Movie Underdogs: a Dozen of my Favorites

I love underdogs.  They're the "us" on screen.  Hollywood has a tendency to make them into stock characters--the loveable losers; the hard-luck, working-class heroes; the guy who gets knocked down but whose indominable spirit compels him to get back up.  It's a well-worn character.  However, these dozen underdogs give us a little more; an added dimension that sets them apart from the dog pack.    


(1)  The Second Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca (1940) played by Joan Fontaine

In neither Daphne deMaurier's novel nor Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation, is the second Mrs. De Winter's first name ever revealed.  This is because her sense of self is overshadowed by Rebecca, the first Mrs. DeWinter, who died under mysterious circumstances.  The spectre of Rebecca is present in every scene.  She is a bully from beyond.  As most bullies, she has a minion, Mrs. Danvers, the skull-faced head of the household.  Through Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca intimidates--no, scratch that--terrorizes, the second Mrs. De Winter on the day-to-day earthly plane. 

Alfred Hitchcock did a spectacular job making Joan Fontaine look small.  Everything around her is big--the grand staircase, the floor-to-ceiling drapes, the massive cliffs overlooking the crashing waves.  From the first scene, she is surrounded by characters who diminish her, including her own husband, played by Lawrence Olivier.  She feels small in her environment and so she is small.  She is the fragile child who is knocked down over and over again; that is, until the last time, when she finally stands up, holds her ground, and says, Enough.

(2)  Georgina in Georgy Girl (1966) played by Lynn Redgrave

There isn't a woman in the world who can't relate in some way to Georgy.  She's a big girl with a wide-open heart.  She hides nothing.  There is no guile or attempt at womanly wiles.  She has the honesty of a child. 

Georgy has grown up in the home of her father's employer, the wealthy James Mason.  Mason is in love with Georgy; in fact, he wants nothing more than to marry her and take care of her for the rest of her life.  Understandably, her father believes Georgy should grab that brass ring.  After all, the men aren't exactly lined up at her door.  As her father sees it, a fat girl could do a lot worse than an adoring old rich man.

The problem is, Georgy doesn't care about wealth; nor does she care much about marriage.  She's got a happy spirit within her that carries her through most days.  Sometimes she's a bit lost, and sure, too many people seem to want to make her feel fat and stupid.  Georgy doesn't care much about what other people want, though.  For herself she wants only one thing: the newborn baby who has been abandoned by Georgy's roommate and placed in her care.  The baby makes her feel loved, and Georgy loves her right back with that big, generous heart.  They are an underdog duo. 


(3)  The Artful Dodger in Oliver! (1968) played by Jack Wild

Only Hollywood could turn the gritty underworld of Industrial-era London into a feel-good movie. 

In the 1838 novel by Charles Dickins, the Artful Dodger is there to demonstrate what happens to children when they are deprived of their childhoods.  Dickins himself had worked as a child labourer.  He knew there was no such thing as a childhood for the children who filled the streets of London during the Industrial Revolution.  Most had either been abandoned by destitute relatives or had run away from deplorable conditions at home.  They became cheap, disposable labor for the workhouses and brothels.  They were like nuggets of gold to the predators who enslaved them, then sent them out onto the streets every day to steal or prostitute themselves.  The children were provided with a roof over their heads as reward.  If they failed in any way, they were beaten.  That's the reality. 

To enjoy the Artful Dodger in Oliver! you have to forget what you know to be true, especially when the boys and their captors break into song and dance.  The Artful Dodger is the lead boy, Fagin's favorite.  He's portrayed as a spunky little survivor.  His antics are a humorous blend of street smarts and naivete.  He wears a top hat and pants that are too short for him.  His face is always smudged with street dirt.

He is a child, so there is still a bit of a soul left in him.  You just want to grab him out of the screen and plunk him down in a more wholesome environment.  The problem is, you'd only get part of him.  He has already given so much of his childhood to the streets, and so much of his soul to his enslavors.  There's only a tiny bit of him left.  The rest has been swallowed up by the black smog that hovers over London.


