Downhill Racer

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

As I have done before, I am addressing a film that was viewed and discussed in one of my Bryn Mawr Film Institute courses. We recently analyzed the 1969 movie, Downhill Racer. This film is a character study of a man who has self-esteem issues because of where he comes from and his distant relationship with his father. He compensates, although most likely unconsciously, by aspiring to be an Olympic skier. The story explores what it takes to win in athletic competition, and in the case of the main character, the consequences of the path he has chosen. The cinematography in the film many times is shot at the skiers’ level, and we really get a feel for the speed and danger involved in the sport, which is accentuated by the sound of the skis on the snow and ice. 

The first shot in the film is of the summits of mountains. In Greek mythology, the gods lived on Mt. Olympus, which is, of course, where the Olympics acquired its name. But people do not reside there. We see a cable bringing humans to the top of the slopes so they can ski. It is not their home, but the participants in the Olympics become godlike among humans if they can excel at athletics. Chappellet (Robert Redford) looks at those mountains, wanting to be famous, as he later says, by winning the downhill event. But his incentive in the present derives from his past. It is ironic that in order to ascend Olympian heights he has chosen a sport that makes him descend the mountain, back to where mere mortals live.

Chappellet is an excellent downhill skier, but he is new to the American team, which means he ranks low in any privileges. However, he is angry that he wasn’t placed to do his run earlier in the qualifying competition. He comes off rather humorless and self-absorbed. He tells the coach, Claire (Gene Hackman), that he can’t show how good he is if he doesn’t ski before the other men who will create poor conditions by going before him. He doesn’t want to pay his dues and doesn’t seem to understand that he doesn’t show his real skill if he can’t ski under unfavorable conditions. His desire for speed on the course is mirrored by how quickly he wants to succeed.

This film does not have a great deal of dialogue, but instead mostly suggests what comprises Chappellet’s character by a few lines and mostly through images. We can see that he is a loner as he rarely associates with the other team members. When he first meets Claire while checking into the hotel, the other skiers are in a circle talking and smiling, while Chappellet stands alone. He has a roommate only because he is assigned one. Chappellet finds out the man attended prestigious Dartmouth College, which suggests the roommate comes from wealth and privilege. Chappellet just repeats the college’s name to himself as if he expected that kind of background for his roommate. So, we know that Chappellet is not a member of the upper class. We get more evidence of his social inferiority when he awkwardly tries to get a drink of water from the bathroom sink’s extended spout. He keeps staring with a puzzled expression at the bidet. When his roommate asks if he knows what it is, Chappellet says he does, not willing to expose his ignorance.

Chappellet starts out skiing well, but then wipes out on one of his attempts. He makes excuses for his failure, but Claire will have none of it and cuts him short. He tells Chappellet that he just wasn’t strong enough and will have to go home and work at being better before the next competition. Chappellet returns to his tiny hometown in Colorado. It is here that we see what drives him. His father (Walter Stroud) is mending a fence on his ranch, a practical activity. The existence here is spartan, so his dad only cares about the essentials of survival. Chappellet wants to impress his father by noting the European countries he has visited and that he is doing well in his sport. He says, “I’ll be famous. I’ll be a champion.” The father is unfazed, saying, “World’s full of ‘em.” He does not value anything that does not immediately bring in a living, which he says is the attitude of the community when they ask what his son does. Chappellet gets a drink of water and doesn’t like the way it tastes. The father says it has gone bad, as opposed to the water Chappellet drank in Europe. The poor water implies that there is no sustenance for Chappellet here. 

The next day he asks if his dad wants to take a ride in his father’s 1957 Chevy and get a drink with him. The father says no, but notes the keys are in the car, which is what his son wanted anyway, he says. Chappellet does not hesitate, gets in the car and guns it away from the ranch. Was he sincere in wanting to share a beer with his dad? Or, did he know he wouldn’t accept, and was just being polite. His desire for speed may come from his wish to get away from his father’s home. It seems significant that there is no mother present to provide an alternative to his father’s cold ways.

Chappellet drives into what looks like the only main road in the small town. He sees Lena (Carole Carle), the girl he dated. She comes over to the car when he calls her. His handsome looks and his being a success by this town’s standards make him a large fish in a small pond, as one class member stated. She gently chastises him for not telling her when he was leaving for the racing trials. He is not contrite. They drive off to a secluded area and have sex. When she tries to tell him what’s going on in her life, he is oblivious to what she says. The only comment he makes is that he asks for some chewing gum. As class members pointed out, he uses gum in other scenes which may be part of an athletic ritual, but might also denote a lower-class habit. Another classmate said that Chappellet can make love, but doesn’t know how to love, which points to his self-involvement, since he is driven by his need to win to show his worth to others who have a higher social status.

