Blunted affect is the scientific term describing a lack of emotional reactivity on the part of an individual. It is manifest as a failure to express feelings either verbally or non-verbally, even when talking about issues that would normally be expected to engage the emotions. Expressive gestures are rare and there is little animation in facial expression or in vocal inflection.[1]
Blunt affect 'can be symptomatic of schizophrenia, depression, or brain damage'.[2] 'The difference between flat and blunted affect is in degree. A person with flat affect has no or nearly no emotional expression. He or she may not react at all to circumstances that usually evoke strong emotions in others. A person with blunted affect, on the other hand, has a significantly reduced intensity in emotional expression'.[3]
That seems to define the acting technique that is the modern equal of "The Method" that influenced acting in the previous generation (Clift, Dean, Brando, Pacino).
The latest advocate of Blunted Affect is George Clooney, the favorite in the best actor race for this year's Oscar for "The Descendants". Others who espouse this technique include Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, and other comics who dial down their personalities when they want to be taken seriously.
Peter Sellers in "Being There" was the best example of this school which was pioneered long long ago by Buster Keaton, "The Great Stone Face". Sellers, of all the actors mentioned, was probably the most natural exponent of the style, inasmuch as he was, by most accounts, a certifiable schizophrenic.
Other actors of past generations sometimes resorted to the flattened affect approach to character. Gregory Peck was accused by critics of having a limited range of expression. Cary Grant, when trying for drama, suppressed his naturally abundant personality. Gary Cooper was viewed as a shallow "yup-nope" type, which I think was a sad under rating of his talents as a film actor. He understood his face and at his best (as in "High Noon") he was nearly perfect.
A still earlier school of screen actors resorted to a more extreme style, which could be labeled bipolar. They indulged in severe mood swings chewing the scenery in emotive flailing. The pantomime needs of silent films led to acting that would later be ridiculed for its over the top manner.
Garbo's critical acclaim was based on a perception that she, apart from other silent stars, was able to express a wide range of emotions with reactions that were subtle. (Oddly, when she was able to speak, her acting became less subtle, sometimes awful, as in "Grand Hotel" and "Camille"). She was the first screen actor of whom it was said that the camera alone exposed her genius. On the set, directors worried about her performances. But when they saw the film, they were awed. Garbo's face was described as like the Mona Lisa, a slate upon which the viewer wrote his or her feelings. Famously, in the final scene of "Queen Christina", she stares at the horizon evoking profound emotions, and was told by the director to think of nothing.
In "The Descendants," Clooney's character has plenty of reason to be closed down emotionally and to be somewhat depressed, considering the difficulties of his domestic life: a wife in a coma who he learns was unfaithful and in fact planning to leave him, a rebellious teen daughter, and financial burdens about whether to dispose of his inherited fortune. I must admit that I myself felt detached from these characters. I felt that in one sense I had little in common with them because I do not have the terrible dilemma of being filthy rich and living in paradise. Depressing.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Sunday, August 07, 2011
The Next Voice You Hear ....
Today, it is nearly a lost art. The few remaining impressionists rely on politicians as in SNL skits or sports figures (Frank Calliendo has made a career of doing John Madden). Some of the best comic performances on SNL were those of Dana Carvey (Bush 42), Daryl Hammond (Bill Clinton and Al Gore), Will Ferrell (Bush 43), Tina Fey (Sarah Palin). But there are few modern impressionists who do vocal caricatures of contemporary actors.
The fact is that, with the notable exception of Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro, contemporary actors don’t have distinctive memorable voices. Can anyone get a laugh imitating the the voice of Meryl Streep or Nicole Kidman or Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston? Is there anything about their voices that captures their personas?
Despite the popularity of the horror genre, has any actor in any horror flick of the past thirty years been more memorable than the old timers, Bela Lugosi ("Dracula") or Boris Karloff ("The Mummy")? As funny as Robin Williams can be, is his voice as distinctive or funnier than Groucho’s or Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy? Angelina Jolie has a sexy face and figure, but can you identify her voice as easily as you could Marilyn Monroe’s, whose breathy tones say it all in a rapid heartbeat.
Think about the voice of James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Katherine Hepburn or Henry Fonda. Some of today’s movie stars have the charisma to stop traffic, but once they speak, who cares?
In the early days when movies began to talk and voice recording technology was primitive, many silent film stars flopped because they had voices that scared the moguls. Some were "too foreign," other voices didn’t match faces.
John Gilbert, a romantic lead in silents, had a decent speaking voice face to face, but rumors spread that in sound tests his voice was laughably high pitched. He panicked, adopted a stilted, overly trained diction that led to ridicule, fatal for a screen lover and his career swooned. In a few years he became an unemployed alcoholic and died.
Others were luckier. Gary Cooper made the transition by emphasizing his Wyoming bred western twang (though he was educated partly in England). MGM was so terrified that Greta Garbo’s thick Swedish accent would doom their meal ticket that they delayed her first talkie for years. After crash diction classes made her sound legible, they put her in Eugene O’Neill’s "Anna Christie," about a prostitute who returns home to her Swedish father, which made her accent appropriate.
Her opening line: "Giff me a viskey, ginger ale on da side, and don’ be stingy, baby," became an instant classic. Breathing relieved sighs, Louis B. Meyer and Irving Thalberg trumpeted their marketing: "Garbo talks." Garbo’s most famous contralto tag line, "I vant to be alone" was part of all stock imitations of the iconoclastic star.
Later, Marlene Dietrich’s success solidified the notion that deep voices and foreign accents could add to the sex appeal of female stars.
The best voice of the era was Ronald Colman’s. He had been an established silent star but with talkies, his mellow English voice was almost poetic. In period epics derived from literature, he spoke the classic lines as audiences heard them in their minds. "A Tale Of Two Cities" ("Its a far, far better thing I do..."), "The Prisoner Of Zenda", "Lost Horizon".
