kuciak
Johnny Cool is a real revelation. that it was produced by Peter Lawford, and directed by a William Asher, whose Beach Party movies seemed to celebrate American life as this film condemns it. It also may seem stranger when one sees the people who participated in it, some in only cameos, like Sammy Davis Junior, or Joey Bishop. However, when you consider that Vitoria De Sica, who had once been considered the Cary Grant of Italian films, you may realize, that some of these people who we looked at as entertainers, may have also had ambitions to create art. Johnny Cool is art.Many have commented that it is similar to Point Blank. This is true in many ways,however, another film that no one seems to have mentioned that has also some connection to, I think is John Frankenheimers Seconds. Those who have seen Seconds I think will know what I mean.Whereas Johnny Cool came out in 63, Seconds and Point Blank came out in 66 and 67. Silva I think was so good in this film as Jonny Cool, that he was encouraged to come to Europe to become a film star their. However, the only film that I think of his European films that matches Johnny Cool at this time as a good film is 'Hail Mafia, that he would make some 2 to three years later with Jack Klugman and Eddie Constantine. Johnny Cool I think also bears resemblances to Machine Gun McCain with John Casavetes, which has a theme Song Similar to John Cools by Sammy Davis Junior. he last killing of Johnny Cool in this film also reminds me somewhat of Seijun Suzuki's 'Branded to Kill', and has some similarities for me to another dark Japanese crime film of the time, 'Blackmail Is My Business.' When we see Johnny Cool, first he is a young Italian boy in Sicily who has just saved his Mother, but it will be to no avail, as she is killed right after wards, and perhaps foreshadows Silva's character's failure at the end of the film. As a young boy, he will meet right after wards Salvatore Gulliano, a real life person who would lead a Sicilian resistance movement. The inclusion of Guilliano is interesting, in that though he was apparently killed in 1950, their was a belief by some that his death was faked, and that he would end up in the US. In this way Johnny Cool runs with this premise, and suggests what might have been of Guilianno in America.That also, the first scenes we see of Silva, as his real person in the mountains of Sicily, will remind one of Neo Realism with its black and white photography. Also, does not Silva as that person not remind one of Fidel Castro, with his beard.Though this is in Sicliy, one cannot help in these scenes to feel that their is some Latin American feel. The people in the village seem more down to earth people, than the ones we will see in America.Also here, Richard Anderson as the American Correspondent, asks Silva's character about having once fought with the Americans, to which Silva's character replies that a man fights for himself. This gives the implications that the Silva character at this time may be fighting against the Americans. When he says, from the Germans we got these guns, holding a machine gun, one can't help but feel some present equation between the Germans of the 40's, to the Americans of the 60's, as they were aiding totalitarian regimes against the communists.When we jump to America, we will be introduced to a very sinister and unpleasant America. Perhaps this film would have had a bigger box office (I don't know what that was) had it been filmed in Color. This is however one film that benefits artistically with black and white, especially when one goes to LA and Las Vegas. With its black and white photography, one does not get a feeling of beauty, but instead a dreary feeling, especially during a swimming pool scene, that might have looked too beautiful in color. Also surprising to me, Las Vegas when one considers the participation of Davis, Lawford, and Bishop, is not shown as a place one should really want to go to, as perhaps the earlier Rat Pack film Oceans 11 did. One gets the feeling that this town is really the place of losers, and people who can't really pay their bills.Elizabeth Montgomery, as the love interest of Silva, is presented as I think the mixed up, naive American. She is drawn to his tough guy persona. However she will bring destruction to him, even though one should consider that he has saved her life from possibly a similar fate that he will have. First, after killing Mort Sahl's character, he will have plans to leave and abandon what he is doing. However, she will sadly convince him to continue. The next two victims that he does in we will have no sympathy for, so we continue to root for him. However, she betrays him stupidly when she realizes two children of one of his victims could have been killed. Instead of calling the police, she will out of her own cowardliness, because she is guilty as an accessory to murder, call the very criminals he has been fighting against. In many ways, her character, represents 'the common American' of the time, just before American involvement in Viet Nam, unaware that even in wars sanctioned by the US, innocent children could get killed, or not have really thought about that. A very dark, disturbing view of Americana, from people you would not expect from. Get a load of one of the law enforcement people, with his glasses, one dark, one regular. What is the meaning behind that. I wanted to writer more, but with only a 1000 limit, could not.
Robert J. Maxwell
Henry Silva is Johnny Collini, aka Johnny Cool. Adopted by the deported gangster Marc Lawrence in Sicili, he's sent to America to take over all of his former businesses, wiping out the current managers if necessary. It becomes necessary.Swept up in Johnny Cool's serial assassinations is Elizabeth Montgomery as Darien Guiness from Scarsdale -- great WASP name. She becomes Silva's love slave. We all know what great lovers Italian men are, even if they're not necessarily great actors. She aids and abets his crimes, up to and including murder by dynamite. Finally, as the agents of social control are closing in on her, she gets drunk and the next day decides to drop the dime on her boyfriend.First of all, what a cast! Movie historians will be impressed -- John Dierkes, Elisha Cook Jr., John McGiver, Robert Armstrong ("King Kong") inter alia. One of the executive producers was Peter Lawford, which may account for the Rat Pack character of some of the cast -- Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and a reference to Jilly's, one of Sinatra's favorite bars in New York.Most of these celebrity appearances are in bit parts. The story depends on the leads, Henry Silva and Elizabeth Montgomery. Silva isn't a bravura actor nor a particularly interesting one. He's much better as part of an ensemble, in smaller roles, especially villainous ones. He was great as "Mother" in "A Hatful of Rain" but those glistening, quartzite irises can't carry a film on their own. He's given no help by the script. Not a tag line in a cartload.Elizabeth Montgomery overacts volcanically when she's not chirping away in her "Bewitched" persona. This may not be her fault. The director ought to shape the performance of a newcomer, and Montgomery was quite good in a later made-for-TV movie, "The Legend of Lizzie Borden." Besides, she's so damnably cute and sexy, in the way that Jane Fonda was at the time, that she gets a pass.The film strives for the essence of "cool" as the word was understood in the late 1950s.The score by Billy May is a good example of what I mean. It's jazz oriented but not challenging. More like big band swing, the kind of backing that Sinatra had from Nelson Riddle. I swear that the climactic phrases in the score feature Maynard Ferguson's trumpet. He's the only guy I've ever heard who can run a trumpet up into the stratosphere, like a dog whistle.But, as I say, the cool we see here is 1950s cool. It now seems a little dated. The general concept involves expensive suits, styled hair, smoking, big tips, American cars that are forty feet long, stylish mannerisms and digs, an excess of self confidence, dames (or, more commonly, "broads" or "mouses"), shades, a stride that has a bounce in it, and an air of unflappability. Think Las Vegas. Sinatra embodied it. You didn't have to be rich, though. Marlon Brando was cool in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen in "Bullet" was neo-cool.
whpratt1
Greatly enjoyed this fantastic film from 1963 with plenty of cameos of Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cook Jr.,("I Wake Up Screaming"), Telly Savalas,"Kojak", Joey Bishop (Comedian) and Jim Backus, (Mr. Magoo)Henry Silva, (Johnny Cool) was given a job from a retired Mob gangster hiding out in Rome,(Marc Lawrence) who wanted him to repay some guys with a nice Mob Hit. Elizabeth Montgomery, gets involved with Johnny Cool and starts going on a killing spree with him doing all sorts of wild things and at the same time falling in love with this guy. There are plenty of great musical sounds in this picture by Billy May which adds a great deal to the entire picture. This is the type of film that will never grow old and will keep you interested right to the very end. Enjoy.