His tendency to be an outsider is shown by the many times when the other team members are socializing and Chappellet is not with them. Or, when he enters a restaurant where his colleagues are eating but sits with his back to them. At a dinner he stares at a beautiful woman, Carole (Camilla Sparv), and rudely leaves his teammates. He wants to make a play for the attractive female, but goes to the bathroom first, again to get a drink of water which symbolizes his need to strengthen his courage to approach the elegant lady. However, he is not able to connect with her at this moment. 

Carole works for a man who says he doesn't want to infringe on the athletes' amateur status, but wants them to use his skis as he tries to get free advertising. Of course, if one does become a champion, monetary gain will come through product endorsements. Claire tries to get more funding from businesses when he notes that there is not enough money for American Olympic teams. His pitch is that, “Every racer on a well-equipped winning team is a foreign sales representative for U. S. ski products. These fine young competitors that we are training are roving ambassadors for the American way of life.” He stresses that athletic competition mirrors what is great about America, which welds success in sports with capitalistic accomplishment. The film seems to suggest that competition brings out excellence in people, but it can also break those who don’t reach the finish line first, in sports, and in the area of economics.

Chappellet does meet Carole later in a bakery. He is awkward when it comes to words, as he previously didn’t want to say anything to his old girlfriend. Here, the woman offers him a piece of pastry. He first says no, but then recovers, probably realizing he faltered at expressing the social requirement to be gracious about a gift. He loves her Porsche, not only because it represents financial success, but he values it’s speed. She lets him drive it, and he races dangerously through the European roads. His driving of the sports car mirrors how fast he wanted to get away from his father, and may also show why he values a sport that extols speed. Of course, it is also exhilarating, and that is something he did not get back home on the ranch.

The two become lovers. But, he is jealous of her boss, not wanting to be beaten by someone who is more successful than he. She does not show up to meet him when he has some time off around Christmas. So, Chappellet is alone on a holiday that emphasizes being with friends and family. He sees Carole at a party later. She casually says she spent time with her family during the holidays. She takes him out to the car and gives him a present, a pair of gloves, which for him is a poor consolation prize. He is hurt, and as she goes on about her family, he honks the car’s horn, drowning her out. She is angry and leaves him there. She treats him the way he treated his girlfriend back home, using him, as he used Lena, for her own purposes. Her actions are a sort of punishment for his uncaring behavior. But, he may also be jealous of her happy family life, which is the opposite of his experience, and he just didn’t want to listen to her joy.

 Chappellet, again wanting to prove his value, dares the skiing team’s lead athlete, Creech (Jim McMullen), to a race to see who would get to the finish line first. But, he is in competition with his own colleague instead of those from other countries. He wins, but Creech goes into an embankment. He doesn’t get hurt this time, but it is a foreshadowing of what happens later. Based on this incident, Claire tells Chappellet he acts recklessly, even to the point of not looking out for his teammates. He lectures Chappellet, saying, “You never had any real education, did you? All you ever had were your skis, and that’s not enough.” Claire emphasizing Chappellet’s not being a socially rounded individual goes to the heat of Chappellet’s insecurity. Later, Creech is talking with another skier, Mayo (Dabney Coleman), noting that Chappellet is not a team player. Mayo says that skiing is not really a team sport like many others. His statement fits with why Chappellet may have chosen it as his athletic endeavor. Not only were the mountains close by where he lived, but Chappellet does not seem to be at home anywhere but by himself on the slopes, racing away from his past life. 

At the Olympics, Creech takes a fall, and this time hurts his leg, and can’t compete. Chappellet becomes the United States’ lead man. When asked by reporters what he will do after the competition, all he can say is, “This is it,” which he repeats. One of our class members noted that for Chappellet, nothing else matters. He must win to prove to others and himself that his life has some importance. 

Chappellet beats the German leader’s time. It appears he will win the gold medal. However, the next skier is moving down the slope faster than Chappellet, and apprehension grows for Claire and Chappellet. But, the skier falls, and Chappellet comes in first. When the opposing skier gets to the finish line the two exchange looks. Just one move is the difference between winning and losing. The two could easily have exchanged places. But this world has decreed that for one to be victorious, another must be defeated.