In 1942, George Stevens directed Colman, along with Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, and character actor Edgar Buchanan, a cast that may have had the most interesting voices of the decade in a comedy / drama, "Talk Of The Town".
Talking pictures compelled studio heads to scour the stage for actors who could speak and their ears perked up when they heard voices that could project to the balconies and were impervious to tinny sound systems.
In 1929, James Cagney was signed directly from a Broadway play called "Penny Arcade". Seven pictures and two years later, he shot to stardom when he really found "his voice" as "The Public Enemy," spitting his dialogue into the faces of his enemies as if they were bullets, creating an entirely new style of street-wise acting, that influenced all later tough guys, including De Niro.
Warners found most of their gangsters on the stage: Muni, Robinson, Bogart. Spencer Tracy made a hit on Broadway in "The Last Mile" and was signed by John Ford to play another convict (with Bogart) in "Up The River" in 1930.
These great stars were lucky for the timely advent of talkies. None of them had faces that would have made them leads in silents; their voices were their fortune.
Of course, the most famous stage actor of his day was John Barrymore. Considered the best American classical actor of the early 20th century stage, "the Great Profile" found steady work, then stardom as a silent movie star, playing "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" among many other roles.
In 1926, Warner Brothers released the experimental "Don Juan" starring Barrymore. The film included the first fully synchronized sound track. When talkies began (the next year, 1927, "The Jazz Singer" came out), Barrymore continued to thrive.
His performance in the Hecht / MacArthur / Hawks production of "Twentieth Century" is one of the first and best of the screwball genre co-starring Carole Lombard, who exhibited her brilliant comic manner in such dialogue as in "My Man Godfrey," in which she created the persona of a charming, sexy, ditzy but somehow wise woman.
Another important reason for the dominance of voices was that the other mass medium of the era was radio.
By the 1930's, radio had trained audiences to listen — writers who came from the medium were all about the dialogue, and their words told the story as much or even more than the images. They craved actors who could punch the lines, bring them to life. Actors with characteristic voices were listened to and writers loved to write for them.
That is why Capra’s favorite collaborating writer, Robert Riskin, and the writer / director of great comedies of the 1940's, Preston Sturges, treasured actors like Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, Fonda, Joel McCrea, Cooper, and Stewart.
They also filled out their films with supporting players who had terrific voices: the gravel voiced Lionel Stander ("Mr. Deeds Goes To Town"), Charles Coburn "The Lady Eve"), Roscoe Karns ("It Happened One Night)", Walter Connolly ("Mr. Deeds..."), Eugene Pollard ("Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"), James Gleason ("Arsenic And Old Lace"). You may never remember their names, but their voices can’t be forgotten.
Now, who was that actor who played Ryan Reynolds’ friend in that romcom with what’s-her-name?
Saturday, May 07, 2011
HEREAFTER (2010)
Clint Eastwood dedicates his considerable talents as a cinematic storyteller to a script about the possibility of life after death by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) which has (no irony intended) fatal flaws. Premised on the hackneyed notion that the departed hang around in order to assist their grieving loved ones, it presents it as a given fact, but one that it claims the sophisticated, insistently rational world wants to deny and suppress.
The truth is that as a matter of faith and desperate wishes, the impulse to believe in a hereafter is a universal and insistent human frailty. if an afterlife was convincingly proved, it would be a discovery far more important than finding life on other planets. Any scientist (or psychic) who could prove it would be as famous as Einstein.
Eastwood has gained a reputation as a thoughtful filmmaker, at his best when he allows his characters and scenarios to tell a simple, moving, and fundamentally honest story. Unforgiven is his best, minimizing sentimentality. He deals well with ambiguous emotions and attitudes, especially about violence, as in A Perfect World, Mystic River, Gran Torino, and his Iwo Jima films. Now that he is 80 years old, the subject matter of this movie is not unexpected and may be forgiven. But here, he has allowed ambiguity to yield to confusion, sentimentality to rule over coherence.
In another movie cliché, he chooses a form which is annoyingly popular in recent years. Crash and Babel are two examples. Three stories are told, seeming at first to be disparate, taking place at distant locales, coming together or overlapping in meaningful and unsatisfyingly contrived ways.
Here, Cecile de France is a Parisian tele-journalist whose Indonesian vacation is shortened by her near death in the tsunami. In a masterful terrifying and lengthy CGI scene, we see her drown, while she sees blurry images of dead people. She returns to life but is haunted by the visions. It takes Eastwood a long time to get her on the road we know she's going to follow, the one that teaches her about the "truth" of her experience. Her producer and her publisher both think her batty and sentimental. But she is determined to write a book about it.
She meets a "scientist," a doctor (played by Marthe Keller) whose 25 years in hospice work has convinced her that there is an afterlife. The evidence the doctor asserts as proof, that all of her patients describe similar visions which she concludes cannot be coincidental, seems unscientific and illogical, easily answerable by rudimentary knowledge of how the human brain works when deprived of oxygen and when the mind becomes aware of its impending death.
The doctor asserts that the truth she has found has been suppressed. By whom, is not clear. Of course, that is nonsense. By setting this part of the film in Europe Eastwood strives for an ironic credibility. He seems to imply that the secularized and cultured continentals are far less believing than we naive Americans.
The ultra American actor Matt Damon is the second main character, a reluctant San Francisco psychic who really possesses the gift of " connection" with the dead. By touching the hand of his subject, he can hear the dead speak to him. The mechanics of this are not questioned. It is a gift which was presented to him as a result of illness and some medical malpractice, and he has used to make a good living by exploiting it. But it caused him grief by denying to him any connection with living women.
We see an example when he meets a sweet girl in an Italian cooking class (played by Bryce Dallas Howard as if she signed on for a rom- com, but hadn't read the last page of her role). When she discovers his gift, she insists that he do her and when her dead father begs her forgiveness for abusing her, it chills the date and we get why our guy calls the gift "a curse."
