“Take it easy. All the time.”
That’s advice the lawless Duke gives to Boots, his dimmer and more straightforward friend. Corey Allen keeps his voice low, even, intense: this is not about relaxing, it’s about keeping a velvet glove over a steel fist, never revealing what they’re after but never forgetting it.
What they’re after is, in some ways, ambiguous, and the way their initially clear—and disturbing—goal loses its definition in the film’s haze of lust, envy, obsession, and longing is one of Private Property’s many strong points. The action stays simple. Everything else gets complicated.
Duke and Boots are drifters, criminals of opportunity who will use intimidation and suggest the possibility of violence—but who often have no higher ambitions than to secure a free bottle of pop and a ride.
They’re held back by aimlessness, though, not morals. Warren Oates plays Boots with a slightly bruised openness, a vulnerability he can’t shake—he knows he’s one of life’s losers—but he still views violent rape as the natural solution to desire. Duke, the brains of their two-man operation, warns him off, but only out of a pragmatic understanding of what it’s like to do that kind of evil: “Force is very hard to make, take my word for it. Not the first time out. It’s like … work.”
The ”first time out” bit is key here. Duke needled the virginal Boots, stirring him up, and then promised him a girl, and who should drive into their lives at that moment but the beautiful, wealthy Ann Carlyle (Kate Manx)?
Duke will get her for Boots, or so he promises. His decision to “take it easy” means trading an abrupt, brutal attack for a slower, more invasive “seduction,” creating a psychological slow burn of voyeurism, manipulation, and deceit. He sets out to lie to Ann, crafting a porn-ready fantasy where he’s a friendly, handsome gardener eager to see to all the needs her husband’s been neglecting, but he slips into lying to himself, too, experiencing an attraction that he didn’t count on and can’t fully manage.
It’s clear early on that Duke is a born bullshitter who, crucially, is not always aware of his own bullshit. Ann’s marriage may not be as lively as she wants it—I’ve never seen anyone as starry-eyed as Manx is when Ann is listening to her husband, but, while amiable, he’s too focused on the suburban professional grind to even pay attention to his wife’s negligee, let alone her adoration—but it’s not as bleak as Duke tries to paint it. There’s a wonderfully composed shot where he and Boots pull a loveseat up to the window of the house they’re squatting in, watching Ann and Roger Carlyle like they’re framed by the edges of a TV screen, and Duke confidently spouts off about their body language like they’re characters to him too, not people. He creates stories about her, ones that serve his needs, but he never considers that she might have stories and needs of her own.
But she does, and the film lets her. That, as much as the atmosphere of dangerous sleaze and the frankness about sex and rape, may be why this 1960 film needed to be rediscovered to be properly appreciated. Ann is a loving wife who considers an affair, and her eventual desire for Duke is potently and even kinkily sexual rather than romantic. She doesn’t have to pay for it, either, at least not with any of cinema’s traditional forfeits. There is admittedly, and understandably, a sharp sense of horror and violation when an agonized Duke prioritizes his agreement with Boots over her. She can’t treat the two men as interchangeable, and seeing they believed she could shows that they never believed she had a self at all; it’s like they think her desire, once summoned, is plug-and-play for anybody. Yet this never feels like narratively issued payback for her daring to want him. She has sexual agency without shedding her implicit status as an innocent. None of this was an invitation.
Invitations, though, are key here: the title implies trespass, so we see both that and the chance of possession. Duke makes inroads with Ann by eroding all her boundaries, pushing past each polite demurral to another opportunity. When he crosses too bright a line—diving into her pool to rinse off when she’s explicitly said she’s not comfortable with it—and upsets her in a way she won’t hide for his comfort, he chooses manipulation over enticement. Oh, he was only trying to provoke her because she upset him! When she didn’t want to hire him, she seemed like a stuck-up bitch, and therefore, you see, only a stuck-up bitch would stay mad at him now. Ann is horrified at the idea that she hurt him, and she thaws at once; she didn’t want her privacy invaded by a stranger, but she’ll happily extend kindness to someone she thinks just offered her an embarrassing amount of vulnerability. It should be a win for Duke, but her newly issued invitations to him, her offers of lunch and friendship and even reciprocity, are destabilizing. When he no longer needs to push, he no longer feels in control.
