tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23917334798480813092024-03-05T16:57:52.848-08:0052 Movies in 52 WeeksRobinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-22773126029588295912011-06-25T23:47:00.000-07:002011-11-26T09:59:38.488-08:00Rear Window (1954)I'm sorry to say I only had room for one Hitchcock picture on this list, and <i>Rear Window</i> seemed like it would be the most representative. He is the "master of suspense" after all, and in <i>Rear Window</i> - a movie in which basically nothing happens for one and a half hours - he very nearly succeeds in producing suspense devoid of context, right out of thin air. This he manages through the meticulous presentation of information; taking care in what we know, and when, and how. Sometimes James Stewart will take a moment to brief another character (and us) on the story so far, but initially we are allowed to discover almost everything on our own, just by watching. Soon his questions become our questions, and we are drawn in through participation. And as the benign alternatives are gradually eliminated, suspense is not built by shadows or scary music, but by logic. The movie would never work if Hitchcock didn't trust us to draw our own conclusions, or if we were too lazy to draw them.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Since basically nothing happens, I can't really summarize the plot. Stewart plays L. B. Jeffries, a photojournalist stuck in his apartment while he recovers from a broken leg, which leaves him little to do but gaze at his neighbors out the back window. It all seems harmless enough until he begins to suspect that he's witnessed a murder. And... that's really all there is to say. If you've seen it, you don't need me to remind you, and if you haven't, there's nothing I could say that wouldn't be a spoiler. Joining in on Jeffries' voyeurism and watching all the various stories unfold in the courtyard is the entire fun of the movie. Sadly, I suspect that makes <i>Rear Window</i> one of those films that's never going to get better on repeat viewings. I'm sure it has its delights stuffed into the corners, but the main thrust is entirely about playing on what we know and what we <i>don't</i>, which you can only do once (oh, what I wouldn't give to see <i>Dark City</i> again for the first time...).<br />
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As is typical for later Hitchcock, the film has its visual gimmicks. In this case, it is entirely shot from within Jeffries' apartment: the neighbors are only ever seen from his point-of-view through their uniformly large and conveniently placed windows. To accommodate this, the entire courtyard is one big set, not a real world location. It looks like a set, too. Not because of a lack of detail, but it just feels that way because it is all so strategically arranged. The film feels a lot like a stage play, but uniquely it's not because everything happens in the same location, but because every location is viewed from the same angle. I remember noting in <i>Birth of a Nation</i> that every location was usually shot from exactly the same camera angle, no doubt as a vestigial stage convention, but that concept was quickly dropped going forward. So it was amusing to see it again here, under totally different circumstances. Anyway, I actually liked this subtle artificiality. I think a real location - and this is totally backwards from how these things usually work - a real location would have felt rather generic. Like it could have been anywhere. The set and its cast of somewhat broadly drawn characters created a very specific personality to the location. It quickly came to feel familiar, even endearing, as if these were my own quirky neighbors. Trying to generalize the situation would have been a mistake.<br />
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It's also worth noting that the movie is not only in full Technicolor, but also 1.66:1 widescreen - the first film on our list not to use a standard full frame image. Of course both of these advancements are spreading like wildfire through the industry at this time in order to compete with the new television market, but I still thought it was a bit odd considering <i>Rear Window</i> is not exactly <i>Ben-Hur</i>, or even <i>North by Northwest</i> or some other visual spectacular. But in fact, because of the heavy emphasis on voyeurism, I can see how it benefited greatly from a big, wide, colorful "window" for the audience to gaze through. Unfortunately, the DVD we watched was made from an obviously old and slightly dirty transfer (yet still the best version available) - a full Blu-ray restoration will be a great service to the film. Hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer for that.<br />
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Stewart is not alone in his apartment. Along the way he gets loving discouragement from his police detective friend, his somewhat brash nurse (Thelma Ritter), and his girlfriend (Grace Kelly). Kelly is described even before she appears as irritatingly perfect, and that's pretty much spot on. She's talented; beautiful; charming; quick-witted and sharp-tongued when she needs to be; strong and capable, but not willful or rash; generous, considerate, understanding, but not without self-respect... it's really quite easy to see how daunting it might be to be in love with her, which is something Jeffries struggles with. He can see how far he is from perfect, and how far love is from perfect in all the rooms outside his window. In the end, he never really finds a solution to this problem, but I think he finds the will to dive in anyway. At the very least, it is better to be another melodramatic story in a window than to just watch from an empty room.<br />
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This theme of romantic struggle goes on to inform everything else (even the apparent murder). In the courtyard Stewart sees old couples, young couples, incomplete couples yearning for their other half, and, in the biggest and most frequented window, good old-fashioned sex on a stick. Overall, I was surprised how light and cheeky the movie was. It's definitely entertainment first, not a biting analytical work or psychological horror, and when it's not ultimately affirming, it's cynical only in that eyes-rolled sort of way people use when talking about marriage over a beer. It's like your neighbors. You just... well, you gotta love 'em.<br />
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NEXT TIME: About as many science fiction firsts as you can stuff into a movie. It's <i>Forbidden Planet</i>. (Yes, this means no <i>The Day the Earth Stood Still</i> on the list. I've seen it. It was o-k.)Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-21217916111925226382011-06-25T15:04:00.000-07:002011-06-25T15:28:24.631-07:00On the Waterfront (1954)A rough, boorish and callous film, not always easy to approach or relate to - like many of its characters. If the bleak, almost cheap-looking photography doesn't make the point, the music should do the rest (by Leonard Bernstein, composer of <i>West Side Story</i>). It's sparse, but quite overbearing when it appears, almost to the point of absurdity. Definitely not pretty, but it drives home the point that this is not a refined story about refined characters. None of them are masters at what they are doing, but instead often flailing about as they take their first steps into new territory.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The plot is easy to summarize. Dock worker Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is urged to testify about a murder, both by the police and the victim's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint). However, the criminal racket responsible for the murder is also responsible for Terry's livelihood and is the closest thing he has to a family, leaving him reluctant to stick his neck out. The story rests on uncomfortable political ground. While largely based on various factual events <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan">and people</a>, it was also a clear attempt by director Elia Kazan to defend his "outing" of 8 colleagues before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which remained a sore spot with many until his death.<br />
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But of course the main reason to watch this movie is just to see Brando work. His performance here, along with <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i> in '51, represents the beginning of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting">method acting</a> revolution on film (<i>On film</i>, mind you. Like Orson Welles, both Brando and Kazan had rich theater backgrounds before coming to Hollywood, which is a better place to refine such skills.). And I definitely noticed a clear difference from acting we've seen so far. There are frequent dialogue exchanges where he trails off or speaks in words or phrases instead of complete sentences. Sometimes he'll start to say it one way, stop to consider, and then rephrase or simply drop it and move on. All this is most obvious in his scenes with Edie, because she is an intelligent, educated person and he is not, and he knows it, and struggles to express himself. He also struggles because he's unsure of what exactly he wants to express and how much.<br />
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It's not completely natural - one can see a few character "tics" that Brando may have practiced in the mirror a bit, like his characteristic shrug he does whenever he doesn't want to say any more. And his pronounced gum chewing occasionally borders on a crutch. But for the most part, whenever he appears to be overtly <i>acting</i>, it's very much the point. What I found most brilliant about the performance is the way Brando plays Terry as someone putting on a show for the world. Brando pretends to be Terry pretending to be the cool, aloof tough guy his associates expect him to be. And he's <i>almost</i> convincing. But around the edges we can see the uncertain, immature, gentler soul inside, who mostly just likes his pigeons and the peace and quiet up on the rooftops. I know this is real, because I've met people just like this, who have certain phrases and mannerisms that they've learned to hide behind. Watch his face, especially around Edie, and how much trouble he has maintaining eye contact whenever he's saying something he doesn't truly believe.<br />
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And the payoff is that we can see a clear transformation as Terry's vulnerable inner core begins to find its voice. In the famous conversation with his brother near the end (the "I coulda been a contender" speech), the actualized Terry finally emerges fully, and his previous defensive mannerisms fall away, and his gaze becomes clear and purposeful.<br />
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Concerning the rest of the film, I appreciated the cinematography the most. Bleak and vaguely documentary-like, the whole movie was shot on location on the docks of Hoboken, NJ - where similar events unfolded. We haven't really seen location shooting on this level yet, and it brings a lot of authenticity to the drama. The naturalistic realism of the shooting creates an odd balance with the contrived symbolism of the script, which keeps finding convenient ways to poetically connect the dots. Most obvious was the jacket of the first victim, which somehow manages to be passed from whistleblower to whistleblower until at the end it almost may as well be a superhero's cowl. There are also the pigeons Terry cares for and his former life as a champion boxer. Once again his "friends" running the docks are asking him to take a dive.<br />
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I do have some issues with the story. For one thing, whistleblowing is repeatedly suggested to be a deeply hurtful betrayal among the dockworkers, but given the transparent evilness with which the villains are painted, their continued allegiance gets difficult to swallow. Showing us the psychological conflict of the workers' position is basically dumped entirely on Brando's shoulders. The movie also takes too long to end, going on far past the courtroom scene that one might expect to be the capstone. At first I understood, figuring the movie wanted to show that Terry's choice wasn't going to be a walk in the park and there would be negative consequences. Which it did, and that's fine. But then there's a bizarre confrontation with the evil boss. I don't understand why he felt he needed that, or why the movie did. Earlier there is an excellent and very tense climax where Terry has a gun and intends to shoot him down in revenge, but the priest intervenes and convinces him to face him in court instead. But after the court scene he goes down to the dock to confront him again, and again it turns violent, and again violence is not the answer. This is stupid - the movie is just repeating itself now. After doing some reading, I learned that Terry was originally planned to be killed in an earlier draft of the screenplay. I suspect this confrontation is when that was to happen, and they changed it by letting him live and tacking another moment of conclusion on after it. I think this was a mistake - the scene should have simply been dropped entirely. One might argue that its purpose is to give the other dockworkers the same moment of revelation that Terry had, but this isn't the first cold-blooded act they've witnessed, so it hardly makes sense that it would convince them where the others didn't. The point of the movie as I saw it was that they all knew from the beginning how bad it was and that somebody should speak out - they just wanted somebody else to go first. Once Terry testifies and lives to tell the tale, the story is over.<br />
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NEXT TIME: We've been ignoring Alfred Hitchcock for far too long. Time to fix that.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-41431073297924988562011-06-23T21:35:00.000-07:002011-06-25T20:20:16.416-07:00The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)I find it fascinating that, so far, most of the movies chosen for being the most financially successful of their decade have been among the least well remembered. I'd never even heard of <i>Mickey</i> or <i>The Big Parade</i> before starting my research, and <i>The Best Years of Our Lives</i> only sounded hazily familiar. Some featureless drama among many; fodder for AMC/TCM. Yet both <i>Mickey</i> and <i>Big Parade</i> turned out to be my favorite movie of their respective decade, and, while I'd be pushing it to rate <i>The Best Year of Our Lives</i> above <i>Casablana</i> or <i>Kane</i>, it was certainly a pleasant surprise. A warm, unassuming slice of Americana, devoid of artistic ambition perhaps, but also of ego or cynical manipulation. Oh, it's manipulative alright, and oh-so-convenient, but not <i>cynical</i> about it. It's just that it has a little less than three hours to tell over 15 million stories.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>In many ways this felt like something of a sequel to <i>Big Parade</i>. It picks up the story where we left it - with the eruption of peace. Both were filmed shortly after a World War, and both are very much "in the moment" if you will. That is, not movies <i>about</i> the war or <i>about</i> how we dealt with the war, but part of the process themselves. That is why I can forgive the film for pulling some punches and reaching some implausibly tidy conclusions. It doesn't exist to study or examine or otherwise shine lights in dark places - it exists as part of the healing process. For members of its generation, watching it must be like attending a gathering of treasured friends. For me, it feels a bit like I'm peeking in from outside the window, but it put a smile on my face all the same.<br />
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As I said, peace has broken out all over. We meet three vets just returned from overseas, struggling to find transportation back home amid the throngs of fellow soldiers trying to do the same thing. Eventually they manage to grab a ride aboard a bomber on its way to the scrapyard (if that's not enough symbolism for you, wait till the bombers at the end!). As we get to know the men, our expectations are, naturally, quickly upended. The ragged infantryman turns out to be a wealthy banker back home. The decorated Air Force officer turns out to be the weathered remains of a high school pretty boy, now barely able to get a job as a soda jerk. The third man, a Navy mechanic, must confront his old sweetheart with the pair of steel hooks that have replaced the hands he lost in a fire.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From top: Dana Andrews; Frederic March; Harold Russell</td></tr>
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The banker's obviously grim experiences at first appear to have left him too mentally exhausted to connect with the world. But as he regains his strength, a newfound compassion emerges that he must reconcile with, well... with being a banker. The pretty boy has returned with the wisdom and solemn humility earned by his experience, but not with any motivating purpose. This he must reconcile with the expensive, party-loving tart he married just before shipping out. No need to say what ails the ex-mechanic. He is portrayed by non-actor Harold Russell, a real vet with real hooks, whose astonishing capability and earnest delivery rightfully earned him <i>two</i> Oscars for the role - the only time in history that has happened.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Of course he's good - he's learning from Hoagie Carmichael!</td></tr>
