This, more or less, is what happened to John Frankenheimer in the '80s and most of the '90s. After directing a series of big hits in Hollywood during the '60s and '70s (including The Manchurian Candidate, French Connection II, and Black Sunday), he disappeared; banished, as it were, to the margins of the business, where he made small-budget movies that were poorly marketed. What was exceptional about Frankenheimer's "bad period" (as he calls it)--and what ultimately resulted in his spectacular return in the late '90s--was that during those dark years, he never changed the style or content of his films. There was no John Travolta-like reinvention of his image or subject matter; he just kept making the same movies (the espionage thriller, the heist film, the political and social drama) until Hollywood rediscovered an interest in his work.
The movie that returned him to the spotlight, Ronin, was no different than any other film he had made in the recent or far past. In look (muted colors, large depth of field), mood (melancholy, psychologically stark), location (Europe as the theater of elaborate espionage operations and political intrigue), and score (wide, suspenseful, dramatic), it was the same type of double-agent noir he helped popularize back in the '60s. Sure, Ronin had gleaming high-tech gadgets like slim cell phones and even slimmer laptops, but the way the story opened (on a rainy Parisian night), advanced (in sleek European cars), and closed (with two jaded agents in a bar) demonstrated that the director was from another generation of filmmaking.
Frankenheimer's new film, Reindeer Games, also takes its clues from an old Hollywood genre he is familiar with: film noir. Staying true to his nature, Frankenheimer steered clear of the neo-noir of John Dahl, the retrofitted-noir of Ridley Scott, and the art-noir of David Lynch, and produced a film with very little variation on the themes, codes, and moral concerns of classic film noir. The movie has your basic femme fatale (Charlize Theron) at the center of the plot; a basic heist, planned and executed by an amateurish team of criminals; a basic ex-con or "Everyman" (Ben Affleck), who is drawn moth-like into the femme fatale's elaborate labyrinth; and sharp contrasts between black and white. The end result is that Reindeer Games (which opens with five dead Santas riddled with bullets, and boasts Ben Affleck's best performance yet) feels like a movie crafted by an old master, by someone who has been in the business for so long that he can do nothing else but produce expert entertainment.
Andy Spletzer and I met John Frankenheimer in the capacious Cascade Suite at the Four Seasons Hotel (there was a larger suite upstairs called the Boeing Suite, but seeing that Frankenheimer is just a director and not the CEO of a multinational corporation, he got this merely large suite on a lower floor). Though the director is now 70 years old, he is alert, in great shape (a young publicist's assistant went as far as to call him a "babe"), and very talkative. Here is what this veteran director had to tell us.
"This movie is definitely classic noir. You see, I didn't want to make a really glitzy movie out of this thing. I didn't want to make a hip, slick, and cool version of Reindeer Games. I wanted to make a classic noir, [because] that is the kind of movie I like seeing. And that is the kind of movie I made, I think."
"After I read the script, and Harvey Weinstein asked, 'Who do you see in it?' I said, 'I see Ben Affleck in it.' Now, if you [asked] me who do you really want for this part, I would have said give me Jimmy Stewart, because that is what I need, someone with an Everyman quality. That is what Stewart had, and what Ben has. The other thing I'm going to tell you guys: I don't want to work with anybody I don't want to have dinner with (quite honestly), having been around the block as long as I have. I want to work with people that I get along with, and Ben is a guy you want to be around."
"When you read a script that says, 'Fade- in Paris, cut to Nice,' you want to make that film. You really do. You go out of your way to make that film. On the other hand, when you read, 'Fade-in Paris, cut to damp, dank jungle,' you kind of find something wrong with that script. But honestly, I loved making Ronin because I wanted to get all of these Cold War guys in a picture. I know something about that time--I have done it, been there, visited that place before--and seeing them in the modern context, without a job, reminded [me of] when I was [out of a job as] a live television director, and it was all over. It was like I knew how to do this thing [live television], but there was no need for my services anymore."
"Reindeer Games is the opposite from Ronin. You know what I mean? These are small-town guys, these are dirtballs, as they call them back there. These are not high-tech criminals at all! They are very low on the food chain when it comes to criminals. I mean, the guys from Ronin would have taken down this casino and [been] gone and you would have never seen the dust, [because it] would have been all over in five minutes. But I had to be careful not to make them into a gang that can't shoot straight; I had to do it with some reality, and make it as dramatic as I can. But really, they are not very bright guys."
"There is this collusion between the film companies and media, where they have put a premium on the box office success of movies. [Now, on] Sunday nights, you can tune in your TV set to see what is number one at the box office, and the public tends to confuse the commercial sense of the movie with quality. Today that is what guides the industry. But I don't kid myself, this was always the guide for movies--but back then it was better hidden, I think. There was at least the pretense that maybe it was good to make a wonderful movie, but today it's 'What did it make?' It's tough to live with that, I gotta tell ya.... But guys, this business has been really good to me, and I'm sure as hell not going to trash it. I mean, I have had a really, really long, good career. It's been up and it's been down, it's been up and it's been down, and now, thank God, it is up again. But I'm old and still doing films, so I have to feel pretty grateful. "
"I've got a couple of things that interest me, and I want to do another picture for Harvey Weinstein--I really enjoyed working with him. And I also want to do a cable movie. I have been very successful there, and so I want to do one of those. But, you know, when they told John Chancellor, the newscaster, that he was very sick [and he was asked his plans for the future], he looked at them and said, 'Well, if you want to make God laugh, then tell Him your plans.' I don't want to make a whole hell of a lot of plans; I just want to make sure that what I do is the right thing for me... right now. I want to get the right script. And somehow or another that is going to happen, but I don't know what it is going to be."
