4,000 Blows

Hollywood history provides several instances of savvy actors who, understanding the rules, deliberately take on spleen-threatening roles purely to satisfy the public's dark, primordial, sadomasochistic urges, then move on to parts that allow them to be a bit more debonair. This was the course charted by Humphrey Bogart, who adeptly leaped from playing psychopathic gangsters in The Petrified Forest and The Roaring Twenties to guys who smoke stylishly and wear homburgs in films like The Two Mrs. Carrolls and Sabrina. On a much smaller scale, this is also what happened to Charles Bronson, who started out by getting his face battered into hamburger patties in a number of mostly undistinguished American films until the French decided that he could really act and turned him into a brooding, existentialist antihero in a couple of undistinguished films where he did not need to get his face battered into hamburger patties. As usual, the French got things wrong.

Perhaps most prominent among actors who, cognizant of the public's secret desire to see them pulverized, used cinematic abuse to vault to major stardom is Marlon Brando. Brando was savagely beaten in The Wild One. Then, in the climactic scene of On the Waterfront, Lee J. Cobb and his nefarious henchmen trash Brando so badly that his face looks like minute steak, with huge gobs of viscous material dangling from his eyes, brows, nose and cheeks, creating the unnerving impression that the actor is sporting a Fu Manchu made entirely out of blood. A less calculating movie star might have said that this was enough carnage for one career. Not Brando. Just to make sure that the public wouldn't write off these ass-whippings as flukes or phone-in jobs, Brando arranged to get himself bullwhipped in One-Eyed Jacks, and for added safety, he also had his hand broken, sealing a lifelong covenant with the public: I took my whuppings when I was young, so you have no right to complain about how fat, cranky and self-indulgent I get when I am old.

It's the same story with Clint Eastwood. Having started out as a TV cowboy of minor distinction, Eastwood gained favorable notices for getting his face kicked in by a bunch of ornery cowpokes late in A Fistful of Dollars. In fact, the public liked this--particularly the eye half-closed by a sea of caked blood, a much-admired grace note--so much, they immediately began making Eastwood a cult star. But Eastwood, like Brando before him, wanted to make sure that he had the foundation for late-career Life Achievement awards, so he quickly came back for more in Hang 'em High. In the opening scene of this film, Clint is cornered by a bunch of obnoxious, self-involved vigilantes who rope him like a steer, drag him across a river, beat his face in, and hang him from a tree. After being miraculously rescued, he spends the rest of the movie tracking down this passel of substandard lynchers, periodically exposing the garish rope marks around his neck just to get innocent bystanders cranked up. And before the end of this smorgasbord of physiognomic abuse, he gets his face repeatedly smashed into the ground by Bruce Dern.

Why did Eastwood agree to take so much crap in these films? Because he knew that by sating the public's sadistic urges early in his career, he could maneuver himself into a position where he would be able to wreak vengeance on his tormentors many years later. And in such lugubrious, rain-soaked films as Bird and The Bridges of Madison County, he has done just that. By cleverly manipulating French critics and their American vassals into proclaiming him an auteur, the punching bag of spaghetti Western days has given it right back to the public in spades. You stick it in my ear, says Clint, and I sure as hell am going to stick it in yours. Incidentally, Eastwood is the only certified auteur ever to costar in a movie with Charlie Sheen.

Anyone who doubts the validity of my theory about the public's passion for seeing leading men getting fucked over should take another look at Martin Scorsese's rambunctious remake of Cape Fear. The unsophisticated viewer could easily be forgiven for thinking that Cape Fear is a movie about revenge, sexual repression, class warfare, or glaring inequities in the judicial system. But in reality Cape Fear is a movie about two good-looking guys who get a rush from jacking up other guys' faces.

Cape Fear is a bonanza for closet sadists because it features not one, but two, leading men getting physiognomically nuked. First, Robert De Niro, previously fucked up royal in Raging Bull, gets the shit beaten out of him by a bunch of goons in Nick Nolte's employ. But then De Niro turns the tables on his adversary by strangling him, kicking him in the head while he lies bound helplessly on the ground and, just to add a little flourish, spitting revolting cigar fragments into his face while getting in the mood to rape his entire family. Luckily, Juliette Lewis, never to be trusted in situations like this, surprises De Niro by setting his face on fire. The surprisingly resilient De Niro reemerges from the watery depths into which he has plunged to cool himself off, so that he and Nolte can batter each other's faces with heavy rocks.

The movie seems ready to achieve a highly satisfying apotheosis when Nolte raises a boulder high above De Niro's head and prepares to smash it wide open. But just then, the boat fragment that De Niro is chained to drifts off into the storm, and we never get to see the blood and guts and fragments of the sinus cavity and caved-in orbital lobes that we've all been waiting for. This is a classic case of what is known in the trade as coitus interruptus cinematicus: the audience feels cheated because it doesn't get to see De Niro's brains trickling out of his eye sockets. Next time out, Marty should bear in mind the famous adage: If you're going to start with cannons, you've got to finish with dynamite. Otherwise you can end up making interminable, star-less epics about Buddhists in tiny, mountainous Third World countries that nobody but movie stars cares about.

Let me emphasize one point here: I am not arguing that all onscreen beatings are a sign of psychosis on the part of the moviegoing public. Nor am I suggesting that movie stars getting beaten or mutilated is always a bad thing. I was happy to see Eric Roberts get his thumb chopped off in The Pope of Greenwich Village. I have never been upset by the amount of abuse Chuck Norris takes in his films. I, like many other viewers, was more than happy to see Spike Lee get his face smashed in near the end of Mo' Better Blues. And personally speaking, Jean-Claude Van Damme couldn't get crucified often enough to suit me.

Nor am I arguing that a good beating or mutilation is always a passport to international stardom. Kyle MacLachlan got beat up pretty bad in Blue Velvet and he's still scuffling around in the vestibule of stardom. Jeff Daniels got the shit kicked out of him by Ray Liotta in Something Wild, then took a weird detour into comedy where he literally ended up on the shitter. Chuck Norris has been whipped on good for more than two decades, yet he still remains little more than a poor man's Charles Bronson. As for Mickey Rourke, well, I'm sorry I brought it up.

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