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In terms of craftsmanship, the film was subtle but interesting. As you might expect, the photography is primarily in that straight-forward Hollywood style that doesn't call attention to itself, though nonetheless clean and effective (notably, lensed by Gregg Toland, cinematographer for <i>Citizen Kane</i>). However, it isn't afraid of a flourish where appropriate, such as a gliding camera truck that gives a scrap B-17 hull the appearance of one last flight. Editing and music follow suit, being mostly utilitarian apart from the occasional long silence to allow us to soak up a moment or an emotion, or some rattling action music to score a harrowing dogfight flashback that we can only imagine. That last one impressed me the most actually. The flashback scenes don't even use sound effects to suggest the action - <i>only</i> music. This is a clever decision that distances us from the character, preventing us from feeling too comfortable with the whole thing. We aren't meant to sympathize - we're meant to see this as the weird, scary affliction that it is. Overall, the filmmaking style possesses that careful blend of unaffected populism with commanding craftsmanship (and rote sentimentalism if you wish) that defines the work of Steven Spielberg - another thing this film shares in common with <i>The Big Parade</i>. It's also worth noting that director William Wyler joined several combat missions during the war while filming the documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036152/"><i>The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress</i></a>. The experiences he gained there and among the crew clearly did not go to waste, as evidenced by the authentic human touches to be found under the movie's slick Hollywood veneer.<br />
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Favorite moments: Russell matter-of-factly explaining how lucky he is to have his elbows; Fredric March, as the infantryman/banker, gazing curiously at his haggard, hungover visage in a mirror in comparison to a dashing pre-war photo of himself. March also won an Oscar; as did Wyler and just about everybody else (8 wins total).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oh yeah, and Myrna Loy is in it too, for moral support.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whoa....</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-52280228640093317882011-06-19T19:07:00.000-07:002011-10-16T10:15:58.567-07:00Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and Double IndemnityWell, I've recently returned from an Alaskan cruise with my family, which I wish I could blame for not writing more reviews. But truthfully it's been a combination of laziness and some trepidation in finding something worth writing about some of the most written-about movies ever produced. Not to mention that, as I said in an earlier post, the history of movies from <i>Birth of a Nation</i> to <i>Gone with the Wind</i> felt like a fairly tidy whole. To go beyond that is a little like starting again, but this time pushing off into broader, darker, and more tumultuous waters. Which I imagine is much like what filmmakers of the time felt like as well. <br />
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Again, there is little I could say about these mega-classics that hasn't already been said. So I just want to summarize some of my strongest reactions to each.<br />
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<b>Citizen Kane</b> (1941)<br />
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<i>Kane</i> never had much emotional impact on me, but of course I am always impressed by Orson Welles' cleverness (as was he). This is one of those movies where you catch some new little thing each time you see it. This time, I noticed the cut when Kane's second wife lays ill in bed, her attempted suicide drugs sitting in the foreground (composited into the shot so both foreground and background remain in focus). This shot cuts to black - or what appears to be black - and then the blackness turns out to be the doctor's bag sitting in front of the camera. He pulls it away, and we are looking at the same angle as before, of the wife in bed, only the glass and pills are missing. At first the cut seemed a little awkward, but then I realized the drugs were getting almost literally "scooped away" by the doctor's bag - and so her sickness scooped away by his craft. Har har - very clever Mr. Welles.<br />
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More importantly however, I realized something ironic about some of the staging techniques used throughout the film, which are of course widely considered among the most thoughtful and innovative in history (and they are). The obvious trend in movies up to this point has been simply learning to escape the conventions of theater. In the earliest films one can plainly see how the frame is almost used as a mezzanine. With new editing and close-up techniques, this "theatrical" style was gradually broken down and replaced with a new visual language appropriate for film. <i>Citizen Kane</i> gets a lot of the credit for that evolution - one could fairly say it taught other directors how to use a camera in much the same way Hendrix taught other rock stars how to use an electric guitar.<br />
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So the ironic part is where I realized that much of the "new" stuff Welles is doing are techniques he brought over from his career as a stage director! The difference between him and the earliest filmmakers is that Welles, first of all, was a <i>very good</i> theatrical director, and, secondly, he understood how to translate his craft from one medium to the other. On stage, actors might be arranged on risers that use their overall height to direct our eyes. On camera, this is condensed so that just heads and eye-lines are composed. On stage, upstage and downstage positions are very important - an effect generally lost on film due to the 2D frame and fear of making actors too small. However, Welles gets around that by frequently using low camera angles, which exaggerates perspective and thus makes staging relevant again in all three dimensions. Even <i>Kane's</i> rabid insistence on keeping every layer of a shot in focus can be seen as a way to recreate the theatrical experience - where viewers can focus their eyes wherever they want. Likewise, compositions are sustained wherever possible, and they evolve fluidly over time, just as they do on stage, with minimal intercutting and virtually no closeups. Closeups are a purely cinematic convention, and - one might say - a crutch. A shortcut. You can't do closeups on the stage, and so a more sophisticated language is necessary. So, Welles became a great filmmaker precisely because he was <i>not</i> a filmmaker. He had to learn the hard way, in a world where technological marvels like closeups and montage editing couldn't bail you out. Old tricks are the best tricks, eh?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There are so many lines and symmetries in this shot it's mesmerizing. I could stare at it for hours. An optical FX shot, btw - Kane was filmed separately. Notice the guy in the back yet?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<b>Casablanca</b> (1942)<br />
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I like that <i>Casablanca</i> and <i>Citizen Kane</i> are usually the two films in closest competition for the title of Greatest Movie EVAR. There's such a great symmetry to it, as they were produced at practically the same time and yet are almost complete opposites. <i>Kane</i>: bold, raw, intellectual. <i>Casablanca</i>: commercial, polished, emotional. The studio system vs. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory">auteur theory</a>. Some might argue that <i>Kane</i>'s complexity and forward-thinking style make it the superior film, but there is value in simplicity (which is not the same thing as simple-mindedness). Welles' cleverness can sometimes become a distraction, while <i>Casablanca</i>'s straight-forward approach keeps the focus squarely on the story and allows a more earnest tone. They are also communicating on different levels. Where <i>Kane</i> might present a visual puzzle to tease our brains, <i>Casablanca</i>'s craft is more intangible, mostly to be found in the music, the glowing photography, and the pacing of edits (easily the best pacing of any film so far on the list). The "battle" in the bar between "La Marseillaise" and "Watch on the Rhine" uses all three to create one of the most stirring moments in film history. Its elegant simplicity belies the skill required to make it - though you'd have to be pretty stone-hearted to be thinking about that while you watch it.<br />
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If I have a problem with <i>Casablanca</i>, it's Humphrey Bogart. I know that sounds sacrilegious, but hear me out. Bogart's rendition of the hard, cynical Rick we meet at the Café Américain is beyond reproach, no argument there. But the gravity of his choices at the end of the film depend on selling the strength of Rick's love for Ilsa, and here he is less convincing. During the Paris flashback he comes across as the same glib character we've known the whole time, if in a considerably better mood. There is no emotional connection; no sense of vulnerability in her presence. To be fair, that is as much the fault of the script, which seems to think a little sightseeing and a catchphrase is enough to establish a timeless romance. These scenes give us little sense of what he sees in Ilsa, except that she looks like Ingrid Bergman (which just might be enough), and even less what she sees in him. It's all rather transparently calculating, which lessens the impact of his sacrifice at the end.<br />
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Fortunately, I never got the impression that the love triangle was the real point of <i>Casablanca</i> anyway - just the hook to sell tickets. My favorite parts of the movie have always been the early scenes that do such a good job of soaking up the atmosphere and tension of Casablanca, especially the young couple whom Rick bails out at the roulette table (a more effective chink in his cynical armor, for my money, than any of the Ilsa scenes). That, and Claude Rains, who mercilessly steals the show at every opportunity. I'm shocked (shocked!) Rains never won an Oscar during his career. He should have been given a lifetime achievement award with the inscription: "Your winnings, sir."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF2hNUSvsHBZzbWifGhPSQbLAVsZzIGceZ3hojDDX_OylzdHpoIBRGOZZ_nCytolbn0QASB3IQxOO2eOwbp7U8Rv5xON3-lONf-nrY4VSLDYcdnd4d9uKlLHc1TFW7pXlb7SwDMgFXAm4/s1600/m01113_lrg_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF2hNUSvsHBZzbWifGhPSQbLAVsZzIGceZ3hojDDX_OylzdHpoIBRGOZZ_nCytolbn0QASB3IQxOO2eOwbp7U8Rv5xON3-lONf-nrY4VSLDYcdnd4d9uKlLHc1TFW7pXlb7SwDMgFXAm4/s400/m01113_lrg_10.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perfection in every detail. And not just the girl (Oh Ingrid- why couldn't you have been about 70 years younger?). This frame captures the movie's essence: desperate longing and gleaming eye-lights.</td></tr>
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<b>Double Indemnity</b> (1944)<br />
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Coming right after the previous two films, this one almost seems rather plain in comparison. I certainly don't connect with it as much, though this is one of those genres that constantly has to one-up itself, so an important landmark like this feels a bit quaint almost 70 years on, through no fault of its own.<br />
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Still, I find it to be a somewhat hollow movie. The murder plot sounds clever on the surface, but doesn't hold a lot of water. Some of the performances are great, especially Edward G. Robinson (and it's fun to see him as a totally different character than his earlier gangster persona - and he has one more appearance yet to make on our list). There are a couple excellent moments of "don't look behind the door!" tension, which I very much enjoyed. But for the most part the film is a lot of posturing. It's a writer's movie is what it is, by writers who are infatuated with the sound and shape of the words more than their content. Beyond that, most of it seems to exist - like a lesser M. Night Shymalan picture - for no particular purpose except to set up the final shot. On the plus side, it's a great shot.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Try not to look suspicious."</td></tr>
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Going forward I'll probably have to double up on a few more reviews to get caught up, but they are coming. Next up, we round out the '40s with <i>The Best Years of Our Lives</i>. I guess they haven't been so bad so far...Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-53895179349444437662011-04-30T17:18:00.000-07:002011-05-16T18:24:36.881-07:00His Girl Friday (1940)I've been slacking with my reviews lately. I blame <i>Gone with the Wind</i>. It was just so... so... <i>much</i>, that after that other movies just seem too mundane to be worth commenting on. In fact it felt much like this film project was already over, because we have, if you think about it, already come full circle. Sixteen weeks ago we saw the also epic and industry-defining <i>The Birth of a Nation</i>, which even shares many story elements with <i>Gone with the Wind</i>, especially in the first and early second acts. From those primitive beginnings, pretty much all the major filmmaking techniques have now been realized. Everything D. W. Griffith set out to do has been revisited and perfected is one monumental effort. At least according to the standards of the time, <i>Gone with the Wind</i> was very much the Ultimate Movie.<br />
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So where do we go from here? I realize now that the '30s really were the true Golden Age of Hollywood; the period that is the most "classic." What sets the next phase of film history apart is a more visible effort to push boundaries; deconstruct old ideas; play with form and tone. Because, in the wake of the Ultimate Movie, what else was there to do?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>So... <i>His Girl Friday</i>, a subversive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screwball_comedy">screwball</a> comedy about the newspaper business. The story is actually adapted from a 1920's stage play called <i>The Front Page</i>, itself made into a film in 1931. This version amps up the already fast-paced, overlapping dialogue even more, and adds a new twist by turning the ace reporter character of Hildy Johnson into a woman, thus adding a love triangle and a new dimension of social commentary.<br />
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The film is notably unflattering towards the news industry, the law, and pretty much everyone else. Anybody with significant moral fiber - who might've been the star of a more conventional film - winds up merely a naive pawn pushed to the sidelines around Johnson and her boss, Walter Burns (Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant), who power the film with their romantically charged feuding. They are both big personalities, and equals in every way: equally intelligent, capable, sharp-tongued, and ruthless. You might say they belong together, in that way people say it that isn't entirely complimentary.<br />
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<i>His Girl Friday</i> is famous for the dialogue, which is so fast I'm sure I missed half the jokes. The way characters constantly speak over each other was fairly novel on film, and an important step towards more naturalistic acting. However, naturalism was not the point here - the dialogue is all about style. In fact, it was almost a special effect. The movie has too many shots of reporters barking overlapping torrents of information into their telephones (a telephone should probably have been the poster image), so that eventually I got the impression the movie had those scenes just to show off that it could do them, like an action film with too many special effects.<br />
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More importantly, though, the dialogue paces the movie, in the same way that music would ordinarily be used. This, to me, was the most interesting and revolutionary quality of the film. The intensity of the conversations was used to build tension, moreso than their actual contents (which often could not be heard anyway), and the payoffs come when the dialogue suddenly ceases, leaving a portentous silence. Some actual music does appear right at the end, and, because the movie was so thoughtfully structured, I instantly realized, "Ah, we must be at the end of the movie."<br />
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Overall, I can't say that I liked it. Comedy ages faster than most genres, especially something so topical as this. But I definitely appreciate the craftsmanship, and the creative approach to spinning its story. It's a shame Rosalind Russell didn't become a bigger star. She got the part because almost everyone else turned it down, and made it her own.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: The film that, try as he might, even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst">William Randalph Hearst</a> couldn't stop. It's hard to believe we're already here.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-35629829283868858372011-04-17T22:14:00.000-07:002011-05-16T18:37:43.602-07:00Gone with the Wind (1939)So, that was <i>Gone with the Wind</i>, was it? Far more complicated than I expected. On just about every level. I don't even know where to begin.<br />