In mimicking a seduction, he’s given himself time to be seduced too. This started off as a show of dominance over Boots and over women in general, a chance to flaunt his sexual experience and prowess; when he first wanted her, it was the way he wanted everything in her relaxed, moneyed existence. He was coveting private property, so to speak, infringing on her marriage and her solitude the way he plunges into her pool or risks exposure to sneak into her expensive car. He was comfortable with all that, but as his interplay with Ann gets more complicated and in-depth than a series of intrusions and victories over indifference, his confidence slips away. He’s not above it all anymore. He’s in it, and the people he was dominating now feel less like objects for his own gratification and more like obscure emotional threats.
Boots wants Ann, though he doesn’t know her. Ann wants her husband, but she’s also coming to want Duke, even though she only knows his lies. Duke wants her back, but choosing her will reveal he’s not the master of himself he pretends to be. He hasn’t actually taken it easy at all. No one here has.
Private Property is now streaming on Tubi, Hoopla, Kanopy, and Amazon Prime.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Dan Duryea gets a shave and a second chance.
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A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
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You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
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Department of
Conversation
I realized I should start keeping a (grateful) record of how some of these movies come to my attention. This one is courtesy of Tristan, who also recommended Cause for Alarm. C. D. Ploughman pointed me towards Quiz Lady; Captain Nath towards Let’s Start a Cult. And my friend Scott introduced me to The Seven-Ups, Pray for Death, and Ninja III: The Domination.
What did we watch?
Caught By The Tides — I’ve only seen a few Jia Zhangke films but there are more than just Boss Baby vibes here in a tale of separated lovers over the years (Ash Is Purest White) with a detour to the Three Gorges Dam construction (the same and Still Life) — Zhangke uses footage filmed during those movies, plus stuff from back in 2002 and the present day to construct this timepiece. And especially in the opening section the nostalgia is overpowering — I am not Chinese and I did not go to the clubs back in this time, but I was a young person and there is a hell of a pull seeing footage of youth without much care, Zhangke is attuned to music as a presence in a way few other directors are and this section is full of song and noise, although it’s interesting how much this created and participated in by women (almost no dudes sing and the young dude dancing is hilariously bad). And of course the incredible Zhao Tao is here, impossibly cool and always holding something back even as she embraces the moment she’s in. But times change, boyfriend Li Zhubin abandons her for work elsewhere and she goes to search for him, this is the Still Life section and it can be a bit slow but once again the on-location footage is incredible, the world’s largest dam is displacing millions and some embrace it while others that Jia’s camera finds appear to be going nowhere. Zhao and Li each move on though, and the last section takes place in 2022, Covid everywhere and people apart, Zhao’s most crucial interaction in some ways is with one of those goddamn grocery store robots (it quotes Mother Teresa and Mark Twain at her), but Jia’s great trick is to match these tides with those earlier in the movie — snatches of Qatar World Cup footage echo China’s pride in hosting the Bejing Olympics, another nation on the march, and what appears to be and in some ways is a slam on TikTok as parasocial dance move advertising is also a mirror of the sponsored dance events for booze Zhao was working back at the turn of the millennium. Things change, things stay the same, the final musical moment in the movie is Jia re-embracing the Woo Live Music lifestyle even as it too is sponsored, but the reflection it provokes belongs to the listeners. The ending finds one person swimming with the tide and it’s an open question to whether this is good or not, like the rest of the movie it’s there to ponder as the tide pulls you along. The beginning is a lengthy shot of women having fun singing to each other, I believe a mix of folk and pop songs, but each tune ends the same, with the singer laughingly stopping halfway through: “I forget the rest.”
The Righteous Gemstones, “I Will Take You by the Hand and Keep You” and “Wonders That Cannot Be Fathomed, Miracles That Cannot Be Counted”
Unbelievably strong final two episodes here. Actually, the whole back half of this season, or even the back two-thirds–say “Interlude III” and on–has been incredible.
