Considering the Films of Monte Hellman in Terms of Auteur Theory
To consider Monte Hellman an auteur director, it is necessary to distance
Hellman from his early assignment work for the likes of Roger Corman (The
Beast From
complete creative control. To consider him anything less than a true American
auteur on the basis of his early work would mean that the likes of Francis Coppola
should also not be considered an authentic auteur on the basis of his own Corman
work (Dementia Thirteen). Hellman’s crucial body of work begins with 1965’s
Ride the Whirlwind and ends with 1988’s Iguana. Since Iguana, Hellman has
completed only one other film to date. Unfortunately, this film, Silent Night Deadly
Night 3, finds him back in the role as a mere director-for-hire for a sequel in a
vulgar horror franchise. Wollen says that “(t)he auteur theory…insists that the
spectator has to work at reading the text.” (579) Indeed, this is the best way to
approach the films/texts of Monte Hellman.
Beginning with Ride the Whirlwind, Hellman created the first of his existential
masterpieces. As noted in a Reel.com interview, Hellman indicates that he works
more closely with screenwriters than do many of his peers. Hellman states that he
was literally sequestered in a small room with Whirlwind writer and star Jack
Nicholson. Hellman’s guiding hand ensures that his own existential sensibilities
are firmly engrained in that, and subsequent films. This tact is part-and-parcel
of the auteur’s internal structure. In Ride the Whirlwind the traditional Western
motifs of the Hero Ideal and the strict dichotomy of Hero-Villain is eschewed in
favor of a more realistic structural setup of three cowboys who are inadvertently
mistaken for members of an outlaw gang by a group of vigilantes. Trapped in
a ranch house with an innocent family and surrounded by the vigilantes, the
inarticulate cowboys are faced with some very difficult choices. Their predicament
is completely random. They are caught up in the proverbial Existential Whirlwind
and must ride it to its dreadful conclusion. The men are not tough guys in the John
characters in the Western genre. Perhaps the most properly considered antecedents
of Hellman’s characters are the ambiguous “heroes” of the Boetticher-Scott cycle of
films of the 1950s. This is not to say that Hellman is derivative; far from it. In fact,
his characters are uniquely his own, which begs not only the conclusion that
Hellman is a genuine auteur, but the question as to whether or not, as Wollen
suggests, that the auteur film is constructed a posteriori. (576) If, as I understand
the term, Wollen is suggesting that the critical elements of a particular film’s
construct are necessarily discernable as the work of an auteur only through
empirical analysis, the answer must be “yes,” although one must acknowledge
a certain a priori, intuitive element in the critical process, as well.
With 1967’s The Shooting, which was shot back-to-back with Ride the
Whirlwind (although released later), Hellman creates an even more ambiguous
and bleak Existential interpretation of the Western genre. This time, however,
the film is decidedly more surreal in its presentation than its predecessor.
The screenwriter of The Shooting is Carole Eastman (writing under a
pseudonym). Once again, Hellman insinuates his sensibilities into the screenplay
in classically auteur fashion. That is to say, one cannot imagine any other
filmmaker, particularly Hellman’s contemporaries, creating such a unique
vision in the Western milieu. One wonders what would have been made of the
script in anyone else’s hands. The answer is: It undoubtedly would not have
been made at all. The Shooting is such a rarified bit of work, like the later works
of David Lynch, that it must be considered the prototypical “Hellman Film.”
Notably, this film marks the beginning of four consecutive films that Hellman
was to make with the brilliant character actor Warren Oates. It seems that
with his discovery of Oates, Hellman found his psychic-and-creative “Other.”
While one must unequivocally consider Hellman the auteur of The Shooting,
Warren Oates must equally be considered the auteur of the character Willett
Gashade. Gashade may be considered Hellman’s Meursault, as he somewhat
impassively takes a job leading a woman across the desert towards an end she
will not disclose. “It’s just a feeling I’ve got; something I’ve got to see through,”
Gashade tells his child-like friend Coley, who accompanies Gashade and the woman
into the wilderness. Soon, the weirdness of the situation takes on new dimensions
as a spectral figure appears on the horizon, following the group. The woman
inexplicably shoots her own horse dead and the spectral figure makes his presence
more firmly felt in the persona of a hired gun meant to ensure that Gashade
does not stray from the path. Coley is left behind to die in the desert, as the
gunman compels him to give his horse to the woman. Coley finds a dying man
in the desert and offers him candy…
Each of these conceits is played out in a dry, muted, eerily sub-emotional level.