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I guess I'll start with Scarlett. Lots of people seem to hate her (such as my wife). I didn't. I didn't like her either - she's hardly a very sympathetic person (and would likely scorn you for pitying her). But I think the movie's portrayal of her speaks well of it, and is indicative of its general approach. While there are rose-colored glasses aplenty for the fairy tale of the Old South and especially that whole slavery thing, regarding its leads I found the movie impressively observant and even handed. Scarlett is simply presented as a hard-headed woman with "gumption," as the novel's author, Margaret Mitchell, put it; neither demonized nor sugar-coated. The consequences of her actions do not leave any single, simplistic conclusion to draw about her, except that she's complicated and willful and fun to watch. As Garry Marshall put it in the movie <i>Soapdish</i>: "Stable? <i>I'm</i> stable. Who wants to watch me on television?"<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Certainly, there is nothing wrong with Scarlett that is the fault of Vivien Leigh. Her efforts are pitch-perfect: fierce and.. just... <i>young</i>. Young with both the good and bad connotations. Rhett even calls her childish, and it's an apt label. It's also one of the principle similarities between Scarlett and the Old South itself. They are pretty, charming, vain, selfish, idealistic to a fault, and stuck on a fairy tale that no longer exists (and in fact - though the movie doesn't seem to recognize this - never really existed in the first place, either in the Old South or Old England or anywhere else). In short, they need to grow up. But is the movie really aware of this? Does it really believe in the dream of Tara or is it pointing out the illusion? I see clues pointing both ways, but the ambiguity, I suspect, is crucial to the movie's enduring success. For my part, I think women who openly idolize Scarlett are as confused as men who idolize Travis Bickle's "You lookin' at me?" scene.<br />
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Rhett Butler, on the other hand, I don't understand at all. Despite being the other one printed big on the poster, his function in the story is much murkier than I would have expected. He's quite enjoyable in the first half, as his job is basically to pop up from time to time and comment on the silliness of it all. Fun, but hardly essential. In the second half he becomes a much more active part of the story, and a continuing foil for Scarlett, but somehow a rather arbitrary one. He is contrasted with Scarlett to an extent, though there is a much clearer contrast between her and kind-hearted Melanie. Often he comes off as the detached but clear-headed voice of reason. But by the end he's made his own mistakes and succumbed to bouts of doubt, loathing, and even madness. I guess I just never understood his motivations. There seems to be a good deal of conflict burbling under the surface, but we never get a good look at it because this isn't his story, or even really the story of Rhett and Scarlett's romance. The only throughline that connects the first scene to the last is Scarlett's obsession with Ashley Wilkes - <i>that's</i> the "romance" that drives the movie, with Rhett as little more than the poor sod who got trampled by the whole situation.<br />
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Much is made of his departing line, "I don't give a damn." The devastating, nail-in-the-coffin put-down to Scarlett, or so everyone says. But, when the moment actually came, that's not what I saw at all. I'm not sure what I saw, but it wasn't a virtuous character escaping the clutches of a madwoman with devastating panache. In fact it came during Scarlett's moment of greatest vulnerability; a confession of love that might, for once, have actually been the truth. Too little too late, according to Rhett, and he's probably right. But hardly the moment for a put-down either, if that's even what it was. It sounded to me more like quiet exasperation from a very tired man, and nothing more. It certainly didn't work in any case: the movie doesn't end before Scarlett again finds her implacable resolve.<br />
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The structure of the film was a bit frustrating to me. Apart from Rhett's exit, most of what people remember about the film is in the first half. I can see why. Ridiculously fancy parties, stunning photography, cast of thousands, war, suspense, the burning of Atlanta. Everything here is big and broad, including the pacing. Yeah, it's stretched out and overwrought, but that's what big epic movies are all about. The grandeur. The <i>drama</i>. One thing I can say about <i>Gone with the Wind</i> - right from the opening title it has an audacity the likes of which I've never seen before (note the use of a very formal "Cast of Players" in the titles - something we haven't seen since the early silents). But by about half an hour into Part 2 the film has become something it never was before: rushed. And disjointed. The first half is painted with long, clean lines. The second half gets progressively closer to just scribbling. Scenes eventually became almost isolated tableaux, cut by long (though unspecified) passages of time. It's not unlike the high school American History class, which has inevitably spent too much time on the early stuff and is now rushing to get through Reconstruction before finals. The hurry gets so bad it dilutes the style of the film. The first half is abound with lush, dynamic, and visually striking images. The opening by the tree. Tracking around Mammy as she barks orders around the house. The barbeque. The famous reveal of the wounded soldiers. The fire. The rain as they hide under the bridge. I couldn't list them all even if I needed to. There were some great silhouette shots, which made exquisite use of color and staging. But the stylish production design quickly becomes lost in the second half. Scenes are in homes with people pacing or sitting, and the camera is generally still. It becomes more and more about efficiency - which it has to, in order to get it all done in time - and the grandeur is lost. The setup for Rhett's departure is a stirring camera truck towards the door, which caught my eye not just because it looked good, but because that sort of shot hadn't happened in a long while.<br />
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Rather than following one or two plot lines with a close eye, the second half throws new twists, turns, coincidences, and tragedies at us almost relentlessly, and usually completely out of the blue. It's all so arbitrary. At one point, Rhett has <i>had enough</i> - he's made up his mind to take their daughter to London. This must be a momentous event. So he takes her, and after awhile she doesn't like it, and he takes her back. And... we're pretty much where we left off. So what was the point of that little episode? I kept trying to understand each scene's importance to the overall themes of the movie; how does it help the movie accomplish what it's trying to accomplish? But nothing the movie appears to be trying to accomplish requires so many complications. Rhett and Scarlett get mad at each other half a dozen times. Why is the last time the <i>real</i> time? We've established that the Old South is gone and Scarlett is trying to recapture it, and that she fails. But that's not hard to portray - it doesn't require nearly so many scenes and plot points. Perhaps the rub is in why she fails? She concludes the first half with a pledge to never be poor again, even if she has to murder, steal, lie, cheat, etc. to do it. And, sure enough, she runs through that promise like a checklist in Part 2... so efficiently in fact that we must have an hour of movie left after she checks everything off. So did her ruthlessness bring about the end of her dreams? Not really, and even if it did, it still wouldn't have taken so much plot. The significance of their daughter, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Blue_Flag">Bonnie Blue</a>, is made pretty obvious by her name. Except... it isn't. The decadent mansion that Scarlett has built seems to represent the wealth and vacuous excess of the Old South, while the tenderness and honor of Melanie and Ashley would seem to represent its real heart. So what place is there for Bonnie that isn't redundant? As the film wanders on, tragedies strike with almost reckless acceleration. But to what purpose? Most of them are random acts of God, which makes them less than instructive about the character's personalities. What led them to this? I suppose it could be instructive to see how they deal with tragedy, but quickly we come to a point where they can't deal at all because they're busy with the <i>next</i> tragedy. If the Old South was lost because of people like this, no solid argument is made for it. But perhaps the point is precisely that it <i>was</i> all an act of God, totally inevitable, and they're only grasping at straws. But, again, <i>how does it take so much plot to make that point?</i> The more plot points the movie sprinkles in, the less each one is worth. The more it spins its wheels, the less progress it seems to make.<br />
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So, while this would appear to be the sort of story one approaches in symbolic terms, I have to conclude that it really isn't, at least not on the higher levels. What it really is, is a movie based all too faithfully on a novel - A <i>real</i> novel, in the old-fashioned sense, with lots of characters involved in lots of overlapping, intertwining little stories, and not so much one big one. Which is no bad thing, at least not if you're Charles Dickens or Margaret Mitchell. Books are good at that sort of thing. TV shows are too. But movies are not. They are a taut medium. My final verdict on <i>Gone with the Wind</i> is that it was just a little too ambitious. It tried to stretch the boundaries of what movies are capable of (to its credit), and wound up with essentially two different movies back-to-back. The first is sweeping, ridiculously grandiose cinema, and the second is a full season of soap opera smooshed into two hours.<br />
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Just a note here - I couldn't get this to fit anywhere else in the review - but as an editor my favorite scene was the building tension as the Yankees approach in Atlanta, where Scarlett bustles around amid all the orange dust. Up to that point, I was going to complain that composer Max Steiner was overscoring the movie, but he wisely lets that sequence play in musical silence, allowing the tension to build through cutting and background sound. Marvelously done.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: <i>His Girl Friday</i>. Only on Saturday.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-84081497094014203492011-04-17T16:53:00.000-07:002011-04-17T22:24:47.531-07:00Gone With the Wind (1939)Let me preface this review by saying that the movie wasn't as bad as I remembered it being. Don't get me wrong - I still didn't like it - but this time I dislike it for different reasons than I used to. This is interesting to me, because ordinarily if I don't like a movie I simply never watch it again. So this is quite possibly the first time I've ever rewatched a movie I didn't like, and therefore I am a bit surprised at what I took away from it.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I was going to write about the connection I saw between this movie and the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, but after writing a few paragraphs and only beginning to scrape the surface of what I wanted to talk about I decided to save that for another time or else this particular "review" would be ridiculously long. But I may still write it at some point in the future when I have more time on my hands because the parallels were compelling (at least they were to me.)<br />
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So disregarding that, I'm not too sure how to format this review. Unlike "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" I can't summarize the whole film with commentary because at nearly four hours long that too would become too long and I simply don't want to devote that much time to this particular review. But what then do I talk about? I suppose for fairness' sake I should mention the positives first. The filmography was pretty amazing. From the expansive sets to the intricate costumes to some of the camera shots, the movie was very pretty to look at. The filmmakers effectively created the world of the Old South, both pre-war and post. Post war looked appropriately apocalyptic, which for these people I'm sure is an accurate viewpoint. The music was similarly effective (good job, Max Steiner.)<br />
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But that's about it. :( The movie was way too long, and meandered a bit too much. Some plot lines seem to have been forgotten, and the last quarter of the movie almost feels like another movie altogether. The acting was very melodramatic (which may have been intentional, but by modern standards it comes off as comical and overdone so I have a hard time crediting it as "good" acting.) The character development was only so-so as well. Each character seemed more like a caricature than a character. Scarlett is selfish and spoiled with no real depth or softer side to balance her out. Melanie is good, decent, and kind to a fault - again there is no balance. NOBODY is that good all the time. It lacked credibility. Rhett is an arrogant, abusive ass, and Ashley is a pathetic, spineless goober. All the main characters could have used rounding out, though I suppose the most rounded is Rhett since I actually liked him in the beginning and only came to despise him after his marriage to Scarlett when his abusive and controlling side came out to play. I don't care what people in the 1860s thought - controlling men who call all the shots and rape their wives ARE NOT ROMANTIC AND SHOULD NOT BE IDEALIZED. Rhett lost all traces of my respect and affection when he started treating Scarlett like his own personal possession, and I didn't even like Scarlett. Selfish and spoiled as she is, she's still a human being and shouldn't be treated that way.<br />
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However, what makes it worse is Scarlett's reaction to the whole thing. We see Rhett, slobbering drunk, physically sling her over his shoulder and cart her upstairs to have his way with her, but instead of resisting or fighting back, we just cut to the next morning where she's propped up in bed all glowy and happy and singing with joy. She was just RAPED by her drunk husband, and she's HAPPY about it?! I wanted to do this to her:<br />
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Way to spread a sexist agenda, Margaret Mitchell. You should be ashamed.<br />
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I was more infuriated with the anti-woman messages in this film than the racist stuff, which is one of the things that surprised me because I remember hating this film for the racist portrayals of black people. This time I was more focused on the sexist messages. I think people nowadays expect the anti-black message and hopefully know to ignore is as a relic of a time past. But the anti-woman message is clearly not ignored as a relic of a less civilized time, because it is still being sent to children of today. That's what really bothers me.<br />
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People today know how horrible slavery was and nobody I know tries to justify it or say that we should bring it back. But plenty of people still admire male force in relationships and think that women need to be completely controlled by their men. This is the main brunt of my comparison with Twilight - Edward is painted out to be this heroic, wonderfully loving, protective, perfect man (just like Rhett) but in reality he's the type of man who physically drags Bella around when she tries to walk somewhere on her own, forbids her from seeing a friend he disapproves of, and even removes the engine from her car just so she can't go see said friend. He withholds physical intimacy and bullies her into marrying him against her will. When they finally do sleep together, he can't control his strength and ends up covering Bella in bruises, which she lovingly refers to as "decorations". This is scary, scary, stuff still being fed to young girls. Here we are in 2011 and little girls are STILL being taught that rape and abuse equals love and protection.<br />
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In the case of Gone With the Wind, I'm trying my best to keep it in historical context because I know that in the 1860s that was considered appropriate and ideal behavior. But it's not now, and I'm just afraid that people who love this movie don't see how scary and dangerous the relationship between Rhett and Scarlett is. It may be historically accurate, but it is not romantic and it is not something to be idealized or emulated.<br />
