Look. I am second to no one on my love for the screen work of the late Alan Rickman. I saw Die Hard in preview, before anybody knew it would become a classic of its kind and a model for many inferior films, including its own sequels, that came after it. I knew he was a star the second he opened his mouth. Some of you who had seen his stage work already knew it.
So fine; I am perfectly willing to tolerate people who think Hans Gruber was the greatest screen villain of all time, even if I think that’s a bit much. I think it’s saying a lot to put him in the top ten.
But comes the point where somebody says something that you have to be an ignorant know-nothing to even want to say, as in this VULTURE tribute by Adam Sternbergh.
And I’ve got to tell you, this article embodies the bane of the movie-journalism internet, the article that seems to be written by people who know nothing about movies, prior to about 1990.
We have all seen movie lists that purport to tell us the scariest movies ever, the greatest movie villains ever, the best fight scenes ever, the word “ever” always a part of the title even though no entry in them dates back to — if you’re lucky — 1970; it’s usually more like 1980.
That is because movie list articles are often written with the care lazy students give to term papers they didn’t study for and yet have to hand in for an hour: i.e. whatever knowledge the writer already has, whatever arguments they have read by others, whatever thoughts don’t warm the insides of their skull.
But this one kind of digs a new sub-basement.
I quote, “What distinguishes Rickman’s performance {in Die Hard} is simple: Rickman is an excellent actor. This had never been a qualification for movie villains before.”
Seriously, what the fuck?
What part of your ass are you blowing that out of?
Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, or in Notorious? Laurence Olivier, in Marathon Man or Spartacus? James Mason, in North by Northwest? Movie villains were never played by excellent actors before?
Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West? Really?
Let the paragraph play out.
“What distinguishes Rickman’s performance is simple: Rickman is an excellent actor. This had never been a qualification for movie villains before. It had certainly not been a qualification in the nascent genre of American action thrillers.”
That depends on how you define “action,” of course; there were always movies that ended in gunfights, movies that contained or climaxed with action set pieces, but for many years after the evaporation of the silent, what you got instead was something I find superior, the drama or thriller with action in it, where character and performance joined with action in the creation of fully-rounded, exciting stories. Because action scenes are hard to film and because the audiences of the past were expected to have attention spans greater than that of a gnat, most movies didn’t go from action scene to action scene for most of their running time; other elements had to have their turn. And so there were fully-rounded, understandable villains, played with nuance, all over the place: Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo, Robert Ryan in Bad Day At Black Rock, Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours; all movies that at their key moments revolved around life or death situations, and in many cases whether it was the good guy or the bad guy who got to shoot first. You want to praise Alan Rickman in Die Hard, you can go ahead, I won’t stop you. I will help you carry that banner. But to argue that he represents the first time an American movie bad guy was required to be a great actor is to visibly demonstrate a knowledge of film that is about one finger wide and once micron deep.
More: “We’d seen oleaginous European bad guys, sure, and trigger-happy psychopaths, but never a character whose elegance and savagery are so convincingly and dexterously intertwined.”
Okay, so this sentence is less crazy-making, because it’s represented as a matter of degree, not kind. You could argue that Rickman’s Hans Gruber was the high-water mark to that date; I wouldn’t necessarily agree, but I do concede that “best” here is within the margin of error. But by God are there certainly movies that present room for debate, at the very least. Orson Welles, in The Third Man, for instance. Cultured, brilliant, charming, a guy you immediately wanted to have a nice long talk with — but a monster. Joseph Cotten was pretty damned gentlemanly in Hitchcock’s Shadow of A Doubt, for instance: a character who was both a loving uncle and a remorseless killer, a guy who could both charm you with his personal warmth and chill you to the bone with his disregard for human life, and Cotten shifted from one to another with ease, often within the same sentence. Was he better than Rickman was? That’s not the argument. Would acknowledgment that great performances existed before 1990 be inappropriate in article that presumed to make declarative statements about bests? Absolutely.
More:
“Hans Gruber is permanently perched atop every list of the Greatest Action-Movie Villains — all of which, frankly, should simply read: (1) Hans Gruber and (2) All the Other Ones — for a one very good reason: No actor before him was ever expected to be that good, and no actor after him has ever managed it. ”
I will tolerate the part before the colon, but not the part after the colon. You can say that a performer exists in rarefied air without declaring him a totally unprecedented prodigy.
“Rickman, among his many other career accomplishments, single-handedly lifted the American action genre to the outskirts of art.”
Fuck you, Howard Hawks. Fuck you, John Ford. Fuck you, Anthony Mann. Fuck you, Sam Peckinpah. Hell, fuck you, Harold Lloyd. Fuck you, Buster Keaton. You all existed before Die Hard, so you are disposable.