It has been suggested by other reviewers that the movie permits an alternate explanation for the afterlife explanation. Maybe Damon’s character is telepathic, reading the emotions of his grieving subject – as if that would be more “realistic.” But the plot and dialogue detail really does not permit that apologetic interpretation. It is presented in the film as fact, as shown in the climactic scenes when the third plot thread weaves together.
The third main character’s arc is the most painful story to sit through. Twin twelve year old sons of an English heroin addicted mum are separated when one dies after being taunted by street bullies while on an errand to get medicine for mummy. The surviving twin is the quiet one, who idolized his protective older ( by minutes) brother. When mum goes into rehab, boy is sent to foster parents by the social workers. The adults are so understanding and forgiving of the little shit's neuroses that you want to slap them, especially when he steals money to seek out psychics to contact his brother.
In another startling episode, the boy’s cap falls off his head preventing his entry into a subway car which is soon blown up in a London terrorist attack that really did happen. Later, Damon’s psychic reveals that the twin brother knocked the cap to save his brother. It is another proof of that we are meant to take the notion of ghostly assistance as literal.
Contrary to the views of some reviewers that the movie avoids a religious POV, the movie gives a foggy spiritual explanation for coincidences as well as loss of loved ones.
By tying the supernatural with current events like the tsunami and terrorist attacks, Eastwood seems to be saying that there is meaning to the randomness of natural and man-made violence in our world.
These are dubious assumptions, as the lengthy history of afterlife mythology, whether propagated in almost any religious faith or the entirety of movie history, testifies. As recently as last year's "The Lovely Bones" the idea has been such a well worn staple of movies that it constitutes a genre with several sub-genres (Topper, Ghost, The Sixth Sense, Ghost Town, Blithe Spirit, et. al.).
The truth is that as a matter of faith and desperate wishes, the impulse to believe in a hereafter is a universal and insistent human frailty. if an afterlife was convincingly proved, it would be a discovery far more important than finding life on other planets. Any scientist (or psychic) who could prove it would be as famous as Einstein.
Eastwood has gained a reputation as a thoughtful filmmaker, at his best when he allows his characters and scenarios to tell a simple, moving, and fundamentally honest story. Unforgiven is his best, minimizing sentimentality. He deals well with ambiguous emotions and attitudes, especially about violence, as in A Perfect World, Mystic River, Gran Torino, and his Iwo Jima films. Now that he is 80 years old, the subject matter of this movie is not unexpected and may be forgiven. But here, he has allowed ambiguity to yield to confusion, sentimentality to rule over coherence.
In another movie cliché, he chooses a form which is annoyingly popular in recent years. Crash and Babel are two examples. Three stories are told, seeming at first to be disparate, taking place at distant locales, coming together or overlapping in meaningful and unsatisfyingly contrived ways.
Here, Cecile de France is a Parisian tele-journalist whose Indonesian vacation is shortened by her near death in the tsunami. In a masterful terrifying and lengthy CGI scene, we see her drown, while she sees blurry images of dead people. She returns to life but is haunted by the visions. It takes Eastwood a long time to get her on the road we know she's going to follow, the one that teaches her about the "truth" of her experience. Her producer and her publisher both think her batty and sentimental. But she is determined to write a book about it.
She meets a "scientist," a doctor (played by Marthe Keller) whose 25 years in hospice work has convinced her that there is an afterlife. The evidence the doctor asserts as proof, that all of her patients describe similar visions which she concludes cannot be coincidental, seems unscientific and illogical, easily answerable by rudimentary knowledge of how the human brain works when deprived of oxygen and when the mind becomes aware of its impending death.
The doctor asserts that the truth she has found has been suppressed. By whom, is not clear. Of course, that is nonsense. By setting this part of the film in Europe Eastwood strives for an ironic credibility. He seems to imply that the secularized and cultured continentals are far less believing than we naive Americans.
The ultra American actor Matt Damon is the second main character, a reluctant San Francisco psychic who really possesses the gift of " connection" with the dead. By touching the hand of his subject, he can hear the dead speak to him. The mechanics of this are not questioned. It is a gift which was presented to him as a result of illness and some medical malpractice, and he has used to make a good living by exploiting it. But it caused him grief by denying to him any connection with living women.
We see an example when he meets a sweet girl in an Italian cooking class (played by Bryce Dallas Howard as if she signed on for a rom- com, but hadn't read the last page of her role). When she discovers his gift, she insists that he do her and when her dead father begs her forgiveness for abusing her, it chills the date and we get why our guy calls the gift "a curse."
It has been suggested by other reviewers that the movie permits an alternate explanation for the afterlife explanation. Maybe Damon’s character is telepathic, reading the emotions of his grieving subject – as if that would be more “realistic.” But the plot and dialogue detail really does not permit that apologetic interpretation. It is presented in the film as fact, as shown in the climactic scenes when the third plot thread weaves together.
The third main character’s arc is the most painful story to sit through. Twin twelve year old sons of an English heroin addicted mum are separated when one dies after being taunted by street bullies while on an errand to get medicine for mummy. The surviving twin is the quiet one, who idolized his protective older ( by minutes) brother. When mum goes into rehab, boy is sent to foster parents by the social workers. The adults are so understanding and forgiving of the little shit's neuroses that you want to slap them, especially when he steals money to seek out psychics to contact his brother.
In another startling episode, the boy’s cap falls off his head preventing his entry into a subway car which is soon blown up in a London terrorist attack that really did happen. Later, Damon’s psychic reveals that the twin brother knocked the cap to save his brother. It is another proof of that we are meant to take the notion of ghostly assistance as literal.
Contrary to the views of some reviewers that the movie avoids a religious POV, the movie gives a foggy spiritual explanation for coincidences as well as loss of loved ones.
By tying the supernatural with current events like the tsunami and terrorist attacks, Eastwood seems to be saying that there is meaning to the randomness of natural and man-made violence in our world.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Ghost Tales
Having recently seen and hated “The Lovely Bones,” I tried to remember other ghost stories that I preferred. Here is the list I came up with so far in no particular order:
1. "Ghost" (1990) Possibly the most successful romantic ghost story. Directed by Jerry Zucker, with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, some very sexy clay, and Whoopi. Loving spouse is murdered, sticks around to solve crime, save his wife, give her closure. The whole package of sentiment and wishing.
