449 Missing

[Galen Young]

Has anyone noticed a glitch around 1 hour and 53 minutes. Jack Lemon is on the phone and the picture seems to jump. It doesn't look like a DVD problem, but more of an edit.

I can confirm that yes, there is a glitch at the mark you mention. Hard to tell if it's from the source or a manufacturing error, but yes, the error is on my disc too.

I also have to say, I can not believe anyone would dignify GringoTex's trollistic remarks with a response as unfathomable. Gregory and Binker, you are both far too kind.

...poorly acted, etc. ad nauseum

The thought of someone being emotionally unaffected by Jack Lemmon's performance in this film can only lead me to believe they are a cold and heartless human being. I have never once thought of this film as purporting to be about the coup in Chile, or even to be about the Chileans in particular, but about the true story of an American, caught up and killed in a misadventure of American imperialism. ("misadventure" is an understatement, obviously.) A "sidebar" story? Is your own child's existence just a sidebar in this life? Jesus Christ!

My first post on criterionforum (which doesn't exist anymore because of one of those server crashes) was about trying to find the early films of Costa-Gavras on disc or tape. Having written to Criterion over the years about him, I was ecstatic when Missing was announced as a forth coming release. And they definitely delivered the goods, it's a terrific package. I can only hope this is the beginning of more good (Costa-Gavras) things to come. But I have to stop gushing, because I don't want to DNFTT...

ps. can't wait to get my 'Che hard-on' tomorrow!

[GringoTex]

The thought of someone being emotionally unaffected by Jack Lemmon's performance in this film can only lead me to believe they are a cold and heartless human being.

Harry Dean Stanton's performance in Red Dawn absolutely tore me up. Does that make up for it?

[MichaelB]

It's great to Criterion venturing into the related history rather than confining the special features to things about the film itself, the filmmaker, and the work being adapted. I often wish they would do more of this, especially with films like this that are based on actual events.

I completely agree - The Battle of Algiers is the model for this kind of treatment, and I'm delighted that Missing is following suit.

Too many DVD companies think that extras should invariably relate to the film's specific production circumstances and little else - ignoring the fact that many people are rather less interested in anecdotal or technical accounts of the making of the film than they might be in the social, cultural and historical context. Especially if the film was made against (or about) a contentious historical issue.

It'll be interesting to see what Artificial Eye do with Wajda's Katyn, which I presume they'll be releasing on DVD (or Blu-ray: a master exists) after its theatrical run - that would seem to be a perfect example of a film whose production is considerably less interesting than its subject.

[colinr0380]

I agree but then another reason why The Battle Of Algiers was such an amazing release was that it covered both the historical angle and the production side (the same can be said about The Last Emperor package, despite the aspect ratio issues on the film itself), and then both of these areas from narrow (interviews with participants in the film as well as the events) and wider perspectives (a Pontecorvo career documentary, the 'lessons to be learnt for the War on Terror' roundtable and the influence of the film on other directors).

I'm seriously not expecting Artifical Eye to add anything to Katyn - after all they don't really have a track record of making their more difficult works accessible in any more than a physical sense of providing the work itself. However my pessimistic attitude towards the label also helps to make the rare occasions when they do add material (Land and Freedom for example) more of a pleasant surprise!

[MichaelB]

I'm seriously not expecting Artifical Eye to add anything to Katyn - after all they don't really have a track record of making their more difficult works accessible in any more than a physical sense of providing the work itself. However my pessimistic attitude towards the label also helps to make the rare occasions when they do add material (Land and Freedom for example) more of a pleasant surprise!

It really depends on what they licence. The Polish single-disc DVD and Blu-ray editions have extras that focus pretty much exclusively on the production, whereas I get the impression that the Polish double-discer has more historical material - I didn't go for that as I couldn't find any confirmation that the extras had English subtitles, and assumed they probably didn't (they didn't on either of the single-disc versions).

Arguably, it's more important to supply historical context on a non-Polish release, since one of the film's weaknesses is its assumption that everyone watching it is already well up on the historical background. Which is fine if the audience is exclusively Polish, but not otherwise!

In fact, while I'm on this particular subject, I actually planned to include rather more historical context in the BFI's Jan Svankmajer box - specifically to do with The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. But plans for a commentary fell through (the images are so rapid that it's impossible to keep up with them verbally), and a context-setting timeline that I devised for the booklet had to be axed for reasons of space - though I ended up publishing it online.

[psufootball07]

Whoa, totally blown away by Jack Lemmon's performance. I also thought the cinematography was brilliant, shots in the rooms were brilliant. One shot sticks in my mind when Jack and Sissy look up at a glass ceiling and see the bodies lying above. I would absolutely love to see this on Blu-Ray, but the quality of film/DVD looked quite astounding.