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Since that's my biggest issue with the movie, I'm actually going to end my review here. Nothing positive will come of me continuing to rant; I'm just upsetting myself. :(Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-84155847316467737192011-04-14T18:27:00.000-07:002011-04-14T23:57:51.861-07:00Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)<div class="MsoNormal">In which images of patriotism evoke a craving for mystery meat, Frank Capra demonstrates his eerie precognition skills, country bumpkins become U.S. senators, and politics is SERIOUS BUSINESS. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mandie to review <i>Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.</i><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i></i><br />
<a name='more'></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">This review is actually returning to my summary roots, but with commentary thrown in, so there are spoilers. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">In the beginning, there’s this state (we don’t know which one because they never say) and one of the senators from it has just died, so there’s a mad rush to find a replacement. The governor is a complete pansy and is incapable of making a decision by himself, so finds himself torn between who his corrupt political boss <s>Karl Rove </s>Jim Taylor wants and who some popular committees want. Rove, er, Taylor, wants a stooge who will do what he’s told and not get in the way of his evil schemes, and the committees want a reformer. During dinner, the governor’s eerily educated passel of children (seriously, they’re like Stepford children) urge him to pick Jefferson Smith, head of the Boy Scouts, er, Boy Rangers. Well, obviously Smith gets the bid or we wouldn’t have a movie, so let’s move on. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">Oh, but before we do, let me introduce you to Karl Taylor. No, Jim Rove. Wait! Jim Taylor!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbtnSfW4fgnXj6hPh4cbPcs8f_ImCoNrK42tMbb8zTtzP5CKg7bYgTPgoQp90z5Dszg7jngQ_V9_dch9cCnr5j_dnKQf-jxYBARQ7LM352gqIoEObGqQwXWdGdJYLo0QGeg5wvpHRtsXU/s1600/taylorrove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbtnSfW4fgnXj6hPh4cbPcs8f_ImCoNrK42tMbb8zTtzP5CKg7bYgTPgoQp90z5Dszg7jngQ_V9_dch9cCnr5j_dnKQf-jxYBARQ7LM352gqIoEObGqQwXWdGdJYLo0QGeg5wvpHRtsXU/s320/taylorrove.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"> Frank Capra was psychic. O_O</div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Okay, so Smith gets to Washington and promptly acts like a ten year old boy and just wanders off to sightsee without telling anyone, causing panic. I found this irritating, because even though he’s supposed to be a common man without any corrupt political influences, he’s still an adult and should know how to act like one. He should know better than to just wander off without telling anybody, especially as the head of the Boy Rangers, for crying out loud! I mean, seriously. What kind of survival skills is this guy teaching our youth? Anyway, during this time we the audience are treated to a patriotic montage that suggests national pride and joy with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Lincoln! Washington! Glorious bells inscribed with the word “liberty”! Democracy! Eagles! DEMOCRACY, DAMMIT!!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Made me want a hot dog, REAL bad.</div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNovz75VagLjACEWC4plAwvB3DtuptgFp50IZoXa0F2qNkUy3JALAOUd1BcKmn9EwWdNo1UHKFNdVejbpstGgckj7p-9ifWMuZCycg4cnHoh3GGrbc4ZOwKHlEUxy05bzkob3W9ZUXIFc/s1600/hotdog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNovz75VagLjACEWC4plAwvB3DtuptgFp50IZoXa0F2qNkUy3JALAOUd1BcKmn9EwWdNo1UHKFNdVejbpstGgckj7p-9ifWMuZCycg4cnHoh3GGrbc4ZOwKHlEUxy05bzkob3W9ZUXIFc/s320/hotdog.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Okay, not that bad. Creepy what you can find on the Internet. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But I digress. Smith is in way over his head, his fellow senator, Paine, is as corrupt as Taylor (in fact he’s in Taylor’s pocket) and in an effort to keep Smith out of his hair suggests that Smith propose a bill. Smith, with all the enthusiasm of a puppy immediately sets to work proposing a bill for a boy’s camp in his still unnamed state. But rumthing was sotten in the mate of Stendark (my apologies to Spilliam Wakesheare). It turns out that the very land Smith has his eye on is also the object of a shameless graft by none other than Paine (acting through Rove. Taylor. You know who I mean!) Taylor orders Paine to deal with Smith, which he does be creating a completely bogus crusade against him using falsified documents and flat out lies to frame Smith as a greedy, unscrupulous grafter. </div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYWaiG0b2bavJ5_Xuux877REmMsVb0wsIZxsUpOkJKt798OM59Qi1zLSbrVEZeiuHT0hhdTtNchsITXlc3U7uaaqCDXhyIfMlDs9XB0KmH1IhLLnzcE3wywsESxJKxIME0AU7CSJk_Du8/s1600/evil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYWaiG0b2bavJ5_Xuux877REmMsVb0wsIZxsUpOkJKt798OM59Qi1zLSbrVEZeiuHT0hhdTtNchsITXlc3U7uaaqCDXhyIfMlDs9XB0KmH1IhLLnzcE3wywsESxJKxIME0AU7CSJk_Du8/s320/evil.jpg" width="286" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">Paine moves to have Smith removed from the Senate, but before the vote can commence Smith stands up and begins to filibuster. He’s determined to clear his name, but ol’ Rove can’t have that. He calls out his entire crooked arsenal of newspapers, radio stations, and local cronies to prevent any news of what Smith is actually saying from reaching the citizens of the state. He just feeds them his lies and manipulations, even resorting to actual physical violence against the small group of people who try to speak out in favor of Smith (including running over a group of CHILDREN and I’m not even kidding). Now that’s evil.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Back in Washington, after nearly 24 hours of filibustering, Smith has had it. His voice is gone, he can barely stay standing, and Paine, in the name of all that is heartless and evil, moves in for the kill. He brings in baskets of hate mail from the citizens who have only been fed lies and tries to make Smith believe that everyone has turned against him. He almost succeeds, but Smith gets a small smile from the President of the Senate and tries valiantly to carry on, but physically cannot and slumps into a dead faint. Paine and Taylor win.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWI2XRZufhOyFNaQxZ0aIorFtz2xTdwapBPfLEv4a-7pOgk8tl0-0WhifaYmt3kj-NzXgbK9Gok8Ne2jsp15LN33VQOlhrS3-Ug6NLbaXOt9twVy6L-95kfUL2799WOJ5S6miGULfNgQo/s1600/excellent-frog.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWI2XRZufhOyFNaQxZ0aIorFtz2xTdwapBPfLEv4a-7pOgk8tl0-0WhifaYmt3kj-NzXgbK9Gok8Ne2jsp15LN33VQOlhrS3-Ug6NLbaXOt9twVy6L-95kfUL2799WOJ5S6miGULfNgQo/s320/excellent-frog.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Except not, because now we come to the oddest part of the film, in which the evil and calculating Paine, having just succeeded in accomplishing what he was trying to accomplish for the whole damn film, suddenly suffers a change of heart and tries to off himself with a revolver in the hallway. What a drama queen. When that’s thwarted he rushes back into the Senate room and confesses everything, even his original graft scheme and declares that Mr. Smith was innocent all along.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And…scene. Actually, and…film. That’s the end. There’s no wrap-up, no resolution, nothing. What happens to Paine? What happens to Rove? Taylor? Gah! What happens to Smith? We may never know.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Still, the movie wasn’t bad. James Stewart annoyed me with his country bumpkin schtick and I thought Paine’s reversal was out of character and unbelievable, but the story was good and holds up well 70 years later. Actually, it holds up VERY well. All my jokes about Rove aside, the political maneuvering and corruption showcased in this film are all too relatable today. We appear to have not progressed terribly far in the 72 years since this film was made, and that’s frankly pretty sad.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All right, here’s a hint about the next movie on this list: What’s racist, sexist, way too long, not at all romantic, and completely overrated?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg14OEZqgvptzGcnBo1BbudWe9fZU1wHZ-J-pMLOjWqZXltkmn8gubW1i7sDbB9uYYl5Uahh3DBTVQMZlunRcBlssbMK2cDy_pz4x6Yf03-Azbz1f2jzY1tSrAjAS_ByIsmAuPutDpoHUU/s1600/gone-with-the-wind-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg14OEZqgvptzGcnBo1BbudWe9fZU1wHZ-J-pMLOjWqZXltkmn8gubW1i7sDbB9uYYl5Uahh3DBTVQMZlunRcBlssbMK2cDy_pz4x6Yf03-Azbz1f2jzY1tSrAjAS_ByIsmAuPutDpoHUU/s320/gone-with-the-wind-2.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-37423091895714977552011-04-09T14:00:00.001-07:002011-04-10T17:07:40.552-07:00Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)It's a bit tricky for me writing "dwarfs" with an "f." I'm a Tolkien fan, and so more used to the smoother (and more dangerous) "dwarves." One might define "dwarves" as a fictional race, while "dwarfs" are people with the genetic condition, but... well in this story they could be either one. I can't tell. I don't suppose anybody really thought about it much - they simply are what they are on the surface. That's much of the modern appeal to fairy tales. Timeless, placeless; they exist outside of any context but familiar human conflicts. They are very close to drama and action in pure, theoretical form.<br />
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By the way, the story sometimes goes around that the use of dwarfs was a Disney euphemism, and Snow White actually met up with seven thieves in the original story (as in the '90s TV movie, <i>Snow White: A Tale of Terror</i>). But that would depend greatly on which version you consider the "original." Apparently they are thieves in some regional versions of the tale, but dwarfs appear much more commonly, including in the Brothers Grimm version. So <i>Snow White</i> is actually among the most faithful adaptations Disney has ever produced (they still change plenty, but mostly for the sake of streamlining, not sanitizing).<br />
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<a name='more'></a>So this was actually the first time I've seen <i>Snow White</i>, that I can remember. Perhaps I saw it as a child, but nothing seemed familiar. Which I'm quite glad of, for I greatly enjoyed getting to see such a beloved classic both with fresh eyes and a grown mind to appreciate its subtleties. Growing up with classics is great too, but a totally different experience. I have no idea how I'm going to (list spoiler alert!) write about <i>Star Wars</i>, a movie I've seen about 20 zillion times since literally time out of mind.<br />
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The story needs no explanation. The structure here is a bit different from later Disney productions, capturing a bit of the transition from short subject cartoons. The plot is surprisingly thin, actually reduced in detail from the traditional fairy tale. In fact it comes close to bookending the movie, rather than being the focus of it. After the initial business of setting up the Queen's jealousy and chasing Snow White off into the woods, the movie becomes primarily a series of songs and cartoon vignettes. First she wakes up in the forest amongst the cutest animals in any movie ever. And they play around a bit and sing a song. Then they find the empty cottage of the dwarfs, and decide to clean up, which involves more antics and <a href="http://youtu.be/u-Ra7nwZRN4">another song</a>. (Er, sorry, wrong song. <a href="http://youtu.be/oY3aljAO7qU">Here you go</a>.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQ8NVDIGANzPHZ9mUeoBQ532FF5kvK6bBWYe5trx0k83CHsPoYVQz3MirevlzqSANRpCtokRZ9AsvtiEcEAsHkpnJnfQ9pkMZ03dlL8aazBTLyaB1UZBNoz0D0rAxg7LsVr8OP992I-w/s1600/snow_white_and_the_seven_dwarfs_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQ8NVDIGANzPHZ9mUeoBQ532FF5kvK6bBWYe5trx0k83CHsPoYVQz3MirevlzqSANRpCtokRZ9AsvtiEcEAsHkpnJnfQ9pkMZ03dlL8aazBTLyaB1UZBNoz0D0rAxg7LsVr8OP992I-w/s400/snow_white_and_the_seven_dwarfs_4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
And then we meet the dwarvvv- dwarfs, and they get a song. And then the dwarfs come home and there is a lengthy suspense sequence as they realize they have an intruder, which finds comic ways to introduce all of their various character tics (Doc wixes up his murds while Sneezy's allergies nearly give them all away, etc.). And so on and so forth. This is the very first feature-length cartoon, after all, and nobody could be certain what that meant. Resting the whole thing on the dramatic content was surely a scary idea, so the movie instead looks a lot like a short subject blown up to epic proportions. Fortunately, it wasn't content to rest entirely on its gags either (not that the gags aren't well done - Disney famously offered $5 to anyone on staff who could provide a good joke). The plot returns with a bang at the end, and brings with it action and intensity and terror and romance on a level no live-action film could compete with. They can't make the light <i>just so</i>, or the rainfall <i>just so</i>. These sequences proved definitively what animation is capable of, and I'm sure gave Disney the confidence to put the 'cartoon' label behind and focus later features more on their stories and cinematic qualities (though fleeting anxiety remains in the form of the studio's ubiquitous comic relief sidekicks - the annoyingness of which generally provides a solid objective measure of a Disney film's quality ... if I were Barney Stinson, I would advise staying above the Mushu Mendoza Line).<br />
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The film is beautiful to look at, thanks to an art style that is vibrant without trying to look "real." It retains much of the watercolor wash look of the early cartoons, albeit with more color and complexity, but not afraid to fade away into abstraction. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://openwalls.com/image/16267/snow_white_singing_1920x1080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://openwalls.com/image/16267/snow_white_singing_1920x1080.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Snow White herself is transitional, achieving a unique look among Disney princesses as she hasn't fully developed the giant "<a href="http://harryallen.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/avatar-navi-image.jpg">Disney eyes</a>." (Oh, sorry again. <a href="http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19100000/belle-or-bella-bella-or-belle-19105279-941-515.jpg">This</a> is what I was looking for.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://193.105.21.101/image/16265/snow_white_castle_1920x1080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://193.105.21.101/image/16265/snow_white_castle_1920x1080.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Zoom in and notice the pencil scribbling under the balcony and on the red turrets. I love that. There are also some photographic techniques going on here. A soft-focus "gauze" filter is clearly being used to enhance the lighting, and I have to assume using a trick like that to capture a painting was a novel idea at the time. This shot is also one of the many made using Disney's fancy new multiplane camera. This was a large contraption that allowed numerous layers of glass, paintings, and animation cels stacked like shelves, with the camera looking straight down through them. Each layer could be moved independently, allowing the the choreography of highly dynamic compositions. Notice how the foreground turret is blurred, creating a depth-of-field effect. That's because it really, physically was in the foreground, probably about a foot or so in front of the other painting. This is similar to the layers of models and matte paintings used to create <i>King Kong</i>, except the whole thing is turned on its side, and, because it isn't so concerned with looking "real," it allows much more creative movement of the various image components, such as the dramatic race through the dark forest.<br />
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There was also a great moment where the background and foreground are moved in opposite directions, creating the feeling of the camera swirling around Snow White. Being the first animated movie, I was on the lookout for how the shots compare to live action. Generally they keep things naturalistic and inspired by physical camerawork, but with frequent tracking movements that would have been expensive in real-life. After watching it, I read that Walt Disney instructed his artists to watch a lot of live-action movies, including foreign films like <i>The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</i>. Their research and attention to detail definitely shows. And they dabbled in a few things live action can't do, like the below well shot. This is great, because it seems simple enough... but where do you put the camera? Unless you want to bother with a complicated two-way mirror setup or something, this shot is impossible in live action. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.filmtotaal.nl/images/newscontent/07f8907.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://www.filmtotaal.nl/images/newscontent/07f8907.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Also, the rippling water distortion effect was astonishing to watch. It's impossibly smooth and clean, like a computer render. Turns out, this was done with a sheet of rippled glass layered between the paintings (themselves matched through forced perspective) and moved a little bit each frame. That means there are at least four layers in the above shot - five or six when water drips in the well to create circular ripples. I can't find a screenshot of my favorite effect, in which a gentle stream reflects a deer on the bank. In this case, the glass must have been set at a 45 degree angle to reflect the animation cel behind it, with a narrow painting in front to obscure the join. Point being: just because it's animation doesn't mean they just draw everything and have no need for special effects. These multiplane shots involve some of the more sophisticated effects work of the pre-digital era. <a href="http://www.animatormag.com/archive/issue-20/issue-20-page-16/">Here's a link</a> with some more interesting making-of info (since the Blu-ray was useless in that regard - Disney special features almost universally suck). <br />
