Sunday, September 28, 2008

Paul Newman- The Last Angry Man

When I was 16, a group of us young drama geeks went to see "The Verdict". It was the first "serious drama" I had ever seen in a theater (unless you count "The Empire Strikes Back"... and I do).

Seeing the layers of this search for justice in a corrupted world, movingly written by David Mamet and directed by Sidney Lumet, was amazing. It is a "through a glass darkly" Frank Capra story (although Capra himself tended to set up his stories in a pretty real-world context), with Paul Newman as a seriously flawed ambulance chaser, a drunk who has lost faith in himself, the system and is going through the last stages of his long, plummet into the abyss. To watch him in the opening montage is to see a man who's greased his way down with whiskey and is not looking for a way to stop.

But a life preserver comes anyway, in a malpractice case that everyone tells him to settle on. The fact that he somehow can't is and it scares him is one of the many, many levels Newman works in this story.

We have lost an actor of passion and intelligence, one who was able to channel an anger that he carried with him most of his life. Has there ever been a role that Paul Newman played that didn't have anger in it?

Even when he was playing lighter characters, they seemed to be driven by some fire that couldn't be quenched by the banalitites of what the script required.

We will not see the like of this man again.

Also, he had blue eyes.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

On cue, on the button, good insight on a great actor and a great humanitarian. You said more with fewer words than other commentaries on PN I have read. Thanks,

your fiend, mr. jones said...

You're melcome.

It's hard to do the posts from You Tube because I can't retouch the posts after I see the gazillion typos I make.

But you're very nice and have excellent taste.

Mona Buonanotte said...

Very sad day indeed...he was an excellent actor and human being. We all should be so lucky.

your fiend, mr. jones said...

Yeah... I just kept flashing back to seeing "The Verdict"- one of my favorites of his.

He was someoen who stuck to his guns in a town that's not that sympathetic to true maverick behavior.

your fiend, mr. jones said...

Yeah... I just kept flashing back to seeing "The Verdict"- one of my favorites of his.

He was someoen who stuck to his guns in a town that's not that sympathetic to true maverick behavior.

Anonymous said...

i did not know it was written by Mamet.

still with the learning stuff every day, but so much sweeter when taught by a one Mr. Jones.

-- sherry sly

your fiend, mr. jones said...

Shucks, twarnt nuthin'...


I still remember when you came with me and my friend Tim to see "Once Upon A Time In The West" at The Castro. Man, SF has some great one-screen palaces.