2. "Topper" (1937) The playful society ghosts stay on to loosen up their uptight friend. Cary Grant, Constance Bennet, Roland Young, and a classic white Cord fishtail. Spawned sequels and a T.V. series. Also in this genre are the recent “Ghost Town” which itself was a twist on “Hearts And Souls” (1993) Robert Downey, Jr. as the guy who has to help ghosts find closure.
3. "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1945) Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney, directed by Jos. Mankiewicz. A classic woman’s fantasy - a lusty sea captain ghost who helps her to independence and dreamy passion without leaving the toilet seat up.
4. "The Canterville Ghost", story by Oscar Wilde (filmed at least 6 times, including Charles Laughton version) in which a meek dead knight tries to haunt but doesn't have the heart to really scare.
5. "The Sixth Sense" (1999) M. Night Shyamalan’s coming out party with Bruce Willis in dialed down non action mode and Haley Joel Osmond seeing dead people. Everybody claims they guessed the twist - but like deja vu, not until afterwards.
6. "Blithe Spirit" (1945) Rex Harrison play by Noel Coward (sub-sub genre: dead spouse returns to mess up new relationship eg “Kiss Me Goodbye” - James Caan, Sally Field, “Chances Are” Downey, Jr and Cybil Shepard.
7. "The Others" (2001) Alejandro Amenabar sets Nicole Kidman and her supposedly photosensitive kids in a dark house on an isolated foggy island after World War II. The chilling solution to the scary story is logical and satisfying in its horror.
8. "The Innocents" (1961) ("The Turn Of The Screw") Henry James classic ghost tale, directed in glorious black and white by Jack Clayton, starring Deborah Kerr as the prim Victorian (ergo sexually repressed) governess who sees things the children see - or does she?
9. "The Amityville Horror" (1979) Based on the true story of a family that was murdered in their beds, the next occupants have serious problems with the previous owners.
10. "Ghostbusters" (1984) Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, directed by Ivan Reitman. Launched sequels, early video game, hit song and thankfully, Bill’s wacky comic persona.
11. "The Haunting" (Of Hill House) (1963) Shirley Jackson's classic sample of the psychological ghost story genre. Julie Harris, Claire Bloom. Directed by Robt Wise.
12. "The Shining" (1980) A haunted hotel sparks insanity for a frustrated writer - Stephen King’s story as told by Stanley Kubrick through Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and a kid on a trike who meets scary twins.
13. "A Christmas Carol". The ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come visit poor Scrooge, filmed many times and versions. My favorite is the classic Alistair Sim (1951) .
14. "Beetlejuice" (1988) Tim Burton’s twisted vision stars with ghosts Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis.
15. "Casper" (1995) Christina Ricci meets the animated friendly marshmallow looking ghost.
16. "Field Of Dreams" (1989) The ghosts of Chicago Black Sox players and a father come to Iowa to make me cry simply by saying “wanna play catch?”. Gulp.
see Wikipedia for a more inclusive list
1. "Ghost" (1990) Possibly the most successful romantic ghost story. Directed by Jerry Zucker, with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, some very sexy clay, and Whoopi. Loving spouse is murdered, sticks around to solve crime, save his wife, give her closure. The whole package of sentiment and wishing.
2. "Topper" (1937) The playful society ghosts stay on to loosen up their uptight friend. Cary Grant, Constance Bennet, Roland Young, and a classic white Cord fishtail. Spawned sequels and a T.V. series. Also in this genre are the recent “Ghost Town” which itself was a twist on “Hearts And Souls” (1993) Robert Downey, Jr. as the guy who has to help ghosts find closure.
3. "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1945) Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney, directed by Jos. Mankiewicz. A classic woman’s fantasy - a lusty sea captain ghost who helps her to independence and dreamy passion without leaving the toilet seat up.
4. "The Canterville Ghost", story by Oscar Wilde (filmed at least 6 times, including Charles Laughton version) in which a meek dead knight tries to haunt but doesn't have the heart to really scare.
5. "The Sixth Sense" (1999) M. Night Shyamalan’s coming out party with Bruce Willis in dialed down non action mode and Haley Joel Osmond seeing dead people. Everybody claims they guessed the twist - but like deja vu, not until afterwards.
6. "Blithe Spirit" (1945) Rex Harrison play by Noel Coward (sub-sub genre: dead spouse returns to mess up new relationship eg “Kiss Me Goodbye” - James Caan, Sally Field, “Chances Are” Downey, Jr and Cybil Shepard.
7. "The Others" (2001) Alejandro Amenabar sets Nicole Kidman and her supposedly photosensitive kids in a dark house on an isolated foggy island after World War II. The chilling solution to the scary story is logical and satisfying in its horror.
8. "The Innocents" (1961) ("The Turn Of The Screw") Henry James classic ghost tale, directed in glorious black and white by Jack Clayton, starring Deborah Kerr as the prim Victorian (ergo sexually repressed) governess who sees things the children see - or does she?
9. "The Amityville Horror" (1979) Based on the true story of a family that was murdered in their beds, the next occupants have serious problems with the previous owners.
10. "Ghostbusters" (1984) Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, directed by Ivan Reitman. Launched sequels, early video game, hit song and thankfully, Bill’s wacky comic persona.
11. "The Haunting" (Of Hill House) (1963) Shirley Jackson's classic sample of the psychological ghost story genre. Julie Harris, Claire Bloom. Directed by Robt Wise.
12. "The Shining" (1980) A haunted hotel sparks insanity for a frustrated writer - Stephen King’s story as told by Stanley Kubrick through Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and a kid on a trike who meets scary twins.
13. "A Christmas Carol". The ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come visit poor Scrooge, filmed many times and versions. My favorite is the classic Alistair Sim (1951) .
