Cop Land (1997, James Mangold), the director’s cut

Here’s an interesting director’s cut… it doesn’t change the film overall.

Most director’s cuts, extended versions, whatever, change the effect of the film. Blade Runner is the usual example, but so is something like The Big Red One (though not as much). In many ways, Cop Land is like Touch of Evil. The experience doesn’t change significantly.

Throughout, I suppose Cop Land is stronger. But Cop Land was always exceptionally strong throughout. It’s the ending, that stupid ending, putting everything on Robert De Niro’s narration… and the narration undoes the film. With DVD’s proliferation of director’s cuts and extended versions (for example, I have Gone in 60 Seconds–which features another sixty seconds or so–and A Knight’s Tale extended to watch in the near future and Ali even), these versions are more and more becoming less important. (Wow, what a bad sentence). Thinking further, I think Pearl Harbor is probably the worst director’s cut, since Bay used it to excise the film’s goodness….

Cop Land: The Director’s Cut is a better film. It’s just not a more rewarding experience.

It Happens Every Spring (1949, Lloyd Bacon)

I know nothing about baseball, but I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules to doctor the ball to guarantee no one can hit it….

The discussion of that dishonesty never comes up in It Happens Every Spring. Otherwise, it’s a nice little late 1940s Fox feature with the cast to match–Paul Douglas, Jean Peters, and Ray Collins. Douglas and Peters are particularly good, with Peters in the thankless girlfriend role that I don’t think she played often or at least, I’ve never seen her in it before. She and Douglas only have a scene together, but it makes you wish they’d done a movie together. Douglas is, of course, great.

It’s Ray Milland, as the forty-seven-year old “kid,” who comes off worst. He’s not particularly charming and the film’s incredibly dull when he’s moving the story along. It’s not even his obvious maturity that makes him so boring, it’s his distance from the whole thing. Spring doesn’t have much of a story (it fails to be either an American baseball film or a character piece), but it’s got a cast. Milland seems to have no interest in it. He’s not putting anything into the picture.

The writing is all right in spots–I particularly love how Douglas can get any piece of dialogue out and make it sound good–and it’s by Valentine Davies, who worked on The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which is great. Still, he couldn’t make this film move. It’s less than ninety minutes and it drags.

It occurs to me that I’ve only ever seen two other Milland pictures: Dial M for Murder and The Big Clock, both years ago. I don’t remember him ever impressing me. Spring does nothing to contribute. He’s just so ineffective, kind of like they wanted Cary Grant and couldn’t get him.

But Paul Douglas is great.