“All the characters in Asteroid City seem to have attended Anderson School, so to speak, where the need for underreaction, clipped and quick, has been drummed into them; that would explain why Augie’s young daughters barely flinch, let alone cry, when they hear of their mother’s demise. Such a conceit — that emotions can be as stylized as clothes — is not a fault so much as a sly strategy. (You encounter it all the time in Restoration comedy.)
“Now and then, however, I couldn’t help yearning for the tough, sombre inhabitants of Bad Day at Black Rock: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. When Tracy, one-armed and clad in funereal black, strikes Borgnine and sends him reeling through the doorway of a bar, with Ryan holding steady at the pinball machine beside them, the director, John Sturges, positions his figures with Andersonian care, but there’s a meaty moral tension in the fray. These guys are not fooling. Who, in Asteroid City, can make that sort of impact?” — from Anthony Lane’s 6.16 New Yorker review.
Posted on 2.8.17: Hollywood Elsewhere has long been bothered by illogical elements in classic films. One is the whopping absurdity of 19th Century settlers living in the barren wilderness of John Ford‘s Monument Valley (no grass for cattle, no rich soil, no river, no nearby forest). Another is the natives of Skull Island having built a huge wall to prevent King Kong and the dinosaurs from invading their village, and yet having also constructed a super-sized gate that could only have been built to allow a large beast to pass through.
To these I’m adding a third head-scratcher: what the hell are the residents of Black Rock, California — the tiny hole-in-the-wall ghost town in John Sturges‘ Bad Day at Black Rock — doing there in the first place? No soil, no industry, no oil, no trees, no gold mine, not much groundwater except for the well that the late Kimoko discovered, no lake, no tourists — nothing but rocks and heat and nothing to do except sit around, play cards and scowl.
Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin are too dumb to realize what a blessing and godsend Spencer Tracy is because at least he’s given them something to do — i.e., prevent Tracy from learning what happened to poor Komoko. Without Tracy poking around their lives would revert to the usual paralyzing nothingness.
What are Ryan, Marvin, Borgnine,
According to Sturges’ commentary on the old Criterion laser disc of Black Rock, having no extras was a conscious decision on his part. Originally there were supposed to be extras always milling around everywhere and the town was more vibrant but he decided to remove them to further isolate Tracy’s character’s predicament and emphasize his “unwanted loner” position
Another issue: Are you telling me that in the middle of this parched desert moonscape that Francis’s Liz, the 20something sister of John Ericson‘s Pete, isn’t married or “seeing” anyone in town? In a town this dead you know that someone would have stepped up and wooed his way in, and yet Liz could have been played by Thelma Ritter or Mildred Dunnock for all the action she’s getting.
I’m sorry but these questions were getting in the way of my enjoyment when the Warner Archive Bluray arrived three weeks ago. Excellent transfer, good color, nice detail, original 2.55:1 aspect ratio….all good.