[jbeall]

I just watched this yesterday, and have to concur that Lemmon is fantastic. Spacek is very good as well, although for a native New Yorker, her character sounds suspiciously Texan. Criterion's presentation is also excellent--I watched most of the extras (will finish tomorrow), and they're all highly informative.

Anywhoo, back to Lemmon: he's believable as a conservative Christian Scientist, his temperament reflecting a kind of quiet piety that seems somehow separate from his professional self (businessman), but his performance as a vulnerable father above all else is incredibly moving. In one of the extras, Costas-Gavras mentions that the studio wanted Ed Asner to play the role of Horman, but CG noted that in the scene where Ray Tower is being incredibly condescending and rude immediately after Horman has learned that his son is dead, Asner wouldn't have been able to pull that scene off the way Lemmon did; I think CG is absolutely right, and that moment in the film was just devastating.

Re: some of the earlier remarks about religion. Of course Latin America is hardly atheist, but the U.S. govt's fear was always that socialism/communism would undermine religious values (why else are the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance?), so I don't think you can consign religion to mere propaganda status.

The film doesn't really touch on this--and yes, I realize this is partly because CG didn't want the film to be only about Chile, but the Nixon Administration did a lot more than just send military operatives into Chile; official economic sanctions did a lot to keep the Chilean economy stagnant, creating the unrest and strikes that helped pave the way for the coup. It'd be interesting if more films explored US interference via the mechanism of economic destabilization rather than via military assistance and/or invasion, but that'd probably be less interesting for a moviegoing public that prefers recognizable bad guys. Not that this should detract from this film, which I thought was excellent (even moreso than Z).

[Gregory]

Of course the US used economics as its justification. They also used God. But atheism doesn't carry much sway in Latin America. How else could they justify their actions to their populace?

Re: some of the earlier remarks about religion. Of course Latin America is hardly atheist, but the U.S. govt's fear was always that socialism/communism would undermine religious values (why else are the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance?), so I don't think you can consign religion to mere propaganda status.

In response to jbeall: Anyone who believed that the Popular Unity coalition led by Allende posed a threat to religious freedom or values was misinformed. It suited the U.S. policy agenda to paint Allende with the usual broad brush of anticommunism when in fact many of his policies, including those toward religious freedom, were vastly different than what people associated with the Soviet Union. In fact, it was extremely clear that there were strong currents of anti-clericalism (just like everywhere else in Latin America) but that these were on the right.
Predictably, Pinochet took measures to beat the Church into subservience, beginning right after the coup when he forced it to offer a Te Deum to thank God for the "national liberation" that had just taken place. Following the atrocities of this period, the Church tried to push for a return to democracy and to challenge the dictatorship for its human rights abuses, but its ability to retain this role gradually slipped away as Pinochet insisted quite openly that priests should have no right to engage in political activities. As far as I know, the U.S. government never issued the slightest criticism of Pinochet, even when he arrested and deported U.S. priests in Chile for political reasons. This is further evidence for the view (which I will not try to fully support here) that U.S. interest in intervention in the name of protecting religious freedom and human rights was on the whole a pretext for policies with other motivations behind them.

[jbeall]

I may not have been as articulate as I wanted in my earlier post, Gregory, but I'm pretty sure we're not in disagreement. Allende's attitude toward religion and the US govt's perception of his attitude, however, are two very different things. All I'm suggesting is that fear that socialism=antireligionism may have been one of the initial motivations for US involvement, albeit one that was quickly forgotten in the face of economic interests.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

You can have it for less than 26$ from here.

That's the member's only price, though.

[panicprevention]

on sale at BestBuy.com for only $19.99

[HistoryProf]

Speaking of evil US government officials, the ambassador's grand confession at the end that the US was doing all this so that US firms could continue business in Chile showed me how Costa-Gravas misunderstood the whole situation: Chile (and El Salvador and Nicaragua) was all about ideology and Cold War cocksterism, not money.

I realize this was a while ago, but I would appreciate feedback from anyone in the know: wasn't one of the central concerns of the U.S. the nationalization of the Copper industry? I think America's big company on that front was Anaconda? I'm almost positive that Anaconda got a HUGE payoff after the coup - in the hundreds of millions - which was a large part of the U.S. involvement in it all. After Allende nationalized it all and kicked the U.S. companies out, it got REAL serious, just as it did in Cuba when Castro nationalized oil. So I guess you can put it in the context of the Cold War, but to argue that money wasn't a part of it is pretty disingenuous.

But I could be remembering wrong and it's been awhile since I've read up on this stuff. Any thoughts? I'd rather not have to resort to wikipedia, Democratic Underground, or Ann Coulter

[Galen Young]

So I guess you can put it in the context of the Cold War, but to argue that money wasn't a part of it is pretty disingenuous.

It was about money, thank Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys... Journalist Greg Palast has written about it over the years. Anaconda is mentioned in a couple of articles here and here about Chile from his website. Really looking forward to Criterion's future release of State of Siege!