14. "Beetlejuice" (1988) Tim Burton’s twisted vision stars with ghosts Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis.
15. "Casper" (1995) Christina Ricci meets the animated friendly marshmallow looking ghost.
16. "Field Of Dreams" (1989) The ghosts of Chicago Black Sox players and a father come to Iowa to make me cry simply by saying “wanna play catch?”. Gulp.
see Wikipedia for a more inclusive list
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The Lubitsch Touch
LACMA is in the midst of a four week program showing the films of Ernst Lubitsch, the master of the romantic comedy, a genre that has been a mainstay of Hollywood movies since they began to flicker.
Old school cranks like me wish that more contemporary filmmakers would review the Lubitsch library and learn just a bit of “The Lubitsch Touch”.
His ‘touch’ forbade coarseness in any part of his productions. The plot, dialogue, motivations, themes all had to be elegantly thought out, polished, coherent. Words like “sloppy,” “crass,” or “gross,” couldn’t be used to critique any of his movies. Even his pre-code movies showed a sophisticated view of sex and relationships. The battle of the sexes in Lubitsch films is fought with passion, wit, suggestion, tantalizing comic tension — but never with mean spirited nastiness.
Maurice Zolotow, in his biography of Billy Wilder (“Billy Wilder In Hollywood", Putnam 1977) writes of Lubitsch:
“He was a believer in a well-made screenplay and he didn’t start shooting until the screenplay was perfect. Lubitsch never improvised on a set — nor allowed his actors to utter spontaneous lines. He choreographed each word and gag. He made sure that there was not a single superfluous detail in the script, Once, B.P. Schulberg, then Paramount’s head of production, asked him why he was shooting a scene in a certain way, and he replied that he couldn’t remember exactly why at the moment, 'but it is in the script, which is good enough for me. If I didn’t have a good reason, it would not have been there when *Sam Raphaelson was writing it in the first place.'"
(*Samson Raphaelson writer on 9 Lubitsch films, including "The Merry Widow", "Shop Around The Corner", "Heaven Can Wait", and also Hitchcock’s "Suspicion".)
One of the best is “Design For Living”. Skirting the era of the Code, the movie drastically adapts Noel Coward’s play about a menage a trois among a writer (Fredric March), artist (Gary Cooper), and their muse (Miriam Hopkins). Ben Hecht’s screenplay downplays Coward’s homoerotic suggestions, keeps the eyebrow raising notion that marriage is not the only permissible alternative for relationships. He allows Lubitsch to keep the titillating hetero situations afloat as the three Bohemians assert their desire to preserve a “gentleman’s agreement” of no sex.
The movie’s wisdom about such an idealistic fantasy — which makes it a worthy guide for the 60's renewal of the Bohemian ideal of communal relations — is that it won’t work. But Lubitsch juggles the lovers so deftly that it seems like great fun. When the girl caves in the inevitable, she sprawls languidly on a divan, sighs, “unfortunately, I’m no gentleman.” Of course, the triangle plays out to its logical extremes.
Another pre-code Lubitsch treasure is “Trouble In Paradise”. Herbert Marshall, a thief, combines with soulmate, Miriam Hopkins, to steal from socialite Kay Francis. Marshall falls for Kay and Lubitsch creates subtle scenes suggesting liaisons as George gropes with his choices.
The fact that Lubitsch survived the strictures of The Code is instructive. The Touch thrived with the kind of subtle innuendo that The Code could not repress. “The Shop Around The Corner” is a sweetly innocent love story set in a Hungarian store. The head clerk (James Stewart) and the new girl he reluctantly hires (Margaret Sullavan) disagree about almost everything. Each sees the other as unromantic, although each has been writing anonymous love letters to a secret admirer. If you saw the remake, “You’ve Got Mail” you get the idea.
During the war, his anti-Nazi comedy, “To Be Or Not To Be” proved to be Carole Lombard’s last movie. The story of that movie was credited to Melchior Lengyel, a Hungarian born screen writer, who also had the idea for Lubitsch’s masterpiece, "Ninotchka".
According to Zolotow, the inspiration came in true Hollywood style — over lunch, at the Brown Derby, no less. Lengyel met Salka Viertel there. She was Greta Garbo’s companion and advisor, mentioned to Lengyel that MGM was looking for a comedy that could revive Garbo’s career, so they could trumpet “Garbo Laughs” the way they hyped “Garbo Talks.”
The next day, he called her with an idea. She invited him to tell it to Garbo. At the pool, where Garbo was swimming in the nude, he said, “‘Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance, and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism is not no bad, after all.’ MGM paid him $15,000 for these three sentences.” (Zolotow, p. 79).
Also in typical Hollywood style, Viertel and Lengyel’s script of his idea was rejected. The first director assigned, resigned. Jacques Deval, who wrote “Tovarich” a comedy about Russian aristocrats in Paris tried his hand. S.N. Behrman’s draft created the shell of a plot about a Russian commissar and French gigolo. She comes to Paris to sell nickel ore.
Garbo asked for Lubitsch, on loan from Paramount. He admired her acting, brought on Walter Reisch, a contract MGM writer, and his people, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, to create a polished script worthy of a Lubitsch picture. According to Zolotow, it was Lubitsch’s notion to have her come to Paris to sell with Czarist jewels, previously owned by a dutchess living in Paris with her lover, the gigolo who is going to fall for Ninotchka. Diamonds, Lubitsch said, were more cinematic than nickel ore.
Which brings us to another of the aspects of the Lubitsch Touch that is not often acknowledged. Like many artists of the 1930's, Lubitsch wanted his movies to have “social significance.” But unlike Frank Capra, Lubitsch (abetted by Wilder) would treat the “issues” with subtlety and wit. Ninotchka is a satire of Soviet seriousness. Gags touch upon news items familiar to all movie goers. Stalin’s purges — “there are going to be fewer but better Russians.” The five year plan — “I’ve followed your five year plans for the past fifteen years.”