Motive is unknown, possibly even to the characters themselves. Everyone involved
in this strange quest seems to be strapped to an inexorable clockwork, heading
towards the terminus of their respective existential manifestations. The fruition of
the quest ends bizarrely and ambiguously, as Gashade and the woman face
Gashade’s doppelganger (or twin brother) in a Zapruder-like shooting sequence
that leaves the viewer with many more questions than the film ultimately answers.
This ambiguity is a signature of Hellman’s unique style, and appears in his
subsequent films to one degree or another.
Hellman’s next film firmly ensconces the director into the pantheon of Great
Auteurs. It is 1971’s Two-Lane Blacktop. Using Will Corry’s original story as
the catalyst (as Wollen describes it – 576) for his own, unique visionary tale,
Hellman had commissioned a complete rewrite from Rudy Wurlitzer, author
of the underground novel Nog. The rewriting process, on which Hellman once
again worked closely with his screenwriter, transformed a Disney-esque farce into
a darkly humorous existential meditation on self-identity. Tellingly, the characters
in the film are never referred to by name; Warren Oates is GTO (named after the
automobile he drives), James Taylor is The Driver, Dennis Wilson is The Mechanic,
and Laurie Byrd is The Girl. Taylor and Wilson cross the continental
in a random pursuit of street car races. The money they raise from these illegal
races is just enough to keep them and their 1955 Chevy going until the next race.
Their existence is Spartan, perhaps even Zen-like in its simplicity. It is more likely,
however that Hellman does not intend the viewer to regard Taylor and Wilson
as wandering monks. Perhaps a better analogy would be that of Kurosawa’s
eponymous Yojimbo, a masterless samurai whose “zeal for the game” seems to
be his sole raison d’etra. As in The Shooting, the “quest” motif is very near the
surface of the film, although the quest in Two-Lane Blacktop seems to have
no beginning or end, only an eternal middle. Into this setting Laurie Byrd and
Warren Oates find themselves randomly intersecting into the existence of the racers.
Byrd, a shameless hippy, gets into the Chevy while the Driver and Mechanic
eat at a roadside diner. Wordlessly, the pair drive away with her in the back seat.
Oates, on the other hand, portrays a middle-aged, congenital liar who picks
up various hitchhikers and tells each a very different, colorful story about his
own background. He finds himself goaded into a race against the Chevy for
the pink slips to the cars. The brilliant maneuver by Hellman here is that the
the car race doesn’t go anywhere. It is basically an exercise in existential inertia,
as the dueling racers stop to eat together, repair each other’s cars, and race other
cars. In this sense, Hellman uniquely creates a claustrophobic metaphor for
pointless, insular human existence. For instance, even though the film is ostensibly
about a cross-country car race, the characters are usually shot in tight,
claustrophobic automobile interiors, or in rural diners, bars, and motel rooms.
When the characters are outdoors, it is usually in inky darkness or in a rain storm.
There is no sense of the expansiveness of the countryside one might normally
expect from a traditional car race picture like The Great Race or Those Daring
Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies. In fact, Will Corry’s original story has
been described by Hellman as being something akin to the Herbie films. That
such a genesis for a film project could serve as a catalyst for such a distinct
cinematic vision is a testament to Hellman’s auteur genius. He is so existentially
demanding of his story and his audience on this film that he actually ends the film
by simulating the print catching and burning in the projector. Hellman has said
that this caused the less imaginative projectionists who screened the film to excise
those frames as “damaged.” They actually cut them from the prints and returned
cans to the distributor without Hellman’s now famous (non-) ending extant!**
The next film in his auteur series is 1974’s Cockfighter. Hellman has said
that he was not satisfied with the outcome on this picture and the reason is
again a testament to his unique vision. Not content with Charles Willeford’s
screenplay from his own novel, Hellman found himself at the mercy of
producer Roger Corman, who only allowed a timeframe of two weeks for
rewrites. In the end, Hellman shot from a script that did not satisfy him, but
the resulting film is quite good and in line with Hellman’s overall vision
of the “quest” motif and self-identity. Another stellar performance by
Oates, Frank Mansfield is a braggart on the Southern cockfight circuit who
loses a tournament because, his friend tells him, he has a “big mouth.”
The rest of the movie is simply the mechanics of his quest for that prize.