The next film is The Iron Lady.

Annie Hall

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

Woody Allen’s 1977 film, which won the Oscar, (beating out Star Wars), is a portrait of the artist as an alienated man. Allen exhibits this outsider predicament through the story line, but also with various cinematic techniques. In real life, Allen, and in the movie, his surrogate character, Alvy Singer, are powerless to satisfactorily interface with the world around them. So, they use art in an attempt to control their lives, and try to make a connection to others.

Right from the beginning, Alvy breaks the “fourth wall,” escaping the confines of the plot, and speaks directly to the audience in an attempt to explain his take on existence. He notes a joke about two women at a place in the Catskills saying how the food was lousy, with one of them further commenting that the portions were small. Alvy says that is how he views life – “full of loneliness and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness. And it’s all over much too quickly.” So, despite his emphasis on the negative, he admits that he doesn’t want to give it up, that there is still something worth living for. That turns out to be, mostly, romantic relationships. But, at the same time he confesses that he doesn’t have the qualities needed to connect with others, and his feelings of inadequacy cause him to quote Groucho Marx, or whoever made up the line, which says, “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member.”

The movie skips around in time, reflecting Alvy’s stream-of-consciousness. He says that he has a hyperactive imagination, so his mind jumps around a lot. This is the character’s psychological explanation for the non-linear story line. But, the non-sequential telling of events also stresses that what we are seeing is a work of art, with the artist having the god-like control over his invention that a person cannot exert over his or her life. At the conclusion of his opening speech, which is set at the end of the story about to be told, Alvy notes that he has broken up with Annie (Diane Keaton, in an Oscar-winning performance). Even though this tale is humorous, we know from the beginning that this story, despite the artist’s power to manipulate events, does not end with the principle players living happily ever after, because Allen does not want to present a film with a rosy mindset.

 Alvy says he is not a depressed individual, but this assertion is undercut by his youthful fixation on the death of the universe, since it continues to expand, and eventually will “break apart.” He has stopped doing his homework, and his mother brings the boy to the family doctor, who offers a normal way of dealing with impending doom, which is “to enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” The doctor’s name is “Flicker,” which undercuts his advice by emphasizing the lack of persistent stability in the universe. (Could the name also conjure up the term for a movie, a “flick,” implying that a film only can deliver momentary enlightenment or happiness?)

This feeling of a lack of security in a turbulent world is symbolized by Alvy growing up in a house built under a Coney Island roller-coaster, the vibrations of which cause his home to shake. Add to the housing situation, we have the additional image of his father running the bumper car ride. Thus, instead of going with the flow of human traffic, Alvy continually collides with the outside world.

Alvy’s outsider personality makes him always at odds with others. As a youth, he saw his fellow students and teachers as inferior. He says that the teachers didn’t fall into the category of those who can’t do, teach, because they “couldn’t do anything.” By placing Alvy as an adult conversing with school age children, Allen depicts the distance Alvy felt between himself and his classmates. For instance, Alvy had sexual impulses toward the girls long before puberty. But, Allen’s technique also shows how we remember the friends we have lost touch with, frozen in memory snapshots of the past, as we wonder what has become of them.

 Alvy has conflicting forces working on him. On the one hand, he wants to be accepted and admired by others, but on the other side, he can’t get over his feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt, which make it difficult to accept recognition of his talent, and make him discredit those who either express praise or seek a romantic relationship with him. When fans of his comedy stand-up routines approach him, he distances himself by pretending not to be himself, and then by degrading their attention, calling them mafia types (cast members from The Godfather) or lower-class workers. But, he also tries to dismiss those who appear higher in the intellectual social strata than himself. His second wife, Robin (Janet Margolin), associates with New York intelligentsia at a party, and instead of trying to connect with them, Alvy goes off to the bedroom, now identifying with the blue-collar mentality, by watching the New York Nicks play. When Robin enters the room, Alvy, out of sync with the occasion, wants to have sex with her, saying the mind can “lie” but the body always tells the “truth.” Here, he values non-thinking physical urges over what he considers pseudo-intellectualism. In short, he always makes himself the odd man out. (He may find himself at odds with either the educated or working-class groups in the city, but he also shuns the suburbs, with its unsettling insect sounds and moths caught behind window screens).

