Encore Cinema Out Takes

How I Feel About "The Descendants"

2012-02-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

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.

The Next Voice You Hear ....

2011-08-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

Impressionists were staples of early television variety shows. Stand-up comics almost all began doing impressions of movie stars as part of their routines, repeated so often in night clubs, the Catskills, or on The Ed Sullivan show that the patter became kitchy signatures: Bogart ("Play it again, Sam") and Cagney ("You dirty rat...") and Gable ("Listen, Scarlett...") and Bette Davis ("Petah, Petah..."). Some, like Rich Little and Frank Gorshin, developed the skill into a near art form.
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 20^th 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?

HEREAFTER (2010)

2011-05-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

Ghost Tales

2010-10-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

The Lubitsch Touch

2010-07-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

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).

Notes On Oscars

2010-03-08T12:05:00.000-08:00

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.

My nominees for Worst Movies of 2009 involving talented movie makers:

2010-02-09T20:40:00.001-08:00

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.

"Too Bad She's Bad" (1955)

2009-11-16T22:12:00.000-08:00

I get a kick out of discovering a new old film.

I remember a very late sleepless night long time ago running into a Japanese film. It was in black and white and subtitled and I soon noticed that there were no monsters attacking paper models of Tokyo and toy cars. Instead there were bald guys wearing diapers and carrying formidable swords, sploshing around in mud and taking on marauders attacking a village of peace loving ...
Wait a minute. I sat up in my seat after twenty minutes of viewing. This plot is familiar...
Five minutes later, it struck me: The Japanese stole this story from "The Magnificent Seven".
I was embarrassed to relate the tale to a friend who corrected me: the movie I was watching was Kurosawa’s "The Seven Samurai", from which the American Western was derived. Oops.

Anyway, there is something riveting about watching foreign films with subtitles. Like silent movies, they demand a degree of concentration and involvement from the viewer that far outstrips talkies in one’s own language.

The other day I caught a film on TCM that I had never seen and before I knew it I was stuck for the next hour or so.

It was an Italian import from 1955 titled in English, "Too Bad She’s Bad", starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroiani and Vittorio De Sica. It is a screwball like story of an honest cabbie, Mastroiani, who becomes victim of a family of thieves, including Loren and her father, De Sica, her brothers and even her sweet old grandmother.

The tone and plot turns of the writing and rapid fire pace of acting traces the tropes of American pre-war screwball comedies that funned authority (especially the police and politicians), the rich and pompous.

The plot has several laugh-out-loud scenes, including dialogue (even with the sporadic translations) that reminds you of classics like "Bringing Up Baby", especially when Loren and De Sica twist the logic of morality and family values, exasperating the straight faced Mastroiani. De Sica creates a character that cons with the best of Groucho Marx and W.C. Fields, but is more sophisticated and European. Loren’s character is less ditzy than Hepburn in "Baby", maybe because she has more serious equipment available to keep our attention - her traffic stopping face and figure, for instance.

Reading about the film later, I discovered that Loren was only 20 years old when this film was made. It was her first or 15 pairings with Mastroiani, several of the best directed by De Sica. The director of this movie was Alessandro Blasetti, a veteran of Italian cinema, and a co-writer was Alberto Moravia.

Now my attraction to this film began to make sense. Moravia, I knew, was a novelist whose writings were considered existentialist, some overtly erotic, and often left leaning. His books had been filmed by Godard ("Contempt"), Bertolucci ("The Conformist"), and De Sica with Loren winning the Oscar ("Two Women"), among others. Like my favorite American screenwriters of the 30's and 40's, Moravia had earned his living as a journalist, his politics was anti-fascist, and his social commentary was satirical and ascerbic, including spicy dialogue.

Although Italy’s post-war cinema was mostly noted for the gritty neo-realism of dramas by Rosselini, Fellini, and De Sica, the comedies of the era displayed the same expression of sarcastic viewpoints toward society.

Watching this movie I was reminded that Sophia Loren was a far more powerful presence in Italian films than in her American or international films, even though she mastered the English language well enough to charm co-stars like Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant.

In that element, she is the forerunner to Penelope Cruz, whose looks and talent are sometimes compared to Loren’s. Cruz has become a star in English language movies (e.g., "Elegy" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona") but has done her best work in her native Spanish for Pedro Almodovar ("Volver"), her De Sica.

The DVD of "Too Bad She’s Bad" is not yet available on Netflix.

Ben Hecht, Hollywood's Shakespeare

2009-11-05T20:46:00.000-08:00

Ever think of what you would do if you had another life to lead. Mine would not involve adventure, except maybe the vicarious sort. Sometimes, I think I’d like to be a historian, and recently, I’ve thought I would like to write a biography ... of someone like Ben Hecht.

Hecht (1893-1964) was first known as a Chicago newspaperman in the second and third decades of the 20th Century, part of an era that set the mood for what was to become the dominant popular culture.

In the 1920's, he and fellow newsman, Charles McArthur, moved to New York where they wrote plays, including two of the most influential hits of the decade, "The Front Page" and "Twentieth Century", and hobnobbed with the Algonquin literary crowd and the Broadway smart set.

Moving to Hollywood in 1927 at the instigation of his pal, Herman Mankiewicz, Hecht soon became known as the best screenwriter and script doctor in town. For more than 20 years, he was the "go to" repairman, called on by such as Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitch, Alfred Hitchcock, and David O. Selznick to fix damaged scripts.

His credited successes include many of the best films of the era, including several that defined genres that have become identified with the most memorable movies of the the era — gangster films: winning the first original screenplay Oscar in 1927 for "Underworld" and another for "Scarface" (1933); screwball comedies: including his adaptations of his plays, "Twentieth Century" (1934) and "The Front Page" ("His Girl Friday" (1940)), adaptation of Noel Coward’s "Design For Living" (1933) and the Carole Lombard newspaper caper, "Nothing Sacred" (1937); film noir: "Angels Over Broadway" (1940); suspense: "Spellbound"(1944) and "Notorious" (1945); action: "Viva Villa"(1936) and "Gunga Din" (1939); gothic romance: "Wuthering Heights" (1939).

His autobiography is appropriately titled "Child Of The Century" (1954). Like many of his generation, Hecht wants to be thought of as an artist — poet, serious author of short stories and novels. He admired and befriended and was considered an equal of many of those considered first rate literati of his era: Dreiser, Mencken, Sandburg, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Maxwell Anderson, Sherwood Anderson. He frequently minimizes his own work and scorns the businesses that provided the lucre that made him rich and famous. He admits to writing "creative" stories as a reporter the competitive Chicago tabloid world of his time; Broadway and Hollywood are hopelessly corrupted by commercial needs.

Hecht’s work contains the sophisticated, cynical voice that was characteristic of the best commercial writing of the period between the wars, and still rings true to our ears today. Amusement at the foibles of official corruption, hypocrisy, greed, irony, double dealing, with a heavy ladling of doses of wit and sarcasm, the writing grinds sparks of truth telling. If the goal of "Art" is to tell the truth, Hecht’s best stage and film work must qualify.

As a "child of his century," Hecht’s vocabulary is replete with Freudian references, revealing attitudes toward women (including several wives, daughters, mistresses, actresses, and whores — who are nostalgically credited as mentors), sexual obsession, Jewish mothers and aunts, male pals — confidantes, drinking buddies, raconteurs, comrades. He complains that movies of his era destroyed American culture, creating and promulgating lies (primarily about sex and morals, heroism, social justice, race) that he feared would permanently distort the reality of American life.

Although he acquainted and sympathized with radicals from the Left as early as 1911, he was never caught up the Hollywood Blacklist. But during and after World War II, he became committed to the cause of a Jewish state in Palestine. His activism included financing and organizing support for arms shipments to Menachem Begin’s Irgun, the radical terrorist anti-British Jewish army. These actions led to a blacklist of Hecht’s movies by Great Britain.

At 16, Ben Hecht went from his family home in Racine, Wisconsin to Chicago, to work for newspapers. His first job was as a "picture chaser", who snatched photos of tabloid subjects — murdered or murdering wives, cuckolded husbands. Assigned to night criminal courts, he found himself drawn to the "victims" of the sad system, often the whores and madams, petty thieves and eccentrics who populated the night. Many of the characters who show up in his columns, short stories, plays and screenplays, began their "lives" there. Hecht’s autobiography mentions real newspapermen named "Duffy" and Roy Benzinger", names which he later attached to characters in "The Front Page".

Among the many criminals he knew, he describes a stranger who bought drinks for Hecht and his friend, surprised by the generosity until Hecht discovers the man’s arrest as an embezzler. Hecht takes this experience and converts in into a column which is included in his collection, "1001 Afternoons in Chicago", in which the donor later commits suicide. Still later, Hecht’s nascent film noir, "Angels Over Broadway" includes an suicidal embezzler who is helped by three Broadway denizens played by Doug Fairbanks, Jr., Thomas Mitchell, and Rita Hayworth.

My interest in Hecht stems partly from my own experiences in criminal courts. He writes about what goes on in court houses among prosecutors, cops, reporters, lawyers, witnesses, defendants with a voice that rings true to my experience, even though his preceded my own by roughly fifty years and mine was in far less exotic Los Angeles. In his autobiography, he explains that his sympathies, or at least his interests, were more often with the culprits, the desperate men and women whose crimes led them to the courts and newspapers headlines. Hecht witnessed seventeen hangings and colorfully describes the events and the characters involved in them — the police, hangmen, the hangman’s daughter, the other wisecracking reporters, mostly the hanged.

Of the seventeen hangings he witnessed, several exposed to the young reporter human traits that surprised him and were vividly etched in his memory. He tells of the two brothers who were jointly accused of murder. All throughout the trial and sentencing, the older brother swore that he alone was responsible, trying to save his kid brother. Then at the moment both are brought to the gallows, he changes his tune, insisting they hang his guilty brother first. Hecht’s conclusion: a man will give up any principle or loved one for a few more seconds of life. He also reports of the man who, with the rope around his neck, is asked if he has any last words, and responds, "Not at this time."

My Netflix Notes ... more recent rental reviews

2009-07-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

The International
A muddled travelogue / capitalist conspiracy police thriller. Naomi Watts is wasted, obviously in it for the paycheck. 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.

Valkyrie
The documentary films on this subject are better - cover the same ground and tell you much more about the motives and character of those involved, including Rauchenberg. They were not heroes by any stretch, sought to replace Hitler only when the war began to go badly and they feared their beloved wehrmacht was going down the tubes. They were autocrats - just with a different fuhrer. The movie sticks close to the facts without access to the emotional core we should get from drama. Knowing the true ending diminished the thrill aspect and Tom Cruise's strong presence wasn't enough to keep my involvement.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
My admittedly minority view is that this film is a monumental waste of effort - for the makers and the viewer. The technical achievement of turning the premise into visual reality is notable, but the script by Eric Roth simply restates his fuzzy sentimentality of Forrest Gump - trying to answer the profound big question: "Life is ___." His answers in this film are just as unsatisfying - "some people are mothers, some artists, some dance" - some write sappy screenplays, some make bad movies.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
The first thing the aliens should destroy are all prints of remakes of movie classics. No one who fondly recalls the black & white classic should come anywhere near this one. Why do they think it will succeed? Didn't they learn from last years 'Invasion' or 'The Manchurian Candidate'? Only Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' was worthy of remake in the genre of paranoid sci-fi. The idiot producer must have thought Keanu was Klaatu's grandson - maybe he is - his acting is otherworldly.

Cadillac Records
Old Hollywood's pop music composer bios were summed as "... and then he wrote, etc." Like 'Dreamgirls' & Ray, this one can be summed, "... and then they sang." Fitting in the hits of the stars + Chess's story + the often tragic endings + the racial issues was too much for this film. But for those who are ignorant of these pioneers of rock & soul, I'm glad it was made. Not answered was why Chess loved this music. Was it just the money? They imply something deeper, but never convinced me.

Last Chance Harvey
Good acting, mediocre script. Two middle aged self-described failures find each other and take one last risk at seeking love. Simple, a good short story that is not often told on screen. But to fill out the 93 minutes, there is far too much accessory plot - her mother and his daughter, ex-wife, and boss - and way too many scenes showing the pair walking, sightseeing, apparently finding things to talk about - the details of the beginnings of trust and love. But the writer and director deny the audience these moments by dialing up the music score, avoiding the difficulty of letting us in on it. It's a fantasy, especially considering Hoffman's character, who is set up as a loser, but acts with a self-confidence that seems contrary to the set-up.

New In Town
Pretty bad. Not a surprise in sight. Every beat is foreshadowed long before it happens. The local "characters" are not close to any real people who live in any world. Timely? The jobs are saved by a tapioca recipe? Yuck.

Doubt
Not being Catholic, I don't want to yield to the temptation of seeing this film as a critique of what's wrong with The Church, or Religion. I also resist the notion that it is a tract about abusive priests. The acting, of course, is first rate, even dazzling. The writing & direction are fluent, with appropriate twists and dramatic turns. My small quibbles involve the plotting, which is deceptively contrived. The setup misleads you - the apparently "good" person may have done evil; the unlikeable "bad" person may be "right". The event that triggers the "doubt" is a bit contrived - I doubted that 'Sister James', as portrayed by Amy Adams, would have interpreted what she saw as something suspect. Other than those small problems, the performances by Streep, Hoffman and the surprisingly moving Viola Davis, are what remain in the afterglow.

The Earrings Of Madame De ...
A film that proves that classic art films with subtitles can be entertaining, if given a chance. Max Ophuls is one of the least known of the great classic film stylists who made full use of the "moving picture camera." Like Welles, Fellini & Hitchcock, the moving camera sets the mood, tells the story, moves the viewer's emotions more eloquently than the words. The story here, like the camera movement, is complex, ironic, witty, and ultimately profound on its many levels.

La Plaisir
As a trilogy showcasing Ophuls brilliant style, 'La Plaisir', joins 'The Earrings of Madame de...' and 'La Ronde'. All set in France's Belle Epoque, an era of decadence and prudery, ostentatious wealth and rigid class pomposity. You can see why Ophuls dazzles and influences modern filmmakers - his camera style and story telling ability are singular.

Quantum Of Solace
What made this JB different from others was the ruthlessness, arrogance, blatant machismo plus a debonair English dry wit, the wry smile, the cool settings. Craig lived up to that in 'Casino Royale', but here he is not much more than 'Jason Bourne' on a revenge trip, a humorless lethal weapon. His adversary, 'Greene', was not worthy - never had a chance. Disappointing.

Frost / Nixon
With the original interviews available (see below) and fresh in my memory. Damn, I'm old. I found the back story about Frost more interesting. Sheen captures Frost's smarmy lightweight personality & the drama in his desperation to be seen as legitimate. The subtext should be noted: the celebrity non-journalist interviewer now rules over the serious traditional reporters. Imagine Larry King, Oprah, Matthews, or O’Reilly interviewing Nixon.

Frost / Nixon: the Watergate Interviews
Having watched it when it first aired, I welcomed reliving the disgust I felt then listening to the pathos Nixon tried to squeeze when revealed as the liar he was. The close-up camera, Frost's incredulous tone, Nixon's falsely earnest voice make gripping viewing, fully understood only in context of the entire historical record. Nixon's defense - that his motives were not criminal - is so weak that only the most air-headed apologist could swallow it without gagging

The Spirit
Frank Miller as film director went for an unapologetic comic book look and over-the-top self-conscious acting style that undercuts the noir mood he managed to capture in ‘Sin City’. It didn't work - you can't take it seriously and it wasn't very funny or original.

Vicky Christina Barcelona
Woody Allen at his best manages to cloak a very deep and insightful film about the human condition in apparently frivolous forms. I would rank this film in the upper 1/3 of Woody’s work, certainly below his earlier works of genius, but far superior to his later tossaways. The best since ‘Match Point’. It exploits Woody's special talent as a short story writer and it is the most authentic of his European set films. Woody works his favorite themes - the messiness of love, sex and relationships; the mystery of art and genius. His characters are complex, self-deceiving, struggling with self image, passion, seeking the elusive happiness and romance and fulfillment that Woody knows often makes them (and all of us) look silly, pretentious, and sometimes tragic. Well schooled in Americans-abroad literature and European film sensibility toward 'life' and 'passion' and unconventionality, Woody is ultimately a realist rather than a romantic - at least, here his realist side wins out in a logical, tho not completely satisfying ending. The film, like Vicky & Christina's summer vacation, is itself something of a fantasy. Cruz's brilliant realization of the mercurial artist Maria Elena is more than a cipher, but she is another of Woody's singular characters, raising one of his favorite themes - genius residing in a flawed human may never be fulfilled.

Tell No One
Another French film that owes much to American film style and form. Guillaume Canet's previous films, 'Love Me If You Dare' and 'Merry Christmas' showed a willingness to tweak genres. This mystery / thriller of the Hitchcock wrong man-racing-to-solve-riddles is overly complex and long and reliant on contrived twists, but still stylish, with interesting characters & familiar faces in minor roles - Rochefort, Baye, Scott-Thomas.

Rachel Getting Married
I'm ambivalent about this film. Anne Hathaway stretches into drama quite comfortably - impressive. The family dynamic of the wedding and the warmth & charm of the celebrants is enjoyable to watch, filmed so that you feel you are part of the fun in the intimate multi-focused witness-like style that suggests Robert Altman. BUT the elephant in the room plot - the tragedy that might have destroyed the possibility of happiness for this family, and seemingly almost did, is a bit melodramatic for my taste. Anne's 'Kym' is the one who understandably can't put it completely to rest. Her intense need for re-connection with the the family she hurt is painful to watch.

Synecdoche, New York
I think the previous Charlie Kaufman works are among the best films in recent times. I got the idea he was trying for in this one. His images & metaphors are brilliant as usual. BUT I didn't "enjoy" this film. I squirmed. And it is not a great film. My problem is the same one I have with Kubrick (especially his last film) and later Woody Allen. The philosophical world view is ultimately too sad to be credited. 'Caden', however, is a poor example of an everyman. He is an artist groping for a way to express all about his life. He seems captivated by every neurosis that precludes man from happiness. Kaufman stacks the deck. Life is beyond this character - is that sad life, art? Sure, but it is not the whole truth. Is it all so meaningless and trivial? Caden's "art" certainly turned out to be a delusion.

Elegy
A film to love or hate. Sexist, creepy, sentimental, contrived or sensitive, insightful, tragic, ironic. Filled with undeniably excellent actors. I felt less sympathy for ‘David's’ dilemma than others might. What many will find unreal is ‘Consuela's’ love for him. But Penelope Cruz finds honest and brave motivation in her character's attraction to him. She overcomes the assumptions of her startling beauty with a depth that only a truly beautiful woman can.

What Just Happened
The best work De Niro has done in a long long time. Though it failed to hit with critics or audiences, this Hollywood movie biz bitter comedy deserved better. In the tradition of 'The Player' & many others, it comes close to the nasty truth about the fragile egos & self deceptions rampant in that town.

A Handful Of Dust
'Tony Last' may be one of the most infuriatingly naive characters in Brit lit. He is always the 'last' to get the picture - his wife's infidelities, his guide's incompetence, his captor's dark intentions. Evelyn Waugh’s picture of between-the-wars English society is typical of its genre. Whether meant as social parable of England's naivete, or satire of upper class twits & their reliance on outmoded traditions of decency, or a postmodern tale of the wreckage of selfish indulgence ('Unfaithful' is the most recent example), the acting by Scott Thomas, Wilby, and of course, Guiness, is first rate. You will squirm for poor ‘Tony’ and his ilk - the trusting and foolish wellborn, about to become (justifiably) extinct.

Lady Chatterley
Stories about passionate affairs by bored - or abused - wives of inattentive - or sexually crippled - husbands with manly men - usually defined as those with two day beards - are common in literature (‘Anna Karenina’) and film (‘Unfaithful’). Lawrence's novel has been filmed many times, mostly for the explicit sex & sometimes with the class issue as a rationale. This one, released in 2006 directed by Pascale Ferran, though painfully long & very French (while set in England) finds a new fresh slant. After an hour of meandering through forests and glades, we realize that it is about 'nature' and the natural urges of the human animal, not in the brutish sense of mere lust, though that counts, but to show that sex and physical connections are as natural as rain, flowers, and birds. 'Constance'- the same character name as in 'Unfaithful' - conveys a completely different meaning. This woman is completely true to her nature, in the end trying to live a complete life.

Ghost Town
Apart from the idiot conceit that a woman such as Tea Leoni's character would end up with a guy like Ricky Gervais', this re-cycled ghost-helps-living-guy-live-better romantic comedy is pretty pleasant. Ricky's initial character flaw - you know, the one he's going to learn to suppress so he can get the girl and be a better guy - is a bit less painful than his dentist drill - his whiny misanthropy grates like the sound of the drill. But his snide asides - reminiscent of W.C. Fields sarcastic throwaways - are often very funny & his self deprecating insights are on the mark. Greg Kinnear & Tea, as always, hit theirs on the money.

Righteous Kill
It's time for De Niro & Pacino to retire at least as cops. They've played these parts so often they qualify for pensions. And we need the rest. Please. The entire premise - that ‘Fisk’ lost his faith when his partner planted evidence, so decided to kill all the bad guys - is absurd. These guys would have been fixing cases all their careers. The big reveal is so transparent because of bad writing or bad acting by De Niro. His rants make him too obviously the suspect and only one other is likely. As a buddy film, it also fails, partly because De Niro & Pacino occupy the same personas. Other matches: Gable & Tracy, Newman & Redford etc, have far better chemistry due to age, personality & style differences.

Mad Men: Season 1
Terrific series all around. How did HBO pass on it? ‘Sopranos’ vets are the creative force and the structure is similar - eg, ‘Draper’, like ‘Tony’, has deep secrets from his family & ruthlessness vs. compassion. Startlingly accurate & insightful in its depiction of place & time, attitudes & biases. Revealing in understanding of the truth that we are all trapped in the assumptions of our social milieu. The second season will move to the 60's and the changes should be something for these "people".

Nights In Rodanthe
Gere & Lane: boy met girl in 'Cotton Club' lost girl in 'Unfaithful', now gets her back but are they doomed? Thrown together at a crucial turning point in their lives (i.e. careers), will they survive a hurricane (in an inn perched on stilts on a beach), their kids, their script? Only a romance novel reader would care very much or take any of the supersilly plot devices or soapy morals seriously. Emotions are all by the numbers here, and fantasy is all about the sub-pornographic dreams of unfulfilled middle aged women. A sad story.

Tropic Thunder
Proof that war is (funny as) hell in the movies Stiller finally hit the mark with a broad satire of actors, stars, agents, action films. Downey, Jr's work is up there with Peter Sellers for inventiveness. Tom Cruise is shockingly great in his character role. Jack Black, Steve Coogan are hysterical. The DVD contains deleted scenes that are terrific & don't miss the commentary by Stiller, Black, & Downey (still in character).

Wanted
A stew of plots, characters, and effects from previous comic book action flicks - chops bits from 'Matrix', 'Spiderman', too many hitman films to count. Jolie & Freeman walk through without effort. McAvoy could have been Toby Maguire, but with much more whining. The teen nerds who have had sand kicked in their faces can dream of bending bullets around school lockers to get back at the BMOC's. By the way, why do they have to be able to bend bullets around meat?

Appaloosa
I liked this slow moving western that isn't as cynical as 'Unforgiven' or as violent as ‘Wild Bunch’ or as old fashioned as any John Wayne film. Ed Harris as director & actor clearly cares about the characters, tells us just enough about them - except maybe ‘Mrs. French.’ We'd like to know a lot more about her - she says she does what she does in order to survive, but I wonder if she's a sort of pre-noir femme fatale in training. Mortensen is Eastwood's heir for showing intelligence with a minimum of words.

Holy Smoke
Jane Campion, like her French feminist counterpart, Catherine Breillat, is an angry woman. Her films slice into sexual politics with a sometimes cruel scalpel. Of the two, Campion is more entertaining, for sure. This film is visually interesting, often funny. Like Breillat, her take on eroticism focuses on sexual power as a woman's weapon for independence rather than identity. Winslet & Keitel are brave actors, committed to full out risk.

The Duchess
Recognizing the quality work involved in this film, by the actors, costumers, wigmakers, et. al., my reservation stands on the too obvious issues which smash the viewer over the head well beyond unconsciousness. (1)Women were literally treated like dogs by their husbands: kept for breeding and show. They had no legal rights. (2) This ancestor of Lady Diana Spencer led a life not much different from the tragic Di. She married a cold fish who openly had a mistress. She was a celebrity, involved in current events, a fashion icon, a beauty, a socialite, hounded by the press.

RocknRolla
How good? (1) Watched it all the way through (2) without once fast forwarding. (3) I used English subtitles - that helped. (3) Tom Wilkenson bald? (4) Not enough Thandie. (4) Ahh, its kind of Elmore Leonard (‘Get Shorty’)lite. (5) One hour later - did I watch that one?

The Reader
A film that should make moral absolutists sputter obscenities. After all, it asks you to consider as human a woman who has committed the most heinous of crimes. For some in our times, her seduction of a 15 year old boy for sex would be enough to condemn her. But later we discover(through the eyes of the boy, who was left emotionally damaged by the affair) that it was the least of her crimes. But if we are more accepting of human frailty, we may see more ambiguity in the morality choices she made and which he also makes, reflecting on those judgments we are capable of - certainly German society and we are forced to question ourselves as well if we are to be honest. The film wisely gives no answers. Strong views are voiced (by a fellow law student and in the end by another of the woman's victims) and they are just as moving as the pity, if not forgiveness, that we are manipulated into feeling. It is also about the terrible cost to the soul of concealing shameful secrets, and the potential of redemption. A powerful film with a spectacularly brave performance by Kate Winslet, the best of its kind since Meryl Streep's in ‘Sophie's Choice’.

The Incredible Hulk
The Hulk in the end becomes more like Kong in his toying with his little girlfriend. The cynical "Ka-ching" of Marvel's marketing genius is nothing new. Nor is the CG effects auto - destructo binge. Nor is the counter supervillain green thing - Abomination’ (?) maybe a better title for the movie itself. Nothing original. Nothing to feel or think - so its a big hit, right?

Exterminating Angels
Jean-Claude Brisseau, like his female counterpart, Breillat, is not for everyone - especially those who can't abide sexually explicit takes on sexual power politics & a peculiarly French attitude about attraction, obsessive love, and sadness. There is also a creepy dirty-old-man voyeurist sense about Brisseau's eye that is off-putting. But this film does succeed as mainstream soft porn, satisfying the two goals: arousal and involvement. For us men who are always stumped by the mind of woman, it is some help, but not much. As the story shows, in the end, it is a dangerous place to go.

Lies
Nice to see that Korean society is just as confused about sex as we are. Issues like repression, obsession, taboos, sexual power and deception, westernization, all underlie the film with not much subtlety. Contrary to many reviews, there is a plotline and arc to the tale - involving the relationship. The man begins by manipulating the girl. It ends with her dominance over him, sexually as a metaphor for her awareness of her power over him. In the end, she has changed, matured, while he is trapped in his obsession.

Traitor
A better than average political thriller with a far better than average lead, Don Cheadle, one of the few current actors who gives an impression to an audience that he is thinking while he listens, watches & speaks. The critical complaints that the film can't decide whether it is a blow-em up / shoot-em up action flick, or a political issues movie are quibbles - like 'Munich' it is thought provoking, raising troubling questions about terrorism, religion, loyalty. So it is not 'fun' like a superhero action ride, but it is gripping, with some neat twists, and a lot of suspense.

A Max Ophuls Festival

2009-06-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

My first introduction to Max Ophuls came through Bijou, of course.

In those days, we were regulars at the Encore Theater in Hollywood, the Fine Arts in West L.A., and other so-called Art Houses where you could watch classic American and foreign films, gathered together in "festivals".

I was able to watch the American movies on the big screen that I had seen sliced to bits on television for years. There were the MGM and Astaire-Rogers musicals, Bogart movies, Hitchcock films. Each new Bergman and Fellini movie were anticipated as eagerly as the latest Beatles album, as of course were the latest Godard and Truffault.

Bijou’s favorites were the French classics, "La Belle et Le Bete" - Cocteau’s surreal fairy tale that was part horror story and part baroque romance, and "Les Enfant du Paradis" (the 190 minute French version), - made in occupied France under the noses of the Germans by Marcel Carné, written by the legendary Jacques Prévert, starring the equally legendary Jean-Louis Barrault and Arletty.

I found both these films to be hopelessly over-the-top romances, the first a fantasy and the second a tragedy, the kind of stories teenage girls weep over. We argued endlessly about them and Bijou concluded that I was hopeless. No way I could grasp the beauty of Cocteau’s imagery or Prévert’s poetry, forced as I was to rely on the inadequate and prosaic subtitles. Nor could I hope to appreciate the cultural icons that Barrault or Jean Marais (the beast), for instance, represented to the French.

Bijou was right about the barrier of subtitles. Her frequently whispered asides to me during these films made it clear that I was missing important stuff. But I found that the inadequacy of the subtitles forced me to concentrate on the subtleties of camera work, sort of the way I had to focus intently to dig silent movies, like Vidor’s "The Crowd".

Despite the nuisance of subtitles, I was better able to enjoy Jean Renoir’s masterworks, "The Grand Illusion", which was about war, and "The Rules of the Game", which was about a society in elegant decay, blithely unaware of its impending doom. Bijou found these films "too political" and "talky."

But when it came to the films of Max Ophuls we were in complete agreement. Ophuls, a German Jew who fell in love with France when he emigrated there in 1933, was acceptably "French" in outlook and style, admiring of the Belle Epoque, an era of decadence and prudery, ostentatious wealth and rigid class pomposity, in which he found the ironic stories he wanted to tell.

His masterpiece is considered by critics to be "Lola Montes", but the ones I best remember are "La Ronde", "Le Plaisir" and "The Earrings of Madame de ...".

