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Rian Johnson’s Festival of Fakery: Paper Moon
On this Father’s Day, I present to you a movie about fathers and daughters, starring a real-life father-daughter duo — playing a couple who may or may not be father and daughter, but use this dynamic to con people.
Meet Moses Pray and Addie Loggins (Ryan and Tatum O’Neal), the stars of Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon, a tale of a small-time con artist falling into the care of a newly orphaned girl — and finding that she’s a better con artist than he is.
Tell the story driving. Peter Bogdanovich, fresh off directing The Last Picture Show, decided to shoot Paper Moon in black and white. The film is populated with wide landscape shots, complex framing and an alternation between long takes and classic shot-reverse shot storytelling. To pull this off, he would need a talented and versatile cinematographer — and he picked Laszlo Kovacs, the man behind the camera for two classic road movies, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. His adept framing comes in especially handy at the beginning of the film, where Bogdanovich visually establishes the mood, setting, and Addie’s character.
Through the eyes and ears of a child. Tatum O’Neal became the youngest Academy Award winner in history for playing Addie Loggins. And it’s completely deserved. Addie is in nearly every scene of the film. It’s her point of view that dominates the story.
Moses’ original mission is to deliver Addie to her aunt, back east in Missouri. But ever the opportunist, he uses her to bait a factory owner in a simple con for $200. Moments later, after Moses has already spent the money, Addie demands it all from him. She threatens to turn him in if he doesn’t give it to her.
“But I don’t have it!” Moses says.
“Then get it!” Addie fires back.
Together, they drive across Kansas, and Addie watches as Moses sells bibles to recent widows who don’t know any better. When Moses gets into trouble, Addie jumps into the con. Using her for sympathy, they pull off the classic takeaway tactic to fool a lawman into buying — at double the usual price, thanks to Addie.
Instantly, and though Moses denies it, Addie becomes the brains of the operation. What she says goes. When they encounter a poor family, Addie decides to pull out of the con. When they encounter a rich woman, Addie decides to double the price.
Paper Moon could have easily become a “cutesy” movie — but it isn’t. Addie’s performance could have gone into precocious Dakota Fanning-Haley Joel Osment territory, but it doesn’t. In long-take scene after long-take scene, Tatum O’Neal remarkably holds her own with her father, and it wasn’t easy: one particular scene took two days and 39 takes to get right.
A gallery of repeated images. Paper Moon works on many different levels. It’s an entertaining movie that can be equally enjoyed for its aesthetic value. Bogdanovich uses repeated images to tell his story. Once a motif is established, he changes the dynamic of his setups — sometimes more subtly than others — sort of like a Highlights magazine. The effect is very simple, efficient, brilliant.
As I watched the movie, I also wondered, “Why shoot it in black and white?” Slowly I realized how simple and effective this choice was, too — providing cover for his breaks with convention by preparing the audience to experience something different. Sort of like setting a fast-talking detective story in high school, or a globe-trotting con artist expedition in a world of trains and telegrams. Clearly Rian Johnson understood the lesson: using lies to reveal truth. Or, as the rest of us know it, the history of storytelling.
Comments
The camera work in that one clip is so nice. That opening shot is so smooth and she plays it so well with just her expression.
Madeline Khan (sp?) is also super fine.
There’s a great shot in Brick near the beginning when Joseph Gordon-Levitt sneaks back stage at the school theatre and theres this short push/pull movement in opposition with the direction he’s walking as he goes into the dressing room. It’s great.