would be shocked if I can't find at least one movie worth watching that fits under romance.  This category is broad for a reason.  It could be a serious drama or a romcom.  It could be experimental or mainstream.  The only requirement is the movie actually has to be about the romance.  And as for foreign, I mean foreign language.  And this is about the safest category possible.  There is absolutely at least one foreign language movie per year I haven't seen that is considered a classic.  Or could be considered a classic by me.  This would be true even if I gave all five categories to foreign language movies.

Introduction over, let's get started.

Action 

Point Blank (3/4 stars)

This is a strong start.  While I maybe didn't love this movie, it is absolutely worth watching.  I can see why Tom didn't start with Point Blank for his action movie column.  For one thing, it is absolutely nothing like current action movies.  The story is not told in a strictly linear fashion, but what one would call "time-fractured."  It was a very confusing first five minutes for me, but you figure it out.  And no need for exposition with this editing, because you learn A LOT in those first five minutes.  You get the entire backstory, motivation, and what his goal in those first five minutes.

The appeal of this movie is mostly the editing, if you're into that.  The plot is very straightforward.  Man is shot, robbed, and presumed dead.  He lives and wants his money back.  That's it.  The movie is him trying to find someone to pay him back.  Lee Marvin is good, but there's not really anything to his character.  He really is as simple as he seems.  Just wants his money back.  I don't even think he wants revenge.  He probably does want revenge on the man who shot him, but I truly don't think he does for anyone else.

This is one of those movies that you totally understand its classic status, and you know if you watched it at the time, you would be singing its praises, but 50+ years of movies have happened since, and dulled its impact on you.  Steven Soderbergh is on the commentary track of this and pretty much copied its style for The Limey.  Lee Marvin's action hero blank slate has certainly been done to death in action movies.  

There is a popular theory about this movie that I won't share because it could be considered a spoiler, but it certainly makes sense.  It got me thinking longer than your average action movie.  That said, I think my issue is just that Lee Marvin is a nothing character.  He's an empty vessel, a blank slate.  In the present day, he never smiles and talks as little as possible.  I think I need something.  But I admire the style and editing of this movie.

Animated

The Jungle Book (1/4 stars)

I am fairly certain I have seen The Jungle Book before, but it had to be when I was in the single digit age of my life.  So I was interested in revisiting it because I had no opinion on the movie.  The only thing I remember is "Bare Necessities." 

I... didn't like it.  I am more worried for the animated section of this than ever.  I don't know if my problems with this movie are specific to this movie or are just going to be a problem pre-Pixar.  This isn't really much of a movie.  There's not really any stakes.  I don't really like most of the songs.  I didn't like the voice actors, which just seemed really out of place to me.  I didn't like this movie!

It's also just plain boring.  It's amazing how much more boring the movie was with narration than if they had simply let what happened on the screen tell us.  I could not figure out why we were getting told the step-by-step process of the panther's thoughts when the animation was doing a perfectly good job.  We can see him walking away, see his eyes when he turns around, and know exactly what his thought process is when he's considering leaving the baby.  But for some reason, the movie feels the need to share this all with us anyway.

I don't really get it.  I get why it was popular at the time.  Walt Disney had just died.  There is no way they were going to bash this movie.  I don't get how it stayed a classic all these years though.

I'll be covering my horror, foreign, and romance sections for part two.

Hawks Marathon: Scarface (1932)

 I don't exactly know what to say about Scarface.  When you watch older movies that have attained classic status, you run the risk of something perhaps not aging as well as you'd hope.  To fully appreciate a movie, you need to understand the context, because just watching it by itself will make it not seem special.

Because... Scarface is very hard for me to take seriously if I'm being honest.  I had the same problem with The Public Enemy, and I suspect I'd have similar problems with Little Cesear as well.  The three movies were all made around the same time, and all helped create and influence the gangster drama to this day.

But I can't lie.  When I say I find it hard to take it seriously, I'm specifically referencing the beyond parody of how everybody talks.  Like I've seen people make fun of old time gangster voices, and I've seen parodies, but nothing can prepare you for the fact that those parodies... are not exaggerating in the slightest.