Zolotow argues that Lubitsch (born in Germany to Russian Jewish parents), like most of his peers, was mildly communist or at least leftist during the era. However, Lubitch in the early 30's had traveled to Russia and returned after three weeks, refusing to speak about his visit. After that, he had withdrawn from pro-Soviet committees that were popular then. Zolotow argues that after Lubitsch’s time in Stalinist Russia, he no longer had the illusions of his peers. Ironically, the movie’s success derived partly from the coincidence of the Nazi non-aggression pact shortly preceding the movie’s release in 1939.
Zolotow also remarks on the circumstances of Lubitsch’s death in 1947. He had a fatal heart attack in the shower. A famous Hollywood story is that Billy Wilder arrived shortly after the death and found a woman there, sobbing uncontrollably. He tried to soothe her, but finally reverted to his somewhat sardonic character. “Look,” he said, “he was almost a father to me, but I’m not crying.” The woman said “Sure, he didn’t fuck you and die before he paid you.” Wilder paid her the $50. Of course, Zolotow reports, Wilder denied the story. “‘The chauffeur paid her.’” (Zolotow, p.85).
Old school cranks like me wish that more contemporary filmmakers would review the Lubitsch library and learn just a bit of “The Lubitsch Touch”.
His ‘touch’ forbade coarseness in any part of his productions. The plot, dialogue, motivations, themes all had to be elegantly thought out, polished, coherent. Words like “sloppy,” “crass,” or “gross,” couldn’t be used to critique any of his movies. Even his pre-code movies showed a sophisticated view of sex and relationships. The battle of the sexes in Lubitsch films is fought with passion, wit, suggestion, tantalizing comic tension — but never with mean spirited nastiness.
Maurice Zolotow, in his biography of Billy Wilder (“Billy Wilder In Hollywood", Putnam 1977) writes of Lubitsch:
“He was a believer in a well-made screenplay and he didn’t start shooting until the screenplay was perfect. Lubitsch never improvised on a set — nor allowed his actors to utter spontaneous lines. He choreographed each word and gag. He made sure that there was not a single superfluous detail in the script, Once, B.P. Schulberg, then Paramount’s head of production, asked him why he was shooting a scene in a certain way, and he replied that he couldn’t remember exactly why at the moment, 'but it is in the script, which is good enough for me. If I didn’t have a good reason, it would not have been there when *Sam Raphaelson was writing it in the first place.'"
(*Samson Raphaelson writer on 9 Lubitsch films, including "The Merry Widow", "Shop Around The Corner", "Heaven Can Wait", and also Hitchcock’s "Suspicion".)
One of the best is “Design For Living”. Skirting the era of the Code, the movie drastically adapts Noel Coward’s play about a menage a trois among a writer (Fredric March), artist (Gary Cooper), and their muse (Miriam Hopkins). Ben Hecht’s screenplay downplays Coward’s homoerotic suggestions, keeps the eyebrow raising notion that marriage is not the only permissible alternative for relationships. He allows Lubitsch to keep the titillating hetero situations afloat as the three Bohemians assert their desire to preserve a “gentleman’s agreement” of no sex.
The movie’s wisdom about such an idealistic fantasy — which makes it a worthy guide for the 60's renewal of the Bohemian ideal of communal relations — is that it won’t work. But Lubitsch juggles the lovers so deftly that it seems like great fun. When the girl caves in the inevitable, she sprawls languidly on a divan, sighs, “unfortunately, I’m no gentleman.” Of course, the triangle plays out to its logical extremes.
Another pre-code Lubitsch treasure is “Trouble In Paradise”. Herbert Marshall, a thief, combines with soulmate, Miriam Hopkins, to steal from socialite Kay Francis. Marshall falls for Kay and Lubitsch creates subtle scenes suggesting liaisons as George gropes with his choices.
The fact that Lubitsch survived the strictures of The Code is instructive. The Touch thrived with the kind of subtle innuendo that The Code could not repress. “The Shop Around The Corner” is a sweetly innocent love story set in a Hungarian store. The head clerk (James Stewart) and the new girl he reluctantly hires (Margaret Sullavan) disagree about almost everything. Each sees the other as unromantic, although each has been writing anonymous love letters to a secret admirer. If you saw the remake, “You’ve Got Mail” you get the idea.
During the war, his anti-Nazi comedy, “To Be Or Not To Be” proved to be Carole Lombard’s last movie. The story of that movie was credited to Melchior Lengyel, a Hungarian born screen writer, who also had the idea for Lubitsch’s masterpiece, "Ninotchka".
According to Zolotow, the inspiration came in true Hollywood style — over lunch, at the Brown Derby, no less. Lengyel met Salka Viertel there. She was Greta Garbo’s companion and advisor, mentioned to Lengyel that MGM was looking for a comedy that could revive Garbo’s career, so they could trumpet “Garbo Laughs” the way they hyped “Garbo Talks.”
The next day, he called her with an idea. She invited him to tell it to Garbo. At the pool, where Garbo was swimming in the nude, he said, “‘Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance, and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism is not no bad, after all.’ MGM paid him $15,000 for these three sentences.” (Zolotow, p. 79).
Also in typical Hollywood style, Viertel and Lengyel’s script of his idea was rejected. The first director assigned, resigned. Jacques Deval, who wrote “Tovarich” a comedy about Russian aristocrats in Paris tried his hand. S.N. Behrman’s draft created the shell of a plot about a Russian commissar and French gigolo. She comes to Paris to sell nickel ore.
Garbo asked for Lubitsch, on loan from Paramount. He admired her acting, brought on Walter Reisch, a contract MGM writer, and his people, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, to create a polished script worthy of a Lubitsch picture. According to Zolotow, it was Lubitsch’s notion to have her come to Paris to sell with Czarist jewels, previously owned by a dutchess living in Paris with her lover, the gigolo who is going to fall for Ninotchka. Diamonds, Lubitsch said, were more cinematic than nickel ore.