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So, I liked it. Like I said with <i>Captain Blood</i>, the nice thing about being a classic is that you don't have to worry about muddying or redefining your story in order to stand out or avoid unfavorable comparison. You just get right to the point. Snow White is sweet, the dwarvfs are lovable, the queen is evil, and the Prince has nice hair. And we all lived happily ever after.<br />
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Actually, I should mention about the Prince, since Mandie talked about it in her review. It is a bit weird how he shows up for a minute at the beginning to fall in love, and then for a minute at the end just in time to kiss her. But, in the "original" story he actually has even less than that - he only shows up at the end. In fact, that's kindof the point: she looks so beautiful even in death that he falls in love just looking at her corpse (and then he buys the coffin and his men jiggle it and the apple falls out... but a kiss is better, right?). So adding him to the beginning was actually Disney's attempt to expand and naturalize the love story. Goes to show how much things have changed in 70-odd years.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: <i>The Distinguished Gentleman</i>. Er... <i>Legally Blonde 2</i>. No... wait, I'll think of it....Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-54279363592269894572011-04-08T17:03:00.000-07:002011-04-08T17:03:17.886-07:00Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)I'm sorry to be posting this so late! Somehow the week got away from both of us, but with a new film to watch tomorrow it was obvious that last week's review needed to get posted, and stat.<br />
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So, <i>Snow White</i>. I grew up loving Disney movies (and still love them, and pretty much all things Disney) to this day, and since this is the film that started the whole thing I have to have a bit of a soft spot for it. But it was never my favorite Disney animated movie. I think as a young child that honor went to <i>Cinderella</i> and as I got older my loyalties switched to <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> (but only because Maleficent is such a badass). Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about Snow White!<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Snow White is a really predictable story that pretty much everyone knows (and if you don't know it, what rock have you been living under??) so I won't bother summarizing it. But I do want to discuss the so-called Prince Charming. Prince he may be, but Charming...not so much. He's a creeper! He spies on Snow White as she's singing her wishing song, and then without making any noise or anything just barges into her song and forms a duet, scaring the hell out of her. She understandably runs away and he's left standing there calling after her, "Did I frighten you?" or something to that effect. Yes, you frightened her, you dumbass! Hence the screaming and running away. The Prince is not very well endowed in the brains department it would seem.<br />
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After Snow White flees from the huntsman in the woods we enter a segment of animation brilliance. The swirling colors, creepy shadows, whipping tree branches...all drawn and animated by hand. It's nothing short of amazing, and I think we tend to take such things for granted these days because of how many movies Disney has made now. I think we should all take some time to really watch these early classics and keep in mind that these weren't made with computers doing all the work. Real human hands drew and painted every single frame of this movie, and the level of detail in each scene is astonishing. Bravo, Disney. This was a well earned Oscar, at least from an artistic and technical point.<br />
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And actually, most of the songs aren't bad either. I'm particularly fond of this one.<br />
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They make washing up for supper silly and fun, regardless of your age. All of us involved in this little movie project are adults and we all found this song entertaining and enjoyable despite being above the target age. Although actually I wonder about that. I'm not sure what the target age of this movie is. Kids definitely enjoy it, but I know that early cartoons were not intended for children, but for adults. They morphed into children's fare later on. So possibly this film is intended for adults and that's why we like it so much. Food for thought.<br />
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I have very complaints about this movie, partly because of my childhood fondness for it, and partly because there's frankly very little wrong with it. I have another gripe about Prince Creeper though. The dude is a necrophiliac. Hear me out. He thinks Snow White is dead, so he goes to pay his last respects. He finds her in a glass coffin, and instead of quietly mourning like any <u>normal</u> person, he makes the dwarfs lift off the lid of the coffin so he can kiss her on her cold, dead mouth. True, she's not actually dead, but h<i>e doesn't know that</i>. He thinks she's dead and he still thinks to himself that he's got to have himself a piece of that. EW.<br />
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I guess my only other "complaint" has to do with Snow White's utter lack of any kind of personality, but that's not really a fair complaint because she wasn't supposed to have a personality. That's a feminist invention born of the 1960s and 70s. Disney females didn't really start developing personalities until then. Probably the earliest example is Princess Aurora from <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> but even then it's pretty minor. I don't think we see an actual personality in a girl until spunky Ariel in <i>The Little Mermaid</i> (which didn't come out until 1989). After that personality is par for the course, although the male characters still fall short with the possible exception of Aladdin (but the Genie steals that whole movie.)<br />
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Since I seem to have wandered off topic again, I'll just wrap up here. :D<br />
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Tomorrow's film is another one I've seen before, although not for a long time: <i>Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.</i>Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-11804313085758916272011-03-27T17:46:00.000-07:002011-06-23T23:04:07.676-07:00Captain Blood (1935)Well, what is there to say about this one? There is a thin but persistent political undercurrent - a recurring theme of bondage, of masters and slaves in various (and fluctuating) relationships, leading unequivocally to the conclusion that servants owe nothing to an unjust leader. Sortof the lighthearted, blockbuster version of <i>The Battleship Potemkin</i>. Potentially heady stuff in another time and place, but here it's pure, escapist entertainment, painted with broad, bold strokes and absolutely unapologetic about it. That's what makes it great. These days it's hard to make a film like this, largely because there are only so many variations possible without diluting the purity of the essential story. Usually they either come out as a ripoff or a convoluted mess. The key is all in the performance. You have to set aside doubt and go straight at it with the strength and certainty of Errol Flynn's chin.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Flynn plays Dr. Peter Blood (probably not my first choice out of the Yellow Pages), an English doctor who is taken for a traitor to the crown and sent to the Caribbean as a slave. Slavery treats him pretty good, thanks to his skill as a physician and protection from the "sheriff's" niece, Arabella (Olivia De Havilland). But compassion for his fellow slaves and his distaste for bondage even at such lovely hands leads him to organize an escape that leads to a notorious life of piracy. This all sounds like <i>setup</i> for the plot, but actually most of the action takes place on the island (Port Royal - where else?), while the actual pirate part is really just the last act. The importance of his pirate exploits is to reveal the meaning and importance of the previously established relationships by inverting them. This is a carefully structured plot (pretty closely following the novel by Raphael Sabatini). A little too carefully structured, perhaps - I felt it dragged a bit early in the second half as it got all its pieces repositioned, but mostly it flows pretty well. Of course, it also ignores the whole thing about how pirates kill people for money, but so has every other pirate movie ever made, so I'll give it a pass. Blood does at least clearly forbid rape (without actually using the word), but when Arabella calls him on murder, he slides by with, "No more than was necessary." You mean necessary to take all their stuff against their will? And how necessary was <i>that</i>? To its credit, the script does make mention of Blood's anger and desire for revenge, but none of that shows up in Flynn's straight-laced performance.<br />
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This is the role that made Errol Flynn a star, and its easy to see why. Apart from his looks, he has a way of speaking with incredible conviction. There's a sort of "uncanny valley" of earnestness, at the bottom of which one just comes across as totally naive and pathetic. Flynn is one of the few who can cross safely over the valley and shame us from the other side. In fact, there are two occasions in the film where he knowingly manipulates characters to his will using the sheer force of his "naive" Boy Scoutiness. It also enables him to sell the obscenely flowery dialogue he is given, stuff that would demolish a lesser actor, and with enough charisma left over to add a smile on top of it.<br />
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It was also the biggest role yet for De Havilland, who would go on to make quite a few pictures with Flynn, and then on to a more dramatic career that won her two Oscars. Like so many actresses of classic cinema, she has a poise and presence and maturity that obscures her young age. She allows herself to be vulnerable and sexy to just the right degree, but with a steady gaze and sharp-witted delivery that is more than a match for her costars. She was only nineteen upon the release of <i>Captain Blood</i>. They don't make nineteen-year-olds like that anymore. It's also notable that De Havilland is easily the most beautiful and glamorously-photographed actress we've seen in all our movies so far. The "Golden Age" of Hollywood and its obsession with glamorized leading ladies is now beginning to hit its full stride.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/de%20Havilland,%20Olivia/Annex/NRFPT/Annex%20-%20de%20Havilland,%20Olivia%20%28Captain%20Blood%29_NRFPT_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/de%20Havilland,%20Olivia/Annex/NRFPT/Annex%20-%20de%20Havilland,%20Olivia%20%28Captain%20Blood%29_NRFPT_02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Which reminds me, part of the point of this project was to analyze these movies as they compare to their predecessors, not so much from a modern perspective. Which I've rather let slide a bit. But <i>Captain Blood</i> is a good opportunity to mention a trend I've noticed in the 30s. By this point, movies have already gotten old enough that they are beginning to reflect on their history. The earliest examples of every major genre can be found in the silent era, along with the earliest adaptations of major literary works. Now the 30s seem to bring with them a significant wave of movies attempting to recapture and update those early classics with all the new technologies and artistic techniques they've learned since (especially sound). So we get <i>King Kong</i> in the footsteps of <i>The Lost World</i>. <i>Robin Hood</i> with Errol Flynn in place of Douglas Fairbanks. <i>The Sea Hawk</i> with Errol Flynn in place of... whoever it was. <i>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</i> with Charles Laughton in place of Lon Chaney. And so on. Even <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> - while the 1939 version was the first major full-length production, numerous silent attempts already existed.<br />
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And generally I'm one of the first to complain about remakes, but I'm actually quite jealous of audiences of the time. For one thing, the state of the art really <i>had</i> changed significantly since the last decade, and grown more sophisticated besides. And I can imagine the excitement of going in to the theater to see a story you loved when you were ten, reimagined bigger and better (and maybe in color) in ways your 20-year-old mind will appreciate even on top of the nostalgia. That must have been really cool. Like seeing a beloved comic book or video game finally visualized "for real" on the big screen. Only, you know... <i>good</i>.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: And yet, for all the nostalgia, there's room for something completely, utterly new. <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-86743127095743539022011-03-27T13:07:00.000-07:002011-03-27T13:46:06.731-07:00Captain Blood (1935)This is easily my favorite movie that we've watched thus far. HIGHLY entertaining, well acted (mostly - but more on that later), well paced, good action, etc. I honestly have next to no complaints about this film. I was very interested to see how influential Errol Flynn is though. Amazingly enough, this is the first Errol Flynn movie I have ever seen (and yes, I do have a bit of a crush on him...or at least on his character of Peter Blood. What a FOX.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://devilishpictures.com/captblood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://devilishpictures.com/captblood.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><br />
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<a name='more'></a>I'm a big fan of the "Pirates of Penzance" (although to be honest I'm a bit more of a fan of the 1982 spoof of it starring Kristi McNichol, Christopher Atkins, and Ted Hamilton) and it's clear that both of these draw heavily from Errol Flynn and Captain Blood. Ted Hamilton, for example, plays the Pirate King and looks very similar to Captain Blood with the way he wore his hair and clothing, and even just his mannerisms and way of speaking. It was also very obvious that Cary Elwes drew inspiration from Flynn in both "The Princess Bride" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights". I swear Flynn made faces and pronounced words/phrases exactly the same way Elwes does. I did a double take a couple of times because I'm so familiar with these two roles of Elwes that seeing these mannerisms performed by someone else 50 years before the films I know so well was a little weird. Cool, but weird.<br />
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Here's Ted Hamilton as the Pirate King (because I always had a bit of a crush on him growing up, and now I realize it's because he was channeling Errol Flynn):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/tQatWLEIJrA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Here's a couple more videos, because it's really fun to include them. The first is the duel scene from "Captain Blood" and the second is the duel scene from "The Princess Bride". Except for some minor differences they are remarkably similar. "The Princess Bride" is clearly an homage, which I find pretty cool. Unfortunately I can't embed either one because the original posters are selfish and don't want to share - jerks.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uog-mJYyloQ">Captain Blood</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7zvffHu_wo">The Princess Bride</a></div><br />
Actually, now that I've just rewatched both of these clips I see another very clear homage that I missed before. Inigo Montoya looks almost exactly like Basil Rathbone in "Captain Blood", with the facial hair, long curly hair, and even the scar on his face. The resemblance there seems to me a bit more obvious even than Cary Elwes to Errol Flynn. Interesting!<br />
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Okay, getting back to the actual review..."Captain Blood" takes place in 1685-1687. The title cards were very clear about that. So imagine my surprise when they at one point reference King Philip of Spain. I'm going to wax history geek here - Philip (or Felipe) did not become king of Spain until 1700. He was the first of the Bourbon line that is still ruling Spain today. The Bourbons came to power following a crisis in the Hapsburg line where they could not produce a male heir. So at the time this movie is set, the king of Spain was actually Charles II. Thank you, Dr. Nava (my college professor who taught me about this). <3<br />
