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DVD SAVANT

WUSA
Savant Blu-ray Review


WUSA
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date July 23, 2013 / 24.95
Starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins, Laurence Harvey, Pat Hingle, Cloris Leachman, Don Gordon, Michael Anderson Jr., Leigh French, Bruce Cabot, Moses Gunn, Wayne Rogers, Robert Quarry, Skip Young, Clifton James.
Cinematography
Richard Moore
Film Editor Bob Wyman
Original Music Lalo Schifrin
Written by Robert Stone from his novel A Hall of MIrrors
Produced by John Foreman, Paul Newman
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Olive Films is reissuing some of its earlier DVD titles on improved Blu-ray; I've made some changes to this review from early 2011, and assessed the new HD presentation.

At the tail end of the 1960s a number of Hollywood celebrities became personally concerned by the rising unrest in America. A new generation of filmmakers and stars no longer had to fear blacklisting, and the openness of the new ratings system made it acceptable (and rather trendy) to include overt political content in feature films. Fresh from the success of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Paul Newman decided to produce Robert Stone's provocative thriller about political extremism, A Hall Of Mirrors. After spending almost $5 million filming on location in New Orleans, Newman's company returned with a show nobody liked. Paramount re-titled it WUSA in the feeble hope of attracting the audience for Robert Altman's M*A*S*H. Just the same, the picture became one of Paul Newman's biggest flops.

Robert Stone's screenplay finds a number of rootless individuals adrift in New Orleans. The good-hearted Geraldine (Woodward) is a sometime prostitute; she carries a bad facial scar from an unfortunate encounter. The crippled Philomene (Cloris Leachman) likes Geraldine and loans her space in her apartment. Disturbed ex- Peace Corps volunteer Rainey (Anthony Perkins) takes a job making a survey of welfare recipients. He enjoys snapping photos in the poorer parts of town but senses that something is not right about his job. The local parish fixer Clotho (Moses Gunn) seems to know more about the survey than Rainey does. Clotho allows the awkward Rainey to go about his business, even though the information he gathers about the welfare cases makes little sense.

Journeyman radio announcer Rheinhardt (Paul Newman) arrives in town and heads straight for the bars. When a local pimp threatens Geraldine for working independently, Rheinhardt picks her up and they take an apartment in Rainey's building. Rheinhardt finds an announcer job at radio WUSA, a station that offers what it calls "a point of view" for Real Americans. Despite his ever-present thermos of booze, Reinhardt performs professionally, giving the station's slanted news copy the desired conservative spin. Station owner Bingamton (Pat Hingle) envisions him as a fresh voice for his political movement. Bingamton keeps alluding to a reactionary take-back of the country, a new wave that will come sooner than anyone expects.

Rainey challenges Rheinhardt to defend the twisted politics of his employers, but the alcoholic DJ refuses to engage in a debate. Geraldine sympathizes with the fragile Rainey, who has discovered that Bingamton has commissioned the bogus survey to inflame the public about welfare cheats. The WUSA scheme is to cut off state benefits and "starve" the poorer, and mostly black, population out of New Orleans. To this end the radio station sponsors a rally in a large stadium to promote its conservative candidates. Geraldine attends, and Rheinhardt takes his place on the dais with Bingamton's political cronies. While a brass band plays and costumed gunmen act out a symbolic shootout on the stadium floor, Rainey climbs into the high rafters ... with a gun.

Despite its high-quality stack of actors and ideas, WUSA never delivers on its promise to become a political thriller. The screen time spent in examining the believable characters played by stars Newman and Joanne Woodward seems unrelated to the story's center of interest, the barely-glimpsed conspiracy. Geraldine describes herself as "too dumb for the phone company and too old for the five and dime." When Rainey goads Rheinhardt to show a conscience about the deal-making he sees back at the station, the DJ's response is to turn hostile. As much as this mess of disenchantment and apathy reflects reality, it only frustrates the audience that expects heroic action from Paul Newman. We keep expecting Rheinhardt to find his moral footing and stop being so passive.

Newman and his director Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) retain most of the book's characters, using too many good actors in roles that contribute little to the story. Clifton James (a sailor), Tol Avery and Skip Jones (politicians), Bruce Cabot and Robert Quarry (glimpsed only briefly) and Michael Anderson Jr. (a hippie musician in a full beard) are admittedly colorful, but little else. As a crooked preacher, Laurence Harvey adds sparkle to a couple of scenes. Wayne Rogers has a fine scene arguing with the irate Anthony Perkins in a Playboy Club. But too many of the characters are given too little to do, like Cloris Leachman's interesting Philomene. The narrative disconnect in this movie is severe.

The WUSA conspiracy probably seemed far-fetched in 1970. Today plays like business as usual: a political coalition uses the power of radio to spread intentionally dishonest and deceitful messages. The underworld boss Clotho has been paid off to cooperate with the fake welfare survey. Pat Hingle's Bingamton, a powerful man with several elected officials at his beck and call, is quite a prophetic character. After the experience of Hurricane Katrina his attitude toward the poor blacks of New Orleans seems entirely credible. Although Bingamton's minions behave like conspirators, they're not doing much more than "energizing their power base within the white community". Except for a couple of smug slogans and its use of the American flag in its logo, we hear none of WUSA's on-air propaganda. Rheinhardt is never shown delivering a political speech on the air. We hear nothing inflammatory.