The point here is again not that some movie writer wrote something stupid; it is that the particular form of stupid echoes a flaw that has become the expected: the knowledge that goes back only so far, and no farther. The willing blindness. The amnesia.
It does none of us any good.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I suspect that Josh Olson, Bilge Ebiri, Faisal-Azam Qureshi, John Skipp, and other movie folk would despise the article I respond to as much as I do.
Comment By: Travis Creason
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I hate to provoke you, but this is obviously not the happiest of days for you. But since most of my online friends are mutual friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need a collective name, for meet-ups at conventions–I open the floor for suggestions . . .
Comment By: Morgan Smith
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I love it when you rant to me.
Comment By: John Skipp
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I’m actually still too pissed off at the little squeakers trying to malign Neil Gaiman to worry about this guy’s ankle-deep opinions. He meant well, I suspect. He’s just got a lot to learn.
Comment By: David Gerrold
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
This is why you not only should not read comment threads, you probably shouldn’t even read the post…. 🙂
Comment By: Mark Johnson
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
“Is it safe?”
Comment By: John Ordover
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I think you mean more along the lines of “No one exceeds my love for Alan….” not “Nobody comes second” in your first line.
Comment By: Stanton Fink
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Such slanderers deserve to have their hearts cut out with a spoon.
Comment By: Karl J Martin
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Somehow it’s the use of the word ‘oleaginous’ that I find most objectionable.
Comment By: Arthur Tiersky
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
“We’d seen oleaginous European bad guys, sure, and trigger-happy psychopaths, but never a character whose elegance and savagery are so convincingly and dexterously intertwined.”
–Sincerely, Guy Who Has Never Seen Robert Shaw in The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three
Comment By: Christopher Daley
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I agree that ignoring classic villains before is short sighted. He would have been better served saying my lifetime or modern action movies.
I know for me as a kid Die Hard was the movie and it was because of Rickman.
It was soon after that my love of film grew and I began watching every movie I could get my hands on.
Comment By: Ken Houghton
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Bloody hell; Fred McMurray was a brilliant, complex villain before Rickman hit puberty.
And don’t get us started on noir women…
Comment By: Michael Gillman
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Happy to know that Orson Wells couldn’t act. He just stumbled through that role in The Third Man.
Comment By: David Vineyard
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Ah, amazing people can even be stupid in praise of a deserving man. My best reaction is siggggghhhh….
Comment By: Tad Williams
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Don’t get angry. These people grew up in the 1980s. Many of them have never watched a black and white movie all the way through, with the possible exception of Schindler’s List.
Comment By: Christopher Daley
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Peter Lorre in M.
Comment By: Christopher Daley
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Or Raymond Burr in Rear Window.
Comment By: Edward Foy
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
But he DID shoot a man in Reno just to see him die, right?
Comment By: Erik Williams
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Do we not take away from the tribute by shitting on the tribute, and thus create a diversionary argument on what a great villain consists of? The guy who wrote this seems like he was heavily influenced by Rickman’s performance. There nothing wrong with that. It’s personal. And as you’ve illustrated, you have your own personal views on this subject matter. I commented yesterday that Rickman, especially his performance in DIE HARD, was a brick smashed on an anvil to my young life in terms of movie performances. To say we don’t serve his memory well by not agreeing with you is fucking stupid. We all pay tribute in our own way. We express it in our own way. We all have our favorite villains. Congrats on jumping on the web and shitting on someone for saying what they felt. For god’s sake we can’t allow that, allow someone to feel, even though that’s exactly what you did by expressing you FEELINGS. #Douche.
Comment By: Bess Arthur
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
mmm, Joseph Cotten…oh wait, what?
Comment By: Heather Park-Albertson
January 15th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
WTF was that Vulture reviewer smoking, to pull such twaddle out of his arse?
Comment By: Keith Beavis
January 15th, 2016 at 8:17 pm
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
January 15th, 2016 at 7:35 pm
Shooting just a few fish in this particular barrel:
John Huston, Chinatown.
Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity.
Christopher Lee, Dracula, for God’s sake.
Comment By: Pat Turner
January 15th, 2016 at 8:17 pm
Joseph Cotten…consummate actor, and damn sexy to boot. But as to the original topic, let me give you two words. “Major Straßer.” Conrad Veight was magnificent in the part. Cruel, devious, and yes, oleaginous (marvelous word, that).
Comment By: Robert Van Rens
January 15th, 2016 at 8:17 pm
I think this article was written solely because: a)cheap brown liquor and b) someone just learned the word “oleaginous”, and was _dying_, I tell you, _just dying_ for a chance to use it.