I don't know specifically why it's hard to take this seriously when other movies around this time also have goofy, parody ready voices.  I have two theories.  The first is that the goofy parody has tended to be a side character from the movies I've seen, and I can't take those characters any more seriously than I can here, but the characters you are actually supposed to care about tended to talk like a normal human being.

The second is that this is a gangster film and you're supposed to buy these guys as tough.  But the way they talk has so devolved into obvious parody by this point, that it is impossible to think of these guys as genuine threats.  It's like I'm watching a fucking Key and Peele sketch every time they open their mouth.

Which is a shame because, more than any other movie I've seen, I think this might be Hawks' best direction?  Or at least, it's the one where his direction is most evident.  Most of his movies are trying to hide his directing, which makes it tough to determine his influence beyond it just being a good movie.

Here, he makes the kind of choices that makes a director stand out, instead of hidden.  He has to show quite a lot of violence, and even though this was pre-Code, it needed to be obscured and hidden.  So in the opening scene, he has a very cool shot of a guy getting gunned down, seen purely through the shadows.  The camera then pans back to the body, which is now lying on the ground.

And he does that more than a few times and it's waaaaay more effective than actually showing the killing, especially then.  And there's very few actual people dying in front of us in this movie, and the few times they do, you're reminded why it's so much more effective to not show us the death.  Because actors did not know how to die on film in a way that didn't look goofy for... a long time.

I wish I could watch this movie and make my brain not notice the goofiness of the voices.  Especially since I can't really give you any sort of notes on the actors.  I've seen Paul Muni in two other things and this is my least favorite performance of his, but I also readily admit it's entirely due to the things everyone else in this movie was doing.  Everybody was guilty of the funny voices and weird mannerisms.

This is thankfully not one of those movies where I am befuddled over its reputation.  The damn 1930s gangster parody is the only problem I have with the movie, but it's a problem that's hard to ignore since any good gangster film makes you fear the gangsters.

It is weird that, despite this being pre-Code, Scarface seemed subject to Production Code era rules.  They have a ridiculous opening where they condemn gangsters and say we must stop them and what are the politicians doing.  I know they needed to change the ending - it's based on Al Capone - who most certainly did not die by the events of this movie.  And I'm sure they couldn't gotten away with what they got away with, but I just find it fascinating they still needed to change quite a bit.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on Scarface.  I'm going to not give a grade, because it's impossible for me to grade this.  It's a better movie than whatever grade I would give, but also I can't give a better grade because that would imply I bought into this world.  So, hopefully one day I can get used to the parody.

Hawks Marathon: I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

Watching I Was A Male War Bride, I realize how delicate the line is between a screwball comedy working and not working.  It's really no surprise they went out of style.  Not because there's no demand for a good screwball comedy, but because they are incredibly hard to pull off.

A screwball comedy has two things that are directly against how you normally make a movie.  The first is that you need to figure out how to force the plot into zany situations without making it obvious that's what you're doing behind-the-scenes.  Normally, in a movie, you write where the plot takes you, but with a screwball comedy, you're specifically forcing characters into wacko situations in a way that probably wouldn't naturally develop from your writing.

Secondly, you actually need to create believable characters who are probably going to behave irrationally in order to make the plot work.  Plot is derived from characters after all.  His Girl Friday is a perfect storm because the characters are why it's a screwball comedy - their world operates at a fast speed and everyone else is expected to keep up.  But the newspaper world is not how everyone operates.

Anyway, in case you didn't pick up on it, I think I Was A Male War Bride fails as a screwball comedy.  In the first half of the movie, a lot of the comedy is just so, so forced.  The train is still moving when the operator lifts up the boom barrier which defeats the whole purpose of the boom barrier.  Cary Grant climbs up a sign to read it which exactly zero people would ever do.  A child starts the motorcycle with a completely and inexplicably unaware Grant in the sidecar not realizing there's no one driving for an absurd amount of time.

But Gabe, this is a screwball comedy.  This is what happens in them.  If the gags are well set up, I accept these situations.  These gags are just incredibly forced, which only makes me realized how forced they are and I don't find them funny.