There is no visible liberal opposition to speak of. Newman's cynical Rheinhardt is a sell-out who doesn't care what WUSA is up to so long as he gets his salary. The preacher is a fraud and Rheinhardt's pot-smoking neighbor Bogdonovich (Don Gordon) is apathetic. Geraldine despairs at Rheinhardt's lack of concern, but can do nothing. The overly emotional Rainey does find a welfare cheat or two among the cases he interviews, which actually supports Bingamton's position. Rainey's nut job character comes off as something a reactionary propagandist would invent to criticize Kennedy liberalism: he's a Peace Corps volunteer and a crazed assassin? Which side is Paul Newman on?

Director Stuart Rosenberg gives his actors space to perform but fails to bring WUSA to anything resembling a satisfying conclusion. The right-wing hate rally at the stadium is an inept re-run of the finish of John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. Rheinhardt's hippie neighbors are allowed to entertain at the rally, an unexplained choice that makes little sense. Rheinhardt is about to speak when gunshots ring out, at which point the movie falls apart in confusion. Laurence Harvey's preacher advises Rheinhardt that the WUSA gang is finished and that they'd all best leave town. It makes more sense that the publicity from the attempted assassination would actually strengthen Bingamton's hand. Although the mounted police use the chaos to attack the protesting poor, the hapless Geraldine is inadvertently victimized because she's caught with somebody else's marijuana stash. The penalty for possession in Louisiana is ten to fifteen years in prison.

Critics of the time acknowledged WUSA's parallels to earlier political films like Frank Capra's Meet John Doe but blamed its failure on an aimless script and Rosenberg's limp direction. Many felt that Anthony Perkins had found his best role since Psycho, yet Rainey comes off as an accumulation of tics and mannerisms. He's too easily set up as a misguided martyr, beaten to death by Bingamton's mob of hateful whites. The film's passive-apocalyptic tone has more in common with Nathanael West's novella The Day of the Locust.

A committed anti-war protester, Paul Newman ranked high on President Nixon's "unfriendly" list. He and Joanne Woodward did their best to promote WUSA and are on record as complaining about Paramount's unenthusiastic support for the film. In at least one interview Newman hinted at political interference. But ten years later, his final verdict was that WUSA was "a film of incredible potential which the producer, the director and I loused up. We tried to make it political, and it wasn't."  1

It wasn't?


Olive Films' Blu-ray of WUSA is a good but not exceptional transfer of a feature that had never been released on video until 2011. The 2:35 image is clean and bright, and is both sharper and more stable than the earlier DVD. The improved audio helps with some dialogue lines slurred by the actors -- Paul Newman has a habit of muttering his dialogue at his shoes. Also a big improvement for the Blu-ray is the choice of an original advertising image for the package cover art.

The disc offers no subtitles and no extras. This is a shame, as author-screenwriter Robert Stone, a counterculture figure who also wrote the influential book Dog Soldiers, shows an uncommonly keen appreciation of political trends. Several critics hinted that Stone's Bingamton character was based on oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, who in the 1950s backed a syndicated conservative political TV show called Facts Forum. Hunt is also frequently named in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  2


On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, WUSA Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good --
Video: Good +
Sound: Good
Supplements: none
Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? N0; Subtitles: None
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: January 22, 2011 -- August 1, 2013

Republished by permission of Turner Classic Movies.

Footnote:

1. TIME magazine, December 6, 1982.
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2. Valued correspondent "B" checked in on the DVD release, 2.11.11:

Dear Glenn: I sort of liked WUSA back in 1970... uh, that is, I liked the idea that somebody had made a movie about those issues back then. I had heard some of the Hunt-backed Life Line radio broadcasts in Dallas; it was pretty clear to me what station WUSA was supposed to be, and who Pat Hingle was more or less playing. The problem was that Stuart Rosenberg was absolutely not the guy to make that picture. (How Newman could even have taken a 'phone call from this guy after this film opened is a complete mystery to me. Incredibly, he made two more mediocre pictures with Rosenberg.) The film was a tremendous disappointment, obviously, but it fascinated me and led me to read Stone's A Hall of Mirrors, which I found quite interesting. I was not surprised to learn that this has never been on video before.

I still don't understand why we never see Newman doing much broadcast work in the film, giving political speeches, even any incendiary, provocative talk -- this would seem to me to be the heart of the performance, where the actor could show us how cynical his character truly is, and show him working up the emotions of the unwashed masses. I don't recall how specific Stone's novel is about the Rheinhardt character's broadcasts, but I think it at least depicts him in action. [It's been forty years, but I basically recall Newman simply walking and driving through New Orleans in the movie -- I barely remember him doing anything.] Could they have shot some tough talk scenes that they ultimately thought were too hot for the time, or even might reflect poorly on Newman's liberal image?

Without Reinhardt's active participation -- as, say, a dark John Doe -- in the background, there's not much really driving the picture. I like Perkins here more than you do, but he is not well controlled by Rosenberg; there still isn't enough to his character. Woodward is good, but her character is kind of lost in the shuffle. I still remember the audience groaning at the absurd plot device when she's caught with the grass. The rally at the end is both poorly staged and irritatingly unfocused -- I liked that you mentioned the nonsensical presence of Reinhardt's neighbors performing!

Whether it cost $5 million or $3.5 million (a figure widely reported at the time), this was an expensive shoot in '69/'70 for such an uncommercial idea; I remember thinking at the time that it could have been made as (or more) effectively for a lot less money by a fast, creative filmmaker. Writing about the new Olive disc the other day, Dave Kehr all but accused Robert Altman of plagiarizing the picture when he later made Nashville. I strongly disagree with Kehr's assessment, but I believe Altman would have made a lot better movie out of A Hall of Mirrors than this thing... Best, Always -- B.
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DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2013 Glenn Erickson

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