This almost feels like a two-part season finale, with “I Will Take You by the Hand” resolving not only some of the season’s but some of the show’s biggest issues, at least temporarily: the siblings unify, much to an ostracized Eli’s delight (Eli accepting their fury towards him because he gets to see them getting along is beautiful); Kelvin kisses Keefe (beautifully staged, and an instant “rewind and watch it again” moment in my household); the individual couples all make up; and the church is on solid ground again now that being kidnapped and having their family bonds reforged has made the “Gemstone children” more likable to their congregation.
That lets “Wonders That Cannot Be Fathomed” concentrate on resolving the season-long antagonists, Peter Montgomery and the backgrounded Simkins family, and–of course–to do it in the form of the Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers premiere and interrupt it with a climactic plague of locusts that gives everyone a chance to implicitly declare their loved ones or (in Vance Simkins’s case) Force Majeure them. I love the way Peter’s plot resolves, and Steve Zahn kills it in these last few episodes, nailing Peter’s devastation when he thinks he’s lost his family and then the joyful, purged-of-resentment clarity that lets him face down death itself. I love how in the last twenty seconds or so before the bomb goes off, a beautifully relaxed calm falls over him, like he’s just on a peaceful drive through the countryside. It feels transcendent, and it keeps on feeling that way–it could seem like a cheat that he survives (albeit missing a leg), but instead, it plays out with a sense of grace and titular wonder. The whole family gathered at the end for wholesome destruction has such a buoyant sense of love and forgiveness and celebration, and the details of it–Eli’s slightly awkward thumbs-up to Kelvin and Keefe, Baby Billy scattering toys on the picnic blanket–are all perfect.
Side-notes: I love how incredibly weird Judy and BJ’s bathtub reunion sex is; they really make matching each other’s freak into an artform. (I think they’ve become one of my favorite TV couples.) That Fitbit dead man’s switch is pretty clever. I cannot believe how hard I laughed when an extra’s head got flattened by a falling bit of the Bible Bonkers sign. Dusty Daniels laughed so hard at Baby Billy’s not-that-funny joke about Noah’s dinghy that I’m going to go ahead and say that yeah, they definitely fucked during Y2K.
“Y2K was a hell of a time.”
The way we come back from flashback to find that Walton Goggins is now delivering this dialogue lying down is low-key one of my favorite parts of the finale. Such a perfect bit of staging.
Oh me too, one of those great Goggins swagger moments.
I made a clip of that Kelvin-Keefe moment just so I could put it in my “TV Moments of 2023” article.
An excellent and laudable decision.
Kojak. “Once More from Birdland” – Cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci plays a cabaret singer whose jazz musician father (William Windom) was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. Now he’s free from prison early due to a bad heart, and wants to get back the man who framed him. The plot is sort of light – the actual killer didn’t really have much of a motive, and gets killed by his gang for unrelated reasons – but the vibes of Marcovicci and of Windom trying to find the truth are effective. Though we also only really 40 minutes of show as Andrea signs five minutes at either end. There is also a tiny hint of Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man in the plot. Windom unsurprisingly is quite good, even if I think he fakes playing the clarinet at the end,
Justified, Season One, Episode Thirteen, “Bulletville”
“Maybe I just been talking to myself this whole time.”
I know that, when Boyd asked Raylan what he thought God was like, Raylan was originally scripted to respond with this intricate moral thought, and Timothy Olyphant argued this was out of character. He was right to do so. Most people are like Raylan – not as stylish, not as competent, but when you get right down to it, most people don’t like thinking. I don’t necessarily mean “they don’t like doing rational process-based thinking”, although this is often true; I mean that most people don’t like the big abstract questions like the nature of God or morality. When asked moral questions, most people will find the easiest answer. This is why systemic problems are so hard to solve. With Raylan specifically, he is happy to jump into simple practical problems, but he hates thinking about where he’s going or how he feels about himself.