Which brings us to another of the aspects of the Lubitsch Touch that is not often acknowledged. Like many artists of the 1930's, Lubitsch wanted his movies to have “social significance.” But unlike Frank Capra, Lubitsch (abetted by Wilder) would treat the “issues” with subtlety and wit. Ninotchka is a satire of Soviet seriousness. Gags touch upon news items familiar to all movie goers. Stalin’s purges — “there are going to be fewer but better Russians.” The five year plan — “I’ve followed your five year plans for the past fifteen years.”
Zolotow argues that Lubitsch (born in Germany to Russian Jewish parents), like most of his peers, was mildly communist or at least leftist during the era. However, Lubitch in the early 30's had traveled to Russia and returned after three weeks, refusing to speak about his visit. After that, he had withdrawn from pro-Soviet committees that were popular then. Zolotow argues that after Lubitsch’s time in Stalinist Russia, he no longer had the illusions of his peers. Ironically, the movie’s success derived partly from the coincidence of the Nazi non-aggression pact shortly preceding the movie’s release in 1939.
Zolotow also remarks on the circumstances of Lubitsch’s death in 1947. He had a fatal heart attack in the shower. A famous Hollywood story is that Billy Wilder arrived shortly after the death and found a woman there, sobbing uncontrollably. He tried to soothe her, but finally reverted to his somewhat sardonic character. “Look,” he said, “he was almost a father to me, but I’m not crying.” The woman said “Sure, he didn’t fuck you and die before he paid you.” Wilder paid her the $50. Of course, Zolotow reports, Wilder denied the story. “‘The chauffeur paid her.’” (Zolotow, p.85).
Monday, March 08, 2010
Notes On Oscars
The renewed expansion of the best movie category to 10 was a transparently desperate move, akin to a closeout sale at Wal-mart. In the Golden Age when studios released many more movies to much larger audiences,10 nominations made sense.
It is unfair to even compare this year’s 10 with the nominees from the best year in movie history, 1939:
"Gone With The Wind" winning over "Dark Victory", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Love Affair", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington","Ninotchka", "Of Mice and Men", "Stagecoach", "The Wizard of Oz", "Wuthering Heights".
Not even making the cut:
“The Hunchback Of Notre Dame”, “Gunga Din”, “Golden Boy,” “Intermezzo”, “Young Mr. Lincoln”, “Destry Rides Again”.
Although money earning statistics for movies are as reliable as Washington budget projections, I doubt that the nominations of 6 or 7 of the movies moved their earnings needles very far past what they would have earned anyway.
That the award went to a low budget, indy-like war-is-hell movie set in Iraq, directed by a woman and with a small cast of unknowns rather than the blockbuster special effects juggernaut that sucked up all the available youth cash this season, was well within the traditional temperament of academy voters although it can be seen as more evidence of the Academy’s self-destructive tendency toward snubbing audience favorites for arty message movies that appeal to few.
Echoing a trend begun in the Great Depression, “Precious” and “The Blind Side”, a couple of movies that contained unambiguous social messages and captured respectable audiences, gained some recognition.
Arguably, the only movie that sought to address the current economic condition was “Up In The Air”, a droll but somewhat sad dra-medy about corporate downsizing and its cost to the human heart.
Its theme and style was closest to the tradition of Depression era classics like “Meet John Doe”, Frank Capra’s bitter commentary on inhuman corporate values, or his adaptation of Kaufman / Hart’s screwball family play,“You Can’t Take It With You”, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1938 despite competition from “Grand Illusion”, “Test Pilot”, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, and “Jezebel”, among others.
In other categories there were also echoes of the classic film era. Jeff Bridges is the kind of workmanlike actor who reminds me of Robert Mitchum. Both are often better than their material. Both have such an easy manner before the camera that they seem to be sleepwalking, whether starring or featured, whether reciting dramatic or comedic lines. For many in the audience, Bridges will always be "The Dude", his classic avatar from "The Big Lebowski".
The film he won for, “Crazy Heart”, is also well within the tradition of subjects for small showpiece movies: a portrait of a drunken country singer. One of its producers, Robert Duvall, succeeded with “Tender Mercies”. In 2005, there was “Walk The Line”, earning a nomination for Joaquin Phoeniz and years before that, “Pollack” brought Ed Harris a nomination portraying a drunken painter.
Sandra Bullock’s win is reminiscent of Sally Fields’ Oscar. Both have been more popular with audiences than with critics, both considered best at lightweight comedies, and both given a chance in their forties to stretch into drama, came up big, Fields in “Norma Rae” and now Bullock. Incidentally, their acceptance speeches are twins — Fields’ direct whine, “You like me, you really like me” compares with Bullock’s equally apparent but slightly more acerbic amazement at her acceptance into the rarefied company that included grand dames Streep and Mirren.
The Oscars have always been little more than a showcase for the huckstering of often tawdry, sometimes collectible, always suspiciously glittering, merchandise. This year the salesmanship made it seem more like a three hour infomercial for products that may have a limited shelf life.
It is unfair to even compare this year’s 10 with the nominees from the best year in movie history, 1939:
"Gone With The Wind" winning over "Dark Victory", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Love Affair", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington","Ninotchka", "Of Mice and Men", "Stagecoach", "The Wizard of Oz", "Wuthering Heights".
Not even making the cut:
“The Hunchback Of Notre Dame”, “Gunga Din”, “Golden Boy,” “Intermezzo”, “Young Mr. Lincoln”, “Destry Rides Again”.
Although money earning statistics for movies are as reliable as Washington budget projections, I doubt that the nominations of 6 or 7 of the movies moved their earnings needles very far past what they would have earned anyway.
That the award went to a low budget, indy-like war-is-hell movie set in Iraq, directed by a woman and with a small cast of unknowns rather than the blockbuster special effects juggernaut that sucked up all the available youth cash this season, was well within the traditional temperament of academy voters although it can be seen as more evidence of the Academy’s self-destructive tendency toward snubbing audience favorites for arty message movies that appeal to few.
