In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
Cast your mind back to November 21, 1963, when there was no military draft and John F. Kennedy was still president of the United States. The “no draft” situation would change the following year, due to the need for increased manpower during the escalation of the Vietnam War, while the presidential situation would change the next day due to Lee Harvey Oswald assassinating JFK. Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight, however,begins in a world that makes sense to its characters. We soon meet four of them, all young men who voluntarily enlisted in the Marines and completed their training together: Eddie (River Phoenix), Benjamin (Mitchell Whitfield), Oakie (Anthony Clark), and Berzin (Richard Panebianco). They have a free night in San Francisco before shipping out and are full of bravado while eagerly looking forward to what they think will be a fun adventure.
What better way can these young men prove their masculinity to each other (not, you will note, to women) than by taking part in a dogfight, a game in which a number of servicemen compete to see who can bring the ugliest woman to a “party” staged for the purpose? You get to practice misogyny and cutthroat capitalism at the same time while being the worst version of yourself. Oh, and you get to practice disrespecting other human beings, which will come in handy for what’s coming up.
Savoca creates some fun comic scenes as we watch the servicemen try and sometimes fail to pick up women they’ve targeted as promisingly ugly. At first Eddie seems to be just one of the guys but have you ever seen a movie before? I’m not saying anything against the actors playing the other three Marines, but you don’t hire River Phoenix (who was then at his peak career success) because you need someone to fill an ensemble role.
While the other three end the movie largely as they began, Eddie starts to change after meeting Rose (Lili Taylor), who works in a coffee shop owned by her mother (Holly Near). Of course Lili Taylor isn’t remotely ugly even when hidden behind a ridiculous hairdo and fat suit, so Dogfight soon hangs a lampshade on this incongruity: Eddie realizes too late that Rose is not ugly and tries to mess up her makeup to make her look worse. More importantly, he is beginning to realize that he likes Rose and doesn’t want to hurt her. This creates a problem because he doesn’t want to separate himself from his buddies or suggest that there are better values other than those they espouse.
The contest happens,* Rose finds out the premise behind it, and it looks like this might become the shortest romcom on record. Of course that doesn’t happen, and during the night when most of the story takes place we get to know more about Rose, who is easily the most interesting character in the story. Rose may work in her mom’s diner now, but she wants to change the world by enlisting in the Folk Song Army like her favorite singer Joan Baez. It’s not accidental that we hear Baez singing “Silver Dagger” on the soundtrack (which includes many other well-chosen period tunes) because its warning about the wrongs done to women by men might as well be voiced by Rose’s Mom, who long ago lost the naivete that forms part of Rose’s optimistic approach to life.
Holly Near is good in a small role (I always thought of her as a singer, so I’m pleasantly surprised to learn she can also act), while Phoenix is fine but does nothing to surprise you. And seriously, if we have to applaud male characters every time they decide to think for themselves rather than blindly following their dumbest friends (a choice also key in Marty) that’s going to get old real soon. In fact, it already has.
Dogfight is set in San Francisco but it was mostly shot in Seattle by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, who salts in some landmarks like City Lights Bookstore and the Vesuvio Café to establish location. No city can stand in for San Francisco but Bukowski at least disguises Seattle, creating a film that was shot in any of a number of Canadian or Midwestern US cities standing in for somewhere else, punctuated by occasional inclusion of San Francisco locations a tourist would know. With a small budget, that’s probably the best Savoca and her crew could manage, but it’s always disappointing when a movie set in a visually distinctive location like San Francisco is shot somewhere else. | Sarah Boslaugh
*To be fair, many of the “ugly” women are just older than 25, nonwhite, or have large features, which is to say the definition of ugly is based on an extremely narrow concept of beauty. You need to assume the mindset of the least mature of the guys to think anything about this contest is funny.
Spine #: 1216
Technical details: 93 min.; color; screen ratio 1.85:1; English.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray.
Extras: commentary track with Nancy Savoca and producer Richard Guay; conversation among Nancy Savoca, Lili Taylor, and filmmaker Mary Harron; interviews (conducted remotely) by Richard Guay of cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, production designer Lester W. Cohen, script supervisor Jeffrey Kimball, supervising sound editor Tim Squyres, and editor John Tintori; the film’s trailer. A booklet with essay by film critic Christina Newland is mentioned on the Criterion website but was missing from the copy I reviewed.
Fun Fact: I had never heard of “dogfighting” in the way the term is used in this film. So I asked Professor Google, who came up with nothing not connected to this film. If not proof that’s at least good evidence if not proof that someone connected with the film made the term up. But the practice of trying to find the ugliest woman is not, as is evident of the story of widow and sideshow performer Mary Ann Bevan.
Parting Thought: Beginning a story the day before the JFK assassination has to be a deliberate choice, but why did screenwriter Bob Comfort make it? Normally I’d say to signal that the world is about to change in ways none of the characters saw coming, but that seems to work against the romcom storyline and its predictable conclusion. Is there another interpretation that makes better sense?
