31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (19) Donald Sutherland in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (WITH A GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM JOHN LEVY)

"There can't be a conspiracy..."

Wanna hear one of the most insane but true statements in film history?  Donald Sutherland has never been nominated for an Oscar.  Now let me state that again for anyone who thinks they might have misread that sentence...Donald Sutherland has never been nominated for an Oscar.  I can't think of many more oversights in the history of The Academy Awards more shameful than the fact that they have overlooked year after year after year one of our most intelligent and valuable actors.  Sutherland shouldn't even be a candidate for this list (with one of the main rules being no Oscar nominees) but facts are facts and the man who has turned in some of the great performances in screen history has really never been given the due he has so deserved.  

Frankly, there are dozens of Donald Sutherland performances I could have gone with for this list so I just went with my gut and chose my favorite...that of doomed Matthew Bennell in Philip Kaufman's stunning 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of my all-time favorite films.  I have written on the film before so I will leave most of the time to my contributor today, but I will just ask that you go back and watch this film again and pay particular attention to Donald Sutherland's performance.  He slips into Bennell completely and projects the character's initial disbelief, questioning and finally terrifying acceptance with astonishing capability.  Most actors might have looked upon a role in a science fiction horror remake as just an excuse to pick up a check, but Sutherland plays this role with all the conviction and power he could muster.  His work makes what would already be a major film into something even more mesmerizing and powerful.  

I am very pleased tonight to offer up a guest contribution on Donald Sutherland from my friend, the award-winning filmmaker John Levy.  I first fell under the spell of John's incredible short-films a couple of years back and he has become one of my best online friends, and I am always amazed by how close our tastes always seem to match up.  After reading John's terrific contribution on Sutherland please visit his La Belle Aurore page where you can read about, and watch, some of his amazing work, including his truly exceptional Tabula Rasa, which just won a much-deserved audience award at the Once a Week Online Film Festival.  

John is a great friend and a great artist and I am honored that he offered up this piece on one of our shared favorite actors.  Thanks so much John!

-John Levy on Donald Sutherland, written for Moon in the Gutter (2012)-

"Donald Sutherland has one of the greatest, and possibly most overlooked, bodies of work of any actor alive today. From the mid 60’s to the early 80’s he has a section of work that rivals the most notable and celebrated actors of all time, with roles both supporting and as lead that are so many distant worlds apart and yet equally impressive. From Kelly’s Heroes to Steelyard Blues. Don’t Look Now to The Disappearance. Klute to Ordinary People. What works for him time and time again is his subtlety and naturalism. No matter how many times you’ve seen him before, he is completely believable and unpredictable. Amazing actors like Deniro and Pacino (so brilliant) always kind of have one thing working against them, which is the audience expectation of always anticipating a performance that will reach to extremes levels of intensity. But Sutherland is kind of the other way. He is so subtle in carrying himself like the subject of a documentary that when he has a moment of vulnerability, or emotional eruption, it is absolutely polarizing to the viewers mind and memory. On the surface there is no ego in his heroics. No suave in his romance. No menace in his evil. Examples that come to mind are him succumbing to Jane Fonda’s manipulative seduction in Klute. And the revelation of his villainy then tenderness, then further villainy in The Eye Of The Needle. Even in later performances like Backdraft, where he plays an arsonist, the madness of his character is all in his eyes. He jolts the viewer’s preconception of character types. But even better, he humanizes all of them just as Deniro or Pacino would. But where some actors are intricate muralists, Sutherland is an ambiguous minimalist. There is a moment in Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, far into the ongoing chase of the film, when Brooke Adams literally crumbles in Sutherland’s arms. And his reaction is seemingly so void of performance that it pushes the emotional currency of the film to another level, reminding you of the stakes, that at that point in the film, may have fallen a bit to the background. It’s the last cry and whimper for humanity. And without that, it would still be a great film, but it was dramatic gravy that made it an indelible moment. That’s all Sutherland. "

"That's Not My Wife"

"It may be the best movie of its kind ever made. For undiluted pleasure and excitement, it is, I think, the American movie of the year."
-Pauline Kael, 1978-

