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Saturday, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman RIP



Sad to see that Paul Newman has died. I haven't seen a lot of his movies, and I've especially missed those considered great, like The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), and Cool Hand Luke (1967), but one that I remember liking was The Verdict.

The Verdict, a remake of an earlier film, was made in 1982, directed by Sidney Lumet, and adapted from a novel by David Mamet. It starred, besides Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, Milo O'Shea and Lindsay Crouse, and Bruce Willis has an uncredited background appearance as an extra :) The basic plot .... an alcoholic lawyer takes a medical malpractice case against a Catholic hospital, for a brain damaged client, for the wrong reasons but manages to turn himself and the case around. I liked the way Newman's character defied the low expectations others had of his alcohol-compromised abilities and ethics, to redeem himself and avenge his now vegetative client. Here's a quote from Newman's character's summation to the jury ....

You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true." And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, "Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you." IF... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.


Roger Ebert gave the movie 4 stars. Here' his review of the film ....

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There is a moment in "The Verdict" when Paul Newman walks into a room and shuts the door and trembles with anxiety and with the inner scream that people should get off his back. No one who has ever been seriously hung over or needed a drink will fail to recognize the moment. It is the key to his character in "The Verdict," a movie about a drinking alcoholic who tries to pull himself together for one last step at salvaging his self-esteem.

Newman plays Frank Galvin, a Boston lawyer who has had his problems over the years - a lost job, a messy divorce, a disbarment hearing, all of them traceable in one way or another to his alcoholism. He has a "drinking problem," as an attorney for the archdiocese delicately phrases it. That means that he makes an occasional guest appearance at his office, and spends the rest of his day playing pinball and drinking beer, and his evening drinking Irish and looking to see if there isn't at least one last lonely woman in the world who will buy his version of himself in preference to the facts.

Galvin's pal, a lawyer named Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) has drummed up a little work for him: An open-and-shut malpractice suit against a Catholic hospital in Boston where a young woman was carelessly turned into a vegetable because of a medical oversight. The deal is pretty simple. Galvin can expect to settle out of court and pocket a third of the settlement - enough to drink on for what little future he is likely to enjoy.

But Galvin makes the mistake of going to see the young victim in a hospital, where she is alive but in a coma. And something snaps inside of him. He determines to try this case, by god, and to prove that the doctors who took her mind away from her were guilty of incompetence and dishonesty. In Galvin's mind, bringing this case to court is one and the same thing with regaining his self-respect - with emerging from his own alcoholic coma.

Galvin's redemption takes place within the framework of a courtroom thriller. The screenplay by David Mamet is a wonder of good dialogue, strongly seen characters and a structure that pays off in the big courtroom scene - as the genre requires. As a courtroom drama, "The Verdict" is superior work. But the director and the star of this film, Sidney Lumet and Paul Newman, seem to be going for something more; "The Verdict" is more a character study than a thriller, and the buried suspense in this movie is more about Galvin's own life than about his latest case.

Frank Galvin provides Newman with the occasion for one of his great performances. This is the first movie in which Newman has looked a little old, a little tired. There are moments when his face sags and his eyes seem terribly weary, and we can look ahead clearly to the old men he will be playing in 10 years' time. Newman always has been an interesting actor, but sometimes his resiliency, his youthful vitality, have obscured his performances; he has a tendency to always look great, and that is not always what the role calls for. This time, he gives us old, bone-tired, hung-over, trembling (and heroic) Frank Galvin, and we buy it lock, stock and shot glass.

The movie is populated with finely tuned supporting performances (many of them by British or Irish actors, playing Bostonians not at all badly). Jack Warden is the old law partner; Charlotte Rampling is the woman, also an alcoholic, with whom Galvin unwisely falls in love; James Mason is the ace lawyer for the archdiocese; Milo O'Shea is the politically connected judge; Wesley Addy provides just the right presence as one of the accused doctors. The performances, the dialogue and the plot all work together like a rare machine.

But it's that Newman performance that stays in the mind. Some reviewers have found "The Verdict" a little slow moving, maybe because it doesn't always hum along on the thriller level. But if you bring empathy to the movie, if you allow yourself to think about what Frank Galvin is going through, there's not a moment of this movie that's not absorbing. "The Verdict" has a lot of truth in it, right down to a great final scene in which Newman, still drinking, finds that if you wash it down with booze, victory tastes just like defeat.

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6 Comments:

Blogger victor said...

To day when I heard on the news that Paul Newman died of cancer even at what many would consider a respectable age to leave this world, I still literally did the sign of the cross and said to myself, God Bless His Soul. I then thought to myself, could he really be a cell of Saint Paul who came back to his world as a new man and why is it not possible? Ok let me be crystal clear sinner vic, that’s just not possible! Thanks for setting him straight. :)

All kidding aside, I enjoyed all his movies and I’m surprised that I missed “The Verdict” but then again did I really miss it or did I just forget that I saw it? Forgive me if I go out on a tangent to try and explain that statement.

It was 1972 and I had just returned to an hotel where I had worked since 1970. I was off work for a month because of my second visit to another mental hospital. My wife had originally told me that I was there for a three month stay but I could only remember the last month. She now tells me that it was only one month but forgive me if I still have my doubts. While checking out of work one day a bouncer from another room which they called the zoo said to me. I hope that your brother Joe is still not upset with me for what happened. I looked him in the eyes and asked him what he was talking about and to make a long story short as he said to someone else who was with us, he really doesn’t remember what happened and it then all appeared to me. I could see it all clear as if it was on a movie screen. My brother coming back into the hotel with no shirt on after several waiters had just thrown him out and to make a long story short it took six more police officers to keep him out for good and as Joe came in the room I could see him looking me in the eyes and they seem to quietly be saying, They can’t do that to you Victor, I’m your big brother and I’m not going to let it happen cause I can help you! I’ve been asking myself for a long time, what could he possibly want to help me from? I guess I’ll never know cause he took his life when he felt that no one really cared for him. The only think that I’m really concerned about is that someone thinking that I could possibly be the anti-christ but I’ve told him to go to hell a long time ago so why would he want to hang around cause he must know that I’ll never accept that JOB.

God bless your soul Joe and I know He has cause we’re really not living in the twilight zone even though it sometime might look like that!

Anyway, I guess that’s why they gave me shock treatment so that I could forget what had taken place back then. No! No! Vic! It was done so that you would forget “The Verdict.” Yep! That’s it alright and we finally know after all these years. :)

I’m sure that it says somewhere in The Bible that for every sin someday we’ll pay and if I must repeat my sins Crystal, I’m hoping that Paul Newman will volunteer to play my part in The Up Coming Judgement Day Movie!

OK sinner vic, Enough already you’ve got my head in a spin and Kermit also. :)

God Bless,

Peace

6:10 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Hi Victor :)

7:48 PM  
Blogger Jeff said...

I was saddened to hear about his passing too. To tell you the truth, I was surprised to hear that he was 83. I actually thought he was older than that.

I'm kind of the opposite of you. I've seen the films you didn't see, and I've never seen The Verdict. I loved Cool Hand Luke, and I also really enjoyed him in Mrs. Bridge, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, and Somebody Up There Likes Me.

My mom always loved his blue eyes. What woman didn't? He was a classy guy, too. Did lots of good charity work, and stayed married to the same woman for keeps (Joanne Woodward).

10:27 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Hi Jeff,

I did see the two films he did with Robert Redford, but somehow missed all the earlier big ones he was so famous for.

Yeah, I think he was an admirable person, as well as a good actor.

11:19 PM  
Blogger cowboyangel said...

Thanks, Crystal, I wanted to post something but was away over the weekend.

Newman was one of those very rare people I would call a complete man. He was intelligent and artistic, yet he also loved racing cars and won championships at it. He was great-looking, yet remain married to a cool woman for a long, long time. And he made hundreds of millions of dollars actually making good products - and then gave all the money to charity. Most of us would feel we had lived a great life if we had achieved any one of these things.

I haven't said this often in my life, but wow, what a man.

1:39 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Hi William,

Yes, I agree :)

12:59 AM  

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