Once again shot in a bleak style, Hellman immersed himself in the cockfight
milieu of the American South, and the results are palpably authentic. He even
shot on location at real tournaments, and many roosters were killed as a result
of the shooting process. I think the key difference of this film to
Blacktop is that Frank’s process of self-definition reaches its terminus at
the cockfighting championship, which makes him a more self-aware existential
anti-hero than any of the racers in the previous film. Once again, aesthetic
execution is one of the keys to considering this film part of the Hellman
auteur canon. It is also notable that Hellman never worked with Corman after
this film, and Corman released the film in several cuts and under several titles.
It was one of Corman’s few money losers upon initial release.
Hellman’s next film finds him working on a delirious Spaghetti Western called,
China 9, Liberty 37, released in 1978. This would be Hellman’s last film to star
Warren Oates, who died in 1982 at age fifty-three. Another meditative piece by
Hellman, he essentially turns this western subgenre on its head by offering up
a tale in which sex and betrayal are tempered by the bond of friendship. Oates
portrays a former killer-for-hire who has married a gentle Englishwoman and
settled into the frontier as a miner. The railroad company that once employed
him wants his land, but he will not give it up. The railroad offers condemned
prisoner Clayton Drumm (Fabio Testi) amnesty if he will kill Sabenek (Oates).
So far, so traditional. However, the film takes its auteur twist when Drumm
befriends Sabanek and refuses to kill him. This new found friendship does not
preclude Drumm from bedding Sabanek’s wife, however. Sabanek beats his
wife and she stabs him with a kitchen knife. Believing him dead, she leaves
and joins with Drumm. Sabanek is very much alive, however, and he goes in
pursuit of the pair. At the same time, the railroad has hired a gang to kill
both men and an uneasy alliance is formed. While most of this may sound
programmatic, the film is handled deftly by Hellman, who co-wrote the
screenplay. In terms of style, the film is quite similar to Hellman’s two
earlier westerns; the photography is muted and the pace is atypically
deliberate. The only western outside of Hellman’s oeuvre that is similarly
muted and deliberate is Stan Dragoti’s Dirty Little Billy (1972), which
was undoubtedly heavily influenced by Hellman.
The last film in what can properly be called Hellman’s auteur canon is
1988’s Iguana. Once again, Hellman co-wrote the screenplay for the film, and
the catalyst was an obscure Spanish novel by Alberto Vázquez Figueroa.
The story centers around a deformed sailor who jumps ship and sets up his
own kingdom in the
the sailor enslaves them. This film another in Hellman’s line of cinematic existential
dread. One notable scene has the sailor-king order one castaway to behead another
for some petty crime. The man initially refuses, so the sailor-king tells him he
will give the condemned man the opportunity to kill the would-be executioner –
giving each man the opportunity to spare or kill in succession until somebody
dies. The would-be executioner abjures any sense of Free Will and kills the
condemned man he vowed to spare – not wanting to give that man the opportunity
to change places with him. Once again, one is given the distinct impression that if
Hellman had not made this challenging, brooding masterpiece, it never would have
been made at all. Stylistically, he again employs muted color photography and
much of the action takes place in various caves on the island; there is nothing
beautiful or expansive about the island itself. It is bleak and barren. Its inhabitants
are mostly in chains. Some of the prisoners, when given a chance at freedom,
actually subvert their prospects of freedom and elect to stay on the island, enslaved
to the deformed man.
Hellman meets the standard of the auteur mantle, as espoused by Wollen,
by having created a body of work that reflects a uniquely “Hellmanesque”
worldview. Like a Pollack painting or a Coltrane tune, each of Monte Hellman’s
films is immediately recognizable as the creation of its “author.” Through his
exploration of consistent thematic topics – notably existentialism and self-identity –
as well as consistent aesthetic applications of photography, dialogue, and sound.
It is with these consideration in mind that I believe Monte Hellman has earned
his place alongside John Huston, Jean-Luc Goddard, Jean Pierre Mellville,
Werner Herzog, Francis Coppola, Robert Bresson, John Ford, Luis Bunuel,
and a very few others as a quintessential member of the true Auteur Pantheon.
Primary Work Cited
Wollen, Peter. “The Auteur Theory (From Signs and Meaning in Cinema.)
Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen.
Secondary Works Cited
http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/hellman/2
Audio Commentary Tracks by Monte Hellman on the Following DVDs:
Cockfighter, Iguana, Two-Lane Blacktop.
Lecture / Q&A Session at the American Cinematheque by Monte Hellman,
June 2004, in