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Honestly, a modicum of research on the part of the filmmakers would have fixed that flub. So they lose a few points towards realism and believability there. Ha.<br />
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My only other issue with the film was, sadly, the romance. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland were destined to be together - they're the two prettiest people in the film. Naturally they would end up together. Both acted their parts well...except for the romantic scenes they shared. For some weird reason these scenes came off as stilted and like they were trying too hard. The rest of the film they are both quite comfortable in their roles, and even though Flynn often speaks in an overly dramatic fashion it works. But it doesn't work in those few scenes where they're supposed to be romantic. It was kind of jarring actually - I'd be enjoying the film immensely and then all of a sudden I'd be groaning and rolling my eyes. And I LOVE romantic movies. I'm a total sucker for all that mushy crap (and Robin loves to tease me about it too). I wanted badly to believe in this romance and to be swept away by it like I am with so many other films. But I just wasn't. So that was pretty disappointing.<br />
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But that's such a small complaint in the grand scheme of things, really. The movie as a whole was simply fantastic. It was funny and exciting, kept my interest the entire time, and is one I will probably watch again sometime in the future.<br />
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Next week is one of the few I've already seen on this list, and I know I love it: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"!!Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-73488852142064242472011-03-20T11:32:00.000-07:002011-03-20T11:32:51.711-07:00King Kong (1933)Like most of the films on this project, I had never seen King Kong before. The reason is simple; I simply had no interest in a stop motion monster movie from the 30s. Similarly, I've never seen Godzilla. Now that I have seen Kong, I'm having strong emotions about it, which Robin assures me is the whole point of the movie.<br />
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I have to preface this review by mentioning that I did doze off a couple of times during the movie, so I potentially missed some key elements. I didn't doze off because the movie was boring (at least I don't think it was) but I'd had a long day of walking around the Wild Animal Park and was tired to begin with. :)<br />
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Okay, so let's get this party started. I see why they titled the movie after Kong - every one of the human characters were unlikeable, annoying, useless, or some combination of the above. The love story was so weak as to be laughable, the movie director who finds Ann and brings her on board in the first place is selfish and unsympathetic, and Ann herself...well, what can I say about Fay Wray? She sure could scream. And that's not a compliment. She spent all of her time either screaming or fainting, instead of using her brain and her heart to realize that Kong, while violent and scary, was only trying to protect her. He could have killed her in an instant - we see him kill other people just to prove that point. But he never handles Ann with anything other than tenderness.<br />
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Aside from the brutal fighting and killing scenes, I rather liked Kong. Of course, I have a soft spot for gorillas to begin with, and knowing what I do about their true natures I was a little annoyed with the original storytellers for making a gorilla into their evil monster. Gorillas don't act like Kong - bashing around destroying things and killing other creatures just for the heck of it. They're gentle creatures. Anyway, that's another soapbox that doesn't exactly belong in a movie review. :) Robin also mentioned the amazing animation of Kong by Willis O'Brien. O'Brien gave Kong emotions. Not only that - clearly recognizable emotions. I could tell when Kong was confused, or feeling playful, or tender, or afraid. The eyes are the window to the soul; O'Brien proved that.<br />
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Near the end, after the humans have captured Kong and brought him back to New York City, I was so saddened by the showcasing of Kong tied up on a stage in the city. He looked sad and confused and angry all at once. It made me angry so see these people treating Kong like that. I was glad when he escaped. I could even understand his rampage through the city. After all, he thought Ann was in danger and he wanted to protect her. Climbing the Empire State building was a way to get her as far from these crazy, loud, scary little creatures swarming around as he could think of. I'll admit it: I got a little teary eyed when they finally killed Kong. What they did to him was HORRIBLE. Unforgivable even.<br />
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I'm not going to say anything about the dinosaurs...that whole interlude was just weird and frankly didn't need to be in the movie.<br />
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Next week: Pirates! Treasure! Mutiny! Well, actually all I know for sure is the pirates part. It's <i>Captain Blood.</i>Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-40001686109992215182011-03-20T04:50:00.000-07:002011-06-23T22:44:01.579-07:00King Kong (1933)All of the great monster movies are tragedies. Though there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason for it, it's something essential to the genre. Perhaps because it forces a moral reckoning: we stand in awe of the mighty beast, yet what terrible power do <i>we</i> wield that destroys it? And, beyond the moral implications, that equivalency plays on anxieties about our own mortality. What should be a celebration of victory inevitably becomes a contemplation of the impermanence of all things. The King is dead. Long live the King.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Still, I'd forgotten how much this is true even of the original <i>King Kong</i>. I'd seen both remakes much more recently than the original, and of course they both heavily play up the idea of Kong as a sympathetic character; in contrast, I assumed, to the original. That's true to an extent - this Kong certainly spends a lot of time growling and eating innocent bystanders, and there isn't much in the script to suggest anything other than a vicious killer. But Willis O'Brien's outstanding animation adds an entirely new dimension. Faced with a character that can't speak (not even in silent film intertitles), O'Brien nevertheless provides Kong with arguably the best performance in the film. One shot in particular caught my attention, shortly after Kong has recaptured Ann from her high-rise bedroom: he glances over his shoulder, and the angle, up-turned brows, and bright eyes shining in the darkness of the concrete jungle betray - only for a moment - immense uncertainty and fear. The rather simple plot of <i>King Kong</i> tells us about the "old world" of myth, gods, and nature falling before the footsteps of modern civilization (both the planes and the Empire State Building represented the pinnacle of American technological dominance at the time). Kong's performance makes it clear this is a bad thing, or at least a sad thing. His sympathetic side is a lot more understated than in later versions, but I actually like that better. It means Kong's true nature is there to be discovered by those willing to look past the monster, forcing the audience to go through the moral math themselves rather than getting it spelled out. And the '33 Kong is really the most tragic of them all you know. At least later Kongs had Ann/Dwan on his side (for all the good it did), but here even she can't get over her terror. He is utterly alone. That's another trait all the great monsters share. Come to think of it, underneath the social messages about technical advancement ('33), masculinity in the modern age ('76), and, uh.. something about <i>Heart of Darkness</i> ('05), the essential story of Kong is pretty much a remake of <i>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</i>.<br />
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Technically, the film holds up quite well (we watched the Blu-ray, which looks terrific for its age, though not as crisp as <i>The General</i>). Only five years after <i>The Jazz Singer</i> the art of sound design has matured dramatically. The soundtrack was lush and well-balanced; didn't notice any dead spots. As is frequently mentioned, the airplane sequence was especially impressive. The humming and swooping of the plane engines was tempered so well it was almost musical. As for the visuals, well, the direction was by-the-book, but the effects... wow. Last time I saw the movie I was too young to appreciate what went into them. And it's not just the animation itself. The stop-motion was imaginative and clever, but definitely a bit unrefined compared to what Harryhausen and others did with it in later years. Some shots were better than others. But the amount of <i>integration</i> between the animated models and live environment consistently blew me away. This is a similar case to what I said about the camerawork in <i>Sunrise</i>, in that they just went to way more work than they had to.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/images/king_kong_33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/images/king_kong_33.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This single shot involves multiple layers of matte paintings plus multiple layers of live action, including smoke, bubbling water, and two live actors - all created separately and layered in through both in-camera and post-process techniques. Plus the Kong puppet. The entire movie goes to these lengths.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
They could have shot the actors, and then shot reverse angles of miniature sets, but instead dinosaurs and live actors are jammed into the same frame, preferably overlapping, as often as possible. They could have shot everybody standing still as they look at the fallen stegosaurus, or just passing by the frame, but instead they choreographed some crazy tracking shot to follow them as they walk in front of a stop-motion miniature (and the movement lines up perfectly). They could have cut back and forth when animated Kong throws something, and then it lands on a live action set, but they did it in one shot. Repeatedly. They could have changed the script so Kong doesn't have to pick up and put down Ann so often, or they could have done it off-screen, or behind an obscurement, but instead they do constant on-screen transitions between puppet-Ann and real-Ann just to sell the illusion over and over. And it doesn't quite work, to my modern, educated eye. But it's surprisingly close, and I love that they went to the effort. Over and over. And finally the best part is the airplane finale. Everything comes together there - the best sound, music, and visuals of the entire movie. The swooping point-of-view shots from the planes add a lot of energy, while the editing and sound shape the tension perfectly. The pacing of the scene is top notch, and holds its own against any movie made since.<br />
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So, that's a lot of praise. What can I say... I'm a sucker for dinosaurs. But there are a couple rough edges. Kong gets in about one fight too many, dragging down the momentum somewhat in the middle. Jack Driscoll is a fairly unlikable drip, and his, "Say; I guess I love you," ranks as one of the all-time silliest romantic lines ever (perhaps up there with the non-sandiness of Padme). And Fay Wray's Ann Darrow is believable enough and not too off-putting, but so useless one almost suspects that the movie's theme - "it was Beauty killed the Beast" - really means women are a nuisance after all and shouldn't be allowed on boats. The remakes clearly recognized these issues, and did their best to attack them head-on, to varying success. But on the whole I think the original version has now become my clear favorite. Peter Jackson's film is pretty, if a bit vapid and meandering, and Dino De Laurentiis'... well... gets points for trying (Jessica Lange's performance is completely underrated, btw - critics of the time just didn't understand what she was doing). This one, however, is the total package. <br />
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Hail to the King, baby.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: Doug Flyn- I mean, Errol Fairba- I mean.... <i>Captain Blood</i>.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-56847549179039734122011-03-17T01:00:00.000-07:002011-03-17T01:03:08.562-07:00Little Caesar (1931)My parents enjoy telling me how, when I first emerged wrinkly and screaming into the world, I looked just like Edward G. Robinson. I like this, and I think it says something about my parents. I think if more parents were truly honest with themselves, they'd find this was true of their babies too. Some of us were downright reptilian to start with.<br />
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So what I noticed while watching Robinson's performance in <i>Little Caesar</i>, is that the comparison folds neatly back on itself. For his character, Rico, is a lot like a baby. The sort of angry, tempestuous baby everyone fears the most. He always wants more, wants better, wants wants wants. Gimme gimme gimme. He has no patience. He needs to be the center of attention. Anytime he isn't doing anything else, he's complaining. Once he achieves power and success, he has an almost adorable uncertainty of what to do with it. Possibly my favorite scene is when he comes over to the head honcho's pad, and isn't quite sure what to say about all the nice furniture, or what to do with his cigar. But he watches the Big Boy's actions and tastes, and copies them later on. Not because he really likes or even understands them - just because that's what he saw a big important person do, so he copies it. Eventually he navigates their awkward conversation by admiring everything in terms of price. See, he's not interested in the thing itself, but what it took to get it. Being successful - actually <i>having</i> things - isn't what he's good at. What he's good at is wanting things. Taking. <i>Grabbing</i>. And snarling until he gets his way. As a baby he was the kind of kid who couldn't just play with the toy he was holding. He had to play with whatever toy somebody else was holding. And God forbid you don't want to play whatever game he wants to play, or he'll gun you down on the cathedral steps.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>There was a special feature on the DVD discussing "the rise of the anti-hero" in reference to Rico. Depending on your definition of the term, I'm not convinced it's appropriate. When I think "anti-hero" I generally think of The Man With No Name, or Snake Plissken - someone whose motives are sympathetic if not their methods. Someone who is functionally the hero despite not having the personality of one. But there is nothing sympathetic or functionally heroic about Rico, nor was there intended to be. The "sympathetic" one is Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., his buddy, but even he isn't much of a hero. He's a nice enough guy, but doesn't manage to make a single useful decision throughout the course of the movie, not even at the end when it might have made a tidy end to his character arc. And the cop certainly isn't sympathetic. The fact he's on the good side of the moral line is probably a matter of luck more than anything else. So there really aren't any heroes in this movie. If anything, there's those that tempt fate and those that keep their head down. That's a pretty grim statement to make, but we are deep into the Great Depression at this point.<br />
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The special features also mentioned the comparison between the gangsters in the film, especially Rico, and the businessmen responsible for the Depression. This made a lot of sense to me. The primary arc of the movie is how Rico's relentless "ambition" (greed) brings him almost to the top in life, and then straight back down to the bottom. Regardless of how specifically the film means to target its allegory, it's definitely a reference to mainstream business. Most of the, er, <i>business</i> of the film is office politics. Power dynamics. What does Rico's gang actually do? Probably something to do with alcohol (we're also still in Prohibition), but the movie never says. Early on they go on a very important job, but what exactly this job is about (it appears to be just a robbery) is never explicitly stated. Because it doesn't matter - everything is kept as general as possible, because it isn't really about gangsters specifically. If they all could keep their "rods" put away for ten minutes, it would be nearly indistinguishable from an episode of <i>Mad Men</i>. This is a movie about corporate businessmen and how they're all a bunch of babies.<br />
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Since this was our first full talkie, I paid close attention to the sound, which proved quite rewarding. Interestingly, the movie has no music (except during the opening titles). It was curious going from "silents," which have all had nearly constant wall-to-wall music, to a talkie with none at all. Perhaps they didn't know what to do with it? They wouldn't want it to distract from the dialogue and painstakingly made sound-effects, after all. And the modern conception of "underscore" is a very different style from what we heard over the silent films (even in cases like <i>Metropolis</i> which had original scores rather than just classical or improvised accompaniment).<br />
