The Last Cowboy (Carlito's Way (DVD))

Member Name: assethound

Product:	Carlito's Way (DVD)
Date:	14/09/00 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Takes your breath away

Disadvantages: None

Carlito Brigante is the last real cowboy. The long leather coat he wears, and his honourable conduct towards the young upstart Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo) all point towards his lineage on the long dusty trail to the West, together with his Hispanic background. To illustrate this point I will look at the pool room scene - in my opinion the best scene in any movie I have ever seen, but first, a plot summary for those of you who just want a flavour of the film:

It is 1975, at the height of the disco era. Carlito (Al Pacino) has just been released after five years on appeal from a thirty year jail sentence after his lawyer David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) discovered a loophole in the law. Whilst in prison Carlito realises that: “you run out of steam. You can’t sprint all the way; you gotta stop sometime. You can’t buck it fo’ever; it catches up to you, it gets you ” (Carlito’s Way, 0:41:26-0:41:39), and determines that he will retire from crime, and buy into a friend’s car-hire business in the Bahamas as soon as he has got his stake money together. In spite of his efforts to stay on the right side of the law, Carlito becomes enmeshed in the criminal activities of his lawyer, and is eventually destroyed by the world he is trying to escape. As Carlito comments after the disastrous meeting in the pool room: “I don’t invite this shit, it just comes to me. I run, but it runs after me.” (Carlito’s Way, 0:26:01-0:26:08)

This is my favourite film (I do not have a top ten, just a few films that are all my favourites - choosing a ranking for them would be like ranking your children in order of preference). I have seen it countless times, and return again and again for the heady mix of seventies disco and gangster ethics. The nightclub scenes are incredible for evoking the atmosphere and spirit of the time, largely due to an intoxicating soundtrack compiled by Jellybean Benitez, and detail
ed sets and costumes giving an authentic feel to the whole production. Brian De Palma has created a jewel of a film which slickly connects the long movie traditions of the Western and the Gangster movie, and showcases Al Pacino at his very best. Watch this film or forever have regrets.


Commentary on the pool room scene (The scene takes place between 0:18:35 and 0:23:13):

The scene takes place in a pool room concealed like a speakeasy at the back of a barber’s shop. Carlito is reluctantly accompanying his young cousin to a meeting with some gangsters in the pool room to deliver $30,000 in exchange for a consignment of drugs. Although his cousin has described the gangsters as his friends, as soon as he walks in Carlito is on his guard.

The start of the scene is an action match cut, from Carlito going through the door at the back of the barber’s shop, to Carlito entering the pool room and shutting the door. This is followed by an establishing shot of Carlito and his cousin greeting the head gangster and his two henchmen as they emerge from behind the pool table. The set is painted a deep red, and the head gangster is wearing a snake-skin waistcoat and a black hat, strong visual clues that Carlito and his young cousin are walking into a dangerous situation. The head gangster is not in shot for the first 15 seconds, although he is implied in the scene by the use of his point of view for the opening shots, and his voice off screen. A very strong vertical in the form of a support column splits the screen, and the camera pans across this vertical as Carlito and his cousin move further into the room past two of the head gangsters sidekicks. This movement suggests the point of view of the gangster, with the strong vertical providing a reference point for the foreground and background of the scene. This adds to the depth of field already provided by layering effect of the strong horizontal of the pool table, and the danci
ng girls at the back of the shot, together with the use of a wide-angled lens to provide depth of field.

The controlling point of view of the film is Carlito’s. This is achieved by the use of his voice-over, as he comments on the events on the film as they happen, vocalising his thoughts. During the pool room scene, this voice-over is absent, with the point of view switching initially to that of the head gangster as Carlito and his cousin enter the room, and then switching back and forth between Carlito and the head gangster, using a series of cuts. This change in point of view is emphasised by positioning the gangster at one end of the bar, and Carlito around the area of the pool table. This switching between the two principle characters in this scene adds to the tension, and borrows from the kind of cuts used in classic Westerns between the polarised characters of the good guy and the bad guy.

There are a number of references to the Western genre in this scene: the black hat worn by the head gangster; the cutting between Carlito’s point of view and the head gangster’s point of view; the exaggerated gunslinger-like stance of Carlito’s cousin in the beginning of the scene. The use of close-up shots of both principles glancing at other characters and objects also have links with the shots used in Westerns.

These references to the Western, coupled with Carlito’s insistence, right from the beginning of the film, align him with the character of the old gunslinger. Carlito is one of the few people in the film who have any concept of honour, and this is what leads to his eventual downfall, together with his abandoning of the rules of the gangster’s world. He is eventually killed by a young up and coming gangster that he had the chance to kill and did not. As he walks away from the pool room, Carlito reflects that: “Ain’t no more rackets here, just a bunch of cowboys rippin̵
7; each other off ”. (Carlito’s Way, 0:25:58-0:26:05)

Whilst all the other characters are relaxed and distracted during the scene, the focus of the two principles is indicated by close-up single shots. These show them making subtle movements of their eyes, and in the case of the head gangster, nodding a signal to the assassin in the bathroom. Carlito’s wariness and watchfulness is indicated by cutting single shot close-ups of his face with shots of the bathroom door or the head gangster, and then cutting straight back to Carlito in a repetition of the preceding shot. The pivotal role of the eyes in this scene is highlighted by Carlito seeing the assassin first as a reflection in the sunglasses of one of the henchmen around the pool table.

The dialogue in this scene serves primarily as a background to the heightening tension, rather than actually moving the scene forward. The exceptions to this are when the head gangster asks for the juke-box to be turned up, and the dialogue sequence immediately prior to the climactic sequence, which culminates with “Your boss is dead and so are you”, from the head gangster. This contextualises the ensuing violence and deceptions and suggests tensions between different criminal outfits.

The segueing of this music from a background noise to an insistent and increasingly fast tension-building sound in the foreground is matched by the increasing speed of the cuts between Carlito around the pool table and the head gangster at the other end of the bar. Once the action starts with the assassin reflected in one of the henchmen’s sunglasses, the music from the juke-box fades down under the start of the music used during the explosive violent sequence at the climax of this scene.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlito’s Way, dir. Brian De Palma, Universal City Studios, 1993.
Rabiger, Michael, Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics, Boston: Focal Press-Bu
tterworth, 1989.
Fox, Ken, Ed Grant, Jo Imeson, Andrew Joseph, Maitland McDonagh (Eds.), The Sixth Virgin Film Guide, New York: Virgin, 1997.

One of my favourite movie books is "The Movie Book of the Western", edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye (ISBN 0-289-80140-0 (hardback) 0-289-80168-0 (paperback), published by Studio Vista-Cassell) which examines the Western from 1939- the present and provides many different perspectives. Another is "Back in the Saddle Again", edited by Edward Buscombe and Roberta E Pearson (ISBN 0-85170-6606 (hardback) 0-85170-6614 (paperback), published by the British Film Institute), which looks at areas such as silent films, singing cowboys and televised Westerns, as well as looking at the European Western and Mexico, and the role of the western in fashion and advertising.

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