I recently watched them again on restored DVD’s. The trilogy showcases Ophuls brilliant style. You can see why Ophuls dazzles and influences modern filmmakers - his camera style and story telling ability are singular.
There are few special effects in Ophuls films, but modern filmakers are amazed by his ability to stage and film long scenes in one take while the camera and characters weave through complex sets in a natural, yet stylized manner. He captures your attention, forces you to absorb the details of the action, carries you along into the story.
His style is apparent, but never as intrusive or showy as Welles or Hitchcock can be. Where their camera styles always remind you that you are watching a movie, Ophuls' camera, while no less cinematic, never forgets to be the eye of the audience.

"La Ronde"
A French all-star cast: Anton Walbrook, Fernand Gravet, Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux, Gerard Phillipe, Jean-Louis Barrault, and many others.
A survey of all variations of the genre, touching on all its passion, humor, and drama. Cinematically inventive as all of Ophuls, full of winking sophistication about the illusions we need about love. A gem that even modern audiences should enjoy.
The form of the round, in which A loves B, B loves C, C loves D, and D loves A, has been used by such as Ingmar Bergman ("Smiles of a Summer Night") and Woody Allen ("A Midsummer’s Night Sex Comedy"). This is the best.
Of course, you have to tolerate the subtitles, black & white, & the stagelike fantasy of it. But it is The classic romantic comedy for all time.

"The Earrings of Madame de ..."
Danielle Darrieux, Vittorio De Sica, Charles Boyer.
Ophuls is one of the least known of the great classic film stylists who made full use of the "moving picture camera." Like Welles, Fellini & Hitchcock, the moving camera sets the mood, tells the story, moves the viewer's emotions, more eloquently than the words.
It is also a "round" of a sort, a plot full of ironies and coincidences. The story here, like the camera movement, is complex, ironic, witty, and ultimately profound on its many levels.

"Le Plaisir"
Three de Maupassant stories. The first, "Le Masque", a vignette about a strange man in a mask who faints while dancing and is treated by a doctor (Claude Dauphin) who unmasks an ironic mystery. The second, "La Maison de Tellier" is a longer story about ladies from a popular brothel who travel to the country for a young girl’s confirmation, where they recover their innocence (with Jean Gabin and Danielle Darrieux). The third, "La Modele" (Simone Simon), in which an artist falls in love with a model, but refuses to marry her with tragic result.

These films, made and released in the early 1950's, remain as entertaining and as fresh as when I first saw them.

1939 - 70th Anniversary

2009-05-22T19:40:00.001-07:00

Seventy years ago - even before I was born - Hollywood capped its Golden Age with a year of releases that still sparkle, like pearls in a priceless necklace: Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz, Ninotchka, Gunga Din, Stagecoach, Dark Victory, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Wuthering Heights, My Little Chickadee, Destry Rides Again, Only Angels Have Wings, Babes In Arms, The Man In The Iron Mask, At The Circus, The Story Of Irene And Vernon Castle.

The nation was slowly emerging from The Great Depression and was fearful of the imminent world war that had been looming for years and began that September. Americans were isolationists, thirsty for home grown diversions. Forty million Americans (one in three) went to see at least one movie every week. They would first see a newsreel and then some cartoons, a short, and a double feature - a first run "A" film accompanied by a "B" picture.

The major studios, like automobile manufacturers, spewed product from their factories in assembly line fashion - at MGM, nearly one new release each week. It was the age of dictators and each studio, major or independent, had its signature personality, formed by the whims and taste of its production head, its mogul: Mayer, Goldwyn, Warner, Cohen, Selznick and the others. Each had its stable of contract stars and supporting players, writers, producers, directors, crafts people who had perfected the magic of motion picture making.

Because of the misery in Europe, a flood of talented creative juices infused Hollywood. Writers, directors, composers, actors, found haven and gave fresh perspective to dramas, comedies, musicals, adding wit, style, sophistication to the product.

To be sure, the films we remember and still watch seventy years later were the cream of a crop that included plenty of trash that was quickly forgotten. These were factory products, mass produced, consumed, and disposed - never intended for the ages. But it is clear that the year was remarkable for its output and deserves its place as the best single year in Hollywood’s history.

Although post war fashion dictated that the greatest movies were product of "auteurs", these were fabricated by the collaborative efforts of company employees and contractees. However, the stamp of iconoclastic forceful producers such as Goldwyn, LeRoy, and Selznick, and of visionary directors like Hawks, Ford, Stevens, Fleming, Berkeley, and Wyler marked the output.

Ninotchka
MGM. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Adapted Screenplay: Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder with Walter Reisch. Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart.
Lubitsch was one of the most influential European filmmakers, who specialized in sophisticated light romantic comedies. The "Lubitsch Touch" was exemplified in The Merry Widow, Design For Living, The Shop Around The Corner, To Be Or Not To Be, Cluny Brown, and in Ninotchka, where he teased a delightful comedic performance from Garbo.
The script has fun with Soviet Russia’s pompous drab seriousness compared with the radiant frivolity of Paris of the 1930's, an attitude that was popular with the supposedly left leaning writers of the era. Garbo is a dour commissar sent to check up on three wandering envoys who had been assigned the task of acquiring jewelry now in possession of a White Russian aristocrat. Douglas is (only slightly miscast as) a Parisian playboy, who introduces Ninotchka to the joys of decadence. Once he gets Garbo to laugh, she lights up the screen. More than her melodramas, it is the role in which modern audiences can appreciate her attraction.

The formula has become a cliche of romantic comedy. Cole Porter wrote the music for the hit show and film that adapted it, Silk Stockings (Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse).

Gone With The Wind:
MGM / Selznick. The highest grossing film of the year, it was also the most expensive to produce. The course of its travel from best selling novel of 1936 to screen has been chronicled more than any other movie of any time - in documentaries and innumerable books. This week’s New Yorker includes David Denby’s appreciation of Victor Fleming, an article which mentions two new books, one by Molly Haskell who notes the movie’s cultural impact.

My own view is that once the generation which venerates this film passes away, it will be rated much lower on any list of great American films. Once thought the epitome of the Hollywood epic, it has not stood the test of societal changes in attitude toward African Americans, women’s roles, the presumed nobility of the ante-bellum and post-Civil War South. As bad history and negative cultural stereotyping, it is a bad influence. Some of the acting and writing is hopelessly dated, and some performances are embarrassing to watch.
Still, it grandly symbolizes a universal romantic dilemma for women: between love of a sensitive, soulful, poetic man (Ashley Wilkes / Leslie Howard) and the attraction to rough, sexy males (Rhett Butler /Clark Gable); whether to prize kindness and goodness (Melanie / Olivia DeHaviland) or accept her impulse for risk-taking independence and selfish grasping of power (Scarlett / Vivien Leigh). As such it was a primer for adolescent females of the era, and probably still speaks to girls of a certain age, like Wuthering Heights.
Scarlett is a form of the "anti-heroine" of the 1930's, which was personified elsewhere by Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck. She schemes, deceives, rails, is passionate and sexy, determined and strong. Leigh was unique because of her fresh sexuality and crystal beauty.
A subtext of the success of the novel and the film is its perspective of war as seen from the woman’s point of view: as an insane and selfish bellowing of bulls bent on the destruction of a "pretty society," an attitude which struck a loud chord in the pacifist America of the 1930's.

This is what Ebert now observes:
"How does Gone with the Wind play after fifty years? It is still a great film, above all because it tells a great story. Scarlett O'Hara, willful, spoiled, scarred by poverty, remains an unforgettable screen heroine, and I was struck again this time by how strong Vivien Leigh's performance is—by how stubbornly she maintains her petulance in the face of common sense, and by how even her heroism is undermined by her character flaws.
"The ending of the film still plays like a psychological test for the audience. What do you think we should really conclude? The next-to-last speech in the movie, Rhett Butler's ‘Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn,’ is one many audience members have been waiting for; Scarlett gets her comeuppance at last. Then comes her speech about Tara, about how, after all, tomorrow is another day. Some members of the audience will read this as an affirmation of strength, others as a renewed self-delusion. (The most cynical will observe that Scarlett, like many another divorcee disappointed in love, has turned to real estate as a career.)"

It has also been the subject of TV sequels and parodies, the best a classic skit by Carole Burnett who fashioned a dress from her velvet drapes, but kept the curtain rods as shoulder pads.

The Wizard of Oz :
MGM. Producer: Mervyn LeRoy. Director: Victor Fleming (and King Vidor). Cinematographer: Harold Rosson (other credits: Treasure Island, Captains Courageous, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Asphalt Jungle, The Red Badge of Courage). Music: Harold Arlen & E. Y. Harburg. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons. Makeup: Jack Dawn. Adapted Screenplay: Noel Langley and Florence Ryerson. Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton, Ray Bolger, Burt Lahr, Jack Haley.
One of the best examples of the remarkable range of creative talents which the Hollywood studio system at the height of its power could harness. MGM desperately tried to get Shirley Temple, settled for their own contract juvenile, the chubby seventeen year old Judy Garland. Mervin LeRoy was the producer, and Victor Fleming was assigned to direct — in the same year he took over the direction of Gone With The Wind!
A spectacular collaboration of Harold Arlen’s tuneful songs with memorable and clever adult rhymes, the nubile Judy Garland at the pinnacle of her precocious power, and a wonderful cast of scene-stealers including The Witch of all witches (Margaret Hamilton), imaginative costumes, sets, spectacular use of color, plenty of wit for the grown-ups — it all adds up to the most watchable children’s fantasy musical ever made.
Beneath it all, as I see it, lies a dark metaphor of the terrors of a girl growing up, leaving home, becoming a woman in a scary, male, adult world. She has flawed male role models to choose from: ranging from the strong but heartless, dumb but sweet, cowardly but cute, and the older man who claims wiz-dom.
It owes its theme to Alice in Wonderland, but from then on, the originality and universality sparkles. It is fun to see it as an in-parable of MGM: Judy is the exploited child / woman trying to escape from the fantasy world controlled by the wizard, Louis B. Mayer, the dream manipulator, and to go home for rest and sleep while Mayer keeps her working for him, awake with psychedelic drugs.
One minor downside of the films’ values which has always disturbed me: after her great adventure, Dorothy seems to have learned a lesson: "There’s no place like home." Apart from being sappy, that always struck me as somewhat reactionary; we should not seek "our heart’s desire" by escaping drab tedium and expanding our horizons. Maybe this is a secret political theme of isolationism, considering the film’s timing, an escape from the looming tornado of world war.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington:
Columbia. Director: Frank Capra. Screenplay: Sidney Buchman (credits: Theodora Goes Wild, Lost Horizon, Holiday.) James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Eugene Pallette,Thomas Mitchell, Harry Carey, H. B. Warner, Ruth Donnelly,
The unlikely possibility that naive idealism can overcome organized corruption is appealingly argued by Stewart and Capra. Suspension of disbelief is a must. As a genre, political films are rarely "great" because, if good they are timely and therefore become dated quickly. One of my favorites, State of the Union is later (1948) Capra. Seeing it today, it bears the Capra stamp of uplifting cynicism about manipulative politicians along with the sentimental hokum of American symbols of our goodness that I am a sucker for. Capra making a political film is like the remark about Sinatra singing a love ballad: "The jerk really believes all that bull!" And both make you believe, too.

A word about Jean Arthur, who was one of the treasures of the screwball comedy era (You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The More The Merrier, and The Talk of the Town and Wilder’s later Foreign Affair). She is my fantasy of a perfect woman: bright, funny, ironic, tough but sentimental, painfully attractive to look at and listen to.
In You Can’t Take It With You, she and James Stewart have three scenes together that epitomize the essence of 1930's romantic comedy as filtered through the sentimental imagination of Frank Capra. Arthur plays Stewart’s secretary. She comes from a ditzy family which meets The Great Depression by accentuating their eccentricities and having a blast. His father is wealthy banker, Edward Arnold, who was Capra’s favorite heavy, a pompous powerful capitalist.
The first scene between the love birds is in the office; Jimmy holds Jean’s hands and coos to her so ardently that she can’t answer the phone. She has to nuzzle it with her nose to the desk and does half the scene with her hair facing the camera. The result is as sexy as it could be. The second scene has the two lovers sitting on a park bench, smooching, and Jimmy talking about his goofy dreams. Arthur mostly reacts, just looking at him as he speaks, and her face is to die for. The third scene is in a ritzy restaurant. Jimmy says he feels a scream rising from his toes, and fears he can’t hold it back. Jean scolds him, and becomes progressively alarmed as Jimmy’s face becomes more and more likely to scream. Suddenly, she screams. It is a hilarious scene, made of just a silly moment of anarchy, of the extreme talents of two wonderful entertainers, pretending to be and becoming a perfect couple.
In Mr. Smith, Jean Arthur evinces the same magical ability to show intelligence, sex appeal, screwball wit, and sentimentality, whether in successive scenes or simultaneous moments. If you want to find a primer on comedic romantic acting, Jean Arthur is the absolute master. (Her closest contemporary mimic is Meg Ryan – place them side by side and see who you prefer. No contest.)

Snow White:
Over all, I prefer Who Framed Roger Rabbit; but as the first of its genre, a full-length animated feature, it was certainly a landmark. "Whistle While You Work," "Some Day My Prince Will Come," Dopey, Prince Charming, the Wicked Witch, the velvety Disney animation touch, whistling and singing animal pals, the fairy tale for pre-adolescent girls. Disney copied the formula so often that it makes the first effort look trite when viewed again.

Stagecoach:
Director: John Ford. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols (other credits: The Informer, Bringing Up Baby) John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Claire Trevor, John Carradine, George Bancroft, Andy Devine, Donald Meek, Tim Holt (see below).
John Ford’s sweeping western vistas, and lean power of a young John Wayne. The film accumulates practically every Western cliché character and situation and somehow manages to be convincing and enjoyable throughout. Historically important, it made the western into an A movie, moving the genre and Wayne along with it, away from Saturday matinee hell. It was also the precursor of the "adult western" in which all the stock characters of westerns: dance hall girls, dudes, drunks, are depicted as more real people: prostitutes, homosexuals, tragic flotsam. It also contains the elements for the pattern of Ford’s myth making cinema: the creation of heroes (lone gunslingers, settlers, the cavalry) and villains (Indians, city slickers, bankers, bureaucrats, cowards).
How’s this for trivia: this is the second film on this list for one of the worst actors ever: the cavalry officer is Tim Holt, (one of the three leads in The Treasure of Sierra Madre). Holt also had the central role in Orson Welles’ flawed near masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons.

Wuthering Heights:
Goldwyn. Director: William Wyler. Screenplay adapted by Charles McArthur with Ben Hecht (whose screen credits define the Golden Age: Scarface, Viva Villa, Design For Living, Twentieth Century) Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, David Niven, Donald Crisp, Leo G. Carroll, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Cecil Kelloway.
Bijou was a lonely young girl who spent a lot of time in the local library reading novels which were on the shelf in alphabetical order by author; so she read all of Austin and the Brontes. When she grew up, we traveled in Europe. She found this novel — which she had loved reading as a pre-adolescent — in a bed and breakfast bin, and re-read it with great anticipation — and disappointment. As a grown woman, she was struck by her realization that the story actually reflects the transparent and immature repressed sexual fantasies of the Emily Bronte, who had been daughter of a stern minister living in pre-Victorian English isolation. The film, wildly romantic to its viewers in 1939, now seems hopelessly silly and over-the-top ... at least, until one considers Titanic.

Interestingly, the modern erotic story line (as in Unfaithful) twists this plot almost beyond recognition. In the modern women’s fantasy, she is in a stable, boring, sexless relationship and craves the dark, unruly, sexy Heathcliff type, has a wild affair with him, then it ends or doesn’t. Here, Cathy starts with Heathcliff, but drops him for the stuffed shirt, but he is the obsessed character who is fatally attracted to her. He pursues her to the point of destroying her life and his, until, on her death bed she admits her passionate love, her eternal tie to him.
Still, the production is first rate movie making. William Wyler directed, with Gregg Toland behind the camera, a script by Hecht and MacArthur, Alfred Newman’s music. They create a rich atmosphere of turbulent passions. Laurence Olivier shows his power in his dark chiseled looks and rich powerful voice, and Merle Oberon, never a great actress in a generation of great screen actresses is believable in the role of The Woman of 1939: vain, fragile, determined, mercurial, just like Vivian Leigh in GWTW and Bette Davis in Jezebel.
Like another tale of tragic juvenile love, Romeo And Juliet, the story continues to speak across generations of romantic girls. In the 90's it was filmed on the moors with more authentic atmosphere and sense of the era with Ralph Fiennes, Juliet Binoche and Colin Firth.
Then, as proof of its primary audience, MTV has recently updated the story to contemporary US teenville. Heathcliff became "Heath", a mysterious and sexy rock music composer and performer. "Cate" (again) marries the wealthy Edward, whose sister, Isabel, is tragically enamored of Heath. There is a lot of moaning, deep and wet kisses, commercials, and bad music. To cash in on the tweener’s romantic ideal of modern tragedy, Cate dies in childbirth this time (as in the novel), and later, Heath is shown riding his chopper with his and Cate’s child on the back, to the strains of some pop melody, while Cate’s spirit approves.

Dark Victory:
Warners. Exec. Producer: Hal. B. Wallis. Director: Edmund Goulding. Screenplay: Casey Robinson (also credited with Captain Blood, Tovarish, King’s Row, Pride Of The Yankees, Now, Voyager.) Bette Davis, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart. Score: Max Steiner (A famous story goes that Bette Davis asked the director if Steiner was going to underscore her final scene, in which she climbs a flight of stairs as blindness closes in, signaling her impending tragic death. When he hesitated, she ordered: "Either Max goes up those stairs, or I do. But I’ll be damned if I go up there with him.")
Bette Davis was a remarkable star. She was a unique sort of woman in films. Her personality was so powerful that she plowed through all her many unattractive defects to grab you despite your better judgment. She was at her best in soapy melodramas that she elevated to something that was almost human, through sheer determination and personality.
Dark Victory is a tearjerker of the most shameful sort, but is a good example of her power. Davis plays a spoiled heiress who leads a shallow life. Suddenly she develops headaches, double vision, and is cajoled into meeting the very serious George Brent, a brain surgeon. He operates on Bette’s brain, and fails to tell her that she is going to die in less than a year. Bette falls in love with George. Then she discovers the deception, rails at the world and George, finally gives in and marries him. They are happy for the few months they have together in wintry Vermont living a simple life and finding peace of mind. Then Bette feels the onset of the final stages of her "very rare" but convenient movie illness, in which there are no symptoms until a few hours before she is to die, when the world will grow dark. Bette faces the end courageously and alone (except for Steiner’s score), grateful for the love she has had.
The miracle is how compelling Davis makes this film. Though certainly not a beauty in the mold of Garbo, Hepburn, or many others, Davis manages to make herself riveting to look at. Her eyes, those Bette Davis Eyes, are her major attribute in film acting. They express everything. Her voice is sometimes metallic and overpowering, her mannerisms harsh and over-emoting. She moves about, wrings her hands, waves her cigarettes and punctuates her dialogue with vitriolic flair. But she is like a child who is so persistently aggressive that she demands your attention, forces you to take the trip with her, and finally to feel for her. She showed the same kind of power in most of her Bette Davis films.

Only Angels Have Wings:
Columbia. Howard Hawks directed a paean to flyers. Screenplay by Jules Furthman (also credited with The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Bombshell, Mutiny On The Bounty). Starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, newcomer Rita Hayworth, and the ubiquitous Thomas Mitchell (who was in every other movie released that year). Score: Dimitri Tiomkin.
Hawks idealizes the between-the-wars masculine ideal, men of action who grieve with gallows humor, hard drinking, and yield only to women who can be pals as well as tolerant lovers.

Gunga Din:
R.K.O. Director: George Stevens. Screenplay: typical of the studio system, many writers worked without screen credit, including: William Faulkner, Ben Hecht, Dudley Nichols, Anthony Veiler. The story is credited to Hecht & MacArthur, who fashioned it from the Kipling poem. Joel Sayre & Fred Guiol got the screen credit. Starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Sam Jaffe, Eduardo Ciannelli, Joan Fontaine, Montagu Love, Robert Coote. Score: Alfred Newman. (One of the uncredited editors was John Sturges - later director of such as Bad Day At Black Rock, The Old Man And The Sea, The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape). Cinematographer: Joseph August (Portrait Of Jennie).
A terrific adventure film, one of the templates that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg cite as influential to Star Wars and Indiana Jones. A buddy movie, a service comedy, a swashbuckler. Cary Grant, whose sophisticated screwball comedy chops had been established, now hit as an action star with dash and wit, Cockney charm, mixing it up with the gruff MacLaglen and debonair Fairbanks.
Viewed by today’s sensibilities, the clinker of English snobbery toward India, highlighted by darkened skinned Jaffe (a veteran of Yiddish theatre) and Italian actor Ciannelli, must be swallowed to enjoy the fun.

George Stevens, of course, is one of the great film makers of all time. Beginning in silents as cameraman, writer, then as director and producer, master of films in all genres: Alice Adams, Annie Oakley, Swing Time, Woman Of The Year, The More The Merrier, A Place In The Sun, Shane, Giant, The Diary Of Anne Frank.

Destry Rides Again:
Universal. Producer: Joe Pasternak (Anchors Aweigh, Director: George Marshall. Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Mischa Auer, Charles Wininger, Brian Donlevy, Una Merkel.
The anti-violent Western in which Stewart plays a pacifist as sheriff. Jimmy’s stammering boyishness mixes with Dietrich’s inflammatory sultriness producing very funny and sexy chemistry, especially in a scene in which she has a knock down cat fight with Una Merkel, which Jimmy tries to mediate.

At The Circus:
MGM. The Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont, Eve Arden. Screenplay credited to Irving Brecher (other credits: Meet Me In St. Louis, The Life Of Riley), though as in all Marx films, it is hard to know how much the boys improvised.
The film is lesser Marx, certainly not on a par with the earlier A Night At The Opera for MGM, but there are the usual moments of insanity and pun-ishment of the language for which they are best remembered.

Babes In Arms:
MGM. Producer: Arthur Freed. Director: Busby Berkeley. Screenplay: Jack McGowan (Broadway Melody of 1940, Lady Be Good). Songs by Rodgers & Hart, Nacio Herb Brown. Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland.
The first and most original and exhuberant of the Berkeley / Rooney / Garland "lets put on a show" movies. Berkeley exploits their talents to the fullest, with energetic production numbers that make you tired merely watching them. Fame, High School Musical, and the zillion others of this genre owe their existence to this one.

The Women:
MGM. George Cukor. Screenplay: Anita Loos. (F. Scott Fitzgerald also contributed dialogue.) Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine.
Claire Booth Luce’s play, adapted by Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) with an all-star all women cast, is the most overt "woman’s picture" in an era that credibly boasts as the golden age of female actors and stories about women who would later be called liberated.

The writers and stars of the 1930's were molded by the social sensibilities of the 1920's when small town girls became "flappers" and "vamps", drank whiskey from flasks and in speakeasies, danced in short skirts, bobbed their hair, smoked cigarettes, and went to the big city to become independent. Movies of the 20's and 30's reflected and influenced this pop culture revolution. It wasn’t until the 1950's that women lost their bearings and reverted to the puritanical norm of pliant homemakers that required another revolution to free them from.

"Slumdog Millionaire" (2008)

2009-01-11T19:40:00.000-08:00

Pauline Kael, the longtime New Yorker film critic, was known for decrying the pompous critical barrier between "art" and "trash." Almost alone among serious critics of her time, she recognized the legitimacy of the popular film form, dictating that good trash is preferable to bad art. While she was credited with spotlighting European cinema’s achievement in raising the bar of realism and relevance, she also was able to appreciate what she called "movie movies." By that term she meant to laud the skillful creative efforts that produced films that make audiences glad to spend time and money watching them, even if they are not labeled as "art" or "important" in any way other than as entertainment.

"Slumdog Millionaire" is, I think, the kind of film Kael would have enjoyed. She would have praised it despite its ultimate sentimentality, its low brow pop culture references, its mix of gritty reality and romantic fantasy.

Kael also would have observed that its story arc owes perhaps too much to Charles Dickens and even more to Warner Brothers Depression Era potboilers like "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938), epics which trace the arduous path of street urchins. Kids from the New York ghetto grow to be priest, gangster, and girl between them. The gangster will save the lives of his childhood pals, sacrificing himself for their future.

The transparent manipulation of the audience to fear for the lives of children, she might have noticed, has been a staple of film making since Chaplin ("The Kid"). She also might have said that Steven Spielberg, to whom that kind of theme was a signature of his early movies, would have envied Danny Boyle’s picture. Recently, "City Of God" (2002), repeated the theme for the slums of Rio de Janeiro, with a sense of the violence of our time.

"Slumdog" follows the typical pattern, transposed to Bombay’s (now Mumbai) slums, but adds a bonus for Western audiences, as the odyssey of Jamal, Salim, and Latika not only takes us from Bombay to Agra and Delhi and back to Mumbai, it also traces India’s evolution from apparent hopelessness to high tech commercial power.

When I was there thirty five years ago, I never would have dreamed that a country with so much pervasive poverty could achieve anything near the prosperity that India has accomplished in this time. If the picture is anything more than wishful fantasy, the changes are amazing.

The film reminded me of the complex feelings I had during my month there: fascination, admiration, and at the same time, horror. Begging children, hustlers of all kinds, poverty so crushing that it takes your breath away, were all overwhelming.

I remember thinking of the irony when these children (depicted in the picture at the top of this post) who had been begging for "baksheesh" so pathetically, suddenly began to laugh at Bijou's blowfish faces, then demanded more to laugh at, and just as suddenly, lined up to have their picture taken.

"Slumdog" is about the miracle of hope against impossible odds, not just of survival, but of achieving happiness. It is a children's tale, yes. Maybe no less fantastic than "Harry Potter", but rooted in a real world we have to live in, it gives hope that there is a place for a feel good movie movie to entertain us as well as bring us closer together.

Hard times can be fun ... what filmmakers can learn from Depression era comedies

2009-01-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

In a Sunday NY Times column, movie critic A. O. Scott questioned whether Hollywood will react to the current economic hard times as well as it did during The Great Depression. In truth, the widely acknowledged Golden Age of Hollywood actually produced mostly mindless trash to divert Depression audiences from their troubles. The studios rarely exhibited an interest in making audiences think seriously about social problems, at least not in the sorts of conscious efforts that marked the post-war era of "realism" in the movies.

However, many in the creative workforce of the time were anxious to comment on conditions, and some even squeezed into their plots some sympathy with the New Deal. Despite the strictures imposed by commercial concerns and the tight censorship of radical social, sexual, and political notions, they managed to slip some fairly subversive philosophy into their storytelling. For instance, the "Forgotten Man" number of Busby Berkeley’s "Golddiggers of 1933" was a rare example in the most frivolous of forms, the Hollywood version of the Broadway musical. Warner Brothers, the studio responsible for that film, was known for its dramas on subjects "ripped from the headlines" like "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang" and "Dead End". They even dared a movie exposing the KKK, "Dark Legion". The studio’s gangster staples likewise contained story arcs that worked as commentary about poverty and crime. Of course, John Ford’s "The Grapes Of Wrath" is the best known example of the kind of socially aware filmmaking that, by the time of the Cold War, was pointed to as proof of a conspiracy of leftist influence in the movie business.

It was in comedies, especially the screwball comedy form, that the socially aware writers found the most palatable vehicle for smuggling progressive notions into an entertaining and very commercial product. Depression audiences lapped up story lines that skewered the pompous mores of the monied classes that were seen as smugly inattentive to the privations of the masses. The writers, many of whom had sprung from journalistic roots, contrived plots woven around love fables that allowed them to make points about class inequality through wryly satirical voices.

Frank Capra’s output during the decade epitomized and made the most lasting impact on the genre. His films were cleverly designed to appeal to Depression audiences, who could identify with the protagonist a woman or man who was toughened by the hard times, but became involved in romances that exposed an idealistic core of uplifting values. Though Capra is best remembered for the formula, others also found success.

The first time Capra toyed with this formula was in "Platinum Blonde" (1932), in which a wise-cracking newsman (Robert Johnson) allows himself to be temporarily seduced into becoming a pet of a society girl (Jean Harlow). When ridiculed by his pals as the "Cinderella Man," he walks out and finds himself, with the aid of his working girl pal (Loretta Young), finally writing a play about his experiences. Johnson’s performance, laced with witty, sardonic asides that flayed the foibles of the rich, was highly praised by critics; but he died shortly after the premiere, and remains a sadly forgotten pioneer of the genre.

In 1934, Capra joined again with scenarist Robert Riskin (who had written the snappy dialogue for "Platinum Blonde") in "It Happened One Night," a film that has provided the template for innumerable road romances up to the present day. A frisky heiress (Claudette Colbert) dives from her yacht to escape her overprotective father (Walter Connelly), intending to marry an aviator. Naive about life’s difficulties, she is helped by a cynical newsman (Clark Gable). Among the hoi polloi on a night bus, she gives what money she has to a boy whose mother has fainted for lack of food while she is traveling to look for work. On the road, she learns the facts of life for ordinary people in hard times as they scramble to hitch rides, fight hunger. She finds that money can’t buy true love. Extremely popular, the film was the first to sweep the Academy Awards - best actor, actress, director, screenplay, and picture, it remains one of the few comedies to achieve that distinction.

Capra and Riskin followed up with "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town" (1936) in which Gary Cooper played a small town eccentric who suddenly inherits millions and finds himself living in a New York mansion, surrounded by sycophants, con artists, sneaky lawyers, and pompous socialites. Jean Arthur is the working girl of the story, a news hound who is assigned to write stories ridiculing the new "Cinderella Man," pretending to be an out of work shop girl, but of course soon falls as hard for him as he for her. Boy loses girl when he discovers her deception. Disillusioned, he plans to go home to his small town, but is waylaid by a jobless would be assassin who decries the Cinderella Man’s frivolous waste of wealth while so many are starving. Deeds feeds the man and devises a plan to give his fortune to men willing to work. For this he is deemed insane and must defend himself in court.

Also released in 1936, "My Man Godfrey" (directed by Gregory La Cava from a script by Morrie Ryskind) is often cited as the quintessential screwball comedy, starring the perfect screwball actress, Carole Lombard, as Irene Bullock, the slightly off center young socialite daughter of a troubled businessman (Eugene Pallette) and airhead mother (Alice Brady). Bored society butterflies conduct a scavenger hunt, seeking a "forgotten man" in the shacks by the river. Godfrey Smith (William Powell), a fallen son of an upper class family, now reduced to homelessness, is the prize. Despite his scathing denunciation of the shallowness of his sponsors, Irene hires him as the family butler. While love blossoms between Godfrey and Irene, he discovers a purpose to his life, opening a restaurant to employ his homeless friends and restore their dignity, while saving his employers from financial disaster.

"Easy Living" (1937), directed by Mitchell Liesen from a script by Preston Sturges (who would later refine the screwball genre with his masterpieces, "The Palm Beach Story," The Lady Eve," "The Miracle Of Morgan Creek" and "Sullivan’s Travels"), begins with a banker (Edward Arnold) throwing his wife’s latest extravagance, a mink coat, out of the window. It falls on the head of a working girl (Jean Arthur), triggering a set of screwy events typical of the genre. Thinking she is the mistress of the banker, she is offered a luxury hotel suite, a car, a wardrobe. She meets the banker’s son (Ray Milland) who is working in the automat to rebel against his father and somehow it all works out.

Morrie Ryskind (no relation to Robert Riskin) is credited as writer of "Easy Living" as well as the Marx Brothers’ classics, "Cocoanuts", "A Night At The Opera" and "Room Service." In 1938, he adapted the Ferber / Kaufman play, "Stage Door" for Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Hepburn plays an heiress who wants to be an actress, moves into a residential hotel for starving aspiring actresses, learns about the travails of young women struggling for independence in a cutthroat Depression market. The ensemble of wise cracking gals included RKO contract girl Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, and Ann Miller.

Also in 1938, Capra released his film of Riskin’s adaptation of the Kaufman and Hart play, "You Can’t Take It With You" which won Capra’s second Oscars as best director and and for best picture. The film starred James Stewart as son of a banker (Edward Arnold), in love with his secretary (Jean Arthur), whose family is like a commune of free spirited screwballs, led by the patriarch (Lionel Barrymore) who long ago gave up the rat race to enjoy life. The class barrier between the families is broken when the son breaks free and the banker is converted to seek peace of mind.

Released the same year, "Holiday" was directed by George Cukor from a screenplay credited to Donald Ogden Stuart and Sidney Buchman from a Philip Barry play. Johnny Case (Cary Grant) is a hard working stock broker who is turning 30 and wants to quit the rat race to travel for a year to find the meaning of life. He falls for "Julia Seton", not knowing she is the daughter of a wealthy financier. While Julia and her father plan their life after the marriage to disabuse him of his radical notion of abandoning the chase for wealth, her sister, Linda (Katherine Hepburn) encourages his dream. With aid from his bohemian academic friends (Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon) and her alcoholic brother Ned (Lew Ayres), Linda opposes her sister and father, in the process falling in love with Johnny and sailing away with him.

Social commentary during the era didn’t always apply to wealth or class distinctions. In "Theodora Goes Wild," Irene Dunne’s first foray into comedy, she is the straight laced member of a small town family of blue nosed ladies who is chosen as a spokesperson to prevent serialization of a scandalously sexy novel in the town’s newspaper. In fact, Theodora has written the novel under a pseudonym as revealed when she enter’s the office of her New York publisher. While there she meets an artist (Melvyn Douglas) who falls for her and tries to loosen her morals by getting her pleasantly snockered and showing her his etchings. When Theodora escapes, he follows her to her town and threatens to expose her secret. Eventually, he succeeds in freeing her from her puritanical fears, allowing her to thumb her nose at those which are out of joint.

Two notable movies of the day found comedic fodder in Soviet Russia. In "Tovarich" (1937) Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer are Russian aristocrats living in Paris after the revolution. They are impoverished, even though they possess the czar’s fortune, which was entrusted to them in the event of collapse of the Bolsheviks. Evicted from their shabby flat, they find refuge as butler and maid to a Parisian banker and his family. Of course, their taste and manners are far superior to their employers and much of the comedy comes from the couple’s humility as servants contrasted with pretensions of the nouveau riche family. When the family discovers their true identity, the social confusion of the upstairs - downstairs variety. A guest arrives (Basil Rathbone) who is the Bolshevik commissar who had tortured them, failing to secure the fortune. Despite their hatred for him and the Soviet, the couple decide to turn over the money in order to aid mother Russia and, unburdened, decide to continue their roles as servants to the family.

Billy Wilder collaborated with Charles Brackett and director Ernst Lubitch for "Ninotchka" in 1939, the film in which Garbo laughs. She plays a dour Soviet emissary who has come to Paris to recover the crown jewels and finds love with a Parisian man-about-town (Melvyn Douglas).

It will be interesting to see whether our movie makers will find relevant ways to help us through the hard times to come.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

2008-12-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

This movie about a couple in the throes of marital crisis in the 1950's is strangely familiar to me. The Wheelers have turned 30, an age when you fear that you have become what you are always going to be - the potential for more than settled normality is slipping away. In desperation, they contrive to move to Paris to save themselves.

I was 31, Bjou 29 in 1974, when, after a year of marriage, we left our friends - who were having their houses and children, and our secure careers to which we were not yet irrevocably committed, and traveled the world for a year.

After four months in Asia, we lived in a house outside of Paris which belonged to Bijou’s uncle. After spending time with Bijou’s cousin and her husband and child, I wrote this in my journal:

"Last night was another with Gerard and Hélene. Being with them is an odd experience. I suppose it is what is meant by viewing another way of life. We have done a lot of that during our trip. One of the avowed purposes of the travel was to break out of our life style which we found lacking in something: maybe an environment of stimulation of growth, though I blush to use such clinical terms. We have viewed several other people who were sufficiently like us to allow us to step imaginatively into their roles and taste their wine. Some we envied, others felt superior to, all we found lacking in the final accounting, for our model.

"I guess the trouble is we do not know or cannot define what it is we really want and what we are willing to do to get it. We are naturally indecisive as individuals, and as a pair, we are both lazy and passive. Perhaps answers will come to us. We are intuitive, sensitive, bright, willing to learn and experience. We already have some answers and await, albeit impatiently, the rest."

The Wheelers also thought they deserved better than the life they had fallen into, but had neither the passion, talent, or courage to break away. April (Kate Winslet) is a failed actress, whose performance in a community production of "The Petrified Forest" as Gabrielle, the desert waitress with dreams of going to Paris begins her downfall. Now she must face the abyss of a life as a suburban housewife and mother, and all that implied in the 1950's. Her husband, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) is also trapped, commuting with the other men in grey flannel suits to a stultifyingly boring office job, where the only potential for diversion is a fling with a vulnerable young secretary (Zoe Kazan) and three martini lunches.

April, without a dream of her own, tries to escape what she senses to be a life of quiet desperation, devises the Paris plan to revive what attracted her to Frank, a sense that he wanted to be better than mediocre. Frank, tragically, doesn't have the courage, and April's disppointment is fatal.

Unlike the Wheelers, we had our time in Paris and returned, ready to resume our place in the swarm, but with a far greater confidence that we were in fact different from the others. The life became one we chose, after testing many others. Our experiences sealed a bond that made us far stronger than we would have been had we never broken free.

"The Lovers" ("Les Amants") (1958) - you know it when you see it.

2008-12-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

When I was in law school, the most controversial battleground of the 1st Amendment was not school prayer or press freedom or even religious preferences. It was censorship of the arts, focusing on the definition of "obscenity." States passed laws which tried to proscribe sexual content, especially in motion pictures, and particularly in the European imports that were infesting art houses all over the country.

Challenged by the commercial disaster of television, American filmmakers in the 1950's struggled to produce movies with "adult" content, stretching the boundaries of taste and "morals". But most of the studios didn’t dare to cross any lines. Douglas Sirk’s suburban melodramas talked about infidelity, but no filmmaker dared to show it in any explicit scene. The age-old devices of cameras pulling away from closing doors, showing waves crashing on the shore, and other heavily coded but well understood substitutes for sex scenes were still needed.

The rigid Hays Code, Legion of Decency, The Catholic Church and other arbiters of taste and morals, supported by laws in many states, were simply too powerful. While definitions of obscenity varied with each organization and statute, any nudity or showing of the act of sex was always covered.

In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, finally overturned Ohio’s ban on the release of a motion picture on grounds of obscenity. It is from this case, the Justice Potter Stewart’s often quoted concurring opinion was given. Stewart wrote that defining obscenity was an almost impossible task. He couldn’t do it with precision and without trampling on artistic freedom. In effect, he wrote, the most he could say was that he knew it when he saw it, and the film in question was definitely not obscene, even though it contained brief nudity and a sex scene.

The movie in question was called "The Lovers" ("Les Amants"), directed by Louis Malle. It had been a sensation in Europe and was a critical and commercial success. It made both the leading actress, Jeanne Moreau, and its director, superstars. Malle’s success at 25 heralded the "New Wave" of young French directors who followed in quick succession to revolutionize the art of film: Clouzot, Godard, Truffault.

I just watched "The Lovers" on DVD and, placed in its time, can understand what all the fuss was about. It is a rather mundane story of a provincial haute bourgeois marriage going sour. The young wife is bored with her inattentive older husband, travels frequently to Paris where she is having an affair with an attractive man of her own social set, who bores her somewhat less. The husband becomes annoyed with her frequent absences, and is possibly suspicious about an affair though he is too snooty to confront her. It is hinted that he too is meandering, with a woman who works for him. The husband insists that she invite her Paris friends to visit their country house. On the day they are to arrive, the wife’s car breaks down and she accepts a lift from a young man who has rejected his bourgeois roots and the social pretense that money and position afford. At first she is annoyed by the young man, but eventually he impresses her with his carefree air.

In a classically romantic sequence, she roams the gardens in the night and encounters the young man, who pursues her. They fall in love and decide to run away together. Back in the house, the wife kisses her young daughter in her bed, and dreamily takes her new lover to her bedroom There follows a passionate, though tastefully (by today’s standards quite mild) love scene in which the camera does not – as Malle commented — move to the window at the moment of truth, but rather lingers during the consummation of their love, including a close-up of Moreau’s face as she whispers repeatedly and more and more intensely, "Mon amour, mon amour," as she reaches orgasm. There are more scenes of the couple cuddling, in bed and in the bath and back in the bed until the sun rises. They then get into his car and leave.

Absent the historical context, the movie doesn’t qualify as a great film. Fifty years of sex filled movies about bored housewives having affairs have steeled me against this ancient relic, which contains the scenes I've seen so often that that I had to keep reminding myself that this movie created the clichés. Even considering that, it doesn’t do what Malle seems to have wanted. Moreau’s jump from unsatisfied ennui to passionate liberated woman seems too sudden. He fails to prepare us adequately for the gauzy romance that she finds in the idyllic garden. He stated that he wanted to capture love at first sight, but as the scene progressed, I kept thinking that this woman was playacting at love, doubted that she would follow through, despite her contented smiles. Her later work, especially as Catherine in "Jules And Jim", were far more convincing portrayals of the women she came to epitomize. Yet, as the first slap on the face to the bourgeois mind set, it is still retains some of its power.

European censors objected, not only to the explicit sex scene, which was perhaps the first of its kind in a mainstream popular release, but even more vehemently to the values expressed by the woman’s conduct, leaving her child behind while she pursues real love. Notably, it was not the story of adultery that was found objectionable, but rather the subversion of family values by a woman who dares to abandon her child in a loveless marriage and who appears to be content at the fade out, as if the filmmaker approved of her actions.

The story Malle chose was based on an 18th Century novel (written by a contemporary of LeClos, who wrote "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."). Although European literature contained a tradition of similar stories, notably "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina," the opprobrium that this movie inspired is proof of just how hide-bound the culture had become in the 1950's.

The Cinema of politics and politics of cinema

2008-11-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

"Gabriel Over The White House" (1933) might have been the primer on which Oliver Stone learned his ABZ's. At its heart, it is a political tract designed by William Randolph Hearst, purporting to tell the soon-to-be sworn in president Franklin Roosevelt how to beat The Depression and create world peace. It has been praised and condemned ever since - by the left and right - as protofascist, protocommunist, proto-benevolent dictatorship, and quasi-Christian propaganda.

It is as strange a film as a Hollywood Studio (MGM) ever produced. Gregory La Cava, better known for comedies (including W.C. Fields' movies), directed rather hurriedly, from a script credited to Cary Wilson, but based on a book by an Englishman who called himself Tweed. In fact, Hearst financed the film and is said to have personally written some of the speeches. Hearst supposedly submitted the script to FDR, who himself made some changes and signaled his approval to Hearst, who had supported his candidacy.

Walter Huston plays "Juddson Hammond," a party hack who wins the presidency the old fashioned way, by making promises he never intends to keep. He has a mistress (like Harding), refuses to be quoted by the press (like Coolidge), and considers every crisis, such as millions of unemployed marchers and rampant gangsterism, as "local problems" (like Hoover).

One day, he speeds his car over a cliff, and emerges from a coma a changed man, having seen a vision of Gabriel and / or Lincoln. He now fires his cabinet cronies, joins the masses of men marching on Washington, announcing the creation of an "Army Of Construction," a massive public works project to carry the nation's economy until private enterprise recovers.

When Congress rebels and threatens to impeach the president, he announces that Congress must "adjourn" or he will declare martial law. He admits to adopting dictatorial powers in order to preserve what he calls Jefferson's definition of democracy - goverment on behalf of the people.

He then invites to the White House the nation's leading gangster, offers to send him "home" to his country of origin, and when the gangster answers by sending a car full of henchment to riddle the White House with machinegun bullets, the president creates a federal police force which assaults the mobsters, tries them in military courts martial, free from "technicalities" like habeas corpus. They are quickly executed by firing squad in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

The president then calls the leaders of all nations to a conference aboard a U.S. naval warship and asks them to repay their war debts. When they plead poverty, he reminds them that they have used their resources to build armaments that will insure a future war. He threatens them with American military might. As a demonstration, American planes sink two obsolete battleships in view of the diplomats (like Billy Mitchell's demonstration in the 1920's).

The president demands that they sign a compact for world peace, predicting that the alternative will be a war that destroys all their cities and ends civilization.

As the nations all sign the document insuring lasting peace, the president's work is done. Gabriel calls once again and he dies, "one of the greatest men who ever lived."

As screwy as the plot is, the film accurately reflects the sentiments of a large portion of American thought at the time of its release. The Great Depression was at its depth, 25% or more unemployed; thousands of banks failing, taking uninsured life savings with them; farms and homes in foreclosure. Capitalism had no clue, democratic government was frozen in fear.

The crisis demanded new ideas, cries for any action, however radical. But the only new ideas that seemed to be feasible were those that made the trains run on time in fascist Italy, the five year plans of the Soviet Russian workers paradise, and the newly empowered National Socialism in Germany.

Mainstream political thinkers admitted the bankruptcy of the American consitutional system and conceded that a period of emergency dictatorial power was the only solution.

F.D.R.'s apparent approval of the notions expressed in the script of this film and the language he used in his Inaugural Address, referring to the need for emergency powers, seemed to signal his willingness to assume dicatorial powers. Indeed, over the 12 years of his presidency, the claim would be made many times that he had done so.

But the fact is that F.D.R. always used the democratic process to carry out his policies. He persuaded, created consensus, compromised over and over with Congress, business, local governments, foreign leaders, even his own wife who wanted quicker reforms. Unlike Hitler, he never burned his Reichstag, never resorted to a secret police.

F.D.R. ruled by sleight of hand rather than an iron fist. He was a "confidence man" in the literal sense, inspiring confidence even when all the evidence should have inspired fear. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is a motto that was nonsensical on its face. But starving people cheered him.

In this trait, he equaled Hitler. Sarving Germans cheered Hitler, too, when he told them that though they had been defeated, humiliated, impoverished, they were a great nation which would rise to dominate the world.

"Gabriel Over The White House" was supposed to be Hearst's blueprint for an American saviour. F.D.R. conned Hearst but never succombed to the temptations of power as Hearst outlined. The megalomaniacal magnate quickly became disillusioned with F.D.R. and turned to Herr Hitler whose leadership style was more consistent with the Hearst way of doing things.

Michael Clayton (2007)

2008-02-29T21:32:00.000-08:00

I usually can’t stomach lawyer movies. Almost everyone I’ve seen is either offensively unrealistic or unrealistically offensive. I especially despise the films that purport to expose some real flaw in "the system" but distorts the facts or law claiming "artistic license" to make its point.

I don’t mind the "Perry Mason" kind of fantasy because they are so obviously kitchy, except that ever since that show, it has been necessary for judges to remind prospective jurors that it isn’t the obligation of defense lawyers to force the true guilty party to jump up and confess in the third act.

Now comes "Michael Clayton." This is a fairly typical lawyer movie in many ways. The big civil firm is defending an evil agri-chemical client in a billion dollar lawsuit against cancer victims. Thus, the lawyers are depicted as scum.

That’s to be expected. And the big event that triggers the plot crisis is a straight steal from Sidney Lumet’s classic, "Network." The lead litigator for the firm, after six years of battle, suddenly goes bananas — he’s mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it anymore. So in the middle of a deposition, he claims love for the plaintiff, strips off his clothes and chases her through the parking lot (or so we are told — the director had the good sense to withhold the scene of Tom Wilkenson naked.)

Later, the movie becomes a thriller, with surveillance, murder, a car bomb ... none of that is too interesting to me.

No, the one element I latched onto was the idea of the eponymous Michael Clayton, himself. See, he’s the guy in the firm who is given all the "dirty" jobs, we are told. He’s "the fixer," a self-described "janitor" who cleans up all the messes. When a well-heeled client is facing a scandal, he makes the payoff, does the cover-up. He fixes the tickets, presumably arranges bribes, does all the unethical stuff so the partners don’t dirty their manicured hands.

One of the things he does is refer cases to criminal lawyers. That’s something I know a bit about, because I have been one of the criminal lawyers to whom other lawyers have referred clients.

In my experience, there is nothing dirty or sinister about this practice. Most ordinary people don’t know criminal lawyers. Some do know civil lawyers. They’ve had divorces or other accidents of life and when they or someone they know get into trouble, they call the lawyer they know. Some of these lawyers are sensible enough to know how much they don’t know about the arcane specialty of criminal law, and so refer these cases to lawyers they know.

Now, I am sure that at a level far "higher" than my income bracket, there are those who look for criminal lawyers to "fix" problems. I’ve known a few who traveled a shadowy path, so close to dope dealers and pimps that they were engulfed into that world. It was a 60's & 70's fast lane thing for some and a few didn’t survive.

There were others who traded on reputations for being a "fixer" but were, in the end, pretenders. There was a guy who was famous in the small world of L.A. criminal lawyers. He was an outrageous appearing little man, even for the outrageous times, with purple shirt and lavender tie, high heel boots. In the old Hall of Justice, the elevator operators waited for him, greeted him and told everyone who he was. Around Christmas time, he tipped the girls $25. My boss in the PD office smiled slyly. "How much do you think he’s giving the clerks and the judges?"

One day, the lawyer strolled into the courtroom where I was working. We PD’s were waiting to get our cases heard and there were other private counsel waiting as well. But when this guy came in (let’s call him "Harry") the clerk called his case and the judge called him up to the bench for a private meeting.

"Harry" patted his frightened client on the back and went up to the bench. He whispered to the judge. I could hear him plainly from a few feet away. Harry told the judge the latest joke he’d heard. The judge laughed aloud. Harry walked back toward his client and winked, signaling slyly. The judge granted the extension to pay the fine or whatever it was that Harry was requesting. There was nothing unusual in this. The judge would have done it without the whispers. But Harry’s client and many in the audience were convinced that Harry had the "fix."

The more I watched George Clooney be "Michael Clayton," though, the more I thought of how many times I’ve felt like the "fixer." The tag is implied in social conversation, when acquaintances ask those annoying questions about how it feels to get a guilty person off.

It is fatiguing to know you’re admired by some for your skills at a dirty trade.

2007

2008-02-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

These are my Netflix reviews for films already available on DVD and their Oscar results:

La Vie En Rose - best actress
I first admired Marion Cotillard in a startling French film called "Love Me If You Dare." She was also paired with Russell Crowe in "A Very Good Year," a ho-hum romance. But this one is an Oscar worthy tour de force. She becomes Piaf every bit as much as Jamie Foxx became "Ray" and Charlize Theron became "Monster." Piaf's voice, songs, and life intertwined like Judy Garland's, and Cotillard reaches into her character's soul. Formidable.

A Mighty Heart - nominated best actress
The documentary "The Journalist And The Jihadi", is much better, if the issue is finding the truth and global "macro" meaning of this incident. But the film has a different goal: making you feel what Marianne Pearl went through, the "micro" story. As cinematic drama, it succeeds at bringing you deeply inside this strong woman's heart. Jolie is grippingly credible, her cool and rational exterior shielding emotions barely checked beneath the surface until they finally explode, then followed by the need to find strength to go on. The direction and acting by the supporting cast is restrained rather than sensational, honest rather than sentimental, respectful of human emotions and tragedy rather than exploitative. A terrific film.

Once - best song
A new idea for a movie musical that works with young audiences raised on Nick Drake and Beck rather than Cole Porter. It is about time postmodern storytelling met up with music, which is so much a part of the lives of young people.

Ratatouille - best animation
Imagine the reaction to the pitch: "The star is a rat? In a kitchen? A French kitchen?" A delight all the way through. Original, surprising, and clever. This is the rare kind of film that you can really enjoy with the whole family without embarrassment or tedium.

Interview - nominated for best actress
Sienna Miller's role is perfectly suited to her: a spoiled bitchy t.v. & film star who needs to prove to a condescending, self-deceiving reporter that she is smarter than he is. Steve Buscemi is the reporter & directs this basically one set - two character play. The twist ending is a bit too smart, but Miller acts up a storm playing a part that seems made for her.

Overlooked by the Oscars:

Paris J’taime
Je t'adore this anthology. Some of these 5 minute films are like near perfect poems. Some are sketches leaving you wishing to see them in fuller form, others are fully realized stories. More filmmakers should be forced to such discipline.

Breach
Like "The Good Shepard," what is troubling about these spy profiles is that the central character is basically a boring personality, so buttoned up that he reveals little about his motivations and when we discover them, all we can do is shrug. Chris Cooper is fine, as always, with his menacing normality. The script cheats Ryan Phillipe by stinting on his character's relationship with his wife. Pity, their dilemma is glossed over, with the focus on catching the spy, a result we already know. And what about the spy's wife?

Superbad
HS comedies evolve from the same roots - not a shock,filmmakers are postgrad nerds. The urge to be cool, sexy, stoned never ends. "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" was the template. Rogan, Goldberg & buds are the latest to mine the vein with sharp dialogue, knowing sense of teen angst. Two minor players here, Kevin Corrigan & David Krumholtz were featured in a related gem, "Slums Of Beverly Hills."

300
If this is the future of film, I want none of it. What "2001, A Space Odyssey" suggested and "Sin City" foreshadowed, "300" nearly accomplishes: the computer rules the world. Graphic novels & video games provide the sets; superheroes are the character models, and the plot is as old and simple as mythology. Actors? Irrelevant puppets. Theme? Trite, nasty rehash of old ideas: freedom demands ruthlessness; war is glory.

"Lust, Caution" (2007)

2008-02-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

Directed by Ang Lee, starring Tony Leung (Mr. Yee), Tang Wei (Mak Tai Tai / Wong Chia Chi) Joan Chen (Yee Tai Tai), Wang Leehom (Kuang Yu Min). Screenplay by Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus from a short story by Eileen Chang.

My first impression of this movie was to compare it to two previous films, one a famous classic in suspense ("Notorious" (1946), the other an overlooked near masterpiece of erotic cinema ("The Lover" (1992)).

The title, "Lust, Caution," itself, suggests the theme, a synthesis of two genres that expose characters to powerful emotions and forces.

The story follows a young woman who is persuaded to become a spy by a young man who is too timid, innocent and self-absorbed with patriotic heroism to sense that she wants to love him. She accepts the task of becoming the mistress of a Chinese military man who is collaborating with the occupying Japanese so that her friends in the "resistance" can gain intelligence and ultimately assassinate him.

Hitchcock’s classic, "Notorious," hung on a similar framework, but differed in important character and plot points as well as style. Ingrid Bergman’s "Alicia," though far from sexually innocent, is thrust into the role as mistress (then wife) of the target, "Sebastian" (Claude Rains), a Nazi, at the behest of her often painfully diffident lover, the federal agent, "Devlin " (Cary Grant).

While "Notorious" focused on Alicia’s feelings for Devlin and his ambivalence toward her, it mostly treats her dealings with "Sebastian" with superficial detachment. We assume that Alicia has consummated her marriage, but there is no show of affection between them other than the formalities, as was befitting the era of film censorship. Hitchcock characteristically seems more moved by Sebastian’s ties to his domineering mother.

"Wong Chia Chi," the heroine of "Lust, Caution," is initially innocent, virginal, and naive. But she is also shown to be an imaginative actress who inhabits her role with passion and deeply felt emotions. She fully commits herself to both needs of her task and this yields her eventual tragedy.

Lee is far more interested in her dealings with the dangerous "Mr. Yee" than her unrequited love for her young man. Tony Leung is best known for Wong Kar Wei’s excellent neo-noir "2046" and "In The Mood For Love." He is well cast here due to his persona as a Bogart-like world wary (I do mean wary, though he is also weary) man who treads the tightrope of intrigue. His is a powerful masculine presence opposite the young actress, Tang Wei, whose delicate face and slender body conceal turbulent passions ready to explode.

Through graphic sexual encounters that earned the film a NC-17, the pair move from his cruelly sadistic dominance to eventual tender love and interdependence, leading to the tragic conclusion when she is faced with the decisive moment - whether to warn him of the impending assassination.

Lee’s achievement is to meticulously document the risky journey each tread, from "caution" to "lust."

"The Lover,"Jean Jacques Annaud’s film of Marguerite Duras’ story / memoir of her sexual awakening as a teenage girl in Saigon in the 1920's, is also explicit in its depiction of a related theme.

The Girl (otherwise unnamed in the story, played by Jane March), begins a torrid affair with The Man (also unnamed, played by Tony Leung - not the same actor as in "Lust, Caution"), learning lessons far more useful in her life as a woman than those of her convent school.

Her family are impoverished French colonials and her lover’s family is wealthy Chinese, raising the issue of social tensions involving the taboos of each culture in their secret affair, especially as it evolves into something like love.

The arc of the explicit sex scenes in "The Lover" are almost the reverse of those in "Lust, Caution," here beginning tentatively and ending in a final, brutal, near rape. Yet, in both films, the sex scenes are the rare ones which prove the overused cliché that they are essential to the telling of the tale.

Like a modern musical in which the setpiece numbers advance the plot rather than interrupt it, these encounters provide understanding of the evolution of the relationships involved. The characters change because of what happens in the darkened rooms.

It is not original to note that Ang Lee's body of work, so seemingly diverse in styles and subject ("Sense And Sensibility;" "The Hulk;" "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; "Brokeback Mountain") includes a common theme which this film shares: central characters who discover their true nature.

Yet, though all three films are excellent, I suspect that "Notorious" will remain the only one called "classic." The other two, because of their ratiings, had limited releases, and faced critics with the dilemma of admiring "pornography." Both are the dreaded "period pieces," demand patience with slow pacing, set in foreign locales. "Lust, Caution" is even subtitled, a fatal flaw.

But their DVD afterlives may provide new audiences who, in the privacy and leisure of bedrooms with remotes in hand, can discover these fine films.

Knocked Up By The Proper Stranger

2008-02-15T21:45:00.000-08:00

Last year’s megahit, "Knocked Up," shocked & awed critics & audiences with a combination of raunch dressing on top of an insubstantial salad.

Judd Apatow, the writer / director, had cut his teeth writing for "The Ben Stiller Show" and "Larry Sanders," found his voice with "Freaks And Geeks" and hit big with "The 40 Year Old Virgin." He is now a "brand." Echoing from the Hollywood Hills, you can hear producers shouting at writers from within their sealed window offices: "Make it more ‘Apatow’."

While Apatow's film was about a pregnancy, adult responsibility, and love - ingredients in Hollywood’s cook book since its beginning - part of the shock was that such an old dish could still be so yummy. The subject has been treated mostly as melodrama as far back as the silent era. In the 30's it was meat for the women’s weepies, Stanwyck, et. al. Mixing the drama with laughs was rare.

The one night stand -> pregnancy was the premise for another film, one I saw recently: "Love With The Proper Stranger," released in 1963. Comparing it with "Knocked Up," separated by 44 years, reveals something about our times that should also shock and awe.

In "Knocked Up," rotund stoner man child Ben Stone (Seth Rogan) gets lucky with hottie Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and she shows up weeks later with the news. Her motives are a bit fuzzy: abortion is barely considered even when she is reminded of the genetic risk when meeting Ben while she is sober. The rest of the movie consists of mutual embarrassment situations until Ben realizes that growing up is survivable after which she can accept him as a mate and father of her child.

"Love With The Proper Stranger" was a big budget studio film, a star vehicle for Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen, complete with the mandatory title song written by Johnny Mercer and sung by Jack Jones. The director was Richard Mulligan, following his success the prior year with "To Kill A Mockingbird". It was written by Arnold Schulman, who began as a writer of teleplays in the 1950's and had previously written "A Hole In The Head" for Sinatra.

Way back then as today (and if not, soon), technology was altering the moving picture business. Millions who ten years before had gone out to movie houses now stayed home to watch T.V. where they could see free dramas (live full length original ones written by the likes of Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky), comedy (live skits written by Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart), sitcoms, variety, talk, celebrities.
Hollywood had to scramble to show stories T.V. couldn’t touch.

One strategy was the epic spectacular, in wide screen, color, with casts of thousands. This novelty had worn off by 1960, when "Cleopatra" nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. A second route was the cheap exploitation drive-in teen slasher film. Small budgets but small, though sure profits. European films pointed to two more channels: realism and explicit sex.

The typical studio responses were the timid sex comedies in the Doris Day style, tepid variants of the stale screwball genre of the Thirties & Forties. But a few filmmakers of the time, working within the studio system, managed to mix the old reliable Hollywood romance with some serious issues treated realistically but with wit and a deft touch of style. Billy Wilder was a genius at this. His European sensibility, hovering between Lubitsch and Sunset Boulevard, led him to edgy comedies: "Some Like It Hot" with its transgender confusion and "the Apartment," about a corporate yes man who falls for his boss's suicidal mistress.

"Love With The Proper Stranger" is set and filmed on location in New York in the chill fall, a black and white unglamourous city of working class people who live in small apartments. It begins in a musician’s union hall where Rocky Papassano (Mc Queen) is conning himself into a job and avoiding one of his many girls. Angie Rossini (Wood) shows up and he barely remembers her from "The Mountains" where they had their one night together that summer. She needs his help to find a doctor. Rocky flops sometimes with a stripper (Edie Adams), who throws him out when he asks for her help with his problem.

Rocky isn’t much different from Ben Stone almost a half century later. Both begin as blissfully avoiding the responsibilities of manhood until faced with the crisis. Angie and Alison, though, seem to be distant sisters, living in different Ages.

Alison is a far more independent woman. Though she lives in her sister's pool house and views her marriage as a scary model, Alison has a career. Angie works the sales floor at Macy’s and lives with her mother and brothers in a tiny apartment with no privacy, trapped by the constraints of their demands that she marry, continue the old country traditions. While her fling was also a reckless whim, soon regretted, the consequences she faces are far more dire than Alison’s.

She and Rocky scrape together money for a back alley abortion, to be done by a shady couple on the floor of a vacant apartment in a condemned building. When Rocky protests and Angie breaks down, the romance begins with a saving embrace.

The script then reverses tone with a comic scene when Rocky takes Angie to sleep in his stripper friend’s bed. When Rocky returns with Angie’s brother (Herschel Bernardi) and a black eye, the men have solved the problem: Rocky is now willing to marry the girl to make it right.

Now is the time for Angie to grow up. She is not satisfied to do the traditional thing. She declares her independence, moves into her own apartment, and the romance can resume and end happily when Rocky realizes that, after all, he does love her (to the surprise of no one).

A final embrace in a crowd of curious real New Yorkers in the middle of 34th Street fittingly climaxes a film that makes skillful use of New York exteriors to create the mood approaching realism.

Of course, serious issues are completely irrelevant to the success of "Knocked Up." It thrives on clever dialogue funning the childishness of the boys — Ben and his crew of geeky stoner buds and Alison’s brother-in-law, Pete (Paul Rudd), who is suspected of an affair but turns out to be in a fantasy league with his pals.

The women in this our world of today are on serious career tracks while the boys are clinging desperately to their adolescence. It seems that forty years of sexual evolution have permitted the tentative Angies to morph into the secure Alisons of our time, but the Rocky’s of olden days haven’t kept step. In fact, they’ve regressed into Bens and Petes, soft and cuddly but barely adequate mate material.

Let’s face it, the battle of the sexes is over. And we lost.

"No Country For Old Men"

2007-11-24T16:29:00.000-08:00

Joel & Ethan Coen’s new entry in their library of films re-defining Americana is as bleak as the southwest Texas land it is set in. The arid vistas are reminiscent of the icy land of "Fargo." The deadened eyes and sardonic dialogue of its denizens are more despairing even than the protagonists in "Miller’s Crossing" or "Blood Simple."

"No Country For Old Men" digs deep into this parched soil and tries for deeper meaning, a result which is both good and bad for the audience. The Coens have always shown a fascination with Hollywood genres as vehicles for reworking American myth making.

They’ve explored, needled and skewered classic filmmakers like Capra ("The Hudsucker Proxy"), Sturges ("Intolerable Cruelty" and "O’ Brother, Where Art Thou") Huston / Hawks ("Miller’s Crossing" and "The Big Lebowski") and Wilder ("The Man Who Wasn’t There").

Now it seems they felt the need to take on the Western. "No Country" explodes any of the myths of the West left to us after such anti-Western Westerns as "The Unforgiven," in episodes so violent that even when only the aftermath is shown, we cringe.

In the classic Western, a hero faced down the hired gunslinger, no matter how cruel, evil, or tyrannical he seemed to be. "Shane" took down "Jack Wilson" (Jack Palance), Will Kane (Gary Cooper) killed Frank Miller (Ian McDonald) at "High Noon."

The Coens take for granted that the implacable hitman, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the modern gunslinger, wins every showdown. The Coens don’t even bother to show us the final bloodbath when we expect that the apparent "hero," Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), will face down the evil.

In fact, as in the first scene of destruction, we are shown only the aftermath, and its depiction is so quick and spare that we can’t piece it together, as if we are teased — that our fascination with violence will not be sated this time. The truth is greater than those details and the truth lies not in who killed who and why.

The traditional Western hero of this yarn is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), whose weathered face and voice express his sadness of inevitable loss of all that he thought noble about the American West. He knows that all of his wisdom and calm courage means nothing in an age when chance, greed, and cruel savagery take every trick.

There is no place for heroes in this world. Winners are those who survive, not necessarily by being the cleverest, or fastest on the draw, but by predatory instinct, callousness, and sheer luck.

The post modern paradigm in control here is the coin toss. Like the noir heroes of an earlier film epoch, the hitman has a "code" that guides his actions. Just as Sam Spade’s code, which forced the denial of sentimentality to do his job, Anton Chigurh must pursue his victims by his own inexorable compass reading, deviating only to amuse himself occasionally by permitting chance to decide the fate of a tangential annoyance. Like a predatory cat, he can release a morsel or remorselessly squash it.

Against such power, the old hero knows he is "overmatched" as Sheriff Bell admits.

The Coens cannot escape their awareness of film history in setting scenes and action, quoting diverse sources as "Touch Of Evil," "North By Northwest" and even "The Terminator."

There is a conscious borrow from "High Noon" when Sheriff Bell bemoans his disillusionment with Ellis (Barry Corbin), a wheelchair bound former deputy, as Will Kane did with Martin (Lon Chaney, Jr.), the former sheriff.

It is the gift of the Coens (somewhat akin to Tarentino) to entertain us with these images and stories despite our revulsion, forcing us to laugh at the dark comedy about psychopaths and greedy, grimy, foolish people, maybe sensing that our lives could be touched at any time in similar insane ways if the coin flips the wrong way.

100 Great American Movies - Revised

2007-06-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

The AFI has produced another in the never ending chain of BEST 100 lists, this one no more definitive of BEST than any other. In 1998, the AFI produced its first such list, labeled “Best American Films of the 20th Century”. It did what was intended: generated conversation about movies and provided an excuse for a T.V. special. The new one will do no less and no more.

Ten years ago, I spent some time forming my opinions about inclusions and exclusions, rankings and implications. Now I recall those thoughts and add some new ones about the updated list.

My first thought is that then, as now, I have to admit that I agree with most inclusions, though some are not as “great” as others and I still quarrel with many rankings based on my own taste.

The latest list redressed some of my grievances, but not others. For example, I noted then that the list was too impressed with “importance,” as defined by Oscar success and grosses, political correctness, and apparent “newness” of style or technical breakthroughs, which I thought to be of historical rather than long-lasting significance.

On those grounds, the current list eliminated all of the following films (with their 1998 rankings):

39 Dr. Zhivago;
44 Birth Of A Nation [replaced in the new list by Griffith’s less inflammatory 49 Intolerance];
52 From Here To Eternity;
53 Amadeus;
54 All Quiet On The Western Front;
57 The Third Man [the one egregious exclusion];
58 Fantasia [replaced by Toy Story];
59 Rebel Without A Cause;
63 Stagecoach;
64 Close Encounters Of The Third Kind;
67 The Manchurian Candidate;
68 An American In Paris;
73 Wuthering Heights;
75 Dances With Wolves;
82 Giant [along with Rebel, eliminates James Dean from the list];
84 Fargo [eliminates any from the Coens];
86 Mutiny On The Bounty;
87 Frankenstein;
89 Patton;
90 The Jazz Singer;
91 My Fair Lady;
92 A Place In The Sun [the second George Stevens film removed];
99 Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.

Some such movies were severely downgraded (1998/current):
(72/100) Ben-Hur;
(70/93) The French Connection;
(50/73): Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid;
(17/65) The African Queen;
(40/55) North By Northwest;
(13/36) Bridge Over The River Kwai;
(46/70) A Clockwork Orange.

Yet, overrated movies remain:
Gone With The Wind dropped only slightly, from 4 to 6.
Inexplicably, The Sound Of Music rose from 55 to 40 [while Bonnie And Clyde dropped from 27 to 42].

Films that are new to the list:
17 The Graduate;
18 The General [redressing the previous omission of Buster Keaton];
50 Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring [the most recently released movie on the list, 2001];
59 Nashville;
61 Sullivan’s Travels [reflecting the overdue recognition of Preston Sturges];
63 Cabaret [adding Bob Fosse’s most popular, if not best film work (All That Jazz)];
67 Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? [a second by Mike Nichols, who previously was shut out];
71 Saving Private Ryan [Spielberg trades Close Encounters];
72 The Shawshank Redemption;
75 In The Heat Of The Night;
77 All The President’s Men;
81 Spartacus [Kirk Douglas’s only entry];
82 Sunrise [Murnau’s 1927 silent masterpiece];
83 Titanic;
85 A Night At The Opera [adding a second Marx Brothers classic to the list, with Duck Soup (85/60);
87 12 Angry Men;
89 The Sixth Sense;
90 Swing Time [adding an Astaire Rogers musical for the first time and a Stevens movie replacing two that are dropped];
91 Sophie’s Choice;
95 The Last Picture Show;
96 Do The Right Thing;
97 Blade Runner;
99 Toy Story.

Other films soared in esteem in the past 10 years.
Raging Bull rose from 24 to 4;
Vertigo from 61 to 9;
City Lights from 76 to 11;
The Searchers from 96 to 12.

In 1998, I felt that some films were too recent to be fairly evaluated because my standard for “great” requires aging, multiple viewing during your life. Some on the list seemed dated or tedious on later viewing, not as “important” or as much a breakthrough as they appeared when released, or just not as pleasurable when seen again. Because one of my personal standards for “greatness” is whether I want to see it again, and if so, how often, many would not be popped into my VCR / DVD.

Those I questioned then but accept now include
Pulp Fiction (1994), then ranked 95, now 94, which I now consider to be too low;
Fargo was then 84, now out of the top 100;
Goodfellas was 94, now 92, also underrated.
The Unforgiven was 98, now 68 - reflecting Clint Eastwood’s revisionist view of the Western preferred over John Ford’s [(63) Stagecoach drops out of the 100].

I still think these are overrated:
Platoon (83/86);
Doctor Zhivago (39/off);
Giant (82/off);
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (20/33);
Tootsie (62/69),
Dances With Wolves (75/off).

Maybe The Lord Of The Rings and Titanic will stand the test of time but certainly, if they deserve to make the list, how can Shakespeare In Love (1998) be neglected?

Ten years ago, some critics complained that the list was weighted toward recent films. I noted then that 21 of the top 40 were released before 1960. The new list increases it to 23.

But the “Golden Year” of 1939 has been tarnished.
GWTW and Wizard Of Oz (6/10) downrated; Stagecoach and Wuthering Heights omitted along with classics Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Gunga Din, which didn’t make the list in ‘98. Only Mr. Smith Goes To Washington improved position (29/26).

Another thing I noticed 10 years ago was the omission of films by some great stars — Laurel & Hardy, Shirley Temple, W.C. Fields, Garbo, Carole Lombard, Von Stroheim, King Vidor, Wellman, Lubitch. But I must admit that great moments, scenes or styles are what we remember and prize from those artists, rather than “great films”. It is difficult to name a “great film” associated with Laurel and Hardy, for instance, though they were certainly “great” comics. Adding Keaton’s The General, and Astaire/Rogers Swing Time are minor corrections.

A comparison of the genres represented on the old and new lists, are instructive [films which overlap genres are counted again]:

Musicals (10/8): removed: Amadeus, Fantasia, American In Paris, The Jazz Singer, My Fair Lady. Added: Nashville, Cabaret, Swing Time. Still didn’t make it: Gigi, The Band Wagon, Carousel, Top Hat/Shall We Dance, All That Jazz.

Westerns (8/6): Out - Stagecoach, Dances With Wolves. Left out again: Red River; My Darling Clementine; The Ox-Bow Incident, The Magnificent Seven.

War films (20/18). [Defined by me as including those in which a war is a major element in the drama, even if not labeled a war movie — thus I include a film like Casablanca.]

These films are appropriately numerous considering that wars or the threat of them were the most dramatic events of the 20th century. The list includes those which will provide a fitting chronicle — albeit somewhat skewed, sharply dramatized and often propagandized history — for the viewers of the next century of our nation’s wars.

Out = Birth Of A Nation, From Here To Eternity, All Quiet On The Western Front, Patton. Added = Saving Private Ryan, Spartacus. Ignored by both lists: Paths of Glory; A Walk in the Sun; 12 O’Clock High; Battleground; The Story of GI Joe; Porkchop Hill; The Big Parade; Red Badge of Courage and Fail-Safe.

Comedies (17/19) [including its subcategory — romantic comedies.] Many of my favorites left out are: The Bank Dick (Fields); Born Yesterday ; Animal House; The Pink Panther/Shot in the Dark; His Girl Friday; The Awful Truth; 1,2,3; Mr. Roberts, Young Frankenstein / The 12 Chairs / The Producers / Blazing Saddles (as a Mel Brooks entry); The Court Jester.

Sci-fi/ Occult (5/5). Frankenstein (87), Close Encounters (64) were offed, The Sixth Sense (89) and Blade Runner (96)were added A genre that doesn’t lend itself to great films. Other classics left out: The Thing (Hawks version); The Day The Earth Stood Still; Invasion of the Body Snatchers [Siegel version].

Epics (12/10) Somewhat facetiously, this is a genre including any film with “a cast of thousands.” Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Intolerance, The Lord Of The Rings replaced Dr. Z, Birth Of A Nation, From Here To Eternity, All Quiet, Mutiny, Patton.

Crime: mysteries / thriller / spy / gangster (20/22). Perhaps it is the genre most reflective of American society with our never waning attraction to violence.

This is the most broadly represented genre in terms of spanning eras and rankings, appropriately so as it is the most durable and popular of genres among ‘serious’ directors; the specialties of the best of film makers such as Wilder, Huston, Hitchcock, Coppola, Scorsese.

The Third Man, The Manchurian Candidate, Fargo, A Place In The Sun join previous neglected classics out of the top 100: Scarface [Hawks version], Public Enemy, From Russia With Love and Bullitt. All The President’s Men, Do The Right Thing, Sixth Sense, Heat Of The Night, Shawshank, 12 Angry Men are added.

Horror / Monster (non-sci-fi): (3/2). Frankenstein gone.

So few are “great,” perhaps because the formula is so easily hackneyed and the earlier classics so satisfied the standard. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is unaccountably omitted, considering its influence, inspiration and captive themes for popular culture.

Also omitted are any of Lon Chaney’s silent classics, including the very influential Phantom Of The Opera. Also neglected are The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining.

Romances (love stories, not incidental to other genre plots) (5/5). Added - The Graduate, Titanic.

This genre is scarce in "greatness", though as an element, love stories are universal: (boy meets girl, etc being the oldest and most durable of all film formulas, but clearly one least susceptible to originality and whatever other criteria define “greatness”).

Great screen lovers like Gable, Garbo, Monroe, John Gilbert, Valentino, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn made few “great” films, many pleasant romances.

Notably left off both lists are Roman Holiday, When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail / Sleepless In Seattle.

Sports (2/2). One genre almost shut out, which reflects the truth that this genre rarely produces greatness. I am willing to wait for time to prove Field of Dreams, or Bull Durham worthy. Pride of the Yankees, though a sentimental, warm memory is not a “great” film in a sense. Only Rocky and Raging Bull on boxing make the list.

Adventure/ Fantasy (1/2) Another left out is Adventures of Robin Hood in the genre which includes Raiders of the Lost Ark but omits Gunga Din.

Some directors have fared better than others. Wilder and Hitchcock still have 4 each, but Ford now has 2. George Stevens had 3, lost 2, gained 1. Chaplin, Huston, FF Coppola, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, and Capra also 3. Wyler now has just one as does Cukor. Mike Nichols joins Kazan and Victor Fleming with 2. Spike Lee, Brian De Palma, Welles, Polanski, Milos Forman, Zinnemann, Griffith, Eastwood, and Howard Hawks are represented by only 1 film each.

It is also interesting which of the great stars, so important in Hollywood history, are represented in multiple films and which in fewer, or none at all:

It is probably not surprising that the most popular and durable Hollywood film star, James Stewart, leads with 5. The only surprise of stars with four on the list would be Holden, who is lightly regarded by critics, but whose persona and talent for comedy, irony, and action made him a favorite of Wilder and other good film makers. Also with 4: Bogart; De Niro; Brando, and now, Hoffman and Ford.

There are fewer actresses with multiple entries: (4) Katherine Hepburn; (3) Diane Keaton; Fay Dunaway.

The character actors /featured player with the most appearances is Robert Duvall with 6 movies in the top 100.

The other surprise is how many great stars are represented with only one film on the list, neglecting other “classics” they made:
H. Fonda: (no Mr. Roberts; Ox-Bow; Clementine; Lady Eve);
Cagney: (no Public Enemy; White Heat);
Gary Cooper: (left out: Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; Meet John Doe; Sergeant York; The Westerner);
Audrey Hepburn: (left out: Roman Holiday, Donen’s Two For the Road, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade);
Fredric March: (out: Nothing Sacred, Inherit the Wind; Death of a Salesman);
Charles Laughton: (Advise and Consent).
Paul Newman
Olivier: (no Hamlet; Rebecca; Marathon Man);
Spencer Tracy (what about: Captains Courageous; Woman of the Year; Adam’s Rib; Test Pilot or Boom Town;
Sidney Poitier: Lillies of the Field; Blackboard Jungle, The Defiant Ones.
Barbara Stanwyck
Edward G. Robinson
Bette Davis
Kirk Douglas

Many were shut out:
Joan Crawford
Irene Dunne (Show Boat, The Awful Truth;)
Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver; Goodbye, Mr. Chips);
Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl; The Way We Were)
Robert Mitchum (Night of the Hunter; Out of the Past; Story of GI Joe.)
Richard Widmark
Glen Ford (Gilda)
Glen Close
Walter Brennan (five Oscars and a million films)
William Hurt
William Powell
Jane Fonda
Carole Lombard.

Finally, it is obvious that the list is still top heavy in sentimentality although the intervening decade has increased our appreciation of darker visions.

It should not be surprising that many of the favorite well-executed American classics (that have remained popular to succeeding generations) are “beloved” because they touch our emotions about the way we wish love or families or friendship to be.

It is noteworthy that films and film makers expressing more “realistic,” even cynical views about people, America and life are as well represented.

The Good German (2006)

2007-06-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

Directed by Steven Soderbergh; written by Paul Attanasio, based on the novel by Joseph Kanon; director of photography, Mr. Soderbergh (under the name Peter Andrews); editor, Mr. Soderbergh (under the name Mary Ann Bernard); music by Thomas Newman; production designer, Philip Messina; produced by Ben Cosgrove and Gregory Jacobs; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 105 minutes.
WITH: George Clooney (Jake Geismer), Cate Blanchett (Lena Brandt), Tobey Maguire (Tully), Beau Bridges (Colonel Muller), Tony Curran (Danny), Leland Orser (Bernie), Jack Thompson (Congressman Breimer), Robin Weigert (Hannelore) and Ravil Isyanov (General Sikorsky).

Like other contemporary film people, Soderburgh has alternating careers. His makes entertainments that provide the freedom for his independent experiments. Clooney has become the Mastroianni to his Fellini, abetting many of these projects. So, for every opening of an “Ocean’s #,” there is a “Syriana,” “Full Frontal” or “Bubble”. Soderburgh has tacked this zig-zag course for a long time. “Sex, Lies & Videotape” (1989), “Out Of Sight” (1998), “Erin Brockovich” (2000), “Solaris” (2002), etc.

Also like others, Soderburgh’s “experiments” can devolve into self-indulgent vanity projects, wish fulfillment that, as one critic observed, cares little about the audience. The dictum that an artist’s only duty is to please himself is usually a refuge of artists embittered by audience derision. Soderburgh is among the fortunate elite who can truly brag, “Oh I could be popular if I wanted to” and also can claim to produce “Art for its own sake”.

“The Good German” is a cute experiment that tries to bridge the gap to popular acceptance. The concept is to make a film the way the Studio made it back in the day — like “Casablanca”, but with a contemporary freedom to tell it like it REALLY was. Tell the unsentimental truth about love and war and the American Way, using the Studio crafts that created the myths back then — an anti-“Casablanca”. He also tries to recapture the mood of Carol Reed’s “The Third Man”, the “Neo-Realism” of Rossellini’s “Open City” and “Germany Year Zero” and some of the cynicism of Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair.” (Apparently, Soderburgh screened the film for critics paired with John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon.”)

Many loved the idea and were licking our chops at the thought of seeing Clooney’s spin on Bogie; Blanchett’s on Bergman, Soderburgh’s on Curtiz and all those others. He fails miserably. And it is too bad.

It fails for a lot of reasons. First in my view, Attanasio’s script lacks polish, coherence, wit and surprise. Second, the acting is a disappointment: Clooney seems unsure of himself in every scene. Soderburgh’s instruction was to act like a contract player of the ‘40's, dropping the internalized modern acting. Clooney, who seems the most traditional of today’s screen personalities, apparently interpreted the direction as elimination of all Cloonyisms. Thus, we get no self-deprecating winks or stammered anger, no personality at all. The actor was more charming as Fred Friendly.

Blanchett is trapped in a “Deitrich” accent and faux fatale look that provokes comparison with her caricature of Hepburn in “The Aviator” crossed with Natasha of “Rocky And Bullwinkle”. The high contrast black and white close-ups are the antithesis of 40's glamour photography and the unflattering hard look, accentuated by the deep voiced German accent and her burnt out flat delivery fails to hint at the woman she was before the war that is now lost in her fight to survive.

And there is absolutely no chemistry between the stars. Clooney earned his star stripes in a car trunk and hotel room with J-Lo in "Out Of Sight." Here, we get a blackened screen kiss and quick cut back to plot.

Neither character, the "world weary reporter" returning to recapture his love, or the bitter survivor, is written, directed or acted with enough passion to make us care very much.

Sentimentality is overwrought emotion. Anti-sentimentality is not the absence of any feeling.

In “Casablanca,” the chemistry was carefully cultivated during the flashback sequence showing pre-war innocent intimacy between the lovers that has been lost. Soderburgh could not bring himself to insert such a now-hackneyed device and he finds no substitute. When he does use a brief flashback, it is to show Lena being raped and shooting a Russian officer to explain her frigidity and fear of the Russian Zone, while he conceals her deeper secret until the very end.

Jake’s obsession with Lena should be like Rick’s with Ilsa, repressing his cynicism for one last stab at redemptive love or at least self-sacrificing nobility. The script wants Lena to seem like a hardened femme fatale with a soft heart or is it vice versa? But neither the plot nor the style nor the pace nor the acting successfully conveys any of this feeling to the audience.

Soderburgh hopes that his stylish photography and cutting will carry the day. He wants to be a heroic auteur like Huston, Reed, Curtiz, Welles, overcoming trite material and studio strictures to create distinctive and personal art. He is correct that those classic directors had style, but he ignores the fact that for the most part, their work was intended to and did enhance the mood, to tell the story and make the audience feel.

Every movie of this kind tells both a micro and macro story — in the breathless Studio trailer parlance: “a love story set against a backdrop of intrigue and danger.” The macro story is the postwar beginnings of the Cold War, the rush to capture German scientists amid the wreckage of Berlin ... “where everything and everyone has a price...”

Lena’s husband is a mathematician who aided the leader of Camp Dora, the concentration camp / project to build the V-2 rockets. “Emile Brandt” is a composite of real figures including Arthur Rudolph, and his boss, “Franz Bettmann,” is based on Wernher Von Braun. Both Rudolph and Von Braun were captured by the US Army and hustled to America in Operation Overcast / Paperclip, evading war crimes trials for abuse of slave laborers, at least 20,000 of whom were killed (more than were victimized when the rockets exploded in England).

The script rather transparently mimics wartime and immediate postwar liberal sentiment. Jake is a reporter for “The New Republic” and he wants to uncover the nasty truth that America is willing to use Nazis and Nazi methods to survive the rocket age. His adversaries are American soldiers named “Muller” and “Shaeffer,” and a Congressman named “Breimer” while an officer who helps him is a Jew trying to gain evidence to punish war crimes. But there will be no happy ending in this re-write of history. The truth will be suppressed on the grounds of national survival.

The last scene is obviously intended to mimic and undercut “Casablanca’s” famous airport finale. Everyone who has tried to act nobly has failed. Emile's secret dies with him. Lena's guilt remains. Jake has traded suppression of the truth for Lena’s safe passage out of Berlin. Now he wants to know why she is so desperate to leave Berlin. She confesses that she is a war criminal; she turned in twelve of her fellow Jews to the Gestapo. This is meant to be a shock, a crescendo that reveals her corruption and the end of possibilities for redemption.

Like Rick, Jake will give up the love of his life. But not in order to continue any noble fight alone; not because she is worthy. Maybe because she is no good and Jake feels — well, we don’t know exactly what — disappointment, disgust, resignation, disillusionment, guilt?

The scene falls flat. You can almost hear the audience murmuring: “so what?” With what we now know about what everyone did to survive the Holocaust and The War and The Post War, Lena’s revelation seems almost trivial.

A better, more dramatic re-write would have echoed “The Maltese Falcon’s” climactic scene, allowing Jake to disclose his knowledge of the truth about her, cruelly forcing her to confess.

Alternate endings could then follow. (1) He could have done the sentimental thing: said something like, “Go ahead, get out of my sight. I can’t stand to look at you.”

Or (2) he could have said something really shocking and unsentimental: (With A Shrug) “Okay babe, it doesn’t matter. I want you anyway. Maybe you'll look better in Technicolor. Besides, who am I to judge? I spent the war getting drunk in London.”

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

2007-05-27T14:09:00.002-07:00

Directed by Marc Forster from a screenplay by Zach Helm.
Starring: Will Ferrell (Harold Crick); Emma Thompson (Karen Eiffel); Maggie Gyllenhaal (Ana Pascal); Dustin Hoffman (Prof.), Queen Latifah (Penny).

This is a comfortable movie to watch because, although it raises issues that purport to prod you into examining your life, it is only a “movie,” an unreal fantasy that is separated from real life. Thus, it makes you think, but not so deeply that you want to kill yourself.

It is the kind of movie made of compromise, using a “new” style to tell an old story (boy meets girl) and sell an older moral (carpe diem). It is derivative as hell but charmingly acted so as to be palatable. The actors act as if accepting the premise of the joke and willingly participate in the subdued ironic mood, each with a slight knowing smile that lets you off the hook in case you were tempted to take them seriously.

The premise plays on the commonly held neurotic fear that we might be characters in some cosmic novel. Suppose a guy really was such a character, a really dull guy, now forced to examine his life because he discovers that the novelist intends to “kill” him. It permits some amusing musing on literary convention as metaphors for life. Is our life meant to be comedy or tragedy? Are we controlled by the “omniscient” creator, or can we direct own lives?

Because of the expenditure of energy on the cool premise, the working out of “plot” to realize it is a bit thin on newness. The character’s arc — from buttoned up IRS auditor to free spirited guitar player — impelled by his love of a Bohemian girl baker who teaches him to break the rules and eat cookies, is the oldest of romance movie forms.

This is certainly a “movie movie” which, while claiming a literary heritage, is really indebted more to movies. Charlie Kaufman’s films, “Adaptation”, “Eternal Sunshine..”, and “Being John Malkovich”, all will come to mind. So, too, Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose Of Cairo.” You can even reach further back to Pirandello’s “Six Characters In Search Of An Author.” And the resolution smells of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Marc Forster was a decent choice as director. His previous experience with “Finding Neverland” showed a nimble visual handling of the creative process. (He was less successful with a not dissimilar variant — the psychodrama fantasy in which the action is played out in the protagonist’s mind — in the muddled “Stay”.) Here, he copies tricks with graphics that Spike Jonze introduced in “Fight Club” for the same purpose — to show how his character’s life is circumscribed by data. Otherwise, he plays it pretty straight, letting his actors breathe something like life into their characters.

Dustin Hoffman continues to show his limitations. His underplaying as a ploy for ironic wit tires and his line readings sound more like readthroughs than commitment. Emma Thompson is first rate as the novelist struggling with her duty to the character she created. Gyllenhaal has the intelligence and presence to make her character’s eccentricities seem interesting.

Ferrell surprised me. At first, he seemed to be simply following the familiar path of the dialed down comic who plays serious by flattening his affect. Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler are the latest clowns to try this. They deepen their voices, hide their smiles, narrow their shoulders — they are medicated crazies, made sadly dull.

But Ferrell actually draws some felt emotions as his character’s dilemma becomes apparent. His newfound self-awareness leads him to self-examination, love, change, and regret. He conveys these changes with some subtlety and credibility, although he never completely convinces us that his character is much more than that — a cipher, an everyman, who exists only in a movie.

Ferrell’s “Harold” and Carrey’s “Joel” (of "Eternal Sunshine") are both freed from their chains by the female lifeforces who love them. Ferrell’s likeability makes you root for him while Carrey’s edgier persona distances him. Which is more “real” is a matter of taste: I tend to think Carrey’s is the far more human.

Charlie Hoffman’s end lines voiced by Carrey are more in line with my understanding about how love works than the standard treacly compromise ending Zach Helm’s script provides. Joel tells Clementine that he knows they’re doomed to fail, but the trip is worth it even if it produces excruciating memories along with the treasured ones.

That's a nice twist on the happy ending.