The famous scene which demonstrates not only the suspicion of others promoting their mental abilities, but also the contrast of art with real life is the one where Alvy and Annie wait in a movie theater line. Behind them is a man who negatively critiques the works of film directors Allen admires. The audience connects with Alvy having to endure a know-it-all loudmouth. The man then mentions the work of Marshall McLuhan in the field of communication theory. Alvy then steps out of the verisimilitude of the story and again addresses the audience along with the man in line. Alvy then mixes true reality into the film by bringing the real McLuhan into the movie frame, who then tells the man in line that he knows nothing of his work. Alvy then says to the camera “Boy, if life were only like this.” Alvy literally does not fit in within the “realistic” parameters of the story, so Allen, the artist, allows his stand-in, Alvy, to escape the “plot” of his life, which he finds hostile, and exist in an unscripted world which accommodates his point of view.

Because Alvy feels that society excludes him, he sees himself as a victim, Thus, he finds comfort in embracing anti-establishment conspiracy theories. Because his Jewish background provides historical proof of persecution, he suspects anti-Semitic references in the speech patterns of others; he hears “Jew,” when someone says, “D’you.” He fears that the rest of the country considers him and his fellow New Yorkers to be “left-wing, Communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers.” He interrupts lovemaking with his first wife, Allison (Carol Kane), because he can’t get the conspiracy argument against the lone gunman theory concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy out of his head. However, Allison, rightly says he is just using this preoccupation to avoid being intimate with her. His outsider mindset won’t allow him to believe that she would want him.

 Alvy is even alienated from his own profession. He can’t stand the guy who wants to hire him to write jokes for his pathetic act. So, he decides to deliver his comic material himself by doing stand-up (the way Allen did in real life). When he goes out to Los Angeles to meet his transplanted New York actor friend, Rob (Tony Roberts), he is appalled by his use of a laugh track on his TV show, which points to the diminishment of art when success is achieved too easily. Alvey says Rob should be doing plays in New York’s Central Park. Rob says he acted in the park, and was mugged, thus justifying his Hollywood lifestyle. (The fact that Alvy can’t even connect with a male friend is implied by the fact that Rob keeps calling Alvy “Max,” instead of his real name). When Annie says how clean it is in LA, Alvy comments, “That’s because they don’t throw their garbage away; they turn it into television shows.” He also rants against the narcissistic award-giving of Hollywood, saying that they would give a trophy for “Greatest Fascist Dictator: Adolph Hitler.” (Of course, Allen was not present at the Academy Awards ceremony to accept his writing and directing Oscars for this film). For Alvy, Hollywood presents a clash of conflicting architectural designs, and is a place of inauthenticity, where Christmas music plays amid rows of palm trees while one constantly drives, and never walks, anywhere. It is a place where restaurants offer unappetizing meals consisting of sprouts and “mashed yeast,” and the town literally renders him nauseous. Allen satirizes the city’s fleeting interest in a succession of fads by having Jeff Goldblum (in an early movie appearance), calling someone to ask for help because, “I forgot my mantra.” Alvy, never feeling comfortable anywhere, can’t handle the “mellow,” or, content ways of LA dwellers, which, for him, leads to a mentally vegetative state. He says, “if I get too mellow, I ripen, and then rot.”

So why does the loner Alvy, at least to a greater degree than with others, establish a bond with Annie? Because when they first meet, she looks more like an outsider than he does. She is awkward in her speech as she tries to show her interest in Alvy. Visually, she doesn’t conform, her male clothing colliding with her feminine identity. She drives badly (as we see later, so does Alvy). And, like him, she is uncomfortable when someone praises her. For example, when he compliments her on her singing, she looks like she wants to run away. Allen cinematically emphasizes their mutual inability to express themselves with another person by putting subtitles on the screen which show the hidden meanings behind their spoken words. Another noteworthy episode shows the two trying to cook lobsters. Here, they are awkward. but they are accepting of each other’s ineptness, and can laugh and enjoy their alienation together. They sit and have fun watching people walking past them, making up their backstories. (Observing one man, Alvy says he wins the Truman Capote look-alike contest. It is, in fact, Capote, as Allen again intermixes realistic storytelling with artistic manipulation). Alvy feels comfortable exposing Annie to his bleak, off-putting view on life, taking her to a bookstore, and buying her works dealing with death. He tells her that he sees life is divided, “between the horrible and the miserable.” The horrible consist of “terminal cases,” and “blind” and “crippled” people. And, “the miserable is everyone else.” So, he tells Annie, “you should be happy you’re miserable,” because that’s the luckiest one can be in the world according to Alvy.