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But I have no idea whether this lack of score was common for films of the time. It was also possibly an artistic choice, which I could easily believe. The most interesting scene in terms of sound is the heist job early on. Instead of following the whole thing, the scene is done in montage, which actually had a number of unique effects. First of all it again eliminated the specifics of what they were doing to focus on the attitudes and broad choices. Secondly, it felt weird because it had no music - how many times have you ever seen a montage without music? It was <i>weird</i>. It's weird because montage takes us out of the immediacy of the moment - it's "summary" from a witness rather than "being there" and seeing it for yourself. Except the only sound is a little dialogue, a little shuffling and a gun shot, and - most importantly - a constant background of ambient crowd noise (this is all happening in a large restaurant or something). And all these specific, subdued, natural, ambient sounds effect <i>the exact opposite of montage!</i> The soundscape creates (as well as early sound tech can) a vivid and localized sense of place; of actually being there. The editing creates a dreamlike sense of vagueness and distance. They are utterly, diametrically opposed to each other. This is <b><i>weird</i></b>. I have never seen a sequence constructed like this ever before in my life, which alone is pretty impressive. But you know what the total effect was? It made me feel exactly the way Fairbanks, Jr. is probably feeling immediately after it happens, as he tries to explain the situation to his girlfriend even as he struggles to confront it in his own mind. Everything went wrong. Everything went out of control. Things just started happening. He was just there - <i>right there</i> - yet even he can barely remember how it all happened; how events connect and lead one to another. Imagine the mind of a drunk in a bar fight. This sequence captures that feeling <i>perfectly</i>. And all without haze filters or slow-mo, or other fancy crap. For the most part the movie is very straightforward anyway, without a lot of complex or stylish filmmaking. But, in its quiet and modest way, that heist scene is incredibly innovative, and absolutely brilliant.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: But my exploration of "silent talkies" is cut short as we move on to the film often credited with establishing "real" film score as we know it today: <i>King Kong</i>. Also there's a fight with a dinosaur. I like those.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-5667255455474766372011-03-13T16:07:00.000-07:002011-03-13T16:14:06.468-07:00Little Caesar (1931)Have any of you ever wondered what English must sound like to non-English speakers? Well, I have. Growing up speaking nothing but English I have never had any problems understanding spoken English. I'd listen to other languages and think how interesting and completely different they sound, because I don't understand any of their words. I knew on a logical level that these same people must feel the same about English when they hear it, but I could never imagine what it might actually sound like to them.<br />
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Now I can.<br />
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"Little Caesar" is the first full talkie we've seen, and it was so difficult to understand that I had to turn the subtitles on about five minutes into it just to keep up. This is not only due to the completely different slang of the 30's, but to the incredible speed these actors spoke at combined with their nasal gangster accents. There were literally times in the movie where they spoke so fast and so unintelligibly that I felt like I was watching a movie in a foreign language. What a trippy feeling that was.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Anyway, this film was interesting, although I didn't exactly like it. I didn't hate it...I just felt kind of confused throughout rather than entertained. This movie marks the rise of the antihero - the "protagonist" in this story is actually a selfish, cruel, heartless gangster. This is not someone you'd ordinarily root for, and yet I got the feeling that that's exactly what the movie was trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, at least for me, they failed. I couldn't identify with Rico (Little Caesar) and I wanted him to get his comeuppance. I just couldn't make myself care about his plight.<br />
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Now, I know a good part of that is the fact that I don't live in the Great Depression. Gangster films were incredibly popular during that time because they often had a dark and negative outlook on life that mirrored what was going on in reality. We studied this briefly last semester in my Frontier as Myth class. During the Depression, Westerns pretty much vanished from the scene and were replaced with gangster flicks. These new movies didn't end with the hero getting the girl and riding off into the sunset to live happily ever after. More often, the "hero" ended up dying in the streets. It's really quite pessimistic stuff. You'd think that people who suffered all day in the Depression would want to see happy movies to cheer them up - not stuff that would drag them further down!<br />
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Anyway, with that background in mind, I know that I bring an entirely different perspective to the film than the original audience did. I think the film intended audiences to identify with Rico as this poor nobody who manages to make it big, but like all the rich people who put their faith in the stock market, his crash back into obscurity came just as fast and as hard as his rise did. I'm sure people could identify with that. Too bad Rico is so unlikeable. And it's also too bad that gangster movies have been so parodied since the 30s that Rico and his cohorts came off looking and sounding more like cartoon characters than scary gangsters. Again, a problem with my perspective - the original audience wouldn't have thought this.<br />
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Rico himself was a slimy little guy. At times he looked like Dracula, and at other times he looked like a weaselly used car salesman. His voice was super nasal and just weird sounding - I can't imagine that was his real voice; it had to be an act (and honestly I wish he hadn't spoken like that because it was not only distracting but incredibly annoying.) Every time he spoke, I just kept picturing these guys:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/IrishGypsie/a021af9c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/IrishGypsie/a021af9c.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />
Yeah...not exactly threatening. I find it interesting that Disney chose weasels to be their gangsters in Roger Rabbit. Perhaps the animators watched this movie for inspiration.<br />
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I don't really have too much else to say about this movie. Rico got what was coming to him, and the world went on turning. In the end, Rico's gangster antics didn't make much difference to the world at large. He was just another forgettable punk in a city of punks. Perhaps that's the movie's ultimate message - if you're ever lucky enough to become somebody, don't ever forget that you can lose your position as easily as you attained it. Maybe it's better to be happy with what you've got instead of pursuing fame and riches; look what happened to "poor" Rico. All lost for the sake of ambition. Don't be like Rico, kids. Stay home and be good upstanding citizens. Let Rico be a warning to you.<br />
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Actually, I may be onto something with that, all sarcasm aside.<br />
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Next week, hide your bananas and your ingenues...it's King Kong!Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-35404836987456194722011-03-09T23:24:00.000-08:002011-03-17T01:18:19.732-07:00The Jazz Singer (1927)I wasn't sure what to expect here. I knew it wasn't a full talkie, and I knew the synced sound was mostly used for musical performances. The word "talkie" is important here, btw - <i>The Jazz Singer</i> isn't the first sound film in the broadest sense. <i>Sunrise</i> had an on-film soundtrack consisting of the score and a few effects, such as applause (and I think thunder, but maybe the cinematography just made me remember thunder...), as did a few other films. What <i>Jazz Singer</i> pioneered was discernible words coming out of people's mouths in a feature film. This only happens twice as spoken dialogue, but both times are impressive. The first synced dialogue ever: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet!" How perfect is that?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>What's really great is that it comes out of nowhere. He finishes the song and just launches into some quick stage banter, like it was nothing. Audiences gasped. History was made. Then it goes back to using title cards.<br />
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The movie is mostly comprised of a handful of complete musical numbers backed by a simplistic <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BillyElliotPlot">Billy Elliot Plot</a>/<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackieRobinsonStory">Jackie Robinson Story</a> (broadly applied). His father expects one life out of him, he desires another, and - naturally - the key moment for both falls on the same night. These days, this plot is so overused you can't even judge it on originality anymore; it comes down to the strength of the characters and craftsmanship of the story. For example, one of the best - <i>Bend it Like Beckham</i> - thrives on the lush culture of the Indian heroine. It also skillfully navigates the conflicting events at the end and the inevitable compromise solution (by solving it through an effort by all of the heroine's friends and family which is both plausible and, of course, heartwarming). In comparison, <i>The Jazz Singer</i> is passable. Its characters are engaging enough, but it stumbles at the compromise finale, in which we are continually told that compromise is impossible, and then it somehow works out anyway - not sure why. So, <i>taken strictly by itself</i>, I found it a decent but largely forgettable movie, which might be easy to dismiss as a brainless effort to cash-in on the cool sound technology.<br />
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But, you can't take it just by itself. Context matters here - and that's fair because audiences of the time would have known the context, because they knew who star <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackieRobinsonStory">Al Jolson</a> was. The tropes in the film are all too familiar and easy, but the specific details Jolson chooses to fill in those tropes are where the meat is. They are also largely autobiographical.<br />
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Let's go through this again. The hero is Jakie Rabinowitz, American-born child of Jewish immigrants. His father expects a certain life out of him - that of a Jewish cantor, as he is and his father before him. And already the movie has broken some important ground. This isn't just a few mentions of Judaism here and there. The plot is built on it, and we see rabbis and synagogues and singing and ceremonial dress and instruments. When was the last time you saw <i>that</i> in a movie (that wasn't about the Holocaust)? Also, Al Jolson himself was Jewish, from Lithuania.<br />
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But young Jakie doesn't want to be a cantor - he wants to sing the songs of his own new world, Broadway and jazz. So he runs away from home to follow his dreams, and gains much success. Of course, his Jewish heritage does him no favors in that regard, so he changes his name to the much more palatable Jack Robin (even insisting his mother call him that). Al Jolson also changed his name when he entered show business - he was born Asa Yoelson. Btw, even with the fabled penetration of ethnic Jews into the modern entertainment industry, they still can't get carried away. Perhaps you noticed it isn't called The Daily Show with Jon Stuart Leibowitz? <br />
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And then things get dramatically more interesting as we come upon the infamous blackface scene. Oh boy. The initial reaction, as Mandie says in her review, was pretty much horror and revulsion. Since the Civil Rights revolution, blackface performance has been a pretty strict no-no, and not without good reason. Its history primarily dates back to the old "minstrel shows" of the 19th and early 20th century, which were quite popular in their heyday, but now considered so unspeakably evil that their memory has been almost entirely forgotten in the space of a couple generations (thanks to the unspeaking). In these shows, small groups in blackface would sing songs and maybe do a skit or two, purporting (often not truthfully) to be performing real negro music while perpetuating incredibly insulting stereotypes (that went on to form the basis for most of those we have today). Since these shows established that black music was to be played in blackface, even more straightforward performances of jazz and other <i>actual</i> black music came to be performed commonly in blackface, even by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bert_Williams_blackface_2.jpg">blacks themselves</a>.<br />
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So, back to Jolson. Racist? Bigot? Otherwise good man caught up in the current of history, ala' Thomas Jefferson the slave holder? Jolson was certainly no stranger to blackface. He used it a lot, before and after <i>The Jazz Singer</i>, and claimed to love it. It was a sortof disguise, and gave him a feeling of freedom in his performance. It was also just the style at the time - you put on lederhosen to sing a polka, and blackface to sing jazz. But there's more going on here. For one thing, you have to understand that, at the time, jazz was as new and scary to much of America as it is to Jakie's disapproving father. Much like blacks themselves were. For another, it's noteworthy that Jolson simply wears the accoutrements - he makes no attempt to <i>act</i> black, in one stereotype or another. He simply talks and sings as himself with another face. What he's doing comes into especially sharp focus in the context of <i>Jazz Singer</i> - drawing a parallel between the black experience and his as a Jew and as a jazz singer. There is some debate about whether this was done intentionally, but now that I've seen the movie I have no doubt at all. The theme of identity and disguises is strong. Jakie Rabinowitz must suppress his heritage to find success. Ironically, he is able to use the costume of a black man to do this, while an actual black man would also find his heritage a barrier to success. After all, they invented the music, but it was Jolson who was largely responsible for bringing jazz to the rest of America. As a white man, he had the power to do that. He also had the power to stay white and not bring up the whole race thing. Yet he chose to put it right on stage. It suggests a kinship between them, through the music, and I think was also a way to give blacks their due credit, and start the process of bringing <i>them</i> into the mainstream. In any case, if you peruse his Wikipedia link above, you can see that Jolson's credentials as a friend to blacks and supporter of civil rights is beyond reproach.<br />
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So here we have a bunch of underdogs finding acceptance in a conservative world. Jakie to his father. Jazz on Broadway. And, maybe, blacks and Jews to the world, through the unifying power of jazz, the "holy music" of the American experience. Is there anything else? Any other crazy, new, dangerous, world-changing ideas looking for acceptance here? Why... <i>talking pictures</i>! My god, this film is just the neatest little ball I ever did see! It's even a bit prescient. Check this out: Jakie Rabinowitz; Jack Robin; <i>Jackie Robinson</i>. Obviously not intentional, but cool nonetheless.<br />
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I was expecting, or perhaps bracing is a better word, for <i>The Jazz Singer</i> to be one of those technical achievements that really has no reason to be famous beyond being a technical achievement. But that isn't the case. While its story is simple, there is a lot going on under the surface and a lot of clever construction. I didn't even mention the second dialogue scene, in which Jack speaks to his mother while performing some "jazzy" music for her. She loves it, but then his father bursts in and shouts "Stop!" with such force that it cuts off the synchronized dialogue and the film reverts again to title cards. That's exactly what I mean by clever construction - something that could have just been a gimmick is given a real thematic job to do, creating a layer of symbolism that appears to affect the film itself. It's almost recursive. And it just gets better and better the more I think about it. It might even be enough for me to forgive the stumble at the climax. :)<br />
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NEXT WEEK: The first full "all talking" picture was <i>The Lights of New York</i>, a gangster film from 1928. But we're not watching that. We're watching <i>Little Caesar</i>, a better gangster film from three years later, starring Edward G. Robinson... whose birth name, incidentally, was <span class="nickname">Emanuel Goldenberg. And he went with "Robinson." You can't make this stuff up.</span>Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-40968225507158227882011-03-08T23:20:00.000-08:002011-03-09T00:04:03.807-08:00Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)I'd never heard of this movie before I began assembling this list. Not sure how it fell under the radar - I guess its memory was trampled by <i>Metropolis</i> and <i>The Jazz Singer</i>, which came out the same year. But the name kept popping up as I did my research - not usually at the top of the list, but on<i> every</i> list. And I thought, "Huh." And then upon closer inspection, I saw that it was directed by F. W. Murnau, famed German expressionist director best remembered for bringing us <a href="http://img.sparknotes.com/figures/B/bba939170b15f287a4e3b66187ea61de/Nosferatu_1922.jpg">this image</a>. And I thought, "<i>Huh.</i>" So, we watched it. And I thought, ...well you get it. The point is, why didn't anybody mention this one before?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Which is not exactly to say I liked it, but more on that later. First I want to talk about the photography, which is what everyone talks about most regarding this movie. It's not quite what I expected. Somehow with what I gathered about the plot and setting I had got the impression that by "beautiful film" people simply meant the photography is great in the traditional sense of being lush and vivid and well-composed - comparable to great still photography. I was thinking Ansel Adams, that sort of thing. And it is nice in that regard, as far as I could tell through the somewhat battered print. But much more striking is the camera<i>work</i>, in the modern sense of the camera actually doing "work" as opposed to just sitting there and maybe being panned back and forth every now and then. Composition centered around <i>motion</i>; kinetic energy. The camerawork in <i>Sunrise</i> is absolutely revolutionary compared to what we've seen before. It even contains a couple complicated, mechanical tracking shots that hold their own against the best of Hitchcock. I'm glad I didn't know about them, actually, so I could experience the joy of watching these shots unfold; my jaw falling further and further open as - instead of quitting while it's ahead - it continues on to some even more interesting twist or turn before finally coming to rest at the beautiful composition that's been patiently waiting for it.<br />
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Sorry - I do tend to wax poetic when I'm impressed. But I love it when filmmakers put a ridiculous amount of effort into getting a detail <i>just so</i>. It shows they care, and their care shows in the quality of the film. Even today, with all the dollies and cranes and Steadi-Cams at their disposal, this sort of effort is rare (sadly, <i>Dark City</i> is not on the viewing list, but it's one of the few examples in my lifetime of a film with similarly meticulous and - as Ebert put it - <i>generous</i> craftsmanship). Modern movies have a lot of motion, but it's generally unfocused; off-the-cuff. Imagine a great conductor leading his orchestra - that's how I envision Murnau as he crafted this masterpiece.<br />
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And it doesn't stop there! Fancy camerawork isn't enough for you? How about fancy editing/post-processing/effects? <i>Sunrise</i> has them in spades. Keep in mind, this is a drama about two people who take a small boat and then trolley to the city, have a crazy night, and then go home. Almost every movie we've seen so far is less mundane in setting, yet none come close in terms of the sheer amount of crafting that went into the visuals - not even <i>Thief of Bagdad</i>. The city is built up from composites of multiple shots, miniatures, forced perspective... pretty much every trick in the book. Other shots involve double-exposure "ghosts" interacting with people and an astonishing, unbroken stroll through multiple backgrounds (the sort of thing that would be done with green-screen today, and rear-projection before that - but I was told the first use of rear-projection was 1930, so I have no idea what technique is being used here). Some shots are meant to look believable if "too perfect," while others are deliberately dream-like. Even the inter-titles get in on the action, occasionally getting animated effects (like "washing away"). It's an incredible achievement. I have no idea how Murnau talked anyone into giving him the money for all this.<br />
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The obvious comparison is to <i>Citizen Kane</i>, which is the only other "normal" drama (meaning not sci-fi or fantasy) I'm aware of that contains so much effects work and hyper-real design. Actually, I think <i>Sunrise</i> has it beat. What I like is both the acknowledgment that the "world" of a drama is just as important as the world of a fantasy adventure, and that it is, really, no less a fantasy. A film's world is a character just like all the others, and should not let the actual world the filmmakers inhabit hold it back from its true potential. That said, if I were making such a film, and wanted $150 million to make it "<i>just so</i>," and the studio said "no way"... I probably wouldn't hold it against them.<br />
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<i>Citizen Kane</i> also has a lot of fancy camera work apart from the visual effects. The difference here however is that <i>Kane</i> is famous for its frequent and bold-faced symbolism, whereas the photography in <i>Sunrise</i> is driven by emotion and "dramatic momentum" - evocative, but not strictly "symbolic." No shame in that; just wanted to point out a difference since people like to compare these films so much.<br />
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Another difference, I think, is that <i>Kane</i> just has a stronger story. Of course, as they say on the internet, <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=YMMV">YMMV</a>. The story to Sunrise is simple (and timeless, as it points out in the opening title cards). So simple that it's probably either going to click with you or it won't, because they're aren't a lot of wrinkles. The problem for me came early on. The plot, as Mandie summarized, is that a depressed, unfaithful man has been convinced by his mistress to murder his wife (classic duplicitous woman noir stuff, except the murder scene wouldn't be so early on). This he intends to do by taking her out on a boat and throwing her overboard. He - SPOILER ALERT! - gets as far as almost having his hands around her neck, by which time she's well figured out what's going on, but then can't do it and backs off in a daze. They reach land and naturally she tries to run away. He follows her to the city, trying to calm her down and apologize (!?), eventually succeeding as the night on the town becomes a new romance and they fall in love all over again.<br />
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So I think I get the timeless part, reconnecting with a love they assumed lost and all. But... after attempted murder? An affair sure, or violent outburst or selling the farm or some other crazy episode. But... "sorry about trying to kill you - take me back?" And I'm not saying a murder attempt makes him irrevocably evil. I see the desperation. I'm sure he wasn't quite in his right mind. I'm sure he really is very sorry and really does wish to do all he can to make it up to her, and even that he's capable of holding to that wish. I'm even ready to believe that she can process and understand and know all of that, intellectually at least. But to truly set it aside? In one night? Or one year for that matter? It seems to me that attempted murder crosses an irreversible line somewhere. The best I can believe is that she would not file charges and wish him well in his new life. Apparently the people who love this movie can believe a bit more. Again, YMMV. For me, that took me out of the film pretty much permanently. After that, I enjoyed watching it, but it was as an outsider looking in. It was a lovely curiosity to behold, but not a deep experience. I hold no grudges, and I wish it well with an audience that can love it the way I couldn't.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-12640362032955827782011-03-08T20:31:00.000-08:002011-03-08T21:08:35.446-08:00The Jazz SingerThis post is also a bit late, seeing as we watched this on Friday night. But I have a good excuse on this one - my sister was in town for the weekend from Colorado and I spent most of it with her, including all day Sunday at Disneyland and California Adventure. :)<br />
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Okay, so, the Jazz Singer. The first talkie! Well, sort of. This movie was not at all what I expected. And I hated it.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Basically, this movie has the now standard plot of: child has a passion for something (singing, dancing, roller derby, etc.) but parent disapproves because parent wants child to do what they excelled at (religious stuff, beauty pageants, higher education, etc.) Child disobeys parent, parent throws child out of the house, child pursues own passion until parent gets sick. Child goes home to comfort parent, who's dying wish is that child submit to the original plan that they've been rebelling against all along, and child agrees for parent's sake, except that the event the parents wants them to do is happening at the same exact time as the event the child wants to do, and the child must make a Hard Decision.<br />
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This plot has been done many times, some better than others (I admit I'm a fan of "Ice Princess" and "Whip It", both of which fall squarely into this category of film, and yes I know these are not examples of Fine Art but I love them anyway.) The Jazz Singer is probably the first time this now overly familiar plot device was seen, so I suppose I need to give it some credit for that.<br />
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But I just didn't like it. Perhaps because I couldn't relate to the father at all. He's super religious and wants his son to only sing religious songs and to hell (literally?) with what his son wants to do. He throws his son out of the house for singing "jazz" songs at a local watering hole (I put jazz in quotes because whatever he was singing, it wasn't jazz - at least not jazz as I know it). This was an extreme overreaction, especially considering the boy was only 13 years old. Way to be a supportive, loving parent, you jerk.<br />
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Anyway, the kid goes on to fame and stardom as a "jazz" singer, and lands a role in a Broadway show in which he has to wear blackface for his character. I'd never seen blackface makeup before and I was hideously offended. What an absolutely disgusting practice that was.<br />
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Of course, his father gets ill and Jakie (which is pronounced Jackie, and believe me the incorrect spelling irritated me the entire film) goes home to tend him. The father's dying wish is that Jackie (whatever - I'll spell it correctly, thankyouverymuch) sing a religious Jewish hymn at a service because he's too ill to sing it himself and I guess if nobody sings it the world will split open and New York will be sucked into the ocean or something. Jackie is torn as to whether or not to indulge his father who disowned him or perform the racist number on stage. Of course, in the happy-ish ending that's typical of this genre he finds a way to do both. The father forgives him at the last second and then dies a happy man because his son capitulated to his will, because apparently that's all the matters in the end - the father was RIGHT dammit, so now he can die a happy man. *rolls eyes* Puke.<br />
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The film itself was very strange. It wasn't completely talkie. It was actually more silent, with only the songs being aural. In one song about halfway through there is a little bit of dialogue after the song finishes which feels very fake and forced, like the guy didn't know how to act. Which come to think of it, he probably didn't. Up to this point nobody had to worry about their voices being heard in their films, so who cared if they knew how to emote or make their voices sound believable? He sounded very loud and overexcited, and seemed to over-enunciate everything. It was as far from natural speech as you can get, and it bugged me. Yes, I'm a judgmental beast. :P<br />
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Anyway, I didn't care for it. To be fair though I was cranky before we sat down to watch it and my mood may have tainted my viewing, and I probably should watch it again just to be sure...but I don't want to.Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-33982531796735403102011-03-08T20:12:00.000-08:002011-03-08T21:08:20.552-08:00Sunrise: A Song of Two HumansWe watched this movie nearly two weeks ago, and I've just not had a spare moment to sit down and write my review. But I have some time now, so I say better late than never.<br />
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Now I just have to try to remember what my original thoughts/impressions were. :D<br />
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If you're like me, you probably assume that a movie with this kind of title must be a religious Adam and Eve sort of tale. And if that's what you think, then you're wrong. Haha. Robin told me I was wrong but I didn't believe him. So I was surprised when the movie started and sure enough, it's got nothing to do with Adam, Eve, or the Bible. Thankfully.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>What it's actually about is a man and his wife, Swedish immigrants (most likely - I don't think this is ever clearly stated but that's the obvious impression given based on the way they look and the setting being Minnesota.) Anyway, this man, who has no name, is having an affair with a brunette slattern who smokes and dresses provocatively. But he won't leave his wife for her, so she comes up with the "brilliant" plan to murder the innocent wife and make it look like an accident. Yeah, there's a charmer.<br />
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Shockingly, the husband appears to go along with it, at least at first. But at the last minute he finds that he cannot go through with it and attempts to make amends with his wife, who understandably is now terrified of him and wants nothing more than to get away.<br />
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I don't want to do much summarizing here because the movie was actually pretty enjoyable and I think most people would enjoy watching it. I think this is another that could be remade today with modern actors and a slightly updated storyline and have it still work remarkably well.<br />
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The filming was interesting, and I'm sure Robin will go into this more in his review, but I have to admit that interesting as it was I didn't actually notice it all that much. What I mean is, except for it being black and white and a silent film, it looked very much like movies I watch today. Similar camera angles and movements, zooms, pans, etc. It's all stuff that looks very normal to me. Of course, for the time this movie was made it wasn't normal - nobody had ever seen camera work like this before. So I'm a little sad that I'm too jaded by modern standards to really appreciate how stunning this film must have been for the original audience.<br />
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The movie is a bit melodramatic too. Not quite as bad as The Thief of Bagdad, but enough so that all of us watching kept heckling and interjecting jokes and comments. We were our own version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which kept all of us laughing and entertained, but on the other hand the movie obviously didn't set out to be mocked. It took itself seriously...which is perhaps why we felt the need to joke about it. It was a little confused...almost like it couldn't quite make up its mind as to what kind of movie it wanted to be. There were elements of drama and mystery, elements of comedy, elements of tender romance, and elements of redemption and forgiveness. There were just too many elements in my opinion. Near the end there's a part where we predicted what would happen next, perhaps based on our modern viewpoint or expectations. Our theory would have made for an excellent twist in the plot and would have kept the story fresh and exciting, but it's not what happened.<br />
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I was actually a bit disappointed with the ending because it felt a little rushed, a little unfinished, and a little too "and they lived happily ever after", which just didn't seem to fit the rest of the movie. I felt like they were trying to tell a morality tale but then at the very end there's no moral to the story. It just ends, and it feels like the completely wrong ending. They should have ended it with the husband learning a really tough lesson (again I can't really expound on this without ruining the whole plot and the ending they chose.) