The real main relationship in “Auto-Focus” is between Crane’s two selves: the sex-crazed pariah and the nice guy. He simply must maintain his positive self-image and always wants everyone to like him. Early on a Jewish reporter curtly tells him how offensive he finds the concept of “Hogan’s Heroes,” but we’ve already seen the scene when Crane, wary of the show, sarcastically snorts that it’s about “the good Nazis.” He is legitimately hurt by the reporter’s comments, and we suspect that his sexual conquests are a desire to, night after night, make a new woman think he’s a swell guy. He has a serious Madonna-whore complex, in a 1950s kind of way; his first mistress is an actress who came to Hollywood to escape life as a housewife. She and Bob make overtures of mutual understanding, but when they finally wed he reduces her to a housewife and loses interest in her.
Greg Kinnear portrays Bob Crane as the worst kind of degenerate, making one excuse after another and continually denying the existence of his problem. In an early rehearsal for “Hogan’s Heroes” the director tells Crane that he’s trying to hard, that heroes are natural and effortless. Kinnear models his performance on this advice, and comes across as a man too shallow, too insouciant to understand what he’s gotten into, and definitely not Jack Lemmon material. As John Carpenter, Willem Dafoe is equally depraved, but also has a hurt puppy quality to the way he’s always at Crane’s heels, a quality vaguely reminiscent of Ben Kingsley’s brilliant performance in “Sexy Beast.” I liked Dafoe’s performance better of the two, if for no other reason than he somehow seems to be legitimately damaged or sick, and therefore not quite as responsible for his actions. He has no wife to destroy by his misbehavior and we don’t see him with as many women as his master. Crane turns on him once or twice in “Auto-Focus,” and, like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange,” Carpy invokes our sympathy because he has been mistreated—the puppy has been beaten by the one he loves the most—even if in some grand cosmic sense he deserves it.
Paul Schrader (“Affliction,” which won James Coburn an Oscar in 1998) directs “Auto-Focus” straight and efficiently until the final act, when the star has almost finished its descent and the movie begins to take on the blur of morning sunlight through blue curtains. Schrader seems to have learned from his frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, for whom he wrote “Raging Bull,” “Taxi Driver,” and “Bringing Out the Dead,” how to be invisible but powerful. “Auto-Focus” would be unwatchable brilliance if not for its sense of humor and exaggeration; no one, no matter how depraved, would check out a girl’s bum while having coffee with his priest, and somehow I doubt cardigans were ever so prevalent, even in the 1950s. There were always be something snicker-worthy about orgies and swinging, and “Auto-Focus” doesn’t shy away from the dark—very, very dark—humor that crops up along the way. The post-war image of female beauty is a lot more lenient than today’s, and Crane’s beloved strippers are chunkier than the hookers-with-hearts-of-gold we’re used to seeing in movies.
I can watch “A Clockwork Orange” more often than “Auto-Focus,” not just because it’s such an invigorating piece of cinema, with its magnificently self-conscious soundtrack, shots, and editing, but because it’s more fun. Part of Kubrick’s intent with “Clockwork” is to make us enjoy Alex’s mischief vicariously, because that same stain of original sin is in all of us; Alex’s orgies and violence are seen from afar or through some odd, distancing camera trickery. “Auto-Focus” is harder to watch repeatedly because Schrader wisely knows that his goal is not for us to feel like we would enjoy Crane’s activities. He offers us no vicarious, mischievous delight, and in the end we see that Crane’s life of debauchery was just disgusting. It’s no accident that when Crane’s in church the Apostolic Creed is right at “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,” but the line “and his kingdom will have no end” is left out, because Crane’s kingdom does end.
Finished October 25th, 2002
Copyright © 2002 Friday & Saturday Night