(4)  Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969) played by Dustin Hoffman

Ratso is one of the saddest of movie underdogs.  He is crippled, sickly, and essentially homeless.  He is a gritty man living in the underbelly of New York City.  He doesn't feel sad, though.  He is a man who lives on small hopes.  Each day brings the possibility of a couple of dollars.  He believes the course of his life is perpetually on the verge of changing direction.  One day it truly does.  Ratso's blessing arrives in the form of a Texas transplant named Joe Buck.  Joe has come to New York City to pursue a career as a gigolo.  The two agree that Ratso will manage his career. 

The gigolo venture doesn't work out so well, but that's alright.  Ratso is a man who doesn't expect much from life.  He wants the respect of being called by his Christian name, which is Rico.  He wants to avoid the life and death that his father had.  He wants to move to Florida; it is his most enduring dream.  He fantasizes about life spent by a pool with beautiful women watching him from balconies.  There will be money just waiting to be made.  It will be new and better.  There will be no winter; there will be no pain.  There will only be good things. 

In the end, with the help of Joe Buck, he does get to Florida.  He does get to see beaches and palm trees.  Most importantly, he does get to experience the release from pain and the peace he had dreamed of for so long.


(5)  Dave Mann in Duel (1971) played by Dennis Weaver

Duel was actually a made-for-tv movie; it was also Steven Spielberg's first full-length film.  Once it developed a cult following, and especially once Spielberg became famous, it was released in European and Australian theaters and sporadically in the US.

The story revolves around Dave Mann, a traveling salesman, who is driving through the California dessert.  He's an average guy with an average job and an average car.  Early on in the movie, he stops at a laundromat to call his wife.  He feels he must apologize to her.  It would seem they had attended a party the previous night, a party in which another man made aggressive overtures to her right in front of Dave.  Instead of intervening and helping her, Dave stood silent and frozen in place.  During the phone conversation the next day, his wife says to Dave, "He was practically raping me." Allowing for a margin of exaggeration on her part, it's clear she felt disrespected by the encoraching male and abandoned by her husband.  We know from this conversation that Dave is a Beta-style husband who avoids confrontation.  It's likely he has spent most of his adult life getting sand kicked in his face. 

Once back on the road, the duel begins.  The truck driver, whose face we never see, begins to terrorize Dave.  It is a big truck with a big air horn against Dave and his little red Plymouth Valiant.  It is essentially a replay of the night before, though this time, the encroaching male is actually trying to kill him.  This time, passivity is not an option.


(6)  Henrietta Lowell in A New Leaf (1971) played by Elaine May

Walter Matthau plays Henry Graham, a pompous trust fund baby who learns that he has exhausted his entire inheritance.  His rich uncle gives him a loan but only on the condition that Henry repay it within six weeks or forfeit his remaining assets.  Given that Henry feels work is for the peasants of the world and not him, his only option is to marry a wealthy woman.  These are the circumstances that bring us to Henrietta Lowell, one of the most endearing, unintentionally funny characters in cinema history.

Henrietta is professor of botany at the local university.  She is oblivious to the pragmatics of life.  She has no idea how to manage money.  She forgets to cut tags off of her clothing.  She can't hold a cup and saucer properly.  Henrietta's only concern in life--and it is a true passion for her--is botany.  This changes when she is suddenly and aggressively courted by Henry Graham.  She doesn't have an inkling that Henry is marrying her for her trust fund, nor that he plans to kill her after the wedding.

The humor is dark.  Much of it stems from the emotional process Henry undergoes as he simultaneously plots Henrietta's murder while protecting her from an unsavory world.  As he strategizes, he is bothered by a nagging idea and he can't seem to repel it.  It is a new and unfamiliar idea for him.  It is the idea that, despite his deep contempt for Henrietta's blind love, he might actually be a very lucky man to have it. 


(7)  Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) played by Al Pacino

This film and all of its characters were based on a real event that happened in Brooklyn on a hot summer day in 1972.  Pacino plays Sonny Wortzik, a husband and father and wannabe tough guy who decides to rob a bank to pay for his boyfriend's sex change operation.  (You can't make this stuff up).

The events themselves are pretty standard bank robbery fare.  There are swat teams, hostage negotiators, demands for pizzas, that sort of thing.  What makes Dog Day Afternoon interesting is the dynamic between Sonny and his hostages.  During their fourteen hours together, they develop an easygoing mutual alliance.  This isn't necessarily due to full-blown Stockholm Syndrome, though.  Sonny and his hostages relate to each other.  He sees them as just ordinary lower income folks.  They see him as a basically harmless underdog who just wants his boyfriend to be happy and for his wife and children to have something.  The alliance among them is such that when Sonny agrees to release the diabetic bank manager, the manager refuses, saying he won't leave his employees.  Real-life bank manager Robert Barrett says he was also motivated to stay because he was enjoying his hostage experience.  He told reporters, "I've had more laughs tonight than I've had in weeks.  We had a kind of camaraderie." 

John Wojtowicz, the real Sonny,
during the bank robbery.

Al Pacino felt that his role as Sonny marked the peak in his career.  In 2005 he claimed he hadn't made a good movie since then.  The film also made a cult hero of real-life bank robber John Wojtowicz, who really did gain the support of the crowds outside the bank by chanting "Attica!" 

Here's an ironic twist for you.  In order to strengthen his tough guy persona, John Wojtowicz prepared for the real-life bank robbery by watching The Godfather, which starred, of course, Al Pacino with John Cazale in a supporting role.  Unbeknownst to Wojtowicz at the time, his robbery would be made into a movie three years later; the movie would star Al Pacino with John Cazale in a supporting role.  Like I said, you can't make this stuff up.


(8)  Blanche Tyler in Family Plot (1976) played by Barbara Harris

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Family Plot came and left theaters in the blink of an eye.  Maybe audiences had come to expect suspense from Hitchcock, not comedy.  For whatever reason, it's one of his lesser known films.  Too bad, because the plot is reasonably original and Barbara Harris is hilarious.  She plays Blanche, a fake medium who cons people--wealthy widows, mostly--out of their money.  I know, not terribly appealing; yet Blanch and taxi driver boyfriend George (played by Bruce Dern) very quickly grow on you.

As the plot thickens, Blanche and George become increasingly enmeshed in a scam much more elaborate than anything Blanche has ever perpetrated.  They end up becoming the good guys by comparison.

If you have never seen this movie and enjoy physical comedy, you'll like the "Runaway Car Scene" in which Blanche and George's find themselves driving down a mountain after their brakes have been disabled.  It's scary and hilarious at the same time.  In the scene, the audience sees what Blanche and George are seeing--hair-pin turns, trucks and motorcycles coming at them, cliffs overlooking deep caverns.  Their reactions are appropriate to what is happening to them. However, when you watch, bear in mind that these two actors are not seeing anything of the sort.  They're in a studio facing a camera.  Knowing that makes their performances even more impressive.

The scene is Barbara Harris at her quirky best.  She always had a talent for playing clingy, slightly neurotic characters in a way that made them likeable.  She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as Blanche and I'd be willing to bet it had to do with the runaway car scene.

(9) Naoh in Quest for Fire (1981) played by Everett McGill

What a remarkable film, especially if you know anything about the evolutionary development of man.  It takes place 80,000 years ago at a time when several several different species of mankind shared the Earth.  Everett McGill plays Naoh, a Neanderthal with a growing but still-precarious hold as Alpha in his clan.  When his clan loses its only vessel containing fire, Naoh and two other able-bodied men head out into unfamiliar territory to find more.  They have no choice.  Fire is life-sustaining.  Without it, their chances for survival in their competitive world are minimal.