And for what it's worth, I wasn't disliking the movie up to this point either.  I was getting some strong It Happened One Night vibes from the first half of the movie.  And then, the writers realized "oh wait this movie relies on these two wanting to get married" and they forgot to, you know, set it up at all. 

The movie did two things successfully.  They showed them antagonistic towards each other and you believably thought they would get over that and eventually get together by the end.  But the writers skipped a step in the process.  Because the way it plays, Ann Sheridan very randomly decides she loves him.  Like there needed to be a step between them being playfully antagonistic towards each other and them loving each other.

I compared it to It Happened One Night for a reason.  The first half of this movie is pretty similar to the structure of that movie, only It Happened One Night still had the entire 2nd half of the movie for them to realize they love each other.  Like I said, it's like the writers realized "oh wait, we're not just copying that movie, we need to make him a war bride now."

It does not help that this is my least favorite Cary Grant performance so far.  It's Cary Grant, so the bar is high, but unfortunately for him, I'm comparing him to other Cary Grant performances, not typical leading man, so I was actually disappointed.  It seemed like he wasn't that interested in this movie personally?  He's got a very subdued performance.

I don't know I guess if you get right down to it, I didn't buy the chemistry between Grant and Sheridan.  I don't know if they were too successful at being snippy towards one each other or what, but I just think the moment when she falls in love with him wouldn't have seemed so random if I had bought into their chemistry.

And I know this is an American movie thing and that's it's based on something that happened to a French soldier and American woman, but Cary Grant being French and making no attempt at all at seeming like he's anything but an Englishman is weird.  I don't want Grant to try being French or anything, but why in the world did they not just make him British?  Bizarre.

I had higher hopes for this being a Hawks screwball and featuring Cary Grant, but unfortunately I Was a Male War Bride is not a movie I plan to revisit.

1.5/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: A Song is Born (1948)

I knew, going into this process, that A Song is Born was a musical remake of Ball of Fire, so I intended to spread them out as much as possible.  A Song is Born was also on Amazon Prime, a service which happens to remove movies without any notice at all, so after about a month, I felt enough time had passed to watch the musical remake.

Boy, they really weren't lying when they called this a remake.  This is exactly the same movie as Ball of Fire.  The difference is that Ball of Fire is obsessed with words, primarily early 1940s slang, while A Song is Born is obsessed with music, primarily jazz.  With the exception of when they play music, it's the same movie and I think almost the exact same dialogue.

Now, I can't say how I'd feel about this movie had I watched it first, but I didn't.  And so I really, really didn't like this movie.  And it's almost entirely due to the fact that everything about it is the same as Ball of Fire, but worse.  Everything is worse.

As I said in my Ball of Fire review, Gary Cooper didn't really do much for me in the few movies I'd seen him in prior to Ball of Fire, but nothing better exemplifies why he's good when you compare him to Danny Kaye in A Song is Born.  Now this is my first Danny Kaye movie and as I understand it, he's a lot different here than this in his other movies.  Which is good because it kind of feels like he's just trying to copy Cooper here, but poorly.

Then there's Virginia Mayo.  She really never had a chance.  Maybe she's good in other things.  But my reference point here is Barbara Stanwyck, and in the words of Howard Hawks, Virginia Mayo is no Barbara Stanwyck.  Few are, but never has that point been more clear than comparing Ball of Fire and A Song is Born.

Hell, I even like Dana Andrews as the gangster more in Ball of Fire than Steve Cochran here.  I'm telling you, every thing about this movie is worse than Ball of Fire.  And like I said, maybe if I hadn't watched that movie first, it'd be different.  Ball of Fire had a spark, the movie kept your attention, there was a rhythm to everything that happened.  This movie is just flat.

Well, except for one thing: the music.  I'd recommend A Song is Born just for the historical document, but I'd also tell you to skip everything but the music.  Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnett, Mel Powell - they're all in this movie and playing music and it's great.  It's the only good thing about the movie, but it's so good that it basically makes the movie worth watching by itself.