But, Alvy’s inability to feel at home even with Annie surfaces. When she wants to move in with him, he resists, saying that her apartment allows them the independence that is missing in cohabitation. But, conversely, he wants to keep her on a leash for himself, not wanting to go to parties with her, which might cause Annie to connect with inhabitants of the rest of the world, who he would rather avoid. He says to her, “What do we need other people for?” He may feel closer to her than anyone else, but he keeps trying to change her, urging her to take adult education courses. He sees this advice as helping Annie grow intellectually, but she feels that Alvy is judging her for not being smart enough for him. When she does take courses to improve herself, he acts hostile as she becomes more assertive and independent. He now reverts to his anti-intellectual stance, calling the courses “mental masturbation.” Annie responds by saying masturbation is a subject Alvy excels at. Alvy then delivers the line, “Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.” Very funny, yes, but also revealing. It stresses his separateness, his inability to share true emotional intimacy with another. He never really says that he loves Annie. He seems to only get satisfaction from himself. Even in Alvy’s animated fantasy, he can’t achieve bliss with another, as Annie becomes the wicked Queen, and they have the same arguments they have in his real life.

Allen visually reveals their estrangement by having Annie project an out-of-body ghostly version of herself as she and Alvy start to make love. It illustrates how emotionally detached from him she has become. When the two are in respective therapy sessions, Allen uses the split screen technique to show the opposing takes on their sexual activity: she sees three times a week as having sex “constantly,” while he sees it as occurring “hardly ever.” She tells Alvy that she discussed a dream she had with her therapist which involved Frank Sinatra smothering her. Her therapist said that she subconsciously substituted Sinatra for Alvy, whose last name is Singer. Thus, the implication is that Alvy is trying to stop Annie from evolving.

 After a previous noisy, distracting singing engagement, Annie performs to an attentive audience. After her set, a music producer, Tony Lacey (Paul Simon) approaches her and offers her a chance to record in California. Of course, Alvy is against it, but they do go to LA. She enjoys Lacey’s company and his entourage. She and Alvy decide that they have grown too far apart, and separate when they return to New York. Alvy delivers one of my favorite lines from the film. He says that a relationship is like a shark: it has to keep moving to exist, and “what we got on our hands, is a dead shark.” When they divide up their things, Annie gives Allen his political buttons, which are against every president, except Kennedy, in his lifetime. Humorous, but also a telling reminder of how long Alvy has felt estranged from mainstream American life.

He finds out that she is living with Lacey (Allen said he wanted Alvy to lose the girl to someone shorter than himself to emphasize Alvy’s lack of self-esteem. This is a man who already said he was one of the few men who suffers from “penis envy”). He goes out of his comfort zone, and flies to LA. He even drives to meet Annie at a restaurant, and his lack of automobile skills is evident in his halting maneuvers. When they meet, he now asks her to marry him, hoping to get her back. Annie sums him up pretty well when she says, “You’re incapable of enjoying life. You know that? I mean you’re like New York City … You’re like this island unto yourself.” (One of the possible titles for the film was “Anhedonia,” which is the inability to get pleasure.) Alvy seemed to consider New York as the black sheep in the American family, so it is fitting that he identifies with it so much. As he attempts to drive away, he keeps whacking into things. We get images of his father’s bumper car ride. So, from the beginning of Alvy’s life to now, he keeps slamming up against the world around him.

Alvy writes a play based on his relationship with Annie, but he has her coming back to him at the end. Alvy tells the audience, it was his first play, and one wants things to come out perfect in art. But, Allen, who has shown us how as a filmmaker he can bend his art to his wishes, is experienced enough to know that this story would seem inauthentic if it had the typical movie happy ending. He does say that he met Annie again later on. She had moved back to New York, and dragged her new boyfriend to a viewing of the Sorrow and the Pity, the anti-Nazi documentary, a fact that makes Alvy feel he had a positive influence on Annie. They have a good reunion, as we view shots of their past experiences together, with Annie singing “Seems Like Old Times.”

The movie ends as it began, with Alvy addressing the audience. After his meeting with Annie, he tells a joke about a man whose brother is crazy because he thinks he’s a chicken. He doesn’t commit him because, he says, he needs the eggs. That is how Alvy now thinks of relationships, because, “they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd … but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us, … need the eggs.” So, even though he is a confirmed outsider with self-esteem problems, and sabotages all his social involvements, he feels compelled to keep trying to connect with others, for those few “good times.”

The next film is The Talented Mr. Ripley.