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
January 15th, 2016 at 8:17 pm
Shooting just a few fish in this particular barrel:
John Huston, Chinatown
Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity
James Cagney, White Heat
Lionel Barrymore, It’s a Wonderful Life
Angela Lansbury, The Manchurian Candidate
Christopher Lee, Dracula, for God’s sake
Comment By: Linda Robinson
January 15th, 2016 at 9:17 pm
I adored Alan Rickman as an actor. Whether he was one of the best or *the* best, well, I have no desire to get into that debate. I will agree with you, Adam-Troy, that people need to do their homework before asserting that they have The Ultimate Answer on an issue. Rickman was amazing, yes, but that doesn’t negate the talents of those who came before.
Comment By: Michael Harper
January 15th, 2016 at 9:17 pm
Is Adam Sternbergh a complete idiot? Basil Rathbone as Richard II in “Tower of London”. Boris Karloff in just about everything he did. Sydney Greenstreet. Conrad Veidt. Peter Lorre. Claude Rains. Eddie Robinson. Jimmy Cagney. Raymond Massey. Richard Widmark. Sternbergh needs to lock himself in a room with nothing but classic black and white films to watch for about forever, until he learns something. I suggest he start with “The Maltese Falcon”…
Comment By: buzz
January 15th, 2016 at 9:32 pm
If they would just label their lists “Best 21st Century Movie [Whatever]” I could live & let live
Comment By: Greg Cox
January 15th, 2016 at 11:18 pm
Joseph Wiseman in Doctor No. George Sanders in any number of movies . . ..
Comment By: Brian Salyards
January 15th, 2016 at 11:18 pm
You seem…angry
Comment By: Iain Aitken
January 15th, 2016 at 11:18 pm
At times, words fail me. this is just such an occasion.
Comment By: Greg Cox
January 15th, 2016 at 11:19 pm
That whole attitude of “nothing made before I was born counts” drives me nuts every time.
Comment By: Edward Foy
January 15th, 2016 at 11:19 pm
Even without leaving the recent era, both Tim Curry and David Warner have long been go-to actors to play villains. David Warner propably deserves to be better known than he is.
Comment By: Roxane Farrell Murray
January 15th, 2016 at 11:19 pm
Sometimes it sucks to be old and have a long memory. Ask me how I know.
Comment By: Greg Cox
January 15th, 2016 at 11:19 pm
Bottom line: Praising somebody for their sublime talent and achievements and many fine performances is altogether fitting and proper. But praising someone by dismissing everybody who came before is really not the best way to go about it . . …
Comment By: John Ordover
January 15th, 2016 at 11:19 pm
It’s also fine to say “His Hans Gruber was the first action movie villain -I ever saw- that blew me away….IOW< using your own experience as a frame of reference is fine, unless you stretch it to the infinite...
Comment By: Jay Denebeim
January 15th, 2016 at 11:19 pm
I kind of disagree about James Mason in North by Northwest. Yes he was a cultured asocial murderer, however he was mostly a distant presence and the movie was about Cary Grant’s reactions to the mostly off screen stuff Mason was doing. I think Rickman’s villein was much more interesting.
Comment By: Maxwell Murphy
January 16th, 2016 at 12:18 am
Overwrought nonsense by a nutter. Sincerely, Bill Clay.
Comment By: Liz Martinez
January 16th, 2016 at 3:19 am
A great rant!
Comment By: Peter
January 16th, 2016 at 2:44 am
RIP Alan.
90s kids. They know no better.
A pet peeve for Internet articles is the use of the expression “Sure,….”. Every second article has it…
“Sure….” Arh!!!!!
Lazy. Annoying. And stupid.
Comment By: Jan Murphy
January 16th, 2016 at 3:19 am
This whole argument reminds me of something Rickman says to Charlie Rose in an interview I saw via YouTube last night. It’s in response to a question about what Rickman says to young actors who ask him where he has trained. I suppose the young actors want to know what school to attend, like young SF writers asking whether they should go to Clarion or some other workshop.
Rickman’s response is that they should put aside acting, and go read, and travel, and develop their own taste, so that when they come to the point where they have to perform, they’ll have some substance for the work to bounce off against.
I agree that if you’re doing that kind of tribute piece or a review, talking about what a performance meant to you personally is much safer than invoking comparisons to all the other performances you haven’t seen. If you don’t know enough history, all you do is reveal how shallow your own knowledge is. This is one reason why writing praise about anything is harder than writing a piece where you slam it. (In case the video gets pulled down — this is supposed to be an interview from February 28th, 2012. I don’t remember exactly where the comment is — I’ll try to come back and put the timestamp in tomorrow.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFXRzP3iD_4&list=PLnHohZWj9zH5JcoPhTi-sMaPu5txjar4k&index=1
Comment By: Barry Vlock
January 16th, 2016 at 4:21 am
Doesn’t Anthony Hopkins count for his Hannibal Lecter?
Comment By: Rich Beilin
January 16th, 2016 at 8:17 am
Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear.