TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.

We never had the opportunity to tell you how much we like William Friedkin. Of course, Deal of the Century, which he shot three years ago, didn't even open in France. Why so? Because it was a total flop in the USA, Warner didn't take the risk of distributing this humorous piece here about the gun lobbies whose hard-liner black humor was, to a certain extent, similar to Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove. After the worldwide success of The French Connection and The Exorcist, almost all the films Friedkin directed were flops. Whether it's Wages of Fear -- his esoteric remake of Clouzot's Le Salaire de la Peur-, Cruising or Deal of the Century, all his films were costly productions, all were commercial disappointments.

Yet, The French Connection and The Exorcist weren't fundamentally different from his latest films, nor more commercial. It's just that now majors produce films, which are less disturbing, less risky, less mature. For 15 years, Friedkin followed his path and, around him, the world became more and more stupid. The divorce was unavoidable. In the coarse, conformist cinema of the 80's, killjoys aren't welcomed.

Hard luck! William Friedkin keeps on shooting films on the only guarantee of his two hits. His latest film is certainly the best. And it's the most destructive. Let's make things clear straightaway. The French title announces a thriller (Police Fédérale Los Angeles), but if you have a look at the original title, you understand what is the true nature of the film. To Live and Die in LA: a compressed turn of a phrase which already sums up all the facets of the film. Violence. Coldness. Existentialism. Sacrifice. As a matter of fact, it's not about living and dying anywhere, but LA the city of Angels.

STAIN

Three years ago, Friedkin directed "Self Control", a video for Laura Brannigan. It was a "hot" video which, because of its "polished" images, was very unlike Friedkin's usual rough and dry style. Today, Friedkin has well integrated the contribution of the failed revolution of the video (film industry and fashion oblige). Thanks to its unbelievable rhythm, the extraordinary importance of music and sound, the constant choice of telling a story through images and of always surprising our senses, To Live and Die in LA asserts itself- with Blade Runner- as the best representative of the visual language which is about to come. This film is about to stand out in Cinema's history. Friedkin's advantage over other brilliant film-makers is the acuteness of his view. A crooked view (or, if you prefer, an extremely lucid one). As he skillfully moves his camera in LA's streets, it slowly stains this dream city of the West Coast, makes the rottenness appear under the switched-on interiors, and makes Death emerge under the immaculate fronts which are too flooded with light. In order to achieve this effect, Friedkin called on Robby Müller, who had worked with Wim Wenders, whose solar or crepuscular images he skillfully perverts. To the point that the vision of the film-maker reveals an ignored, changing, dirty L.A. It almost looks like a working-class or mining metropolis. This very disruption of our tourist perception is already worth seeing. To Live and Die in L.A., like many works of art, is most of all the film of a city.

This work of plain, methodical demolition of L.A., paradise of our hollow dreams, relies on a detective theme, which apparently seems harmless: the trafficking of forged currency. Indeed, it's the ideal means to lay bare the decline of the West Coast. As a matter of fact, we soon discover that, for dollars, and moreover forged dollars, men can love and burn, kill and die.

MISTER CHANCE

All the pathetic mobsters in To Live and Die in L.A. live this way, fascinated by the quick fortune offered by the banknote plate. To a certain extent, they create the social background of this thriller. They are the hopeless people whom Friedkin's direction can sacrifice at any time, like the policemen lacking talent and courage. Thanks to these second-raters, the intimate conflict of the protagonists is short-circuited, and it can thus violently explode in the streets of the city.

In the pre-credit sequence, an Iranian terrorist with his stomach covered with dynamite falls from a building and scatters in thousand incandescent bits of flesh, as he's reduced to powder in the starlit night. This crazy man is the first zealot shot by Friedkin in To Live and Die in L.A. He's the first fallen angel. And he's not the last one. Thus, all the characters in the movie are reckless, extremists, obsessed by vague notions of Justice, Love, Law, Purity, in the name of which they allow themselves all kinds of excesses.

Chance, the "hero" of the film, will do anything to carry his investigation through to a successful conclusion. Anything. Even if it means going against the law. As a matter of fact, in his spare time, this cop jumps off huge bridges of the city, held back by a thin rope. Just for the fun of it.

You must see Chance taking it upon himself to avenge his murdered partner. See him leading his new, overcautious and distressed partner in his unofficial methods. See him taking advantage of his status to bargain over useful information with a call-girl unhinged by the awareness of her sins. See him chasing mobsters to the point of exhaustion; see him setting himself as the redeemer of the city. Most of all, see him sulling himself to reach Evil.

MASTERS OF EVIL

From The French Connection to Cruising, Friedkin has always lead his characters to the point of no-return, to the point where the soul burns and becomes perverted. In order to guide his heroes in this Way of the Cross, Friedkin usually puts them against a great Corrupter. A symbolic figure of the Devil, an incarnate and abhorred Evil, a dark and provocative double. The anonymous killer hunted by Pacino in Cruising gives precedence to a crank and murderous forger whose inner fire is not greedy but mystical.

Brilliantly played by Willem Dafoe (the very, very bad guy in Streets of Fire), Masters emerges as the survey of all the characters Friedkin created -- with their share of paradoxes and pathos. Again, it's not the money which consumes Masters, but his lucidity. His awareness of Hell on and not under earth. His dreadful condition as an evil wise man that's aware of the presence of the Devil in everything, in everyone. His antichrist nature.

At this stage of the hyperbolic creation of this character, Friedkin did an incredible game in the direction to show Masters's powers: tremendous ellipsis, lack of continuity, visual and sound lies, deceitful shots, distorted angles, dialogues with numerous meanings, everything is working to give Masters a total domination over Space, Time and the life of his fellows. He never appears where and when we expect him. Among other things, it's what causes the death of many characters in the film'

GAY SAMURAIS

If from the beginning, Friedkin shows us there's no true "positive" hero here below, he also tells us that absolute Evil yearns for purity. If Chance and his partners spend all their time cheating, lying, stealing, betraying their promises, on the contrary, Masters is the only character "true" to himself, the only one who keeps his promises (life or death promises, that's quite another matter). When you see him burning the frightening paintings he paints to free himself, destroying thousands of forged notes which have been soiled by unknown hands, you even find yourself considering him as the only pathetic being in this frenzied circle of death and amorality.

In the end, two characters, equal in strength and "popularity" with the audience, confront each other: Chance and Masters. This film is quite similar to the great samurai films in its way to show two opponents with such strength. They've gone beyond their objectives to fight to the death, and they fully recognize each other.

This awareness happens at the gym where Masters leads an obedient Chance from moist gymnastic sessions to claustrophobic and glowing red sauna. This choice of place is enough to turn the conflict into a seduction scene. As Masters seems to be, according to Friedkin, the embodiment of the attraction of good toward evil, the film-maker has no hesitation in bringing into play the typical latent homosexuality of his characters.

In this way, there's always something of a pagan feast in Friedkin's films. The infernal nightclubs in Cruising, the muddy ghettos in Wages of Fear find here an extraordinary stylization in the huge furnace of the final scene where resound the sacrilegious echoes of a soundtrack completely disconnected from reality.

In the end, Friedkin is one of the most uncompromising moralists. Yet he's a moralist consumed by the pride of show and manipulation. How can we then be surprised that all his films --and To Live and Die in L.A. is the most accomplished example of it- are beacons as regards nihilism. Just simply as regards great films.

Nicolas Boukrief

Starfix, n°37 (June 1986)