[HistoryProf]

Ah yes, Pepsi....I knew there was another corporate giant I was forgetting. Thanks.

i'd be very curious to hear Gringo's response to those pieces....I just can't imagine how anyone could say money had nothing to do with the U.S.'s involvement....I'd suggest that by '73 and the plain realities of Vietnam, Cold War blustering was just a cover for the economic imperialism they were trying to protect.

[Gregory]

Of course it was about shaping (a benign euphemism) the region to create a favorable climate for U.S. business interests, typical of Cold War foreign policy. Of the many I've known and read, my sense of historians of Latin America and of U.S. foreign policy since the emergence of the "Wisconsin school" is that few would dispute this point, with the exception of a relatively small number from the Right.

Nevertheless, I would argue that copper nationalization shouldn't be blown too out of proportion as the primary factor in U.S. hostility toward Allende. It's not quite like bananas and United Fruit in Guatemala under Arévalo and Arbenz (see Bitter Fruit and much of the subsequent literature on that coup) and even in that case there were other reforms at issue. The general tactic that the U.S. foreign policy establishment used against Allende was to paint him as "another Castro," and nationaliation of copper was only one issue of many.
They probably couldn't lean too hard on the link between Allende and nationalization of copper and thus the threat of another Castro because it was so obviously deceitful. The fact of the matter was that there was broad support in Chile for copper nationalization pretty much across the political spectrum, except within the rhetoric of far-right (Pinochet's actual policy was another matter, as I'll explain in a minute). Nationalization of resources in Latin America mostly came out of decades-long processes and was often necessary to keep the industries stable and functioning. For example Venezuela, with which the U.S. was generally on good terms, officially nationalized its oil industry in the same era, and this was part of a long, gradual process that they were basically forced to follow for economic reasons, not to mention the accumulation of long-held resentment about corruption and tax avoidance by foreign interests that had contracts for resource extraction. Anyway, it was false to link the nationalization primarily to Allende, but he nevertheless paid the price for it, because it was politically useful for those who opposed him on the Right and in Washington. But again the fact was that it simply made a huge amount of sense for Chile to control such a crucial source of wealth.
The Pinochet regime was able to survive only because he didn't dare re-privatize copper. This once again puts the lie to the alleged success of free market ideology around the world. In those countries that actually followed the dictates of this ideology, the results were disastrous, as they would have been in Chile if copper had been re-privatized.
For more on this last point, an excellent and thorough study is Chile's Free Market Miracle: A Second Look by Collins, Lear, and Rosenfeld. Verifying the title on Amazon just now, I see it's available for a buck. Peter Winn also edited a book on this more recently, and his stuff is always worth reading.

[HistoryProf]

But didn't Pinochet write a check for $200 million to Anaconda in lieu of denationalizing copper? Something Allende refused to do?

[Gregory]

Yes, in addition to a number of similar "compensations" not surprisingly (can't remember the amounts offhand), although I personally might not say "in lieu of denationalization" because the latter would have cost Chile much, much more, as Pinochet surely knew. This only supports what I was arguing before: first, that Allende was and is unfairly associated with the decision to nationalize copper and that this was not a simple Right vs. Left issue because Allende's opposition had supported it all along; and secondly, what kept the economy solvent was maintaining copper as a state-controlled industry not to mention Pinochet's own willingness to nationalize a number of other industries and banks.
Allende's insistence on taking into account Anaconda and other firms' excess profits when deciding whether to compensate, was necessarily "Castro-like" the way his enemies made it out to be. Case in point, the parallel example of oil nationalization in Venezuela, which I mentioned previously. Around the same time it passed a "law of reversion" to bring the oil industry under state ownership with minimal compensation, and the U.S. government never did or said anything to condemn that nor when the industry was officially nationalized in '76, as far as I've been able to determine (including looking at as much of the internal record as possible). Thus the U.S. condemnation of Allende but not Venezuela for this suggests the usual kind of deceitful pretexts and double-standards at work in our foreign policy.

I think we're probably pretty much in agreement at least about the basic issue you raised at the beginning, and I/we are outrageously off-topic and should continue this via PM if there's anything more to be said.

[rohmerin]

What a good movie is!

I could identify two Mexico City locations: Palacio de Correos, and that Hotel near Zocalo where Spectre was filmed. Some Condesa or Polanco I couldn't get... Two for a huge city like that it's ok.

As a native, all the English soundtrack with Spanish accents sounds dubbed. Was it filmed with direct sound? All Chilean sound Chilean (beautiful accent by the way). The people are quite Chilean looking, not Mexicans (and this is important), even the Chilean aristos are quite Spaniards (as in the real life they were). Great location and casting / extra work. Real great both.

Jack Lemmon is impressive. Talented, we knew that, but with a real Spanish - Italian looking, he could have remade some remakes from Italian films, such as Il boom that it's in USA near 60 years its release.