Sometimes a great notion movie images8/17/2023 ![]() Art Director Philip Jeffries designed the Stamper family home, in what he called “bastard Victorian without gingerbread.” Scenes were filmed south of Lincoln City near Fogarty Beach, Newport, and along the Siletz River around Kernville. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION (1970) Based on Ken Kesey’s novel about the Stamper family of independent loggers, the cast includes Henry Fonda as Henry Stamper Paul Newman as his brother, Hank Richard Jaeckel as Joe Ben and Michael Sarrazin as Leeland Stamper. The film locations include the Scout Cabin in Mingus Park, Coos Bay, and Hall Lake, across from Tugman State Park, south of Reedsport. “Jett” is played by Kiri Goodson of Coos Bay, who has performed locally since she was three years old. The tribal watchman is played by Roger Willie, a noted Navajo educator, artist, and actor. Chase, from Coos Bay, uses her own life, local actors, and her hometown as the backdrop to tell the story of Jett, a 10-year-old, blond-haired Native American girl who has a special connection with nature as she embarks on a spiritual journey. Writer and director Barri Chase says The Watchman’s Canoe examines ramifications of bullying, forgiveness, and perseverance. ![]() THE WATCHMAN’S CANOE (2017) A spiritual watchman is one who can see and hear what others do not and who protects those whom he watches. Most of these movies are available for rent or purchase on Amazon, or streaming on Prime, Hulu, or Netflix. Let’s see for ourselves as we go on location. What makes the Oregon Coast so attractive to moviemakers? Perhaps movie magic is in the ocean, the beaches, the rural setting, and the ruggedly independent spirit of those who live on the coast. The latest story to be told is The Watchman’s Canoe, released in 2017. The first, released in 1909, was The Fisherman’s Bride, shot in Astoria. Instead, they're clumsy, resentful enemies, and when they try to sabotage a Stamper lumber raft, they only wind up drifting out to sea - and having to be rescued by the Stampers.For more than a century, moviemakers have come to the Oregon Coast to shoot their films. All through the film, he avoids making the strikers into heavies and their hatred for the Stampers seem melodramatic. The game develops into a brawl, of course, but in an interesting way instead of going for a hard-action approach to the scene, Newman shoots it in a sort of twilight, bittersweet style. Some of the strikers invite some of the Stampers to a game of touch football. The direction of this scene is superb the reality and the danger of the huge logs are caught in a way that defines the men and their job better than any dialogue could.Īnother scene that reveals Newman's insight as a director takes place at a lumbermen's picnic. The Stamper men seem terribly small as they bring enormous trees crashing to the ground, wrap chains around them, and load them on trucks with big, muscle-bound machines. The best scene in the film takes place during a day of work. Newman shortchanges what you might call the indoor scenes in order to give us the lumber business. The character is left wavering, and we don't fully understand her relationship to her husband. There are a lot of things left fairly unclear, though I'm not quite sure what was on Remick's mind during most of the movie. Sarrazin, Newman's half-brother by Fonda's second wife, comes home to help -and also to mope, to get over a bummer of a year, and to suggest to Newman's wife ( Lee Remick) that maybe she should clear out from the obsessed Stamper clan. But the Stamper family continues to work in defiance of the strike, and despite the fact that Fonda has broken half the bones on his left side in an accident. The striking timber workers idly hang around the union office. ![]() The local merchants (especially the neurotic fellow who runs the movie theater and the dry cleaners) are going broke because money has dried up. The story takes place during a timber strike in the Northwest. He rarely pushes scenes to their obvious conclusions, he avoids melodrama, and by the end of "Sometimes a Great Notion," we somehow come to know the Stamper family better than we expected to. But then Newman starts tunneling under the material, coming up with all sorts of things we didn't quite expect, and along the way he proves himself (as he did with "Rachel, Rachel") as a director of sympathy and a sort of lyrical restraint.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |