PRIME CUT

US, 1972, 88 minutes, Colour.
Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Sissy Spacek, Angel Tompkins, Gregory Walcott.
Directed by Michael Ritchie.

A very well-made gangster thriller, but a very ugly portrayal of violence. It has the advantage of having Lee Marvin pitted against Gene Hackman for the melodramatics and the clashes. Sissy Spacek, who was to achieve such success in films like Carrie and Three Women, has a small telling role. Direction is by Michael Ritchie, who has focused on some of the bizarre aspects of the American temperament and ethos, from comedy and satire in the area of sport, for example Downhill Racer, The Candidate, Smile, The Bad News Bears, Semi Tough. This is a well-made but unappealing film.

1. The meaning of the title? How interesting a film was this, how enjoyable? How attractive? Or was it too repulsive?

2. The impact of the credit sequences for the tone of the film, the process of making sausages? Significance of this?

3. The personalities of the people involved in the film? Any attractive ones? Or the repellent aspects of humanity? Gangsters? What tone did this give the film?

4. The Kansas versus the Chicago gangsters - in style, old fashioned versus new fashion, the whole thing as a commentary on the modern U.S.? How valid? How well filmed?

5. The sausage message and the effect in Chicago?

6. Nick Devlin - as a gangster, as a person, as willing to be hired out, what values did he have? His relationship to the young Irish murderer? The sequence of his leaving home? The relationship with the other gangsters?

7. The significance of the ride to Kansas - as a technique in the film of moving from one place to another, a journey and its revelation of characters?

8. The impact of Mary Annette's sale, the location, the manner of the people there, respectability and vice, the prostitutes and the cattle, the drugs, Mary Anne's giving people what they want: dope and flesh?

9. The character and personality of Mary Anne? How do you explain a person like Mary Anne? His power? The symbolism of his eating guts?

10. The importance of the confrontation of the two gangsters? how interesting in itself, how repulsive? When the two were compared who was worse? Why?

11. The drugged girls ? Poppy: done up as a mole, how did she get there, was she a victim?

12. The visit to the dive and the thugs, the fights and the drugging of Daisy? How important for the film?

13. The sequence of the fair, how well done in itself? Nick Devlin and the milk? Mary Anne and his importance at the fair? Clarabelle?

14. How well done were the shootings and the chases at the fair? The chase through the fields with Poppy? The car and the thresher?

15. The personality of Clarabelle, what explains a person like Clarabelle? Her stances, her values? Clarabelle and the yacht?

16. The final showdown? How effectively filmed? What was your reaction to the persons and to the story by this time?

17. The freeing of the orphans - the significance of this? Was it a touch of sentimentality in a brutal film?

18. What values did this film explore? What stances and attitudes? How did it use the gangster style and content to explore these values and stances? Did it show insight into the gangster world?