Ann Of A Thousand Movies

2007-02-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the name Ann or Anne (or Anna, or Annie) keeps coming up as one of the most popular girl’s name in movies. Here are the ones I’ve gathered so far.

There are dozens of film versions of Anna Karenina, and a few of Anna And The King Of Siam. There is Annie Hall and The Diary Of Anne Frank and (Little Orphan) Annie. as well as Anne (Bolyn) Of The Thousand Days.

So why, huh? All these Annes seem to have one trait in common: spunk. Whether she survives or not, she’s got strength as well as a certain presence that the name somehow embodies for writers and audiences.

In fact, Ann is a popular name for regal characters or the actresses who have that name.

Audrey Hepburn was Princess Ann in Roman Holiday. Julia Roberts was Anna in Notting Hill. Mandy Moore was Anna, the president’s daughter in Chasing Liberty. Nicole Kidman was Anna in Birth. Naomi Watts was Ann Darrow in King Kong.

I’m not counting Anne Hathaway who starred as The Princess Bride. Or Anne Bancroft, Anne Baxter, Ann Sheridan, but they all had spunk.

And what about Annie Savoy (Bull Durham). She had almost everything.

Voice Of Her Generation: Sofia Coppola

2007-02-26T19:30:00.000-08:00

In just three films - The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost In Translation (2003), and last year's Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola has carved a niche for herself as the voice of her generation in the same way F.Scott Fitzgerald was of his.

Both generations are "lost," and for many of the same reasons.

Well, let me amend that. Coppola is at least the voice of her generation of girls while Quentin Tarantino is the voice of his generation of boys - which explains why Coppola's females feel so depressed.

Ms. Coppola's girls no longer live in the movie world of boy meets girl. They are confused - alienated from the old conventions but as yet without new rules. They are intelligent young women, but their intelligence makes them sadly aware of their predicament.

To rebel against the rules set for them by society (i.e., by their parents' male-centric generation) and therefore risk destruction; or to tolerate them, assuring a life of stultifying boredom? Other choices seem to be beyond them.

They can't decide what to do with sex, with love, with boys or men. And they have not much ambition to be useful or productive.

What they clearly get is style as an expression of self, and willingly indulge and overindulge ... until something important might come along. Their lives lack drama and they strive to create some. That drive is the center of the universe of pop culture.

If Coppola's social philosophy can be labeled as post-feminist (or as one critic wrote, post post-feminist), her story-telling style is anti-narrative post-modern.

She eschews plot, seems only faintly interested in dialogue as a vehicle to carry ideas. She prefers to slow the pace of her scenes to linger until the viewer is as bored as her characters - seemingly a way to create the sludgy mood of ennui and indecision that she is mostly interested in.

It is that mood that her audience most identifies with - the time of life when time wasting is a full time pre-occupation.

The girls in The Virgin Suicides are trapped in their suburban home in the 1970's with unsatisfactory parents and not much hope.

Coppola is not much interested in the question of why the five girls choose death, but rather wants to create a surrealistic comedic mood that seems to ask why not - why don't all girls, of that age at least, say fuck it and die.

Kirsten Dunst played the sister, Lux, who is the center of the tale, and other sisters are named Marie and Therese. Coppola chose Dunst to portray Marie Antoinette, who incidentally had a mother and daughter named Marie Therese. She chose Marianne Faithfull, an icon of 60's pop indulgence, to portray Marie's mother, who advises her daughter on the perils of fame.

Marie Antoinette's dilemma, as Ms. Coppola sees it, is not much different from Paris Hilton or any celebutante today.

Marie's lap dogs mirror any photo of Paris with her purse pups. The shoe montage, anachronistic teenage girlish conversations, and pop soundtrack choices make her point with a wink.

Today’s girl identifies easily with Coppola's Marie. She expresses herself by creating an image — in fashion and shopping, partying with cool friends. Her palaces were like our college campuses, dance clubs, dorms. She has style and as much independence as her position in society — i.e., her celebrity — allows.

Today’s girl accepts celebrity indulgence and extravagance as leadership qualities. The language of social responsibility is off her radar (or ipod) screen. She finds nothing wrong with spending on Manolos while African children go barefoot; binge eating and drinking despite starvation rampant on the other side of the palace moat. Modish charitable causes are merely effective PR excuses for red carpet exposure and parties till dawn.

Charlotte of Lost In Translation might as well be stranded in Versailles as in Tokyo. Her husband (played by Giovanni Ribisi) is close in type to Louis Auguste (played by Jason Schwartzman), both boys who are not quite satisfactory men, more interested in their toys and pals than in being lover or companion to their girls.

Bored, lonely, depressed, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) meets Bob (Bill Murray), who is in a similar state if not the same stage of life. Charlotte, like Bob, is too smart for the room, looking for something to be passionate about. She is instantly attracted to Bob, who is the opposite of all the young, attractive, aimless and humorless people she knows. He is old, weatherbeaten, aimless - but funny. The fact that Bob is a minor celebrity doesn't hurt her interest in him either.

I think what the audience latched onto was the sense of apartness that these two misfits share. They are aliens in a strange world (as are Marie and the Lisbon sisters) in which rituals and conventions are confusing, communication by articulated speech is laughably ineffective.

Charlotte is too mature for her age group, and Bill wants to still be silly and happy, instead of slowing down in his practical, settling-for-mediocrity middle age. They meet each other half way into their terrifying spins and hold hands for the time it takes for the movie to play, then very reluctantly part.

Coppola is less interested in what they say to each other than the mood they let themselves indulge - a sleepless but dreamy half-conscious state of faint amusement about their lives.

Except for one scene in which the couple try to sleep side by side barely touching each other and talk vaguely about life, the scenes and dialogue are pointedly pointless.

She allows Murray to riff in his usual anarchic way, gently funning all the quaint Japanese thingies, while Johansson chuckles appreciatively at his liberating wit.

In the end, the experience seems to help Charlotte a little bit, though none of her problems are solved.

And that's okay with the audience. They've got nothing but time to kill.

Deconstructing Woody

2007-02-03T13:32:00.000-08:00

Woody Allen's latest efforts, "Match Point" and "Scoop" were disappointing but his work is always worth thinking about. He made his masterpiece, "Annie Hall" in 1977, and in the 1980's seemed to have gotten stuck in a rut of his own obsessions which limited his audiences. But in the 1990's, he made a lot of films that demand a second look.

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Woody addresses the dilemma of a writer whose life is his subject matter. It is Allen’s wry explanation and apology for the subjectivity and self-consciousness of his work.

He explains how his many faults -- his ego, his self-deception, his prejudices -- affect his work and his life. He reveals his awareness of his selfishness, his irrational obsessiveness, manipulativeness, immaturity, his cruelty and disloyalty to people who love him, his inability to love and allow himself to be loved. Pretty funny stuff.

Like much of his work, there is an uncomfortable nastiness about his “lessers” that permeates this film. His acerbic wit spits out biting gags and spiteful caricatures at the expense of his usual foils: psychiatrists, fans, actors, women, children, parents, Jews, Gentiles, God, marriage, religion, trendy popular movements of any kind.

But, surprisingly, in the end there is a sense of backing off, a questioning of his harsh judgments, a confrontation with the reality that his whiny complaints about everyone else in his life are, just possibly, an unjustified reflection of his own fears and neuroses.

The point is masked in some talk about his “art” and “creations” and his “love” of his characters which Allen would skewer as pretentious if spoken by one of the “arty” characters in his other films.

Allen seems to say to us, in his whiny voice: “Yes, I know I am not a nice person, but at least I have talent and a willingness to lay myself, with all my faults, open in my work to you. Judge me by my art, not by my faults.”

The problem, Woody, is that your life is your “art,” so both are fair for judgment. An another thing: because you are self-deceiving, how can we trust the “truth” of your “art?”

Celebrity (1998)

Typical Woody in several respects. It is shot in black and white — by Sven Nykvist, Bergman’s cinematographer. It is about New York chic and, of course, the absurdity of celebrity.

Like other Allen films, the visual style and structure is derivative of another director. In the past he has emulated Fellini and Bergman. Now, he tries Robert Altman’s ensemble technique, splicing interlocking, overlapping stories with a notable cast, while the mood takes some from "La Dolce Vita."

Woody has enticed many stars and “famous” people to appear in small roles and cameos, including Bebe Neuwirth as a hooker looking for a book deal; Charlize Theron as a super model; Leonardo DiCaprio as a coked up, abusive film star (and Gretchen Mol as his moll); Melanie Griffith as a star; Winona Ryder as an aspiring actress. Donald Trump and the Buttafuccos, among others, are seen.

The story tracks Kenneth Branagh as a magazine writer who interviews celebrities and aspires to be one, and Judy Davis as his ex-wife, who becomes a celebrity while aspiring to be “real.” The very British Branagh adopted a New York accent and mouths Woody’s familiar speech pattern of stammering, self-deceiving, selfish, pseudo-sensitive lines with an impressionist’s master timing. He shares Woody’s fear of being naked, and spouts some of his favorite lines, especially about sex: “I’m polymorphously perverse.”

As all Woody’s message films, this one can be a bit heavy handed, though he thankfully eschews drama and keeps some good gags. We are shown the silliness of our obsession with celebrity in all its manifestations.

There is a scene in a pop plastic surgeon’s office. There is a film premiere, scenes at parties, clubs, book previews. There is a “reality” TV show, including episodes about “overweight achievers,” another with a confrontation between a rabbi, a skinhead, Klansmen, mobsters, and Black Muslims, all of whom share donuts and agents. There is a corrupt senator, a real estate agent to the stars, and show biz peripherals galore.

There are laughs about scripts to remake Birth of A Nation with an all black cast. Neuwirth chokes on a banana while showing Davis how to give a blow job. A cop asks DiCaprio for his autograph while arresting him for domestic violence. There is enthusiastic talk of a film which is “an adaptation of a sequel of a remake.”

Woody’s ear and eye for the lies, the polite insincerity of social intercourse, the concealment and self-deception that flows like white wine at all social gatherings with celebrities and celebrity sniffers; for the superficial bullshit that reeks in society, is unerringly true. Underlying all, is the aura of sadness about the fact that in our values, failure is defined as not being famous and fame delineates success.

Everyone Says I Love You (1996)

Cinema is the province of fantasy. Woody Allen has always used his films to let us in on his imaginative and self-indulgent longings. He has pictured himself as witty, charming, sexy, all of which requires a suspension of disbelief. He is a romantic at heart. Underneath the whining wisecracks, he has a sentimental streak a mile wide.

He has always indulged his loves in his films: New York, tall young girls and vulnerable women who need someone to teach them to laugh. He loves jazz, the Marx Brothers anti-pomposity gags, and romantic American standards (note the paean to Gershwin in "Manhattan"). He also loves nostalgia, especially the 1930's and 40's: tough guys ("Play It Again, Sam," "Curse of The Jade Scorpion"), radio ("Radio Days"), gangsters ("Bullets Over Broadway"). And he loves films and the romantic illusions they indulge.

He has also tried his hand at making films in the style of the film stylists he admires: Fellini, Bergman, Altman, Bob Hope, The Marx Brothers. It should therefore have been no surprise that he should tackle the movie musical to tell one of his tales of ensemble romantic neurotic foolishness, or that he should have chosen an imaginative and movie magic style to present his story through song and dance on the streets of New York, Venice, and Paris.

It is also never a surprise that many worthy actors are willing to expose themselves to the risk of falling on their faces working in his films. Here we have a basically non-singing and dancing cast trying their best with standards by Cole Porter, Kalmar and Ruby, and others. Ed Norton, Julia Roberts, Alan Alda, Tim Roth, Drew Barrymore, and Woody himself, all possess thin voices and none of the skill, talent, training, polish, or magic of Astaire, Kelly or Garland. None look or sound completely at ease while tiptoeing through the lyrics and melodies of these mostly familiar songs.

Only Goldie Hawn, who has training and a modicum of musical talent, shows confidence with the music. The rest are sometimes merely adequate (Barrymore, Roth, Alda), occasionally somewhat charming (Norton), sometimes embarrassingly off key (Roberts), sometimes amateurish (all).

A few of the numbers are performed by real “dancers,” in fantasy sequences: in a hospital — with staff and pregnant patients singing and dancing “Makin’ Whoopee;” and ghosts in a funeral parlor doing “It’s Later Than You Think.” Woody allows himself a turn with Goldie on a Paris quay in which she floats and flies gracefully around him. The thought occurs that Goldie was born a generation too late; she would have been a worthy understudy to Shirley MacLaine.

About 20 years ago, Bogdanavich tried an homage / send up of Cole Porter screwball 30's musicals with "At Long Last Love," which foundered on the humiliating self-conscious attempts by Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepard in the elaborately staged numbers (though in retrospect, Shepard showed she could have handled the stuff if Minnelli or Donen had been there to guide her).

This film’s failure at the box office may be ascribable to a similar discomfort, the audience not quite “getting” whether this is an homage or a satire of the genre.

Or it may be due to something more sinister. A girl I knew despised musicals because, she said, she could not “get” why people suddenly began singing and dancing in the midst of dialogue. Compare that attitude with Bijou, who was of my generation. When we were in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, sipping tea on a chill sunny afternoon, watching the elegant strollers amongst the pigeons and listening to the orchestra playing, Bijou said she had a recurring wish that all the strollers would suddenly couple up and begin waltzing around the plaza.

That is the sentimental imagination needed to appreciate it when Woody begins to croon, “I’m Through With Love.” It is what impelled me to splash around in puddles while dating Bijou, after watching "Singin’ In The Rain" at the Encore Theater.

Only the recent "Moulin Rouge" and "Chicago" have risked reviving the mood of unreality that musicals require. Whether this generation can deal with it is yet to be seen.

Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

I recently watched this 1994 Woody Allen film again on cable and laughed more than I had the first time. I think that it is at least equal to Annie Hall among Allen’s work and maybe better for a number of reasons.

Like measures of baseball skills, movie making contains many elements. A ballplayer is measured on 5 skills: hitting for average, power, throwing, fielding, running. The unspoken 6th skill is “heart” which manifests in clutch performance in big situations, baseball smarts and guts.

I measure films by their scope, atmosphere, writing, editing, cinematography, acting. The intangibles I value include powerful imagery, surprise. I ask whether I am moved to strong emotions: laughter, tears, hate, fear; have I been caught up in the characters, story. The film need not “teach me something” but if it does, I want to know what the point is, and how well it has been made.

Allen has always been a film maker with a limited number of skills, but what skills he possesses are prodigious. He has always been able to make us laugh, maybe to laugh as hard as any film maker ever. He has created a character which when created was original, funny, and identifiably human, the “Woody Allen” character which was so perfectly realized in "Annie Hall."

This persona is as vivid and memorable in film history as Chaplin’s tramp, Lemmon’s schnook. His films created a genre, the New York minded intelligent romantic neurotic love story. Without him there would be no Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Sara Jessica Parker, Ben Stiller or any number of independent comedy films, including the Coens’ and Farellys’ work. Jon Favreau wouldn’t exist without Woody as a guide.

But over the years that character has aged without much change and has become tiresome to us. In some, "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" and "Happy Ending," his character’s idiosyncrasies became unbearable. His trademark whining, which had been tolerable from a New York Jewish intellectual guy in his thirties who was trying to deal with the inadequacy of his life, is too much from a 65 year old man. As a possible love interest for Helen Hunt, Charlize Theron, and Tèa Leoni, he is absurdly miscast.

The scope of Allen’s films has always been “small” except for "Love and Death," which satirizes big thoughts like war and the meaning of life, philosophizing that cowardice is a virtue except in sex. He has always ridiculed pretense and “deep depth” as he called it, as well as trendy psycho-babble, but he has too often fallen prey to these.

He has always had awkward footing; rooted in Brooklyn, the Catskills, 30's movies and radio, 50's television and standup comedy, but drawn to the seriousness of Bergman and Fellini. Like all satirists, Allen has a mean spirited side to his wit. Unlike most, he often doesn’t restrain his (one of the defects of “auteurism”). His dramas fall flat, the characters wooden, the serious doings seem drab and forced.

Writing very funny and insightful gags has always been his strength. As he himself admits, gag writing comes easy to him, like drawing to an artist. But like all “artists” he strives to prove to himself that his talents are deeper. So he tries to write “serious.” Like his clarinet playing, his intelligence, diligence, and ability to learn the notes makes his serious films faintly interesting, more interesting than if done by lessers, but without the spark of genius which his gags have.

That is the theme of "Bullets Over Broadway." John Cusak is a playwright, a deep thinker and a conscientious and self-conscious “artist” who can talk for hours about “reality,” “truth,” and “integrity” in his writing. Chazz Parmentieri is a mob hit man who kills without remorse. Yet, Chazz has the talent, the gift of understanding and articulation required for great playwriting, and the integrity to insist on uncompromising adherence to his work. Irony and hypocrisy have always been concepts for which Allen’s wit are well designed.

Cusak represents Allen in the story. He is the whiney, muddled, striving artist with skill but limited talent. Without Woody in the lead, the film flies. It is perfectly cast and performed, with Diane Wiest and Jennifer Tilly chewing scenery and getting most of the laughs.

The intellectual theme is reminiscent of "Amadeus" in which Salieri has the passion and skill and Mozart the careless genius. But "Bullets" is a lot funnier.

Woody's work in the decade also included "Mighty Aphrodite" and "Sweet And Lowdown," both of which merit encores.

"The Black Dahlia" ... they shoot horses, don't they?

2007-02-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

Movie making is like betting on horses. Breeding and track record don’t insure a winner.

This one is by Brian DePalma out of James Ellroy .

It includes all the requisite elements of LA Noir that worked so well in "Chinatown" "LA. Confidential" "True Confessions" and "Mulholland Falls": dark period post-war streets and night clubs, aura of illicit sex, Hollywood glamour, the smell of perversion and palms, corruption run amok among the police and the wealthy, sadism, blood, gore, complicated motives, a convoluted plot, femmes fatales, fedoras, rain, Packards, and coupes.

Its cast includes popular current stars Hillary Swank, Scarlett Johanssen, Mia Kershner, Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett who seem enthused by the project.

Yet it runs a dreadful race and finishes way out of the money.

The 1947 murder case was the springboard for John Gregory Dunne’s novel on which a much better movie, “True Confessions,” was launched. There a mutilation murder of a stag film actress is investigated by the detective brother (Robert Duvall) of a monsigneur (Robert De Niro) of the local Catholic diocese. When the detective finds an influential Catholic layman (Charles Durning) is responsible, he has to choose between his duty and his brother’s career.

Here, the idea was going to be the friction between two friends who are detectives, one who is corrupt but obsessed with solving the murder, the other who is honest but obsessed with protecting his friend. The one gets murdered and the other solves the crime and in the process also solves the Black Dahlia murder. Along the way he falls for his friend’s sexy wife, suspects her of complicity in his friend’s murder, and gets sidetracked by a sexy, rich dame and her wealthy and powerful Chandleresque family with dirty secrets.

Somehow, neither the script nor the direction clarifies any of the above, filling in with mood stultifying exposition-filled voice overs. The film is heavily burdened by the conventions of the genre including sub-plots and seemingly disconnected plots that are supposed to weave together in a satisfying ironic conclusion, but somehow don’t.

As the original noir crime films showed, even an impenetrable mystery plot doesn't preclude success in the genre (the famous “The Big Sleep” paradox for example), if the director skillfully sets his mood, the script contains sufficient amusing dialogue and action, and the actors keep your interest. This one fails on all counts.

De Palma has always derived his style by stealing from his betters, Hitchcock, Hawks, and others. Here, he simply turned to Vilmos Zsigmond, his cameraman, said “noir” and began filming as if channeling Hawks, Nicholas Ray, and John Huston.

He shoots scenes from below, through window slats, curtained windows, rain spattered windows. There are shadows and slanting light. De Palma’s M.O. is to stint on coherence in favor of style. Here he forgot to include any style. His plants of clues and red herrings are so lazily transparent that we cease to care very early. Other plot turns are so obscure that there is no involvement in the mystery.

De Palma cares about none of it. Nor does he care about pace. There is no rhythm to the scenes; one merely follows another without concern for any affect. The film just keeps plodding along, like a dull shark.

De Palma even "quotes" his own film, "Scarface," with a bloody fall into a fountain, as if to remind us that he once had an idea of his own. However, this scene is preceded by a climb up a staircase by the detective who freezes and is unable to prevent a murder, a blatant theft from "Vertigo."

He has no new ideas for his actors either. Scarlett comes off as a too young version of Kim Basinger’s character in L.A. Confidential, Hartnett and Eckhart as weak versions of Crowe and Pearce. Hillary Swank is stranded as an almost laughable femme fatale. The four leads all appear to be pretending to be grown-ups, never for a moment convincing in their grandparents' clothes or adopting their hard boiled attitudes.

Mia Kirshner, who plays the victim in black and white film footage meant to be auditions and a stag film, manages to suggest vulnerability, reminiscent of Jennifer Connolly in a similar role in “Mulholland Falls,” but is never on for long enough. She should be a bigger star, which I first anticipated in Atom Egoyan's "Exotica" (1994).

The worst miscalculation is the campy playing of the wealthy family the detective falls into. Fiona Shaw (best known as the mean Aunt in the Harry Potter series), is awful as Swank’s dotty alcoholic mother, and Scottish actor John Kavannagh is almost as bad as the dad. The final expository mystery solution belongs more to a satire on the genre like Neil Simon’s “The Cheap Detective” or Steve Martin’s “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” It includes the much overused flashbacks with the reveal of the face of the killer which had been hidden from us in previous shots --- with a contrived gender switch from the previously misleading scene.

Just terrible. Send this nag to the glue factory.

"This Film Is Not Yet Rated"

2007-01-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

Kirby Dick’s very funny and passionate probe of the MPAA’s rating system struck a few nerves with me.

As a moviegoer I was not surprised by revelations about the hyprocritical inconsistencies in the system. I’ve seen many films I thought were too violent for their PG-13 or even R ratings and the prejudicial treatment of sex in all its varieties was not a shock. The moviemakers interviewed make you shake your head about the insanity of their run-ins with the raters over “offensive” sex scenes. Dick laboriously but entertainingly makes his case about the lack of qualifications of the raters and the comical cruelty of the bureaucratic corporate process.

As a lawyer I was first appalled by the seemingly clear 1st Amendment and Due Process violations. That a small secret group should affect the ability of filmmakers to get their movies shown in theaters and sold in stores seems outrageous. My immediate reaction was amazement that in our litigious society and given how much money and passion was involved someone hasn’t sued their asses over this practice.

Thinking a bit more deeply into the issue as a lawyer, I began to see why no filmmaker has sued to overturn the system. It is “voluntary” and doesn’t “censor” in that it doesn’t ban or preclude release of any movie. The real issue is one that the industry cares more about than “Art” and “free speech.” The effect of an unwanted rating is that distributors will adhere to the system and not show the film (or sell it) to a large segment of the target audience - the youth market that gobbles up films at a higher rate than those the rating system permits to view them.

The MPAA is primarily a lobbying organization, intended to dissuade government from passing laws that restrict its “freedom” and to encourage laws that protect its business. The rating system was installed as a sop to conservative critics - both within government and social institutions - who threatened censorship.

The movie industry has a long history of self-policing in this way. The Hays Code and Breen Office of the 1930's was the studios’ response to public outrage over sex, drugs & violence in the silent and early talkie era. The Code was far more restrictive; no film could be released in the U.S. without its seal of approval.

The Code was broken in the 1950's, by European imports and, famously, by Otto Preminger in 1953's release of “The Moon Is Blue” without a seal of approval. That film was a mildly risque romantic comedy about seduction of a virgin by a playboy. The subject matter, playful tolerance of sex, and language (using the word ‘virgin’) were forbidden previously and Preminger was considered a courageous hero for challenging the Establishment.

It should also be noted that Preminger in 1960 was credited with breaking another studio self-policing policy – the blacklist of suspected leftist subversives when he credited Dalton Trumbo as screenwriter on "Exodus."

In the 50's and 60's the debate over “obscenity” and censorship was a hot topic in courts and legislatures across the country. Every municipality, county, and state tried to define it. National and local religious, educational, and parenting groups all disseminated reviews of movies and books, forcing bans in localities or among constituents.

At the same time the Supreme Court was struggling to balance the 1st Amendment with the borders of expression. The Warren Court was inclined to protect freedoms, but was under constant pressure, and eventually drew the line at laws and rules relating to minors. That was where a clear consensus was found. In two cases decided in 1968, the Court upheld a New York law prohibiting sale of obscene material to anyone under 17 (Ginsberg V. New York, 390 U.S. 629 (1968)) and struck down a Texas law that created a “Motion Picture Classification Board” only because its standards were constitutionally vague (Interstate Circuit V. Dallas, 390 U.S. 676 (1968).

Later that year, The MPAA system devised its rules. and the very next year, an “X rated” film, Midnight Cowboy, impressed critics and audiences, winning Oscars and making a lot of money. In 1971 Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” did the same. Russ Meyer also exploited the “X” with his soft core porn films and “Deep Throat’s” popularity showed that the “X” could in fact lure customers. Eventually, “X” films were refused advertising on T.V. and in many newspapers, and it was then limited to porn films.

In 1990 the “NC-17" rating replaced the “X” and the studios have been able to make it stick, due to the cooperation of distributors and mass market video sellers like Wal-Mart which refuse to sell such rated films.

Most producers have yielded to the market’s pressure by cutting their films to avoid the dreaded “NC-17” and as Dick’s film shows, it produces some absurd results, many injustices, and some harm, as when movies that might be meaningful for teens are denied them while they are drenched with the bloody “R’s” and “PG-13's.” When a potentially superior film like Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” is tagged “NC-17,” it is a crying shame, denying wide distribution to a film that should have been seen and appreciated by everyone.

The marketplace may eventually make the arguments irrelevant. Already, "unrated" DVD's that include scenes excised for theatrical release are proving a profitable market. "Adult film" (i.e., Porn) DVD sales are in the billions. And the internet promises a market impossible to censor or restrict. Sophisticated home entertainment systems will soon make the neighborhood movie house remodel into something more useful and the "theater experience" will become like going to live theater, a special occasion for certain kinds of films.

In the 50's and 60's, films were shot in European and U.S. versions. I think that may happen again: films will be cut in several "sizes," and styles, one for the home market, one for theaters and one for the internet.

The Netflix Funnies

2006-12-31T16:16:00.000-08:00

I’m becoming addicted to Netflix - not watching the movies, just reading the “members reviews.” Really. They’re better than Bill Maher. Just give them a really bad movie to chew on and they spit out vitriol that would make Don Rickles envious.

Here’s some examples for an awful movie called “Sweet November” from 2000, starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. I would summarize the plot but these reviews tell you all you need to know. I hope I’m not violating some law by re-printing these member reviews but it is sorta the same as getting it in a forwarded e-mail, isn’t it?

“Man, I don't know where to start. Saw this one on a plane to Chicago. And to make things worse I was sitting between two very large mammals who were knocked out possibly from some sort of tranquilizers. Anyway, in this movie Charlize Theron is a free spirited soul and she is dying. So what does she do? She spends her last days with Mr. Keanu "Whoa" Reeves. Did this movie make me cry? Yes it did, I cried because I didn't have a razor blade handy.”

“Worst movie ever. Free-spirited girl brings happiness to all-business guy. Dogs & cartwheels on the beach. Gay next door neighbor. Dying of cancer. Cancer patient wears a rag on her head, even though she's not undergoing chemotherapy. Boy without a dad finds companionship. Yup, this movie has all of them.”

“How does that Keanu guy continue to get work? This is the single worst performance is the history of Hollywood. This movie is terrible. Predictable, contrived...a tear jerking formula-film directed by a hack. Everyone involved in this production should be lined up and kneed in the privates. In fact, I should be kneed somewhere in the groin region for renting it.”

“Won't somebody shoot Kneau Reeves so we don't have to watch another one of his terrible acting jobs. This had to be his worst, please don't tell us it isn't.”

“The movie would have been much better had Charlize Theron's character simply killed herself at the beginning, Keanu Reeves following by suicide ten minutes later, thus reducing a 2 hour tragedy to a somewhat gratifying fifteen minute tragedy.”

“My wife and I watched what some have billed a date movie. If I took her to see this during our courtship, who knows, maybe we wouldn't [have been] married for 25 years...”

“I don't think words can describe how bad this movie is. I think Keanu Reeves may even be a worse actor than Ben Affleck. If that's possible. This movie isn't worth the disk it's burned on.”

“terrible movie - the story is completely implausible, the dialogue is completely phony, Keanu gives a typically flat, wooden performance, and there is not one genuine emotion in the whole film. Your average X-Files episode is more believable than this movie.”

“Just an awful movie, with a sickly sweet premise and an ending that's sappy enough to make any decent person sick to their stomachs. If anybody in your life behaved this way, you'd kick them -- November or not.”

“Saw this on TV- was advertised as the Kleenex tearjerker movie of the week. And I DID need the hankies- I busted a gut laughing at this stupid movie! Just when you think Keanu can't act any worse than he has in ALL of his other movies, he does! It's a gift or something I guess. And just think- he makes a bazillion dollars doing it too!”

“Keanu Reeves (who struggles so hard to deliver a good performance that sweat glistens on his forehead) finds himself in an odd relationship with an enigmatic free spirit (Charlize Theron). The movie thinks it is making some strange statement about the meaning of love. What I got was that self-absorbed will never find true happiness (duh) and I utterly loathed Theron's character, who is so odiously manipulative, self-centered and vain ("I don't want anybody to see me sick! Remember me as healthy and beautiful and really good in bed.") that I wanted to snap the disc in half and save anyone else from watching this movie!...”

BAH!

2006-12-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

Christmastime by definition is ripe for sentimental humbuggery.

The sentimental mood evoked during this most maudlin of times is abetted by midwinter depression, fueled by fuzzy memories of cozy childhood wishes. It is no coincidence that commerce unburies this treasure every year - with sales pitches and movies that pander to an audience so needy for psychic warmth that the inevitability of bitter hangover will be ignored.