Speaking of, the plot makes much less sense here than in Ball of Fire too.  A grammarian working on an encyclopedia cut off from the outside world for years?  Makes sense that he isn't up to date on new slang.  A musical encyclopedia that is completely unaware of jazz makes... a lot less sense.  Surely these extremely smart professors know that music is constantly changing and they need to stay up to date.  I don't know, it seems insane to me that these experts on music just have never heard of jazz in 1948.

Sharing my distaste for this movie is... the director himself, Howard Hawks.  Who admitted that he only directed it because it came with a $250,000 paycheck, which is the equivalent of $2.7 million today.  He called Kaye a basket case because he had separated from his wife.  And he didn't have nice things to say about Mayo either, as expressed above.  He said it was a horrible experience.

How much can music save a film?  That's the question I'm debating when giving my grade, but let it be known that whatever my grade, the music is the only redeeming quality in this movie.  Just watch Ball of Fire instead.

2/4 stars

Hawks Marathon: El Dorado (1967)

Howard Hawks is known for his wide variety of genres he tackles, from screwball comedy to war to Westerns.  Having gone through a fair amount of his movies at this point, I will say that his versatility is probably a bit overstated.  It's perhaps the effect of watching his movies in a marathon setting - even if that setting is over a few months and not back-to-back - but his early to middle career seems defined by the screwball comedy.  And he tended to fall back on love triangles frequently.

Towards the end of his career, he gravitated towards one genre, Westerns.  I don't know if that was the only genre that interested him, or the only genre that he was actually allowed to make, but of his last six movies, three were Westerns and since John Wayne stars in one of the non-Westerns, I'm wondering if that will have the feel of a Western as well.

In any case, from what I understand, he made effectively the same Western three times, with one of those movies being El Dorado.  I am planning to watch all three by the end of the marathon, but for now, El Dorado is my first of the three.

And I'm kind of glad it's my first.  El Dorado and Rio Lobo are considered pale imitators of the bonafide classic Western, Rio Bravo (which was the first made of the three), and I really don't think I would have enjoyed El Dorado as much if I had just seen Rio Bravo recently.  Who knows?

I have a few complaints.  There is no suspension of disbelief I am capable of in believing that a woman who looks like Charlene Holt would be interested in a man who looks like old ass John Wayne.  Not to mention Wayne knew her as a kid and as I understand it, was something like a father figure, and yeah no.

Secondly, I don't actually think James Caan is very good in this movie.  I like James Caan.  And I'm mostly familiar with him as an older guy, where I think he just naturally has more presence.  Here, I don't know, he seems like a much worse actor than the James Caan I've watched.  (I haven't seen Godfather in a long enough time that I can't even remember how I felt about his performance, and that's the only young Caan I've seen I think)

Also, another John Wayne related complaint, but Wayne is just too old for this role.  Or out of shape.  Robert Mitchum specifically plays the out of shape, past his prime alcoholic that is very easy to buy, but Wayne still being as quick as ever?  Suspension of disbelief required.

I lead off with my complaints, because if you can get past those elements - and really if you're watching an older John Wayne movie, you probably understand what you're getting into and can look past those elements, then this is a good, solid Western.  You get exactly what you expect in this movie.

One thing that stands out is how great Christopher George is as the villain.  He mostly sits down, commenting on the action, bemused at the whole situation, and his performance alone makes you believe in his reputation.  Because... we don't really ever see it.  He has other guys do his bidding.  And it doesn't matter that we don't see it, because George has a great, above-it-all element.  It's so great that I'm genuinely disappointed he doesn't really seem to be in much else that I would watch.

Mitchum is of course great.  It's the type of great that can get overlooked because he's able to so embody his character, that it doesn't even look like he's trying.  And John Wayne, well, he's John Wayne.  He's playing John Wayne.  This is not one of those performances where Wayne is really acting.  And I'm starting to love Arthur Honnicut, who seems to be doing his best Walter Brennan impression here.

All in all, I enjoyed El Dorado despite my complaints.  It's a movie that doesn't feel like it should work as well as it does, but for some reason, it's able to blow past the things you can't accept and just makes you enjoy a good Western.

3/4 stars