Echoing a trend begun in the Great Depression, “Precious” and “The Blind Side”, a couple of movies that contained unambiguous social messages and captured respectable audiences, gained some recognition.
Arguably, the only movie that sought to address the current economic condition was “Up In The Air”, a droll but somewhat sad dra-medy about corporate downsizing and its cost to the human heart.
Its theme and style was closest to the tradition of Depression era classics like “Meet John Doe”, Frank Capra’s bitter commentary on inhuman corporate values, or his adaptation of Kaufman / Hart’s screwball family play,“You Can’t Take It With You”, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1938 despite competition from “Grand Illusion”, “Test Pilot”, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, and “Jezebel”, among others.
In other categories there were also echoes of the classic film era. Jeff Bridges is the kind of workmanlike actor who reminds me of Robert Mitchum. Both are often better than their material. Both have such an easy manner before the camera that they seem to be sleepwalking, whether starring or featured, whether reciting dramatic or comedic lines. For many in the audience, Bridges will always be "The Dude", his classic avatar from "The Big Lebowski".
The film he won for, “Crazy Heart”, is also well within the tradition of subjects for small showpiece movies: a portrait of a drunken country singer. One of its producers, Robert Duvall, succeeded with “Tender Mercies”. In 2005, there was “Walk The Line”, earning a nomination for Joaquin Phoeniz and years before that, “Pollack” brought Ed Harris a nomination portraying a drunken painter.
Sandra Bullock’s win is reminiscent of Sally Fields’ Oscar. Both have been more popular with audiences than with critics, both considered best at lightweight comedies, and both given a chance in their forties to stretch into drama, came up big, Fields in “Norma Rae” and now Bullock. Incidentally, their acceptance speeches are twins — Fields’ direct whine, “You like me, you really like me” compares with Bullock’s equally apparent but slightly more acerbic amazement at her acceptance into the rarefied company that included grand dames Streep and Mirren.
The Oscars have always been little more than a showcase for the huckstering of often tawdry, sometimes collectible, always suspiciously glittering, merchandise. This year the salesmanship made it seem more like a three hour infomercial for products that may have a limited shelf life.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
My nominees for Worst Movies of 2009 involving talented movie makers:
Angels And Demons
One of the worst movies of the decade, especially considering the quality of those responsible, particularly David Koepp & Akiva Goldman who took credit and enormous sums of money for their script. Part audio book with interminable babbling exposition or mostly bogus history and part travelogue of Rome (as if on a one day tour), the script has poor Tom Hanks chasing his tail for more than two hours, scrounging for "symbols" i.e., clues. At its core, it is an old fashioned who-dumm-it, with "obvious" suspects laid out for us, while the true culprit hides in the angelic face of its second billed star. Feeling sorry for Koepp, Goldman, Howard, Hanks, et. al, because of the unwieldy implausibility of the novel they had to work from is not an option because they made too much money to care. They made a film which pretends to support a heavy theme: the tension between religion (The Catholic Church) and science and manages to be offensively dishonest and gossipy about both institutions. Pardon the pun, but the movie does not "illuminate." Rather, it chokes on "dark matter."
Public Enemies
This movie is far too clinical in its attempt to re-create the era. For all its violence, it is bloodless compared to the Warner Bros gangster films of the 1930's when the events and characters were fresh. See any Cagney movie of the time for a far greater sense of the era, far greater passion and commitment to the essence of the time. Mann tries too hard to compare the sensitive, romantic, freedom loving anti-hero desperado against the near fascist bureaucrat Hoover and the Southern, gentlemanly, aristocratic lawman Purvis, who is disturbed by what he has to do to restore order. Depp as usual controls the screen, but this time with little effect.
State Of Play
Russell Crowe needs a workout program. Robin Wright Penn is wasted. Rachel McAdams needs more work.
The International
A muddled travelogue / capitalist conspiracy police thriller. Naomi Watts is wasted, obviously in it for the paycheck. Clive Owen's scowling intensity carries the action. The Guggenheim shootout is awesome but that's about it as the rest is a cut and paste of plot points stolen from Bond movie discards.
One of the worst movies of the decade, especially considering the quality of those responsible, particularly David Koepp & Akiva Goldman who took credit and enormous sums of money for their script. Part audio book with interminable babbling exposition or mostly bogus history and part travelogue of Rome (as if on a one day tour), the script has poor Tom Hanks chasing his tail for more than two hours, scrounging for "symbols" i.e., clues. At its core, it is an old fashioned who-dumm-it, with "obvious" suspects laid out for us, while the true culprit hides in the angelic face of its second billed star. Feeling sorry for Koepp, Goldman, Howard, Hanks, et. al, because of the unwieldy implausibility of the novel they had to work from is not an option because they made too much money to care. They made a film which pretends to support a heavy theme: the tension between religion (The Catholic Church) and science and manages to be offensively dishonest and gossipy about both institutions. Pardon the pun, but the movie does not "illuminate." Rather, it chokes on "dark matter."
Public Enemies
This movie is far too clinical in its attempt to re-create the era. For all its violence, it is bloodless compared to the Warner Bros gangster films of the 1930's when the events and characters were fresh. See any Cagney movie of the time for a far greater sense of the era, far greater passion and commitment to the essence of the time. Mann tries too hard to compare the sensitive, romantic, freedom loving anti-hero desperado against the near fascist bureaucrat Hoover and the Southern, gentlemanly, aristocratic lawman Purvis, who is disturbed by what he has to do to restore order. Depp as usual controls the screen, but this time with little effect.
State Of Play
Russell Crowe needs a workout program. Robin Wright Penn is wasted. Rachel McAdams needs more work.
The International
A muddled travelogue / capitalist conspiracy police thriller. Naomi Watts is wasted, obviously in it for the paycheck. Clive Owen's scowling intensity carries the action. The Guggenheim shootout is awesome but that's about it as the rest is a cut and paste of plot points stolen from Bond movie discards.
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