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duanecbrooks · 7 years

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Black Being Beautiful It's another old-time flick, having been made an entire year before The Grasshopper, specifically in--hold on to your hat--1968. Its female lead is a woman who has long, long, long since devolved to Trivial Pursuit-question status, namely Diahann Carroll (Its male lead, Jim Brown again, has, as has been pointed out before, a very successful career as an entrepreneur, not to mention considerable visibility as a rather simplistic, indeed, flat-out shrill Black Spokesperson). Having been made in 1968, its cinematic style and sensibility, not to mention the makeup of most, if not all, of its characters would likely be considered mightily passé, even, considering the fact that these days, political correctness is running rampant, prehistoric. Yet be that as it may... The fact is, The Split, which, thanks as usual to my greatly-cherished DVD player I've seen several times, is a quite gripping, very well-paced heist flick, easily carrying you along on its wavelength, easily causing you to accept its reality. And not once, not once, while watching it does your attention flag or you lose interest in its characters. Let's specify... Split kicks off with a wide-angle shot of a dirt road. Before long, it hones in on this car conking out, carrying this majorly hunky black dude, who, as we'll come to discover, is said picture's central character, McClain (Brown). He tries for a while to fix the car but eventually opts to riding a bus, which we see stopping in front of this rather ramshackle motel. McClain gets off and goes inside and is (in time) joyously greeted by its proprietor, Gladys (Julie Harris). He first asks about his ex, Ellie--whom we'll soon meet--and is bluntly told: "She moved. I haven't seen her." When asked about his future plans, McClain gives an answer that in sum tells the point of the entire picture: "Just one big job. That's all I want." We then see the aforementioned Ellie (Carroll) on the phone, enveloped in shock, obviously being told that her ex is back. Next we see the former couple in bed, lying warmly up against each other, obviously having Done The Deed. We quickly get the message that their history being together was far from happy (Ellie: "I kept on dreaming. And one morning I woke up and you weren't there. That was one morning too many." McClain: "If I'm not here, what the hell were you just doing [in having sex with me]?" This causes Ellie to angrily slap McClain's face). There's further dialogue between them (Ellie: "I'm weak with you...That's my problem...You want to see me crawl. You want to see me so weak I can't stand any more"; interestingly, given that, as has been mentioned, this was 1968, Ellie in time calls McClain: "You black son of a bitch!"), and then we cut to McClain casing the place the latter intends to hit, namely a football stadium where there's scheduled to be a face-off involving the Rams and the Packers (Gladys: "There's 80 thousand seats in the place." McClain: "And that's a lot of money"). Let's continue. Following are scenes wherein McClain "tests" the fellows he wants to include in the upcoming heist, namely Clinger, Kifka, Marty, and Negil (Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, and Donald Sutherland, respectively) by putting them through various paces--dropping in on Clinger and initiating a fight, initiating an open-road car chase with Kifka, et al. When the team McClain wants and Gladys are gathered together, we discover that there's certainly, definitely no love lost between McClain and the guys (Negil: "[McClain is] a big black idiot." Marty: "If there's one thing I don't have time for, it's a smart-ass nigger!"). Yet when our hero at last finally shows up they all fall into line and it's agreed that the money will be stashed at Ellie's place (Gladys: "Ellie's clean. And the cops have nothing on McClain"). Next up is a rather engaging montage wherein McClain and Ellie are walking side-by-side along different places, including the beach with Ellie carrying her heels (McClain: "I'll be with you [after the heist] because that's where I want to be"). At last finally the day of the heist arrives, with McClain and Co. seizing the take while holding several guards and several stadium employees--among them the longtime comedic actor Jackie Joseph--at gunpoint and getting away with the help of McClain and Kifka masquerading as ambulance drivers. Then, as Ellie is lying on top of her bed reading, she, and we, hear a knock upon her door. Upon opening it, in comes McClain with the stolen gains, making it clear his intent to stash them at Ellie's. After her expressing understandable consternation ("You're using me, Mac"), we see McClain seduce Ellie by first taking her up in his arms, then throwing her upon the bed and having his way with her, with her (lovingly?) caressing the money that McClain has thrown upon her bed. Following are McClain and Ellie (obviously) fully under the covers and the phone ringing. Ellie gets it and hands it to her ex, as it's for him. Next we see McClain and Clinger, while playing pool, making plans to get together later with the rest of the gang and divvy up the cash. Next: We see Ellie's ever-horny landlord Sutro (James Whitmore) sneak into her apartment and, while our girl is combing her hair in front of the mirror, approach her, supposedly about the rent. Yet, as time goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that what Sutro really and truly wants is not rent money but Ellie herself--as evidenced by the frequent close-ups of her bosom area and her upper-thighs area. Before long Sutro gives in to his lust and grabs Ellie. There's a struggle, she manages to knee him and she opens the lower shelf of her drawer, where, we find, there's weaponry stashed. Yet Sutro catches her, throws her upon the bed, and himself gets hold of a machine gun lying inside the drawer. Sutro winds up fatally machine-gunning Ellie, seizing all the money, and throwing a sheet over her dead body. Split goes on. When McClain arrives at Ellie's apartment and discovers her corpse, he is of course devastated. Then he opens the drawer and sees that the money, all of it, has been taken, which also knocks him for a loop. The police--having been called by Sutro, who has alerted them to Ellie's murder--show up, McClain manages to get away and, upon re-uniting with the gang, discovers, along with us, that they are in no sense happy campers (Gladys: "You've humiliated me, McClain." Marty: "As you can see, you're on the spot, boy"). We then see that the police detective Walter Brill (Gene Hackman) has been assigned to investigate Ellie's murder (and also see a newspaper headline that fully reflects the fact that this was 1968: "LANDLORD SLAYS NEGRO BEAUTY"), McClain is for a while tortured by the rest of the gang--while his arms are being held down, Clinger smacks his exposed stomach with a soaking-wet rope--McClain manages to escape--with Gladys getting accidentally and fatally shot in the process--and winds up cornering Brill in his home. At first Brill resists McClain's pressure ("the former to the latter: "There isn't a man in the force who will rest if anything happens to one of their own"), yet comes to bend under McClain's prodding (McClain to Brill: "You curl up pretty fast for a cop, don't you?"). Brill comes to throw in with McClain, the latter assuring him that he's the best bet to getting the dough ("There are three others [in the gang], but if you deal with me, you might live to spend that money"), there's a shootout in a deserted area between McClain/Brill and the other gang members, said team winds up killing them all, and the ending of the picture is genuinely unusual. It's comprised of McClain being about to board a plane and stopping upon hearing...Ellie's voice. So there's The Split, in all a marvelously taut, marvelously absorbing crime flick. Whitmore chillingly embodies the ever-lustful, ever-creepy Sutro. Hackman lends his monumental presence and his monumental acting skill to the role of Brill. The two white chicks of Split--Joyce Jameson as Girl-Girl, a jolie laide whom Oates's character hooks up with early on and Joseph--are, respectively, enticingly sexy and enticingly charming. All the backup gang members come through magnificently in the acting department; there's never, ever a false note concerning any of them. As scenarist, Robert Sabaroff comes up with many meaty, pithy exchanges for McClain and the principals in his life to engage in. And director Gordon Flemyng consistently keeps the action moving, never allowing anything to flag (Said scene between Sutro and Ellie deserves special mention, being an entirely blood-curdling combination of adroit camera placement and adroit editing. Also: Apparently Brown and Flemyng didn't exactly click as work colleagues. In his through-the-roof-selling personal/professional memoir, Borgnine reported that the latter, on the final day of shooting, went up to the former and--according to Borgnine, echoing his own feelings--told him: "If you were the last actor on Earth, I would never work with you again"). And now we come to Brown and Carroll. While their acting in The Split, frankly, leaves much to be desired, their stylish good looks, their forceful sexiness, and their awe-inspiring physiques save the day. Their scenes together are aflame with their physical spice and their physical grace. The fact is, The Split is further proof of a point I (I hope) have made before: that theatrical films were at their best when they were a visual medium, when they wholly put aside aesthetic considerations and simply presented gorgeous, muscular/shapely performers whose physical beauty and unyielding sexiness majorly turned us on (To make another point I hope I've made in the past: While television is up to its neck in intellectual and creative barrenness, it shines as a visual medium. There's no blah about the director or about any of its products' Importance. All that's needed is to get whatever Baywatch Babe on-camera showing skin or get Kerry Washington on-camera, period and the winning score is made). It was a 1970s writer who asserted that Carroll and her then-Julia-co-star Fred Williamson (remember him?; I didn't think so) "embody perfection." With regard to The Split, it is Carroll and Brown who are the real and the true embodiment of perfection. And are added proof, assuming any more is needed, of the sanctimonious guilt-bingeing and the complete meaningless of the "issue" of "looksism."

#the grasshopper #1968 #Diahann Carroll #Jim Brown #enterpreneur #the split #dvd player #julie harris #football stadium #james whitmore #gene hackman #joyce jameson #gordon flemyng #visual medium #television #julia #fred williamson #perfection

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