Millions of families religiously flock to their TV screens to watch movies that reinforce their mythology about the season - that happiness resides in familial love, fellowship, and generosity.

Of all the hymns that are part of the ceremony, Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” embodies the story arc that comes closest to the heart of the season. It stands as the template for an idea that is so compelling - yet so ephemeral because of the harsh reality of life - that it needs infinite repetition and variation. It is a clever sermon, a parable comparable to Biblical stories in its universal appeal. It presents us with an ugly picture of life as it exists and replaces it with life as it could — and preaches — should be.

In 1946, Frank Capra - the poor man’s De Mille - made the “Christmas Carol” variant, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which later - due to TV exposure - joined and even surpassed the English classic in American hearts. Others have tried to re-mix the formula since and I want to point up two recent ones, “The Family Man” (2000) and “Click” (2006), to see whether it still can work. The comparison reveals some about whether our values and choices have changed over 50 years.

Right after the tragedy of World War II, Capra and James Stewart combined the sentimental and dark sides of their personalities for a troubling image of American life as we both wish and fear it to be — a sad memory of the possibilities of our nation’s and our individual innocence.

Watching it again at my advanced age, I now feel more deeply George Bailey’s plaint of painful forced abandoning of his youthful dreams of world conquering for the obligations imposed by love, family, and community, a theme which was probably not intended in the film’s final form and which is certainly not what makes it a sentimental family flick.

As with many Hollywood morality tales, the dark middle before the sentimental ending rings more true to life as we know it, but the feel-good ending is tolerable because so shamelessly and classily contrived and performed. The moral, that no man is a failure who has friends, is ridiculous on its face; but the true moral is the religious one: the benefits of generosity and goodness.

Fifty years later, “The Family Man” tried to revive the theme.

Nicolas Cage has made a career exploiting his eyebrows. He has made a series of films in which his “acting” consists mostly of looking sensitive the way a basset hound looks sad: by a quirk of his appearance. Nic is the kind of man/puppy certain women seem to like. He looks to be in pain, thus in need of cuddling, but not so much that he requires too much attention. His voice is whiney, but not as much as if he was Jewish, and he has a better physique than the Woody Allen / Ben Stiller type of urban kvetch.

“The Family Man” plays as another of the chick flick formulas that are meant to prove that man is incomplete without The Right Woman. The situation thus contrived assumes that financier Jack Campbell (Cage) has everything a man’s man thinks he wants: power, wealth, involvementless sex, Ferrari, hot penthouse apartment, racks of clothes, gorgeous models to wake up with; and at work, toadies who follow his orders and cower. Gee, how can men be so shallow?! (Actually, this is also what every “Sex In The City” woman wants — sub in Manolo for Ferrari - but more on that later.)

After the intro of Jack as lone wolf, he gets a phone message from an old girlfriend, whose memory he has submerged, a girl who he almost married 13 years ago but abandoned. Now he will be transported to the life he would have had if he had not chosen this lonely perfect life.

The fantasy replaces that vacuous man’s life with a woman’s supposed dream life — marriage, home, children, friends, domestic routine - the life George Bailey regrets in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

The tension in George’s dilemma is that he thinks he has wasted his life — because he had dreams of travel, conquest, greatness — all purportedly dreams of men. Mary is the one who has gotten her wish: she got her good responsible family man, her home, children, friends, domestic bliss. In the end, through the nightmare of Clarence’s images of what might have been if George had not existed, he is persuaded that the life Mary chose for him was not so bad after all.

But the trick is that George is never shown what would have happened had he – at any one of the several turning points in his life – been able to seek his own dream.

Should it be assumed that his innate goodness would have been perverted by this track? Mightn’t the world have been a better place if this good and decent man had become an architect, become wealthy, achieved power? If he had traveled, gone to college, chased his muse, and then come back to marry Mary, wouldn’t he have been a happier man?

“The Family Man” upends the fantasy. Jack was leaving his college girlfriend, Kate (Tèa Leoni), for an internship in London to study finance. Kate was going to law school to be a pro bono lawyer. At the airport, she tried to persuade him to stay, fearing that if he went, he would never return. He vowed his love, and left. Thirteen years later, we see that she had been right. Jack is now a “Gordon Gecko,” lonely at the top but blithely unaware of his loss.

It is Christmas Eve and Jack is about to enter the “Twilight Zone.” He meets his Clarence, this time played by Don Cheadle as a seemingly scary psycho robber who Jack tries naively to help out. Jack makes the mistake of saying he has everything he wants and needs; Cheadle will now show him a glimpse of the alternate life, the one he would have had with Kate.

Jack awakes in bed with Kate in their little home in Teaneck, New Jersey. His two kids hop in bed for Christmas morning. Jack manages his father-in-law’s tire store, bowls with friends, daydreams an affair with a friend’s blowsy wife, and is mired in a numbing routine of home, suburban chores — driving kids to school, walking the dog, scrimping, enduring the bitter winter.

Of course, Jack comes to appreciate the life, and especially Kate / Tèa, who steals the film. She really is sexy, desirable, smart, fun.

But when Jack sees the chance to have both, he tries to convince Kate they can have the wealth and the family. She clucks— he just doesn’t get it! He does have it all. Her dream is to live in their home and grow old together while she gardens and he repairs the deck.

Later, she relents— okay, she will make the big sacrifice: drag the kids away from their schools and friends and move back to The City (and even enrol them in posh private schools, if absolutely necessary) if it will make Jack happy. “I choose us,” she reminds him.

Jack, now hopelessly the warm and cuddly Nic, wants to stay with Tèa and his family, but he wakes in his bachelor bed, his Gecko life now too transparently shallow. Then he remembers the phone message his old girlfriend, Kate had left. He looks her up, finds her now a self-assured partner in a law firm about to move to Paris.

Interesting, because deprived of his love, she too has abandoned altruism for greed! This is the modern woman’s answer to what happened to Mary Bailey in George’s 1946 nightmare — remember, without George she became a spinster librarian.

Kate has found a box of Jack’s’s stuff which she needs to get rid of. Why she has saved this box but never talked to him in all these years until now is never explored – the scenes are played as if she has moved on and has no regrets about the turn their lives took; only Nic is in pain (as shown by his eyebrows) and conscious of what might have been.

Jack leaves her, then thinks better of it. More to supply a heart racing ending than for any other logical purpose, he drives frantically to the airport, finds her in a crowd, is rejected by her, turns away, then tries again, by reciting to her the fantasy alternate life they “had” in Teaneck.

The scene is painful in its illogic, since she has no memory of the “other life” but Nic’s speech assumes that she has. One suspects that in an abandoned and forgotten script draft, we learn that she has had the same “fantasy.”

Instead, she listens to his argument: ... I left you and regretted it; now please don’t leave me. “I choose us,” he whines. That catchphrase must have been one the writer fantasized would be whispered by tearful couples leaving the theater after watching the film on date night, but it is not exactly, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

It ends with a silhouette of the couple drinking airport coffee under the credits. The ending is satisfying in a twerpy way: now Jack and Kate are both independently rich and have explored their career dreams; they can wed and live happily ever after together. Hopefully not in Teaneck.

“Click” is the most recent entry in the “Wonderful Life” line of pictures. Adam Sandler is Mike Newman, a harried husband, father, and aspiring architect, unable to balance his family’s demands with his ambition to be rich.

Mike’s Clarence is named Morty (a funnier name, I admit) played by Christopher Walken. Adam’s wife (named Donna, in homage) is played by Kate Beckinsale, who is given less to do and therefore makes less impact than Donna Reed or Tèa Leoni, at least until a couple of scenes late in the picture.

Adam must learn the lesson of family values through a modern fantasy, a “universal” remote that makes his life a DVD he can fast forward through chapters, stop action, and rewind. The metaphor is a decent one for a high concept picture sell: a man who fast forwards through the awkward but meaningful moments of his family life, thinking only of his work, is a fool.

“Click” relies on some fancy special effects to show the video type menus of the remote and fat suits, prosthetics, make-up, and facial masks that the cast must have had fun with.

Sandler could not resist the kind of jokes that clicked with his audience in all his movies: farts, fat, kicks in the groin, old people — the usual things pre-adolescents find irresistible. There are a few amusing gags and situations that effectively explore the possibilities of the remote idea, but overall, the picture literally falls flat due to its own heaviness. The life lesson endures way too long, carrying Sandler into a nightmarish old age and death before finally returning us to the present and giving him the obligatory second chance.

As in the previous incarnations, I must admit that the version of life meant to be seen as the wrong path seems more real to me. People are as venal and selfish as in the day before George Bailey’s plunge into fantasy and his nightmare town is more like our cities have become. Jack Campbell was better off rich and alone than struggling in regretful mediocrity and Mike’s unversal remote seems like a pretty good idea.

Also, I find it notable that in all three of these films, made over a span of fifty years, the roles of the wives remain the same: they are the keepers of the family flame. One wonders what feminists make of these films. They are clearly pre- and post-feminist works, with assumptions that women want domestic bliss rather than their own careers to achieve self-fulfillment. How about a remake of “Wonderful Life” with a woman at its center?

2006-11-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

Netflix allows for mini-reviews of movies in 300 words or less, and here are some of mine over the past year:

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
One of the best comedies of the last few years, far better than US products that re-cycle SNL skits. This film works on so many levels that the word "ambitious" is (British) understatement. Mockumentary a la "This Is Spinal Tap," with homages to "Adaptation" as a movie about an unfilmable book. It is also a send-up of the British classic lit / movie industry. An ongoing joke is that no one has actually read the 18th century book, except one PA /AD, who is also the only one on set who spouts "cinema" art concerns. Steve Coogan plays himself as the "star" as we always suspected - vain, self-deceiving, pretentious, neurotic. Slowed only slightly by a few lazily edited improvised scenes, over all it is out loud laughs almost all the way.

Lucky Number Slevin A stew made of body parts from other films: plot tropes from "The Big Lebowski," "North By Northwest," "Pulp Fiction," plus Hwd's favorite persona, the Hitman, today's gunslinger. Smarten up stylized dialogue. Toss in a snippet of screwballish romance subplot, check your brain at the door and just let it wash over you.

Lower City
The love triangle in an exotic or desperate setting is the oldest of movie forms. As in depression era films, the struggle of the buddies for survival is threatened by the girl, whose passion offers temptation and redemptive love at the same time. The world of Brazil's slum life echoes ours in violence and impending tragedy, and also in its vibrant pulse of life. That love can survive in such a world may be a sentimental notion, but here it is convincingly portrayed and remains a gripping universal theme. Alice Braga is a star in the making, playing the prostitute who may have a heart after all.

Stay Re-title as "The 6th Non-sense." All style and no substance, a disappointing waste of starry talents. A jigsaw puzzle with all the best pieces chewed up by a dog. A "thriller" with no thrills, just arbitrary visual and editing gimmickry, an exercise in ego driven drivel.

Bitter Moon Polanski's life and films, like Woody Allen's, can't be separated easily. Like Picasso, their art and life interact. Polanski's current wife, Seignier, becomes a sex toy and an avenger in this opera buffo soft core fantasy about risky emotions released. The movie is an indulgent mess, but so is the artist's life and fantasies.

Mini's First Time "Wild Things" was a trash smash hit, capitalizing on the allure of sexy teen femme fatales in training. "Mini's" tries for the same tone, but fails miserably after Act I. The plot twists are tired rehashes of old noir bites, Baldwin's stepdad / lover patsy becomes drearily foolish and whiny. Luke Wilson is wasted, allowed no ironic dark humor that is his meat. Nikki Reed lacks the extra star presence needed to keep our interest and credibility past Act 2.

Casanova A period satire that flops on Saturday and every other night. It aspires to "Shakespeare In Love" bred with "Tom Jones" and lacks the wit, originality, passion and smart anachronistic edginess that those classics had in spades. Ledger is tepid, Lena Olin's fire is wasted, Sienna Miller has nothing much. Even foils Jeremy Irons & Oliver Platt, both comic talents are adrift in stylistic fog - not enough sex or laughs.

Freedomland Proof that good ideas dont insure a good movie. I like the theme - good intentions are not enough to dent the insoluble mess our society is in. So polarized are we that every "event" re-affirms our prejudices, no matter The Truth. A grim assessment, but insightful. "Communities" are islands of turmoil, ready to explode. Compassion and human scale emotions are left behind in such a world. Like "Crash," and "Syriana" these dramas are bleak, not entertaining, but contain more than a few glimpses of sad truth.

Everybody Wins Could have been "Blue Velvet" or "Twin Peaks" in hands of Lynch. Subject is ripe for noir - detective (Nick Nolte) with a past falls for a sexy hooker (Debra Winger) with a past to solve the crime. The corrupt town, the wrong man, the suspects. With irony, the world is not to be changed. Everybody's happy with a half truth. Okay, what's wrong? The director has no style, no pace, no tenstion, no consistent mood. Nolte & Winger are lost in character, with no help. Will Patton chews scenery. Pity.

The Libertine How to hook J. Depp onto your project - tempt with any or all of the following: disfiguring make-up to conceal his good looks and force him to rely on skill rather than star presence; require an accent, preferably English; permit him to mine a character we can love and despise at the same time; include the theme of the thrill of playacting; give him some well-written dialogue to poeticize; surround him with challenging actors like Malkovich, Samantha Morton, Rosamund Pike. Then give him the screen for as long as he wants and stand back.

The Proposition To Aussies, this film must be a shocking revelation, exploding myths about their history as our "adult" westerns did to Americans bred on our white hat / black hat myths. Frontier "justice" down under is shown as brutal. Few punches pulled as a lawman tries to civilize. Emily Watson, as the decent woman shocked by crime, demanding vengeance, learns that "right" is not so clear. Flawed by pacing issues but overall a needed twist on the Western genre, which seems to have run its course in American films, with rare exceptions.

Inside Man Act 1 is a standard bank takeover thriller, with some nice Spike Lee-isms, his insights to NY characters and racial irony. Act 3 is a fairly satisfying resolution - tho not in the class of "The Usual Suspects" as a surprise. The problem is mostly with Act 2, which drags with little credible action, contrived tension, and less than gripping characters. The exposition gives away the game, the true motives of the robbers, making the resolution less than satisfying. For better takes, rent "Suspects" or "The Hot Rock."

The Great New Wonderful The new urban angst of 9/11 memories is the subject of this ensemble film that tracks a few days in the lives of disconnected New Yorkers approaching the 1st anniversary of the event. Used to many reasons for insecurity in the city - crime, crowds, the rat race - this latest trauma has them stumped. Each in his / her own way is sleepwalking around the elephant in the room. The cinematic problem is that most of them are not all that interesting as individuals. Their dilemmas and their treatment of them are so "normal" that taking 9/11 ptsd out of the equation changes nothing. This perpective itself is a bit unnerving. If anything did change, it was only an edging up of the urban angst a few more unbearable notches.

Don't Come Knocking "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way," was Jessica Rabbit's famous apology for embarassing us. "Howard Spence," Sam Shepard's alter ego here is another self-conscious star, who is embarassd by his own extravagent outrages - tired of being a phony "hero." Now burnt out, he seeks redemption, finding a son and daughter he never knew he had, accepting the reality of fatherhood which is less than heroic, but with more possibilities for a kind of acceptance if not happy endings.

The Night and the Moment 18th Century Paris must have been a hoot. Crebillon wrote scandalous novels, of which this was one, followed by Leclos, who wrote "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," upped later by a bloke named De Sade. This 1995 effort followed the best of the many versions of "Dangerous Liaisons" (1989). Lena Olin is gorgeous and sexy, Miranda Richardson acts as if in "Tom Jones" but Willem Dafoe is sadly miscast as the upper class rogue in lust with Lena. Mostly "oral sex" i.e, a lot of suggestive talk about licentiousness, and a few titillating scenes, which fail to arouse much interest.

The Rules of the Game
In common with my favorite great film, Citizen Kane, Rules Of The Game is not only a great and profound film, it is also endlessly entertaining and involving, actually fun to watch, not just once but over again as many times as you wish. Both work on many levels, do not pound you over the head with "Art." Renoir, as Welles, loved to perform, do shtick, burlesque, as well as to comment subtly on their times. And both films were under appreciated in their time - as were their creators. DVD comes with a 2nd disc that contains great historical stuff.

The Matador A variant of the hitman-meets-nerd theme so often overused as dark comedy ("The Whole Nine Yards"), Brosnan & Kinnear make a quirky buddy movie with a clever twist into a relative morality parable. Intermittently entertaining, sometimes irksome, both actors seem to be having fun. The oddity of Hope Davis's character, grieving for her dead son, finding laughs and excitement in her hubby's new pal never goes the way we think it will - ie the cliche attraction - so there are some surprises and that's a nice change in a hitman movie (don't see "Collateral" if you want any originality).

A Real Young Girl
Breillat's work is aggressively feminist. This early effort is raw, influenced by surrealists. But touches on true & deep forbidden subjects - repression, sexual fantasies about fathers & mothers, curiousity about her body & sense of the power of her sexuality and its dangers.

Searching for Debra Winger
Rosanna Arquette + a sisterhood of whining women decry their dilemma: they cant have it all - career, motherhood, creativity, love, fame, privacy - i.e., perfect fulfillment. Uh, too bad, ladies. Welcome to the real world. Oddly, only Debra Winger seems to get it, though she also seems just a bit sad about her choice. Where are the men? And the children? The truth is that actors are pretend people, not like us at all.

Yellow Flower
Experimental and cerebral, Ji-sang Lee strips everything but what he deems the essence of symbolism of New Wave mood. Godard & Bertolucci are the icons he worships. Scenes with packed emotions are all he gives us. Sex, violence, crime, rebellion are casual but treated as the only "real" events worth living.

L'Atalante
In these days when movies are loud and coarse, this simple ancient little film reminds you of the power of a tiny story about people. Dita Parlo's face reveals all: her sweetness, naivete, yearnings for excitement. Today, this urge would have led to a "Fatal Attraction" or "Unfaithful," an erotic fanstasy thriller with her destruction. But in Jean Vigo's human vision, nothing so dramatic will occur. She will not take the fatal step, fate will be kind, her young husband will realize what he lost.

Basic Instinct 2
The trash classic "Basic Instinct" intro'd one of film's most rivetting femmes fatales, Catherine Trammell. She is a great villain: sexy, smart, sexy, devious, sexy, evil and oh yes, sexy. Sure its a parody, over the top with contrived plots dependent on stupid males easily manipulated, but so is "Dracula." Sharon Stone at 50 is amazing to look at and even more alluringly wicked. Check your brain at the door and have fun.

The White Countess
Merchant & Ivory specialize in tasteful English dramas. Passions are so restrained that you want sometimes to smack the characters to life. They like to put their English in passionate places: Italy, India, or here, in Shanghai on the brink of WWII. Ralph Fiennes plays an American, Natasha Richardson, her mom and aunt (the Redgrave sisters) Russians, but they act like they are English. When Fiennes and Richardson are on the brink of passion a spark lights, but the film is too polite to let it explode. Maybe that would not have been subtle enough. M&I are always subtle. Instead, the plot swerves to make its political point, which is not subtle. In the end, we are left not feeling enough about any of it.

La Belle Noiseuse
Though the film is certainly about the artistic process and can be infuriatingly and excrutiatingly detailed, I found another theme that is more interesting. Beart, as the "model," begins as bored and offended, but eventually finds complex emotions, self-realization, power in her role as the artist's muse, his object. She strips herself to the bone, giving herself but in the end proving to be more than her parts.

The Weather Man
As gripping as watching snow melt. Snow gets most screen time as director Verbinski underscores every transitional scene with lingering shots of nasty Chicago weather. We get it the first time — this is the winter of discontent for “Dave Spritz,” the lightweight TV weather man, his soul chilled and numbed by his failed life, yada yada. This is a pretentious and offensive Hollywood pseduo-intellectual view of American life. Condescending Hollywood movie people preaching values. What an oxymoron. See "LA Story" for sharp satire re weatherman; see "Quiz Show" for touching drama re son disappointing smart dad by silly TV fame. See Caine in ALFIE for better take on jerk-heroes.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
This is Sarah's vanity project / audition for stardom. She has her own niche in stand-up, a "J.A.P." for the Gen X / Y / Z er's. Not Rita Rudner, more Lenny Bruce's illigitimate grandneice. Targets are PC no-no's: 9/11, AIDS, Race stereotypes. And her very one Nana, who belonged to that most laughable minority: old, dying people. She's a hoot, hot, wise and should get some acting parts as a result.

Friends with Money
A film in a long tradition - the Hen Flick. From the 30's, "The Women," to "Waiting To Exhale" & "First Wives Club," & even "Sex & The City." As a man, I am fascinated by the depiction of male characters: all clueless, insensitive louts. Feminism & post-feminism seems to leave couples in limbo hell according to these films. Empowered women still unfulfilled. What next?

16 Blocks
Willis lets Mos Def riff and steal the scenes while Bruce walks thru a character we know too well to surprise us - a burnt out corrupt cop. They lost me with the nonsensical plot from the jump - I'm a lawyer and can only laugh at the silly premise: DA entrusts snitch wit to cops to transport - the bus scene & escape is a riot. The alternate ending is better, but should have also included an alternate plot.

White
Could be subtitled, "Revenge Of The Shnook." Karol Karol, our "hero," seems victim of a scheming "femme fatale." He seems like a bad "Polish joke," a loser. Just when we're ready to give up on him, tho, he finds backbone, a reason to live: to get back and get back AT his love. Will it be satisfying? The end teases, but leaves us wondering. Also incudes Julie Delpy. 'nuf said.

Fool for Love
Shepard, Basinger, Altman, Stanton. Whoa! Nope, never been much fer th' neo-western trailer trashy motel honky tonk school a' actin' & writn'. But I gotta admit that this group rilly gits yer attenshun. 'Spechully Kim - that gal's jest about the prettiest heifer. Shep's kinda Gary Cooper's illegitimate son, I guess an' the two of 'em make great lovers and siblings, too, jes' like back home in the hills. Yep.

My Life to Live
Filmmakers will always be fascinated with prostitutes. See "Klute" for one of the best. "Belle Du Jour" for another. Godard's social conscience and dramatist's sensibility watches a woman, the radiant star, Anna Karina, as she struggles to take control over her life, no matter the risk and outcome.

Miss Julie
Saffron Burrows is a former runway model who can think and act. She is very very serious about her acting chops. Has given herself to Figgis in at least 3 of his experimental movies ("Hotel" & "Loss of Sexual Innocence"). Waiting for a vehicle that makes her the star she deserves to be. See her in "Enigma," a better film actually than this dated exam of class sexual warfare between upstairs lady and downstairs footman. Who is exploiting who is the question and the answer is not very gripping as we learn how hard it is to be a poor servant with no hope of upward mobility. Really? Saffron tries to show how hard it is to be beautiful, rich, and lonely. Not buying it.

Memoirs of a Geisha
Subtitle: Gone With The Geisha. Scarlet (Chiyo) chases Ashley Wilkes (Chairman) through ante-bellum South (Japan) & post war ruin. Mixed with Oliver Twisty child abuse plot. Bad English accents by actors (Zhang Ziyi / Gong Li - who are great & beautiful Chinese stars) and others whose dialogue sounds phoenetically learned. Ersatz history.

See, instead:

The World of Geisha
A Japanese film that was banned there for years beause of the explicit sex. The sex is not pornographic - it is a power struggle stylishly and tastefully filmed to put you inside the heart of this woman. Geishas here are not the glamorous, timid entertainers of wealthy men. They are desperate to move on up by the only route they have - the love of a "client" tho all the rules, social, professional and emotional - warn them against it, and it is a low probability of success and high chance of pain.

Mrs. Henderson Presents
While we Yanks market only our present culture to the world, the British dwell, as The Beatles, sang, in "Yesterday." And they have so many of them. British law must mandate annual films of Shakespeare, Austen, and Elizabeth I. And their "Finest Hour:" The Blitz. Dame Judy and Hoskins have great fun with class clash and dry English witticisms. Stephen Frears lends his skill and Chris Guest is super. Sure, it's sappy, but stiff upper lip, chaps.

Dodsworth
Proof (as if it was needed) that the 1930's was THE Golden Age of filmmaking. Willy Wyler's genius direction of Walter Huston in Sinclair Lewis' famous novel. (Do high schoolers still read Lewis? "Arrowsmith," "Main Street"? Do they still read?) Huston was a "naturalistic" actor long before Brando co-opted the term. The story's values are worthy of argument & comparison to how it would be handled today (See, e.g., "Unfaithful").

Rumor Has It
It's time to admit that Jennifer Aniston doesn't have big screen star appeal. She's tried several matchups - Ed Burns, Kevin Bacon, Jake Gyllenhaal, not Mark Ruffalo & Keving Costner. None work - its her fault. She's not Meg Ryan for the new century - certainly no Jean Arthur or any of the golden age career girl / stars. Time to find another sitcom, Jen.

The Lake House
All romances demand a suspension of disbelief and an arc that ends in an inevitable happy ending. The problem here is that there are so few surprises once the time bending issue is established. I found neither lead character very compelling. Sandra Bullock was far more appealing in "Two Weeks Notice" opposite Hugh Grant and Keanu Reeves remains uni-dimensional at most. The contrivance of letter / conversation with voice overs becomes boring quickly and the plot turn leading to the ending is predictable from miles away. A film that relies heavily on a dog for smiles is in trouble.

The Family Stone
Not a romantic dramedy, but embarrassment humor, the kind that sets up a contrived sitcom family and dumps a stranger in it to quirm and be gallingly skewered. Not that Meredith (Sarah) doesn't rate it - she's hard to sympathize with. Mix in mushy contrived sentiment - mom has a terminal illness, a stable of cardboard "issues," a clumsy stab at screwball wit, and an ending wrapped in the chintziest fuzzy ribbon. Anyone who cried or laughed at this mess is too easy to please.

The Awful Truth
The template for the Screwball remarriage comedy that dominated the 1930's.
The movie that established "Cary Grant Type." Leo McCarey directed him opposite Irene Dunne. Look for the classic scene involving two derbies. Cary gets his laughs, and still looks like Cary Grant while doing it. He repeated this act in "My Favorite Wife" again with Irene Dunne, and in "Holiday" and "Bringing Up Baby" opposite Hepburn, and in "His Girl Friday," stretched it to its limits in "Arsenic And Old Lace" and and practiced a calmer version as late as "Charade." Dunne, the surprise of the movie, matches Cary for sophistication and screwiness. He dignified class was perfectly matched by a lowdown sexy playfulness. Arguably better than Hepburn was in "Bringing Up Baby."

Waking Life
Linklater is a unique artist. Independent, original, literate, philosophical, postmodern, but tapped into pop culture at its roots. This form - rotoscope animation of live performance - using various very talented graphic artists enlivens the talk, permits flights of fancy and subjective imaginative dreamlike atmosphere perfect for the musings of teen student Wiggins. The visual language of graphic novels is a perfect metaphor for pop-postmod life.

Just Like Heaven
Revives a tired formula for weepy romances. The moral is always to live life to the fullest each day. Okay! The new wrinkle is the ghost isn't quite dead, so a happy ending is guaranteed. Oh year, the rom/com conceit that there is a soulmate out there that chance / fate will attach at the fade out. But I kept wondering, what about Ruffalo's dead previous soulmate?

The Notorious Bettie Page
A film that works on 3 levels. 1st, it documents an era we can barely imagine today, when sex was a dirty secret. 2nd, it comments on a postfeminist acceptance of sexuality, women now ok with "objectifying" their beauty. Bettie's innocence now can be seen as her right to choose. 3rd, as an entertainment, it is charmingly naive, straightforward, allowing the irony to flow naturally from the story. Gretchen Mol is perfectly cast, with her angelic face and figure, she foreshadows the Playboy conceit of the all-American girl next door as desireable sex goddess. She also remains an enigma to us - e.g.: given the suggestion of incest, her later free attitude about nudity seems contrary to modern conventional psycho-wisdom.

Syriana
Like most political films, your vote depends on your bias. The message: dependency on oil corrupts. The remedy: drive a Prius(?) Is this really the problem and the answer? The ensemble multi-thread narrative form deprives screen time for the more gripping story lines. Clooney's burnt out spy (a la "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold") is under-written as is Matt Damon / Amanda Peet issue. Matt preaches. Other characters are bare caricatures.

The Sentinel
If you haven't "solved" the mystery by the middle of Act 2, you've never seen this genre before. Douglas joins Eastwood, Willis, Ford, as an aging action hero unconvincingly huffing & puffing his way to the end. Recycled action thriller with virtually nothing new or interesting to offer.

Don't Move
The joy in this film is watching Penelope Cruz stretch. Like Kidman, Streep, Theron, Hayek, she revels in the make-up & costuming that conceals her stunning beauty and exposes her inner actress. She overcomes the material and direction which focuses on the less interesting story of her lover. She still waits for a vehicle that will be worthy of her talent and presence.

Arms and the Man
If you want to know where many of the beats of romantic comedy conventions arose, read (or better yet watch) one by Shakespeare, Wilde, or Shaw. While the English recycle their lit often - Austen, Bronte, Dickens, etc, Shaw has been overlooked recently. But they are ripe for updates, being smartly anti war, upper class twits, hypocrites, sexual prudes, bureaucrats, parents - and is irreverent, even shocking - for its time, while being very, very funny with brilliant dialogue for the situations. Would love to see this one updated to a modern war or placed in our civil war, with the servants being slaves - that would be cool.

Strayed
Reminds me of Sophia Loren's "Two Women" in theme - survival of mother and child in war, but far more subtle. Beart endures by clinging to her faith in civilized values, while yielding to base passions exposed by need to survive. Delicate handling of mother and son's attraction to the "manly" wild boy.

Asylum
This genre is an opera with one recurring theme with infinite variations: Life can be so dull and unbearably secure that the need for passion and drama overcomes all reason, inexorably leading to destruction and disaster for all that one loves or cares about or knows is right. Even if you can foresee the end result, you can’t help yourself from continuing down the corridor; you need to feel something, anything — to prove you’re alive, even if it leads to pain and tragedy. Like and opera: (Bass) the boring, overbearing hubby; (soparano) the bored, lonely, sex starved woman; (baritone) the sweaty hunk with danger in his eyes.

Proof
This film is a sure flop: (1) it is full of words, without a single shot fired; (2) it demands concentration for more than a sound bite; (3) it helps if you have experienced some of life's risks: mental illness, creative doubts, grief, children, parents. Paltrow's father died a few years ago and she brings that to her performance along with all the depth her stage work in this piece formed. If you needed it, here's "proof" she can act.

Double Indemnity
Something few note about the noir genre which is the key to this movie's greatness. Walter Neff is not a dupe of a femme fatale. He's a dope, sure, but a more than willing one. He's the guy who is bored with convention, needs risk even tho he knows its fatal. He knows the blonde is absurdly cheap and bad, but he acts from a deeper urge: the thrill of danger - the jerk wants to be cool. That's why Fred is genius casting.

The Woman Next Door
A character says: "they could neither be togethe nor apart." And another says, "every love story has a beginning, a middle and and end." The French call it: "l'amour fou" (mad love) and it is inevitably tragic - you can't avoid the bad end - fate controls.

Shadows in the Sun
What is about Hollywood people and Tuscany? There was Diane Lane's vanity project, "Under The Tuscan Sun," with cute eccentric Italians and other foreigners welcoming the American lady to their - or her bosom. Now, Keitel & teen throbber Josh Jackson play out a trite play about a blocked writer father figure and his eccentric cute Italian friends teaching LIFE to a blocked American guy - only saver is watching CLAIRE FORLANI - but even her subplot romance with Josh is silly & contrived.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Ebert is on target, comparing to Huston-like subjects. Jones puts his heart and soul on the line - his South Texas roots and passion for the country are evident. Maybe too personal - things he prizes and lingers on may not be shared by many. There are nice picaresque touches - Levon Helm's cameo is super. A very personal story of honor, friendship, values.

10th District Court
[A French documentary showing a day's cases in a courtroom.] I was a public defender for many years and lived in France for a year. I was amused by the familiar echoes as well as the dischordant notes. US Misdemeanor courts are often treated with the same speed, despite pride in our perceived superior recognition of individual rights. Defendants and lawyers for both sides showed the same traits I saw in our courts: the amusing unawareness of the lameness of their arguments, the ease with which excuses are answered, the self-righteous pomposity of prosecutors. French cultural quirks evidenced: precise language, facial gestures, notions of gender character, resort to fatalism, class awareness.

Gentleman's Agreement
A historical document of film culture. Part of Hollywood's liberal guilty conscience in the post war about our failings: racism (see "Home Of The Brave"), etc. Ironic fact: Elia Kazan won Oscar, then later trashed the film for being too "weak" - yet he soon named names to HUAC's "leftist" cleansing (a term that inferred more than a little anti-semitism) that destroyed careers, including his film's co-star and close friend, John Garfield.

The Story of Qiu Ju
Like a fable, a shaggy dog story, or a gag about "fighting City Hall," Zhang Yimou and Gong Li entertain us with amusing characters and educate us about Chinese culture. This is the essence of "story telling," a Chinese Preston Sturges movie about country folk meeting complexities of modern life.

Design for Living
All contemporary romance comedy filmmakers should be forced to memorize every beat of this movie and then forced to make their movie sans gross gags & sex scenes as a test before being given any financing. Like a good book, like a radio play, like a silent film, Lubitsch proves imagination makes the best sex scenes. Hopkins languidly sprawled on a divan, breaking the menage's "gentleman's agreement" of no sex, sighing, "Unfortunately, I'm no gentleman," followed by slow fade out is as good as you're gonna get it.

Edmond
No original thoughts coming from Mamet's stylish pen here. His everyman coping with moral ambiguity, personified by perfectly cast Bill Macy, is severed from his middle class mediocrity for no good reason and has no center to keep him sane. He acts like a naif thrown into hell, completely ignorant of the rules, trying to apply "decency" to harsh reality. When he is victimized, he crumbles into insane violence. The whole voyage is unpleasant to watch and leaves you with no feelings for him - he squandered our sympathy with his foolish rants, nonsensical conclusions, and his predicament is wholly his own fault - or rather, Mamet's, who fails to convince us that this is a tragedy.

Viridiana
For those who think of Bunuel as obscure, dark, "arty," this film is a pleasant surprise. (Not unlike "Smiles Of A Summer Night" for Ingmar Bergman phobes.) It has less in common with the high ideas of Dali and Karl Marx than with the low comedy and satire of Mel Brooks and The Marx Brothers. Bunuel makes fun of dogmatic religion, do-gooders, every class, self-sacrifice, altruism, sexual desire in all its forms, the presumed nobility of the poor. The dining room scene with the revels of the poor, trashing their benefactress's table, parodying The Last Supper, is as funny and gross as any Coen Brothers film.

Gloomy Sunday
A wonderful surprise. Holden, critic of "NY Times," misses the point entirely when he ridicules the "suicide song" idea. It is not the song that kills, but the mood of hopelessness it evokes in people who have every real reason for desperation - they are about to be plunged into hell, and they see clearly how their peculiar arrangement for love will be destroyed. The love story of Ilona, Andras & Lazlo is heartbreaking, portrayed in human scale and much insight and compassion. Even the Nazi Weick possesses human traits. This is a story that might have happened.

Lie with Me
Bold & brave try for new look at sex & love for our times. Works on many levels. Dilemma of kids freed from past sex taboos now are emotional children despite their sophisticated sex attitude. Also thematic is effect of all this on post-feminist girls, empowered, but like children with explosive toys. For director, a bold try to avoid porn while being raw and explicit in a traditional romance form, modeled on "Last Tango In Paris." It works, more than titillation here, evokes real feelings for the characters. Last scene, not a cop out, but credible possibility of hope.

Firewall
Things I have seen too many times in a thriller: the endangered child who needs medication; the sadistic but intelligent mastermind; the criminal computer nerd; the crime team member with a heart; the crime team member who leers at the captive hot teen daughter; the hot teen daughter; the spunky wife; the 60 yr old hero dad who acts like a one man SWAT team, killing the much younger & supposedly deadly psycho kidnappers. This one will appeal to computer geeks who never saw any of the 50 prior movies exactly like this.

"The Cotton Club" (1984) - Forgotten Coppola Classic

2006-09-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Another movie that is as famous for the back story surrounding its making and another movie that tanked commercially and critically at its release but which has gained in reputation over time. It may not yet be considered a “classic,” but it is gaining momentum on cable re-runs.

Robert Evans, who as head of Paramount, had been credited with producing and overseeing THE GODFATHER I & II and CHINATOWN, the best films of the 1970's, had gone independent and this was his big package deal. Script problems and financing woes overwhelmed him at a time when he was trembling on the high wire of the Hollywood power structure. Evans became a poster boy for the excesses of the late 70's and early 80's, involving inflated egos and cocaine budgets that marked the fall of many wunderkind of the 1970's Hollywood renaissance.

As time dragged on during the long pre-production troubles of this mammoth project, Evans allegedly played footsie with some Florida pharmaceutical “importers” who wanted to use their ill-gotten fortune to buy into Hollywood glamour. An attractive dame, Lainie Greenberger, and a complex cast of low-lifes, who could have served as the basis for Elmore Leonard’s GET SHORTY, circled the project and murder ensued. The scandal and subsequent trial, in which Evans played a tangential role, was like those that threatened the Hollywood of an earlier era of excess, the 1920's.

That the movie involved the relationships of gangsters and show business in the 20's and 30's was an irony that has added to the film’s legend over the years.

Eventually Francis Ford Coppola accepted the challenge of cobbling a script and directing, and it is his vision (along with co-writer Mario Puzo) that is all over the final result. It is a fair addition to the Godfather genre (certainly better than his later made-for-dough GODFATHER III), matching scenes of violence with alternating and intercut musical numbers which comment on the action much as "The Godfather" had done with violent counterpoint to family issues.

Unlike The Godfather and more like APOCALYPSE, NOW, COTTON CLUB tries for too much irony, spins too many plates in the air at the same time. It evokes the Cotton Club era, when colorful gangsters ran the posh and trendy jazz club smack in the middle of Harlem, catering to a whites only audience with “colored” talent. The talent included some of the best musical artists this country has ever produced: Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Bill Robinson, Ethel Waters and many others. Coppola wanted to show it all: the gangsters, the Black / White issue, talent in the grasp of evil patrons.

And it is very much a musical, recreating the popular jazz of the era with production numbers — singing and dancing in top hats, taps, costumes, big bands. By 1984, when the movie was released, the audience had lost its taste for musical movies, especially those full of American standards rather than rock. ALL THAT JAZZ (1979), Bob Fosse’s brilliant but difficult autobiographical film, had flopped. Only ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975), SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977), and GREASE (1978), had clicked with the younger demographic in the 70's.

As in "The Godfather," the characters are a mesh of real people and some that are based loosely on real people or composites. The Lena Horne type, called “Lila Rose Oliver,” a light skinned chanteuse, is played by the beautiful Lonette McKee. Richard Gere plays “Dixie Dwyer,” a musician who becomes a movie gangster, a la George Raft. Diane Lane (then only 18), plays “Vera Cicero,” a gangster’s moll who wants to own a night club, like Texas Guinan. Nicolas Cage plays Dixie’s kid brother, “Vincent,” a gangster wannabe, who gets to be known as “Mad Dog” after a “hit” takes out some children as collateral damage. The real “Mad Dog,” Vincent Coll, made headlines in the early 1930's for similar activities.

Bob Hoskins plays Owen “Owney” Madden, the mobster who owned The Cotton Club (which had previously been owned by Black boxer, Jack Johnson). Madden was in fact English born, and was associated with Dutch Schultz, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, and Charley “Lucky” Luciano.

The movie depicts a true event. Desperate for money, Coll and his cronies kidnapped George Jean “Big Frenchy” DeMange (Fred Gwynne), an intimate of Owney Madden, who paid $35,000 for the safe release of his friend and then patiently plotted his revenge. Coll was lured to a drugstore phone booth to talk “peace” with Madden, and while on hold, he was aerated with a tommy gun.

James Remar makes a convincing psychopath as Dutch Schultz, (born Arthur Fleigenheimer) the Jewish gangster (though he converted to Catholicism in time to get the Last Rites). Schultz ran the Harlem rackets (credited as perfecting the “numbers” game) until he threatened to assassinate Thomas Dewey, the “special prosecutor” who had been assigned to get him. Dewey later succeeded as a prosecutor, became governor of New York, and in 1944 and ‘48 ran for president and lost. Dewey, a small neat man with a thin mustache, was famously ridiculed by Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter: “He looks like the man on the wedding cake.”

The newly consolidated syndicate, headed by Meyer Lansky and Luciano, had Schultz eliminated, and this event is fairly accurately depicted in the film (although it happened a few years later, 1935). It is one of Coppola’s inspired editing jobs, a climactic scene intercutting a dazzling solo dance by Gregory Hines on the Cotton Club stage with the shooting in a New Jersey restaurant. The hired killers were contracted by Luciano and Lansky from Murder, Inc., the business run by Louis “Lepke” Buchhalter, and included, among others, Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, Charley “The Bug” Workman, and other notable Jewish and Italian psychos who became famous in gangster movies and tabloid photos of their bodies in pools of blood.

Another sub-plot involves African American gangsters trying to keep their share of the Harlem rackets from the incursions of white mobsters. Laurence Fishburne plays real-life mobster “Bumpy” Johnson (here called Rhodes) as if he is a pioneering civil rights activist, integrating The Cotton Club, and proving he can be as ruthless as the white mobsters.

The history is not much different. Johnson was viewed by Harlemites as symbol of “Black Power” against the white Mob. He and Madame “Queenie” St. Clair had fought for their share of the numbers swag against the more politically connected, better armed and more ruthless white gangsters of the era.

In a touching sub-plot which tracks a common historical issue, Hines and McKee fall in love. Conflict over her wish to pass as a “white” star, and their ironic problem getting a hotel room because they appear to be a mixed couple, are highlighted. At another point, Hines is excluded from a night club where she is performing. They do get together for a happy ending.

Coppola also gives more than lip service to the heritage of great tap dancing that the era represented. “Honi” Coles and other tap legends do a bit with Hines, and Greg and his brother Maurice have fine moments on stage. Gwen Verdon, the legendary Broadway dancer ("Lola" in DAMN YANKEES) and wife and partner of Bob Fosse, plays Dixie’s mother, but gets to do only a couple of steps. The Cotton Club chorus of beautiful light skinned Black dancers (including a young chorus boy, Mario Van Peebles) do lively numbers to several of the jazz age’s best numbers, including “Diga-diga-do.”

Ellington’s great lyrical melodies are the underscoring for violent action. There are several effectively erotic sex scenes between Gere, then the big star, and newly adult Lane, in her first big chance. After this flop and a few others, it looked like Diane Lane would never make it big. She and Gere were matched again 20 years later, and Lane would steal the movie from Gere, attain “instant” stardom and an Oscar, in UNFAITHFUL (2002).

A footnote. George Raft, the actor who was the model for Gere’s role in COTTON CLUB, is a fascinating character. He was born in one of New York’s worst slums, Hell’s Kitchen, but resembled Rudolf Vaentino and learned to dance like the silent film matinee idol. That assured Raft a raft of female followers, including Texas Guinan, who kept him around her night club to “perform.”

In 1932, he made it in Hollywood with a supporting role in Howard Hawks’ SCARFACE, with a trademark coin tossing bit. He was typecast in gangster roles partly because his lifelong pals included Owney Madden and Ben Siegel. The Raft part in BUGSY was played by Joe Mantegna.

James Cagney claimed in his autobiography that when he was president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, the Mob wanted to kill him for opposing their involvement in movie unions. He credited Raft in interceding with his friends to cancel the hit.

Under contract to Warner Brothers, Raft is most famous for turning down the leads in — no kidding: HIGH SIERRA (1941), THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), CASABLANCA (1942) and DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). He can therefore be credited with insuring the success of those classics, and making the careers of Huston, Bogart, Wilder and MacMurray.

He must not have been all dumb. He supposedly said: “I must have gone through $10 million during my career. Part went for gambling, part for horses and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”

Late in his life, he played a parody of his own image as “Spats Colombo” in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959).

(Sources include Wikipedia, IMBD, various contemporary critics)

BRICK (2006)

2006-08-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

MEMO TO MDB FROM MPB RE: YOUR SCREENPLAY

Just ran dvd of BRICK and it should inspire you. On the commentary, Rian Johnson relates how he wrote the script in 1997, 1 year out of film school, then shopped it for 6 (!) years before he decided to get family members to bankroll him - he's from San Clemente, so I'm guessing the family had some $$ - he says his budget was 1/2 million. [Of course, you'll have to get a new family, but ...]

It was a Sundance prize winner for originality and got enough of an audience and critical approval for the writer/diretor to get more work.

He also says (interestingly to me - and probably to me only) how he got the idea. He started with MILLER'S CROSSING, which he memorized, then got into MALTESE FALCON and CHINATOWN.

Then (he says) he was told about the "source material" the books of Hammett, Chandler and Cain, which he then read and found the dialogue, settings and descriptions that inspired him to strip the location cliches and put it in settings he knew about, coming up with his own high school where he actually filmed it.

Of course, the result isn't entirely successful, as I see it. He's a bit shaky on the tightrope, almost falling into parody, too playfully self-conscious in stylized dialogue. Some critics compare it to BUGGSY MALONE a bizarre almost pedophilic movie in which little kids in 1930's costumes and makeup played gangsters and molls. Jodie Foster, at 11, was a femme fatale! Others liken it to CRUEL INTENTIONS as the high school version of DANGEROUS LIAISONS, more credible because it plugged into the "mean girls" paradigm.

Johnson remarks that producers shied away from the script, knowing that the filming was all important, and that if the tone was not perfect, it would crash and burn. It almost does. Judging by Netflix user comments, it seems that many didn't "get it" at all. Not surprising. You really do have to dig the genre and accept the conventions - the overly complex plot, the mandatory characters, the needed exposition. It is true that making a high school student act like Bogart - smart, tough, sadistic - is a stretch and some of the acting - most in fact, is way too self-conscious and mechanical to permit real involvement.

But those defects are inevitable when engrafting a genre that was credible in the hard bitten Depression to the self-indulgent suburbs of SoCal teen life. Yet, it does fit nicely into my thesis about the pervasive influence of the Noir ethic and style on pop culture.

ASK THE DUST

2006-08-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

L.A.: Where Dreams Come To Die

ASK THE DUST (2005) was not a box office hit. A period movie about L.A. in The Great Depression, with a less than subtle theme about prejudice against Mexicans was doomed even though it involves a love story between stars Colin Farrell and Salma Hayak (including some hot nude sex scenes), and the project was affectionately nurtured, written and directed by Robert Towne, a long time Hollywood heavyweight (SHAMPOO, TEQUILA SUNRISE, CHINATOWN).

ASK THE DUST is a certain failure for modern audiences, not only because they can’t “get” period movies, but because the plot is hopelessly dated. A writer is inspired by the tragic death of the love he didn’t appreciate until it is too late. The doomed beauty dies of Camille’s illness, the cough that appears just as happiness is in sight, in order to provide a tragedy.

Colin Farrell plays “Arturo Bandini,” an aspiring idealistic writer embittered by the prejudice he has been subjected to as an Italian in Colorado, who comes to LA with dreams of becoming a famous and important writer. He has one published short story, but now has nothing to write about and the samples we are shown are trash and he knows it. He lives in Bunker Hill, in a shabby hotel, meets some strange LA characters - a grizzled old alcoholic (Donald Sutherland) and a scarred, lonelyhearted girl (Idena Menzel), who he beds out of pity after which she conveniently dies in the Long Beach earthquake.

Down to nickels, he demeans “Camilla Perez,”a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek) because she is illiterate, until she seduces him. Camilla wants to marry an Anglo (she toys with a bartender named “White”) so she can get a green card and live the American dream, and at first sees the poor Italian writer as not much of an improvement on her own lot. But there are sparks — the old fashioned kind of romantic chemistry, where they bitch at each other until they fall into bed. But when he refuses to marry her because she is a Mexican, she leaves him. When he realizes what he has lost, he finds her – as she dies in his arms - and now that he has suffered, he can write that great American novel. This is a period plot that stopped boiling around 1939.

Towne’s respect for the author in this case probably overwhelmed his judgment with dire results. Reportedly, he was unlucky. He wrote the screenplay in 1990 and, after unsuccessfully shopping it for years, had Johnny Depp interested in the lead. Salma Hayek turned it down 8 years ago because she was avoiding Mexican roles as a threat to her career. Several studios backed it and then backed away - until Colin Farrell signed on. Unfortunately, Farrell’s eyebrows are his only feature that can act and he is unconvincing and unmoving as a starving Italian from Colorado.

Towne, an LA native, had discovered the novel while researching CHINATOWN in the 1970's. It had been written by John Fante, a onetime screenwriter (A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)) in the 1930's. Fante’s series of semi-autobiographical books about “Arturo Bandini,” had temporarily been compared with other Depression era novels exposing the limits of the American myth of “the pursuit of happiness.” Fante’s work was later rediscovered by the LA poet, Charles Bukowski, who told his own cult followers of Fante’s “genius” and allegedly copied his style.

In the midst of The Great Depression, LA was a hot magnet for desperate hopes. If you were going to be homeless, it might as well be in the sunshine. You might be hungry but at least you could eat oranges, avocados and walnuts from the trees. The rumors and realities of boom drew immigrants like locusts. Hollywood’s Dream Factory had been churning by that time for twenty years. Every pretty young thing and her mother had visions of Shirley Temple or Lana Turner dancing in their heads. At the same time, any New Yorker who could scribble a short story, play, or novel, was recruited to script dialogue for the Talkies.

While they all came for the money and fame, the writers, being a self-absorbed depressed lot by nature, hated themselves for selling out. They morosely drank their booze, not in speakeasies and cafés, but around swimming pools and night clubs, carping about their servitude to The Studio moguls who kept them like expensive whores.

Out of this alcoholic haze of self-hatred came the literary and cinematic form we now call “L.A. Noir.” Raymond Chandler is the icon of the genre, but he is just one of the many who mined the underside of the golden glitz of lotus land. CHINATOWN drew heavily from Chandler’s stories and aura of corrupt cops, sex, drugs, dirty secrets behind the facades of Pasadena mansions.

Nathaniel West wrote “The Day Of The Locust” (1939) about the losers at the fringes of Hollywood in the 1930's. The book which climaxes in a riot at a premiere, was rediscovered in the 60's by a generation that was living through similar cataclysmic times. While he wrote, West worked as a clerk in cheap hotels owned by his relatives and provided often free lodging to a number of aspiring writers, including James T. Farrell and Erskine Caldwell. According to Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett wrote "The Thin Man" there. West died in car accident after hearing of the death of his close friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was once the most famous novelist in America before becoming a mediocre screenwriter.

Billy Wilder is the epitome of the wise guy intellectual writer who flayed the Hollywood that fed him. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1946) (which he co-wrote with Raymond Chandler from James M. Cain’s novel) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)(co-written with Charles Brackett, who had once been one of The New Yorker’s many theater critics who went west - like Herman Mankiewicz and Dorothy Parker) are products of this sensibility.

The genre continues into the modern era of novels and films.

TRUE CONFESSIONS (1981) starred Robert De Niro as a Priest and Robert Duvall as his police detective brother. From a novel by John Gregory Dunne and screenplay by Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, and directed by Ulu Grosbard, the movie follows the issues of the genre, corruption, sex, the seedy fringes of movie business as part of LA’s heritage.

Jack Nicholson (starring and directing) and Towne had failed to duplicate the success of CHINATOWN with its sequel, THE TWO JAKES (1990), although it deserves a second look without the unfair comparison with Polanski’s original work. Where CHINATOWN explored the corruption surrounding water and land development, THE TWO JAKES deals with oil and gas rights during the Post WW II San Fernando Valley building boom.

In 1995, Denzel Washington brought Walter Mosley’s sometime detective, Easy Rollins, to life in DEVIL WITH THE BLUE DRESS. Mosley’s Easy Rollins series of novels portrays LA’s African American heritage in the post war years, when a thriving Black middle class strove for the American Dream — before the freeways cut the life out of their community.

GET SHORTY (1995) written by Scott Frank from Elmore Leonard’s novel, and directed by Barry Sonenfeld has become a cult classic. “Chili Palmer” as played by John Travolta, became an instant icon, the east coast mobster who easily outtoughs the LA wannabes around the movie industry and drug traffic. Although the sequel, BE COOL, tried to recapture the Chili Palmer mystique, the wit was sadly strained.

MULHOLLAND FALLS (1996) also failed with critics and box office. The story was based on “The Hat Squad,” a group of LAPD officers who, in the 1950's, were assigned by reform chief Parker to dispose of mobsters. These corrupt cops (Nick Nolte, Chazz Palmentieri, Michael Madsen and Chris Penn) meet a hooker (Jennifer Connolly) who dies from radiation at a secret Army A-Bomb test site while servicing the head of the AEC (John Malkovich).

In recent years, the most successful movie of the genre was LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997). Although set in post war LA, the essential elements of LA noir — crooked cops, the seedy fringes of the movie business, racial prejudice — were there in James Ellroy’s novel. Ellroy, a self-proclaimed keeper of the flame of LA noir (his own mother was murdered when he was a child, a life altering event which sparked his continuing fascination with crime). Curtis Hansen directed the brilliant script by Brian Helgeland.

The film was a coming out party for emerging stars - Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce - provided an Oscar winning role for Kim Basinger as a burnt out call girl with a heart of gold and terrific parts for James Cromwell, David Strathairn, and Danny DeVito.

Following the formula of weaving fictional characters with reality, the movie convincingly depicted a turning point in LA crime when the LAPD began to reform itself under Chief Parker.

GAME 6 - "This could be it."

2006-06-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you’re free from sentimental baseball parables about The Meaning of LIFE, they suck you back into the vortex of sappy metaphors for loss and hope.

Of course, it is easy for me to get sucked in because I’m the lead sucker for this sort of hoke. Trapped in Brooklyn in the 1950's, I was baptized into the Dodger religion too early to know better. I suffered through a decade of almost beating the hated Yankees with all the imagined metaphors of good and evil spinning in my tousled head.

Then, they finally became winners when I was 12 years old - and my childhood was over, cut short in its prime by cruel capitalism and the stinging reality of inexorable change. The lesson was bitterly learned. Nothing (good) ever lasts. My childhood was stolen by the crime of the century when the devil O’Malley abused my faith, robbed me of my innocent belief in games.

Baseball movies try to capture the symbolism of these memories - when hope for perfection still lived. They trade on our naive wishes for heroism, justice, love, loyalty. But they often lose their balance. Melodrama overtakes, chokes away true feelings. They reach too far for the outside pitch of metaphor and whiff.

Bernard Malamud’s THE NATURAL is one of those pretentiously symbolic legend reaches. BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY is another.

FIELD OF DREAMS is probably the most blatant, trying to tie the game up with America’s stolen pre-1968 supposed innocence. I cried like every other sap when Ray choked out “Wanna play catch, dad?” But on reflection, I knew that the rebellion that had led the teenage Ray to reject his father’s stifling dreams for him had been a truer impulse.

At least BULL DURHAM swung at a faster pitch - equating baseball with sex - and hit it over the fence.

The lack of credible athleticism has always been problematic for actors in this genre. De Niro looked better as a boxer in RAGING BULL than he did as a catcher in BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY. Cooper was famously inept in PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, as was Anthony Perkins (FEAR STRIKES OUT).

Costner looks like he can play better than he can act and so, is credible as a fading pitcher (FOR LOVE OF THE GAME) and an ex-player (in the otherwise awful THE UPSIDE OF ANGER). Dennis Quaid (THE ROOKIE), and Charlie Sheen (MAJOR LEAGUE) have the same talent.

My own Dodger demons prevent me from sympathizing with the lore surrounding the Boston Red Sox. Although many northeast intellectuals have waxed poetic about the tragedy of rooting for this team which broke hearts for 70 years, I never could get worked up about them.

For one thing, I viewed the Sox as unworthy of devotion by comparison to my team. On the level of social symbolism, the Dodgers stood for integration (Jackie, Campy, Newk), while the Sox were for Whites Only - the last major league team to integrate. Their owner, Tom Yawkey, was overtly racist, and their fan base was almost exclusively White. Their fans booed Ted Williams - the last true American Hero, because he refused to love them back. And they booed Jim Rice, their only African-American star.

In 2005, FEVER PITCH played with Red Sox fanaticism in a romantic sitcom, matching Drew Barrymore with SNL's Jimmy Fallon. Adapted by Nick Hornby - from his own novel which was about Brit soccer nuts - and directed by the Farrelly Brothers, the movie was a success, giving hope to nerdy boys that a Drew might overlook their kiddy obsessions and find them "cute and charming" enough to fall for them.

GAME 6, a far better movie, sunk almost without notice the same season. Novelist Don DeLillo wrote the script. Michael Keaton is a playwright and Sox fan on the day of game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when the Sox, on the verge of winning their first Series since 1918, are destined to blow a two run lead with 2 out in the ninth and lose again, denying redemption for Keaton's character.

It is also opening night of Keaton’s play and the game becomes an imagined turning point, testing his faith in life. Robert Downey, Jr. is a scathing critic who Keaton seeks out to destroy after the game. An uplifting ending sugar coats an otherwise effective noir fable.

Both of these films have lost some impact because of the improbable coincidence of the Sox Series win in 2004. When my Dodgers finally overcame destiny and beat the Yankees in 1955, everything after that was anti-climax.

The world did change, but victory was hollow. They lost again the next year to the Yankees and then O’Malley crushed the rest of the illusions of youth, cruelly trading Jackie to the Giants and courting L.A.

O'Malley proved that THE GODFATHER had a better handle on the truth: "It's not personal - it's just business."

The sentiment of my childhood dissolved and I searched for something else to love, now wary of giving my heart to anything or anyone else.

MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

2006-06-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

If you think you and your group of friends are expert at incestuous intrigue, clever put-downs, and collaborations that can produce some insights, next time you get together with your crowd rent this movie.

In the New York ‘20's, a group of young men and women, mostly aspiring writers who toiled at newspapers and magazines, began to meet for long lunches, gossip, what we would now call “networking.”

In 1994, Alan Rudolph directed this movie, a bio of Dorothy Parker and the other brutally witty members of an informal club who frequented the Algonquin Hotel dining room daily and became known as the Round Table. These liberated men and women became as famous as their expatriate counterparts in Paris - Stein, Toklas, Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Murphy, etc. - and had an arguably greater cumulative impact on popular culture of their period. They remain relevant today.

The movie shows the competitive and convivial atmosphere that spurred the group to eventually create some of the best literature, plays, and movies of the 20th Century. Their voices - urbane, sophisticated, witty to the point of cruelty - became the voice of some of the most memorable Broadway and Hollywood product of the 1930's and 1940's.

Dorothy Parker was more immediately famous for what she said than what she wrote. She coined many of the most notorious barbs of The Table: Reviewing Katherine Hepburn’s Broadway performance: “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” About a notorious society trollop: “That woman speaks 18 languages and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.” Did she enjoy the cocktail party? “One more drink and I’d have been under the host.” And my favorite: “You may lead a whore-to-culture, but you can’t make her think.” When someone commented that a particular actress was her own worst enemy, Dot winked: “Not while I’m alive.”

But she wrote some of the best short stories of the time and poetry which she derided as doggerel but when read today still bites. She became an icon for women of the era, who pioneered feminism, dove into a liberated life and nearly drowned in tears, alcohol, and eventual misery. She led an unhappy but very productive life.

In Hollywood with her husband Alan Campbell, she wrote A STAR IS BORN, and the original screenplay for Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR, added scenes and dialogue for her friend Lillian Hellman’s THE LITTLE FOXES.

The role is a tour de force for Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose performance includes a difficult to take nasal delivery that approximates Parker’s alcohol induced speech. Rudolph is a disciple of Robert Altman, who produced and influenced the style of ensemble acting and camera work, eavesdropping on the overlapping dialogue.

The cast includes Campbell Scott as Robert Benchley, Parker’s soulmate, Matthew Broderick as her lover, Charlie MacArthur, Andrew McCarthy as Eddie Parker, her morphine addicted and abusive husband. Stanley Tucci, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, Stephen Baldwin, and Heather Graham have small roles.

The Round Table included the following characters with their eventual work:

George S. Kaufman (played by David Thornton). Playwright, often collaborating with other Round Table friends - Moss Hart, Marc Connelly, Ring Lardner, Edna Ferber, or Morrie Ryskind, among others).

Films adapted by others from his plays include the Marx Brothers’ plays/movies: THE COCOANUTS (1929) and ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930), and DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), STAGE DOOR (1937) and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938), and THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1941), which included a character based on Alexander Woollcott, the critic and member of the Round Table, whose famous quote was “Everything I like is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

Kauffman hated Hollywood and co-wrote only one script - with Morrie Ryskind, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935), the best and funniest of the Marx Brothers films. He returned in 1947 to direct THE SENATOR WAS INDISCREET (1947), a very funny political satire starring William Powell.

Charles MacArthur was a Chicago newspaperman who teamed up with Ben Hecht to write several Broadway hits, including THE FRONT PAGE (1928) better known in its Howard Hawks adaptation (HIS GIRL FRIDAY) and TWENTIETH CENTURY (1932), a classic movie starring Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. With Hecht, he wrote the script for WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). MacArthur married actress Helen Hayes in 1928 and their adopted son is actor James MacArthur.

Moss Hart wrote the screenplays for GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, PRINCE OF PLAYERS.

Robert Benchley. He was managing editor of Vanity Fair, then a columnist for the New York World, later drama editor of Life and ltheater critic for The New Yorker. He became famous doing stand up routines that satirized middle class values, including short films in the form of lectures: THE SEX LIFE OF THE POLYP, THE TROUBLE WITH HUSBANDS, and HOW TO TAKE A VACATION, HOW TO SLEEP. His son, Peter Benchley, wrote JAWS.

Robert E. Sherwood (Nick Cassavettes). In the 1920's, he was movie critic for Life Magazine and the New York Herald. In the 1930's, he wrote plays which became famous films: WATERLOO BRIDGE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST, TOVARICH.

In Hollywood, he adapted his own plays: IDIOT'S DELIGHT, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS and wrote or co-wrote original screenplays: THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, REBECCA, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE BISHOP'S WIFE.

Ben Hecht was an occasional member of the club. He was probably the most successful screenwriter of the crowd, though later in his life he demeaned his career as a waste of his talent. The story for SCARFACE, scripts for DESIGN FOR LIVING, TWENTIETH CENTURY, VIVA VILLA, NOTHING SACRED, GUNGA DIN, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, SPELLBOUND, NOTORIOUS, KISS OF DEATH, MONKEY BUSINESS.

Other members of The Circle include Edna Ferber (played by Lili Taylor) - wrote the novels GIANT and SHOW BOAT, the plays STAGE DOOR and DINNER AT EIGHT with Kaufman); Harpo Marx, Will Rodgers (Keith Carradine); Broadway critic and wit Alexander Woollcott (whose personality was the basis of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” and the Clifton Webb character in LAURA); Harold Ross (Sam Robards), founder of The New Yorker for whom Parker and many others of The Circle contributed stories and reviews; Franklin P. Adams (Chip Zein), wit and columnist; James Thurber (THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY), New Yorker cartoonist and writer; Ring Lardner and Heywood Broun, sports columnists and writers.

Occasional diners included Elmer Rice (Jon Favreau) playwright and screenwriter STREET SCENE; Marc Connelly (Matt Malloy) who wrote CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS; and Donald Ogden Stewart (David Gow) screenplays for Phillip Barry’s plays HOLIDAY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, and LOVE AFFAIR (remade twice) AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, Lubitsch’s THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING, and the Tracy - Hepburn WITHOUT LOVE. He was also script doctor on many films, including DINNER AT EIGHT, with his fellow lunchers.

After you and your friends watch the movie, get sober and start writing.

KING KONG 1933-2005 - who really killed the beast?

2006-05-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

Kong has always been more than a monster to me.

Not implacable, mechanical, heartless, like those in ALIEN, JAWS, or THE TERMINATOR. He is warmer than FRANKENSTEIN who also had a tragic aura about him - but he whined a bit too much for my taste.

Okay, Frankie suffered from PTSD and all those electro-shock treatments --- and his HMO must have been one of the worst. What’s the co-pay for Dr. F, the mad scientist?

Serial killers in the movies are our modern urban monsters of the implacable sort. Their stories rarely give them redeeming qualities meant to touch us. Ralph Fiennes in RED DRAGON had a bit of it. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA grasps for this sentiment.

But KONG is not really a beast. He is more like me — misunderstood, unloved, a lonely guy in a scary jungle, apparently the only one of his kind - a mammal stranded among stupid dinosaurs who can’t take a joke. Like me, he craves some warm-blooded company, some companion, preferably someone in a slip.

Of course, Kong’s story involves an inter specie love story - truly the love that dares not (and cannot) speak its name. Sure, its a mismatch, but no worse than Ashton and Demi, Tom and Katie ... or any on The Bachelorette.

The story has always been a kin of the road film, where a woman is captured by an apparent brute who she tames and ultimately destroys or redeems with her femininity.

It takes a little from many fables, “Jack And The Beanstalk,” IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, THE LOST WORLD, even the ending from TITANIC.

I won't mention "Beauty And The Beast" because ... well, you know, "T'was beauty killed the beast" is as familiar a bit of corny movie poetry as "Here's looking at you, kid."

If you want to see the story with poetry, watch Cocteau's BELLE ET LA BÊTE.

The original KK had some nasty implications as a racist / sexist cautionary tale - the dark eyed male beast abducting the white woman in order to peel her lingerie like a banana. The latest Kong seems to have the same hang-up about blondes, but that's where his humanity ends.

The 1933 Kong was big, but somehow, when I first saw him on TV in black and white on that small screen, he seemed to be almost human. True, he swatted men, pteradactyls and biplanes like wasps and wrestled a T Rex to the death, but he was no superduperhero like the CG cartoon of the latest incarnation. This one is more a stuntman than a hero, more a circus performer than an ape in trouble.

One thing that I wondered about was whether Kong killed all the previous offerings and what made Ann Darrow such a delight that he was willing to risk all. I must admit that every actress who played the part - Fay Wray, Jessica Lange, and now Naomi Watts - has been a dish. But none have been what I would call femmes fatales, intentionally drawing the powerful male to his doom.

I suspect that what makes this story so cool for boys and girls is that it means something visceral to each sex - and the meaning is different to each sex.

To boys it simply is a fantasy of masculine power - KK is the essence of “Awesome.”

And to girls, there is something irresistible about a guy who can slay dragons while you’re safe in the palm of his hand. A post-feminist hero defined. Respectful, tender, and strong. Because Ann is innocent of her allure, she is an eye-opener for girls who can be sexually empowered with little effort.

And please, hold the jokes about bad breath, banana peels all over the house, and who’s gonna clean the bathroom?

It is a nice, little love story, perfect for an independent movie about misfits trying to mesh.

Unfortunately, as Oscar Wilde observed, “Nothing succeeds like excess.”

Peter Jackson’s movie is like taking a 747 to go to the grocery store.

He has more in common with Cecil B. DeMille who magnified Bible parables into super colossal, stupendous behemoths with casts of thousands. Jackson identifies more with Carl Denham than with any other character and he is fully aware of his folly and his tragedy.

Loving the magic (of Hollywood), he has mastered it and all but destroyed it with his excessiveness. He shows the same callous contempt for the audience of his movie that Denham shows in his exhibition. He tries too hard to impress us with his computer tricks, when in reality, he had a pretty good little tale to tell.

Tell the truth. Did you ever once forget that blue and green screens were behind the curtain?

What Jackson and the other techno-thrill ride creators forget is that roller coasters, no matter how fast they are, lose their wallop with each trip. We're hip to all the video game illusions - and they no longer move us very much, no matter how much we admire the technical wizardry behind them.

Naomi Watts saves the movie because of her expressive innocent sensuality, her close-ups the only acting that goes on in a human scale in this gargantuan monstrosity of computer design gone berserk.

Her relationship with the big guy arcs like that of a pet for its benefactor. She is like a toy poodle, first terrified by her enormous owner, then winning him with amusing tricks and her cuteness. She cowers, seeks his protection. Eventually, she bonds with him and now yaps at his enemies. Ultimately, she mourns him.

And so do I. Jackson and his minions have taken my Kong away from me.

SHOPGIRL - a pop quiz

2006-05-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

1. Steve Martin is either:
(a) a first rate artist and thinker who has made the almost impossible jump from lightweight comic to satiric genius to writer of real “literature” and weighty scripts; or

(b) a pretentious pretender to Woody Allen’s dubious title as the aging clown who wants to make us cry and who egotistically miscasts himself as potential lover to 20-something girls, without Bill Murray's self-restraint.

2. “Ray Porter,” the character he created in his novella and his screenplay and plays in the film is either:
(a) an emotionally crippled but basically decent man who has reached the stage in his life where he can accept ‘love’ only on superficial terms, thereby losing a chance to assuage his isolation with true commitment of his heart, to his eventual regret; or

(b) a self-deceiving over-the-hill seducer of an emotionally fragile girl - the only prey he could impress with his sprayed on charm and ostentatious wealth.

3. Claire Danes is either:
(a) an enchanting actress who perfectly embodies an almost beautiful girl/woman who begins without self-confidence, but when treated as desirable and glamorous, becomes a radiant star; or

(b) an empty shell with a minimal emotional range and less sex appeal.

4. “Mirabelle Buttersfield,” the character Martin wrote and Ms. Danes portrays, is either:
(a) a delicate moth about to become a butterfly, with and for the right guy, finding the strength to face the pain of failed love and the possible rejection of her art; or

(b) a man’s idea of a foolishly immature and dull young woman who is drawn to losers and users, with every right to be depressed, especially when she is dumped by a sugar daddy, who buys her nice clothes and pays off her student loan, freeing her to miraculously "self-actualize" as a successful artist and finder of true love.

5. Jason Schwartzmann is either:
(a) a talented actor who shows surprising scope - able to credibly mature from male ditzy-slacker-nerdy dude roles to a more adult kind of “real” person; or

(b) still a B-list undergrad Ben Stiller type who can't even reach Adam Sandler's bootlaces.

6. “Jeremy,” the character he plays, is either:
(a) a socially inept and offensively insensitive boy who makes the commitment to mature when he senses hope for love from a terrific girl, and does grow up and gives his heart to her; or

(b) a caricature of a type barely remembered by the over-middle-aged writer who used to be a sort of “Jeremy” when he was THE LONELY GUY and THE JERK, but is now rich, famous and "wiser."

7. SHOPGIRL is either (a) a delicately balanced and tenderly performed movie about people adrift in the dreamworld of Los Angeles, a worthy sequel to Steve Martin’s previous satiric insights about this city, L.A. STORY and BOWFINGER, but with “a little sex,” and a straighter face; or

(b) an overwritten, over-directed, self-consciously acted embarrassment that aspires to but utterly fails to be what LOST IN TRANSLATION and BROKEN FLOWERS achieved.

The right answer to every question is: (a) or (b), depending on your digestion, tolerance, zodiac sign, the phase of the moon, your age, sex, marital status, and / or mood.

ALEXANDER - revising the revisionist vision

2006-05-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

As Oliver Stone begins his softening campaign to prepare the world for his 9/11 movie, WORLD TRADE CENTER, I thought it timely to re-evaluate his last production. Stone re-cut the movie for his DVD, and included his own very revealing commentary. The result tells us more about Stone than about the subject of his film.

A director’s cut usually adds scenes that had been cut for commercial reasons. This one is the opposite. The movie was such a failure with audiences and critics that Stone felt compelled to re-cut it, shorten it, re-order scenes, in order to make it coherent. It is still a mess, but the real problem is that, like Greek tragedy, it was doomed from its conception.

The first problem is the subject matter. A historical biography of this nature must contain two parallel arcs: the Macro and the Micro. The needs of Drama defy coherent telling of both lines in Alexander’s case. The famous general events of his life must be touched. They contain hints of “story,” but the truth is complex, lengthy, and doesn’t provide a natural arc and climax. He conquered and then he conquered more, and then he died. His death was anti-climactic; his life was unfinished, his legacy muddled.

The Micro story is even more problematic as a drama for contemporary taste. As with all great leaders, people have been trying to figure him out and Stone gives it a shot, trying to wedge him into his pre-conceptions. Alexander was a Greek, which meant being raised in Greek mythology, religion, sexual values. His motivations, demons, actions, are strange to our sensibilities.

Stone tries to psycho-analyze the great man, so that modern audiences can nod in some kind of recognition. His family was dysfunctional. Father Phillip the king of Macedon, played by Val Kilmer, was a drunken brute who feared his son’s challenge to his power.

Mother Olympias, played by Angelina Jolie, was even stranger. She raised her son to believe he was descended (even sired) by The Gods. She kept pet snakes in her bedroom for company - and metaphoric references. Snakes are like men, Stone has her telling Alex in her Natasha-like accent.

No wonder the kid was screwed up, driven, neurotic, insecure, ended up liking boys more than girls.

Stone, as revealed by his commentary, knows he is walking in the sandals of giants. For him they are De Mille, Lean, and other “epic” filmmakers. He also knows his own filmography, and refers frequently to his other war film, PLATOON.

Stone cannot evade his own political nature, and can’t help finding parallels between Bush and Alexander, referencing military escapades of Westerners into "The East" - Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Western leaders go East with “good” intentions, but Alexander, in Stone’s view, was wiser and nobler than ours. He wanted to unite East and West and his policies toward enemies were benign, respecting their religions and even their leaders after he defeated them. His generalship was better. Alexander never let go of one enemy to pursue another.

Stone opines that Alexander would never have let Bin Laden slip away. It seems like an argumentative stretch.

A second insurmountable problem for Stone is that his Alexander, Colin Farrell, is too small for the role of world conqueror. He is fine in the micro moments, when his sad little eyes seem frightened of his parents, of his lovers, of his obsessions. But when he must be Heroic, inspiring his troops with speeches, he lacks the presence of George C. Scott (PATTON), the brute macho power of Mel Gibson (BRAVEHEART), the tortured ambiguity of Peter O'Toole (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA), or the poetry of Olivier (HENRY V).

Stone decided to use Irish and Scottish accents -except for Angelina’s silly sounding Albanian (?) accent - for his Greeks, arguing in his commentary that the Macedonians had Celtic origins, were a crude bunch, and Greece was a “diverse” population. He likes the lilt of Irish and shied from the usual classic English - as in the 1954 Richard Burton ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

Okay, but it still sounds out of place to our ears, diminishes the larger-than-life element that legendary heroes require.

A third problem he fails to solve is how to make the complicated battles coherent. Stone tried to faithfully suggest the tactics of the famous Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander defeated the enormous Persian hordes of Darius by martial genius and near maniacal courage. But, despite aerial shots, explanatory dialogue and other devices, it remains a jumble in the desert. Compare these scenes with comparable battles in LAWRENCE.

Stone had a terrible time with the syntax of the narrative. He responded to the audience’s reaction to the theatrical release. Apparently the previews hadn’t warned him. In the DVD, he changed the order of scenes to a less linear telling, saving key events of Alexander’s childhood and rise to power until after battle scenes, moving some to the second and even the third act. His arguments for the change are convincing, but don’t solve the inherent problems.

Finally, Stone has to prove that this story has “relevance” and an important theme for us. As usual, he hammers his ideas. Alexander wanted to be civilized, but he still possessed the brutality of his nature, symbolized by the primitive lust for power and death embodied by the mythological Titans.

Anthony Hopkins, as Alexander’s general Ptolemy in old age, narrates throughout the film as Stone’s voice. In the epilogue, he “reveals” to us that Alexander was poisoned by his friends, that he knew the wine was poisoned, but wanted to die after his lifelong “companion,” Ephistaion, died - probably also poisoned, according to Stone.

Alexander was a dreamer, and therefore had to be killed by his generals — including - Stone, ever the conspiracy seeker asserts — by Ptolemy himself.

Stone’s commentary admits that all of this is speculation which some historians have permitted, but Stone likes it because it suits his theme. The dreamers must be killed because they exhaust us with their dreams. They are dangerous to peace and tranquility. He’s still arguing for JFK’s hero status and his assassination rationale.

The commentary is full of praise for his subject, distinguishing him from tyrants who led armies for conquest, like Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler. The argument is self-serving and superficial. Yes, Alexander carried the benefits of Greek cutlure, had some enlightened policies. But all conquerors can say that, and all of their propagandists have made that argument.

I think it is revealing that Stone admits that he first became enamored of Alexander through his boyhood reading.

Stone, whose reputation is as opponent to war (BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY) and governmental power (NIXON, JFK), reveals himself to be a film director who loves power more than any ideas. Part of the thrill of directing on this scale is the exercise of generalship, moving toy soldiers around a story board.

Stone wins the battles he has scripted but loses the war of ideas and drama. No wonder he is nervous about the reception to his 9/11 movie.

BOX OFFICE Q&A

2006-05-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

Movie executives are always looking for catchy titles to insure success.

The length of marquees has always been of concern making problems for such as ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and DR. STRANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.

So, execs keep looking for shorter titles. Recent years have produced the following:

Q&A, A.I., B.A.P.S., O, PCU, S.W.A.T., U-571, UHF, XXX and the one that made the most money, E.T.

For some reason, K is a popular letter for short movie titles, like K-2, K-9, K-19, K-PAX.

But my favorite K titles are the longer, little known, but charming:

KABHI KHUSHI GHAM and KAL HO NAA HO.

While we're on K's, we should observe that Hollywood can be a tad repetitive. In the last 10 or so years there have been:

THE KING AND I, KING ARTHUR, KING OF NEW YORK, KING RALPH, KINGDOM COME, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, KINGPIN, KING'S RANSOM,

and the biggest KING --- KONG.

The formula of KK,BB wouldn't be the same without:

A KISS BEFORE DYING, KISS ME, GUIDO, KISS OF DEATH, KISS OF THE DRAGON, KISS THE GIRLS, KISSING JESSICA STEIN,

and of course, KISS KISS, BANG BANG.

Which do you think grossed more:

LA STORY or LA CONFIDENTIAL?

Back to short titles.

Numbers are good, but you have to be careful or the numbers won't add up at the B.O.

THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN made more money than 13 GOING ON 30.

Total grosses for 101 DALMATIONS roughly equaled 3 NINJAS + THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN.

Somehow, 28 DAYS LATER made more than 28 DAYS.

Defying laws of mathematics:

50 FIRST DATES made about the same as 40 DAY AND 40 NIGHTS + 28 DAYS + 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY.

But if you add THE 6TH DAY, you get more.

8 MILE outgrossed the total take for 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG + 8 SECONDS + 8 MM + 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND.

For criminal law buffs, 3 STRIKES made more than 187, but 21 GRAMS beat them both.

2 FAST 2 FURIOUS made far more than 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY.

1492 barely beat out 2046.

Then again, which do you think made the most money:

THIRTEEN DAYS, THIRTEEN GHOSTS, THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR, or THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR?

THREE FUGITIVES, THREE KINGS, THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY, THE THREE MUSKATEERS, THREE OF HEARTS, THREE SEASONS, THREE TO TANGO, THREE WISHES, or THREESOME?

[Source: /www.boxofficeguru.com/num.htm]

THE NEW WORLD - no hit and all myth

2006-05-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Part of the mystique of Stanley Kubrick was his meager output (7 films directed in @30 years). Writer / director Terrence Malick is even less prolific — 4 directed movies in 30 years --- and thus, for some idolizing critics, is also a genius.

BADLANDS (1973), was a small movie about runaway teens on a crime spree. Based on the Starkweather / Fugate killings in the barren Midwest, it introduced Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek to audiences. In 1978, he wrote and directed DAYS OF HEAVEN with a bigger budget, starring Richard Gere. It flopped with audiences who thought its pace too slow and the pictures of bleak prairie landscapes boring — not unlike the reaction to Kubrick’s artwork, BARRY LYNDON. Malick’s 3rd movie was THE THIN RED LINE (1998), also not box office.

Critics love both Kubrick and Malick for their unique “poetic vision,” the apparent profundity of their insights as revealed by lyrical images and near silent lingering scenes which critics feel lend gravity to their work.

Some art-oriented critics have dubbed THE NEW WORLD a masterpiece. I can’t help wondering whether a scientific experiment, something like a blind wine tasting, would have produced less gushing from Malick lovers.

If somehow critics had been lured into theaters without foreknowledge of “auteur-ship,” would “lyrical” now be “ponderous and dull?” Would “poetic” be “pretentious?” Would “thoughtful” be “self-indulgent?”

The movie tells a legend that is as short as a fairy tale.

Capt. John Smith, an English settler of Jamestown colony, in 1607, is captured by “Naturals” and is about to be executed when Pocahontas, Indian princess, falls in love with him and begs her father to spare his life. Smith learns the Indian ways, falls in love with her. She warns Smith of her father’s plan to attack, saves the Englishmen, stays with them. Smith goes to England, leaving her there to mourn. She meets John Rolfe, marries, bears a son, goes to England, where she is a celebrity. Rolfe arranges a meeting with Smith, and she chooses to stay with Rolfe. Returning to America, she dies.

That’s the legend, and as I will show, like most legends, it is a half-truth, and also like most legends, is far less revealing than the whole truth.

John Ford’s famous quote from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE was something like, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” There is no denying the power of legends, and no denying the reality that perception is more influential than factual adherence in politics, entertainment, and popular culture as well as art.

But oh, it is dangerous sometimes. My continuing prime example is BIRTH OF A NATION, the first proof of the power of moving pictures to “change history” to our detriment. The book and movie, THE DA VINCI CODE, is the most recent one. (A British poll claimed that a majority of people reading the book believed that Jesus had a child and that “Opus Dei” was an evil conspiracy.)

The Pocahontas legend is probably not as poisonous, but to some it is an affront. When Disney’s musical animated movie was released, the net was awash with Native American critics who decried the distortion.

English historians doubt that a love affair between Smith and the Indian maiden even existed. Smith was a prolific diarist, yet made no notation of the event in his contemporaneous reports. He only told the tale many years later. None of his contemporaries every wrote about it.

Her birth date is said to be @1595, which would make her 12 years old when the love affair is said to have occurred.

In Virginia historical accounts, the legend is repeated, crediting Pocahontas as an intermediary between the alien cultures who tried by urging and example to be an ambassador of peace.

She has also become a symbol to Feminists, who want to spin the tale a little more, emphasizing her independence, intellect, powerful personality and steadfastness.

Native Americans bridle at the “Euro-Centric” mythology that distorts their perception of the true history, which as expected, points out propagandistic distortions partly motivated by her status as the first Native American who the English successfully converted to Christianity.

A writer for the “Powhaten Nation” gave his version of “The Pocahontas Myth http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html:

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. The legend is that she saved a heroic John Smith from being clubbed to death by her father in 1607 - she would have been about 10 or 11 at the time. The truth is that Smith's fellow colonists described him as an abrasive, ambitious, self-promoting mercenary soldier.

Of all of Powhatan's children, only "Pocahontas" is known, primarily because she became the hero of Euro-Americans as the "good Indian", one who saved the life of a white man. Not only is the "good Indian/bad Indian theme" inevitably given new life ... , but the history, as recorded by the English themselves, is badly falsified in the name of "entertainment".

The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again ...

The true Pocahontas story has a sad ending. In 1612, at the age of 17, Pocahontas was treacherously taken prisoner by the English while she was on a social visit, and was held hostage at Jamestown for over a year.

During her captivity, a 28-year-old widower named John Rolfe took a "special interest" in the attractive young prisoner. As a condition of her release, she agreed to marry Rolfe, who the world can thank for commercializing tobacco. Thus, in April 1614, Matoaka, also known as "Pocahontas", daughter of Chief Powhatan, became "Rebecca Rolfe". Shortly after, they had a son, whom they named Thomas Rolfe. The descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe were known as the "Red Rolfes."

Two years later on the spring of 1616, Rolfe took her to England where the Virginia Company of London used her in their propaganda campaign to support the colony. She was wined and dined and taken to theaters. It was recorded that on one occasion when she encountered John Smith (who was also in London at the time), she was so furious with him that she turned her back to him, hid her face, and went off by herself for several hours. Later, in a second encounter, she called him a liar and showed him the door.

Rolfe, his young wife, and their son set off for Virginia in March of 1617, but "Rebecca" had to be taken off the ship at Gravesend. She died there on March 21, 1617, at the age of 21. She was buried at Gravesend, but the grave was destroyed in a reconstruction of the church. It was only after her death and her fame in London society that Smith found it convenient to invent the yarn that she had rescued him.

In Malick’s movie, the girl is played by Q’Orianka Kilcher, who was 14 when filming began. This probably accounts for the absence of sex scenes.

Every encounter between the girl and Smith (Colin Farrell, 28) is tender, consisting mostly of petting (not as in “heavy petting” but as in “petting a deer”). What passion there is between them is expressed by her shy looks. Farrell’s every emotion (he has one or two) shows in his eyebrows, which are his competition to Bette Davis’ eyes. Nicolas Cage must be jealous.

Malick lingers on every look, every faltering touch, every shy smile. There is no editing involved. Without these scenes, and those of birds flying, suns setting, and rivers flowing, the 2 1/2 hour movie would be a short.

Malick’s casting of Ms. Kilcher is the stuff of authentic Hollywood myth. Her father is said to be Quechuan, Peruvian Incan ancestry, while her mother is Swiss, raised in Alaska. Her grandfather was an Alaskan mountain climbing legend named “Pirate” Genet, who died on Mount Everest. The young actress / singer was discovered on the exotic streets of Santa Monica, playing her guitar. (IMBD bio).

The Thriller - Its Fall and Rise

2006-05-15T14:21:00.001-07:00

Alfred Hitchcock, we are told, was “the master of suspense.” The plots of his movies were filled with tension and sardonic wit, ironic twists that satisfy the audience’s appetite for drama. Yet even the great Hitchcock resorted to barely believable plot elements and he had trouble resolving his stories.

The ending of SUSPICION which he made for Selznick is a famous case in point. Is Cary Grant trying to murder his wife or is her suspicion unfounded? Legend has it that alternative endings were tested, and audiences would not buy Grant as guilty, so the happy one was patched together, undermining the mood crafted so coldbloodedly. It is notoriously unsatisfying and clumsy.

The famous cropduster scene in NORTH BY NORTHWEST is brilliant as a psychological and witty visual set-piece but ludicrous as a serious effort by clever spies to kill someone. The Master also over-relied on Freudian symbolism - action on trains, the color red, blondes - as shorthand for sexual obsession.

The plot of the darling of modern critics, VERTIGO, demands an impossible suspension of disbelief, hinging on Mac’s confusion about the woman’s identity, and her idiotic yielding to his obsessive re-make of her image, thus insuring her exposure. Of course, if Mac had seen a photo of his pal’s wife, dead or alive, there would have been no film at all. The ending, with Kim Novak’s unlikely paranoid induced fall from the tower, echoing the earlier episode of the fake fall, neatly wraps the story with a final crescendo in an ironic twist that, somehow, leaves us dangling.

Hitch liked the idea of falling as a means to terminate his villains so much that he couldn’t avoid the cliche. In SABOTEUR Norman Lloyd slips from Bob Cummings’ grasp and falls from The Statue of Liberty. NORTH BY NORTHWEST and TO CATCH A THIEF both climax in near falls. SHADOW OF A DOUBT ends with Uncle Charley’s grisly fall from a train. REAR WINDOW ends with another fall.

These endings satisfied the Master’s desire to build tension, use monumental settings, and mostly, to expose primal fears such as falling from great heights — but I prefer the endings of NOTORIOUS or THE BIRDS, in which nothing happens.

The modern thriller is one of the two or three most salable genres of contemporary film. (Teen and Horror being the other two.) Film makers have studied Hitchcock thoroughly and adapted his conventions to create the modern formula. Some have done better in constructing plausible plots within the conventions of the genre, but few have solved the “climax” problem.

The chase subs in for the fall in modern thrillers and similarly suffers from overkill. In fact, the entire thriller formula as a shell for thematic story telling is overused.

Hitchcock must be credited and blamed for fathering the innumerable sub-genres that are so common as to be tediously predictable:

1. The erotic thriller (UNFAITHFUL). 2. The psycho thriller (DRESSED TO KILL). 3. The serial killer thriller. (SEVEN, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) 4. The cop thriller. (Any Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro movie) 5. The parapsychological thriller (THE RING, THE SIXTH SENSE). 6. The horror / monster thriller. (JAWS, ALIEN) 7. The Hit-Man Thriller (COLLATERAL).

Hitch of course pioneered the psycho thriller (PSYCHO, duh), the erotic thriller (MARNIE), the serial killer thriller (FRENZY). And he mastered other variants that later filmmakers have yet to equal: the ordinary guy vs. spy thriller (THE 39 STEPS, THE LADY VANISHES), the innocent man thriller (THE WRONG MAN, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN), the black comedy / thriller (THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, FAMILY PLOT), the nearly perfect crime thriller (DIAL M FOR MURDER).

There are an infinite number of combinations of the variants. My personal favorite: the erotic / psycho-serial killer / cop thriller (most notable example BASIC INSTINCT; worst recent example, TAKING LIVES).

The jackpot is of course the Teen / horror / erotic / psycho-serial killer / cop thriller (SCREAM, HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY 13TH, WILD THINGS, etc.).

Only a few filmmakers have managed an original spin on the genre. David Lynch can fascinate us with his riddles, as in BLUE VELVET and the more enigmatic MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Bryan Singer's THE USUAL SUSPECTS combined mystery and thriller genres successfully. And in MEMENTO, Christopher Nolan spun the genre into reverse to surprise audiences.

Because this genre exploits our most elemental movie needs — risk, sex, violence (boo, kiss, bang), it will forever challenge movie makers and audiences — not to mention therapists.