Quest for Fire is no dumb caveman movie.  Writers researched primitive man and his probable behavior exhaustively.  When Naoh forms a bond with a woman from a more advanced tribe (probably Homo Sapiens, the species that became us), there is tenderness.  What there is none of, thankfully, is sentimentality.  The bond between man and woman is portrayed as it probably happened in reality, which is to say there is a protectiveness between the two as they struggle to survive in their harsh environment.  The character of Naoh is every man as he most likely was in Paleolithic days.  There is nothing romantic about his daily life.  There is only a decision, every single day, to stand tall.


(10) Dell Griffith in Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) played by John Candy

Anyone who does not love Dell Griffith has ice water for blood.  He is exasperating and blustery, but he is a friend for life just waiting to be met.  He is a traveling salesman with the kind of survival skills you would expect.  That is to say, he always has a Plan B up his sleeve.

He plays off of Neal Page, played by straight man Steve Martin.  Both are trying to get home for Thanksgiving, and through a series of haphazard events, they end up traveling together.  What they experience would cause any one of us to shake our fists at the sky; or at least blow up, which is what Neal does.  There is a slow unwinding of his patience due to a combination of his uncanny bad luck and Dell's quirkiness.

This is a lighthearted comedy, yet there is something very courageous about Dell Griffith.  Life for him is not the breeze he makes it out to be.  There is a lot of sadness in his generous heart.  Yet, he endures.  He forges ahead through all kinds of trouble and as he does, he does his best to make sure everyone around him is doing alright, too.


(11) Donald "Sully" Sullivan in Nobody's Fool (1994) played by Paul Newman

If Cool Hand Luke had been allowed to grow into an old man, he would have become Sully Sullivan--minus the swagger.  Sully's bad knee would render any attempt at swagger impossible anyway.  Like young Luke, however, Sully still flips the bird to authority and still goes to jail.  He's still drawn to trouble.  In his old age, though, the hard edges have become rounded over the years.  Jail is a brief and welcome respite from the hardships of his life, and the sort of trouble he enjoys is now pretty benign.


He still carries with him the repercussions from an irresponsible youth.  As a young man, he left his wife and one year-old son simply because he didn't like being married.  He moved a mere five blocks away, but managed to extricate himself completely from his son's life.  He is given the opportunity to correct this when his grown son comes back to town to visit his mother at Thanksgiving.  The son has his own family now including two young boys.  There is a reunion between Sully and his son, but the new relationship doesn't stoop to sentiment.  This is Paul Newman, after all.  He was superb at playing the stock character of the loveable tough guy but he always kept it real; he never let his characters become overly tough or overly loveable.

  

(12) Jeff Lebowski in The Big Lebowski (1998) played by Jeff Bridges

The Coen Brothers' careers are founded upon their understanding of average people who unwittingly find themselves tangled up in chaotic and complicated circumstances.  Jeff Lebowski is one of my favorite Coen Brothers creations.  He's just a guy, an ordinary unemployed guy living in a hovel in Los Angeles.  He enjoys bowling, drinking White Russians, and smoking weed.  He owns nothing of value except a decrepit old Ford Torino and an area rug that he feels "ties the room together."

One evening, thugs break into his house believing he is the other Jeff Lebowski, the millionaire, the one whose wife owes enormous sums of money to a porn magnate.  Before the thugs realize their mistake, one of them pees on the rug.  Jeff Lebowski takes this offense seriously.  He tracks down the other Lebowski and asks to be compensated for the rug.  Thus begins a convoluted, Coen-style journey.

I like Jeff Lebowski because he's just like every ordinary, reasonably upstanding guy in the world.  He has no mark to make on the world, no moral message to deliver.  He just wants his weed, his car, and his area rug.  As Sam Elliot says of Lebowski in his introductory narration, "Sometimes there's a man....I won't say he's a hero because what's a hero?  But sometimes there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place.  He fits right in there."  I like Jeff Lebowski because he's a guy who fits into his own life.