Then there’s people like Boyd. Goggins is so good as Boyd with shaken faith; his voice is soft and uneven, and he’s gone deflated and internal. He needs these big questions to survive or he just can’t function; he loses his strategy and becomes random. He’s all gung-ho about facing the consequences, but when it all seems to fall apart, he has no idea what to do. I enjoy that it’s all-or-nothing with Boyd; he’s either 100% committed or totally lost. Such is the nature of needing faith.
And what’s really funny is that this ends up secondary to the love Raylan and Boyd have for each other. The whole thing is building up to Raylan letting Boyd go at the end; Boyd saves Raylan because he loves him, and Raylan lets Boyd chase the surviving shooter because the only alternative is killing him and he doesn’t want to do that. Love really can overcome any difference between people, which can be unfortunate depending on the context. Either way, it’s a helpful guide forward.
Biggest Laugh: “You think about givin’ yourself up to save us?” / “Well if I thought that would work, I might consider it.”
Top Ownage: The final shootout owns, but I have to give it up for “Then what happens?”
“I’m betting my life on you being the only friend I have left in this world.” A truly incredible end to the season.
Love your notes on Raylan not wanting to examine himself or answer big, abstract questions; it feels like it pairs naturally with how rocked-back he is by Winona pointing out his anger in the pilot. He’s just not naturally introspective, and that means certain things will always blindside him or make him uncomfortable. (Or strike him as foolish: it’s unfailingly good material for exasperated comedy.)
Certainly it’s the basis of his usual rage when talking to Boyd.
And I don’t want to even suggest Raylan is stupid for any of this (though it does feed into his more stupid decisions, usually related to women). The show is really good at selling this as a blindspot he’s ignoring more than anything else.
Raylan definitely feeds the fascistic, conservative, active side of me that thinks most philosophy is a waste of time. (Other times it’s all I got.)
Picture me sitting on a lounge with the book I’m currently reading on the philosophy of Western Civilisation, peering over my spectacles a la Lester from The Wire.
“You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” recurs throughout most of the season finales and always adds this extra epic, bone-chilling layer to the show. (Also just a great piece of music: “Where the sun comes up about 10 in the morning and the sun goes down about three in the day.”)
Ownage.
Doctor Who, “The Reality War” – season finale, also since the show is kinda up in the air at this point, maybe the end for quite some time? And since it took me a few days to get to it, I’d already had some key things spoiled and seen a lot of negative reaction to it. I thought it was a pretty solid way to end things for now though, not a top-tier episode but it had top-tier moments and felt consistently thrilling. Read a couple of reviews afterwards and there are some compelling points against it – notably one thing that happens too much in the show, the bad guy being set up as the doctor’s most deadly adversary ever only for them to be vanquished extremely quickly. But nothing that majorly bothered me while watching, so I’ll give it a tentative thumbs up and will undoubtedly keep watching if and when they do return.
Lol my friend called me specifically to complain about the finale, but another Whovian said this is all Disney’s fault. I blame Disney when I stub my toe so I buy it.
I kinda think I’m a casual enough fan that some of the stuff that the hardcore fans get annoyed by just washes over me. Nobody gets as annoyed as the REAL fans, haha.
There’s that probably now decade old joke about Whovians being the only fans who actively hate the show they watch, lol.
I scrolled past a headline yesterday: “The makers of Doctor Who need to go away and think about what they’ve done” – which seemed ridiculously extra of someone made me laugh a lot.
Buddy Cole live, which was largely excellent (you’ll see why “largely” is here shortly) – some incredible jokes here about Gertrude Stein, married, closeted Egyptians, and Philadelphia’s addicts, and that was just the first 10 minutes. Cole is, as any KITH fan knows, a fabulous comedic character, a fearless survivor and smartass who is perfect for this kind of captive audience. That is, until Scott Thompson came on at the end, shedding the coat and wig, but less to get vulnerable or deliver anything new, and seemingly more to complain about being an old gay guy who has to use new pronouns* and be part of a group. Basically a great evening with a sour taste in the mouth right at the end. (Buddy would have a joke about this sentence.)
*When Buddy talks about this, it’s much funnier, in part because Buddy is trying, and he’s right that “ze” and “zir” are simply never going to catch on.