The time was right in 1978 for Philip Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. The country was still recovering from Vietnam and Watergate, and a rash of damaging self help ideas were sweeping through the country. Even more crucial was the realization that many of the most potent ideals of the sixties were being traded in for an easy comfort, and an unsettling undercurrent of greed was swiftly making its way to the surface of American life. This was, after all, less than two years away from the eighties.
It was also the right time in cinema history for Kaufman's remake. His film would, along with Brian De Palma's BLOW-OUT a few years later, mark the end of an era of cynical paranoid thrillers that had loomed so large in American cinema throughout the seventies. Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS has more in common with films like THE PARALLAX VIEW than it does with most of the American horror films of the period, which is one reason I think it seems to divide genre fans.
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS has just been re-released on DVD in a two disc set that should remind people of what a truly striking and great film it remains after thirty years. Comparing it to the more recent INVASION, one is struck by how deeply resonant and haunting Kaufman's work really is.
The Chicago born Kaufman has had a strange career. His best films like this one, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING and THE WANDERERS show a director of seemingly limitless possibilities but unfortunately he has had a spotty career otherwise. His THE RIGHT STUFF garnered him an Oscar nomination and HENRY AND JUNE and QUILLS are interesting films but such dreck as RISING SUN and TWISTED have hurt what could have been one of the most notable careers of the past three decades.
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is Kaufman's greatest work in my eyes. His film, from a pitch perfect script by W.D. Richter, is a perfectly cast, fully realized work that is among the great movies of the seventies.
There are several things that makes INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS such a special film. Key is its intelligence. At times horrifying but also witty, the film works as much as a satire on many of the seventies most 'me' oriented ideas as it does a typical horror film. Leonard Nimoy's Dr. David Kibner is a sinister and invasive presence throughout the first half of the film and Nimoy portrays this pretentiously cold man to perfection. Kaufman's film seems to suggest at nearly every turn that the total self obsession that would come to encompass the eighties could be as spiritually damaging as any war or failed presidency.
The leads in the film are all extraordinary. Donald Sutherland again proves himself as one of the most capable and diverse actors of all time and Matthew Bennell is one of his great characterizations. Equally impressive are Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright (who was one of the few bright spots of the recent INVASION).

Shot by Michael Chapman right in between his remarkably chilly work on FINGERS and HARDCORE and edited by Oscar winner Douglas Stewart, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is a beautiful looking and fast moving production. I recently read someone criticising the special effects in the film but I find them incredibly effective and so much more organic and natural feeling than anything CGI can come up with. The shot of the human headed dog is still one of the most chilling and off the wall things I have ever seen. There had been a similar but less effective shot in THE MEPHISTO WALTZ a few years before and of course it was finally perfected in John Carpenter's THE THING just a few years later. The effects throughout are mostly low key, subtle and to my eyes they still hold up today.
Kaufman should have directed more genre films. He has a great eye for horror and some of the films most menacing moments are quick shots of people in the background that lets you know that something is really going wrong. One shot in particular that has always stuck with me is near the beginning. It is just a blink it and miss shot of a man standing behind a door staring but, much like the more celebrated Robert Duvall cameo, it manages to add a small if undeniably chilling touch to the film.
The film has several nods to the 1956 version including cameos by director Don Siegel and star Kevin McCarthy. I always thought Kaufman's film worked as a splendid companion piece to the original film more than a straight remake. Like Abel Ferrara's early nineties version, these were films about a particular menacing undercurrent in American life and culture. All three stand as brilliantly realized warnings for their respective generations and they all have very individual merits. Kaufman's version is my favorite not only because I find it the most successful cinematically but also because I find its idea of a country being smothered by its own coldness to be the most resonate and timeless.
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was a solid hit when it opened up in the Christmas season of 1978. The film was greeted with mostly positive critical reactions and it was nominated for several genre related awards that year. I personally think Sutherland and the film should have been included in the year's Oscar nominations but as genre films are typically ignored, the omissions weren't a surprise.
The new DVD of Kaufman's greatest work is somewhat of a disappointment. The featurettes's on Disc Two are solid if too brief and the fine commentary by Kaufman is carried over on Disc one. My biggest problem is the transfer which looks too soft to my eyes, especially in the first half of the film. It is an improvement to the original DVD that came out nearly ten years ago, one of the first I ever bought, but the transfer here is merely functional and not as spectacular as it should be. That shouldn't throw off potential buyers though. This is an important film and the new set, which can be found around $15.00 is one of the most essential purchases of the year.
I have seen Kaufman's film many times and it is always a pleasure revisiting it. It is a film that I grew up with, and I find where as I responded strictly to the fantastical elements of it in my youth, it is a work with enough ideas and intelligence to keep capturing me as an adult. I still agree with Pauline Kael's original assessment of it.