by Don Stradley
Charles
Bronson was 55 at the time of “St Ives” (1976). He was just a couple years past
his star-making turn in “Death Wish”, and was enjoying a surprising run of
success. I say surprising because Bronson had, after all, been little more than
a craggy second banana for most of his career. Now, inexplicably, he had box
office clout as a leading man. In fact, Bronson reigned unchallenged for a few
years as the most popular male actor in international markets. Yes, even bigger
than Eastwood, Newman, Reynolds, Redford, or any other 1970s star you can name.
Many of Bronson’s movies were partly financed by foreign investors, for even if
his movies didn’t score stateside, they still drew buckets of money in Prague or
Madrid. Some have suggested that his popularity on foreign screens was due to
how little he said in his movies (there was never much dubbing required in a
Bronson flick). I tend to think international audiences simply liked what
Bronson was selling: straight forward toughness. Because he was much older than
his peers, he didn’t play up the counter cultural smugness or cynicism. No,
Bronson was a shear, undiluted bad-ass. And that sells anywhere.
So
what, I wonder, did the global movie goer think of “St. Ives”? It was a change
of pace for old Charlie, for he talks more here than in “Mr. Majestyk,” “The
Stone Killer” and “Hard Times” combined. He’s also not blowing his enemies away,
or beating them senseless in an alley fight. Even the veins in his neck seem
relatively docile in this movie. He plays Raymond St. Ives, a former L.A.
newspaper columnist who lives in a fleabag hotel. He sleeps late, gambles what
little money he makes on football, and is supposedly working on a novel. We
never see him writing, but every time someone greets him they say, “Hey, how’s
the novel going?” That’s how we know. (The adverts for the movie also showed
Bronson smoking a pipe, yet he doesn’t smoke a pipe in the movie. Since he
spends a lot of time at a deli, a more accurate poster would have shown him
eating a pastrami sandwich.)
When
he’s not being a lovable slacker, St. Ives occasionally “helps” people, ala
Travis McGee. The connections he made during his years as an ambulance chaser
now assist him when he needs help tracking down a shady character. When he’s
hired by a wealthy old windbag to retrieve some stolen documents, he soon finds
himself knee deep in dead bodies, and crooked cops. John Houseman plays Abner
Procane, the aforementioned windbag. Procane sits in his mansion, weeping over
old King Vidor movies, while a mysterious coterie of people bustles around him,
including a personal psychiatrist who massages his back. He’s mum about the
contents of the documents, but he’s willing to pay a lot of dough to get them
back. Since St. Ives is not close to finishing his novel, he takes the gig. As
the movie’s tagline read: “He's clean. He's mean. He's the go-between.”
The
screenplay by Barry Beckerman was based on a novel by Ross Thomas, and it tries
hard to ape the old Raymond Chandler style. Unfortunately, it’s neither tough
enough to be “hard-boiled,” nor dark enough to be “noir.” It’s simply the sort
of convoluted “who done it” that was rampant as the mid-1970s went nutty with
detectives. Not only was every TV network saturated with investigators of every
ilk, but the big screen was hit with dozens of features, including “The Long
Goodbye” (1973), “Chinatown” (1974) remakes of “Farewell My Lovely” (1975), and
“The Big Sleep” (1978), plus lighter versions of the genre such as “The Late
Show” (1977) and “The Big Fix” (1978). “St. Ives” fits into the list somewhere,
if only because it was probably made to catch the wave created by “Chinatown.”
It’s not nearly as good, but it has many fine moments and is more watchable than
you might think.
First
of all, the film looks great. Cinematographer Lucian Ballard, who worked with
the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah, finds the right tone for an LA
where it’s always just past sundown, a low rent LA of crowded diners, crappy
motels, and garages where cars are outfitted with armor plating. Also, J. Lee
Thompson, a versatile and underrated director (“Guns of Navarone” “Cape Fear”)
moves the story along at a brisk step. There’s a great scene early on where
Bronson is thrown down a freight elevator shaft and has to scramble his way to
safety before he’s crushed; it’s as intense as anything Thompson directed in his
long career.
The
cast features a pleasing collection of journeymen and fringe contenders,
including the likes of Houseman, Maximillian Schell, Elisha Cook Jr., Michael
Lerner, Harris Yulan, Harry Guardino, Daniel J. Travanti, and Dana Elcar. You’ll
even see Jeff Goldbloom and Robert Englund as hoodlums who learn that one
shouldn’t mess with Charles Bronson, even when he’s not in vigilante mode.
Jacqueline Bisset is here, too, for movies of this sort require a femme fatale.
She doesn’t quite cut it – she’s too urbane - but her wet t-shirt scene in “The
Deep” was coming up soon and all would be forgiven.
“St.
Ives” loses steam during a second half mired in car chases and dreary detective
work. Lalo Shifrin’s scratchy guitar and bongo soundtrack fails, too, sounding
more appropriate for an episode of ‘Baretta’. There’s a decent shootout at the
end, and a couple of twists that we don’t see coming, but nothing in the film’s
second half lives up to the promise of the first, when Bronson was discovering
bodies stuffed into dryers, and Houseman was huffing and puffing like Sidney
Greenstreet.
The
movie flopped when it was originally released in the late summer of 1976.
Audiences and critics alike couldn’t quite accept Bronson as a thinking,
methodical character. One newspaper headline roared, “Is Bronson Going Soft?”
Bronson couldn’t win. His violent movies were criticized for playing to the
rabble, but when he tried to change, reviewers seemed indifferent, or in some
cases, downright disappointed. “Bronson,” wrote a Pittsfield MA critic, “should
be ashamed of himself.”
Bronson
appeared in a few movies during this period that seemed to be a conscious break
from his usual fare. There was “Breakheart Pass”, an interesting murder mystery
set aboard a train in the 1800s, and a comedy western called “From Noon Till
Three.” But as usually happens when a well-known star tries something different,
these movies were a hard sell. LA critic Charles Champlin called “St. Ives”
“competent but uninspired,” and said that Bronson, “continues to be a strong and
attractive figure, even when he has as little to do as stroll through this
charade.”
Was
Bronson disillusioned by the cold reception given to “St. Ives”? If the movie
had been a success, would he have considered playing more characters like Ray
St. Ives, a fellow described in The New York Times as “….the kind of private-eye
role that Humphrey Bogart used to do." I’d like to think that if this film had
been a success, Bronson might have continued to evolve as an actor, rather than
spending his later years grinding out the “Death Wish” sequels.
What
I like best about “St. Ives” is that Bronson seems to be having fun. And he’s
not half-bad. He was certainly not a Neanderthal who couldn’t handle dialog. He
speaks the one liners and wisecracks with a surprising dryness, such as when
some thugs rob him of 50 bucks and complain that he doesn’t have more money on
him. "It only took you five minutes to get it," Bronson says. "That's $600 an
hour..." Good stuff. Bronson may not deliver it the way Richard Dreyfuss would
have, but Dreyfuss probably couldn’t climb out of an elevator shaft.
Still,
there’s a telling moment late in the movie when Bronson pulls a gun. His eyes
turn black and the gun seems an extension of his arm. While watching this scene
I was reminded of something I once read about Buffalo Bill Cody – that his
popularity was largely due to his looking better on horseback than any other
man. And Bronson, too, I could argue, simply looked better with a gun in his
hand than any other actor. And he didn’t need the comically huge hardware of
Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, either. Bronson looked dangerous even with a small
pistol. Perhaps it was inevitable that he would resume making violent pictures
and leave the more subtle characters behind. But in “St. Ives”, he was
compelling without leaving the streets awash in blood. Bronson was better than
anyone knew.
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