HEREAFTER (2010)

Clint Eastwood dedicates his considerable talents as a cinematic storyteller to a script about the possibility of life after death by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) which has (no irony intended) fatal flaws. Premised on the hackneyed notion that the departed hang around in order to assist their grieving loved ones, it presents it as a given fact, but one that it claims the sophisticated, insistently rational world wants to deny and suppress.

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

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

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

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:

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)

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

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

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

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

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.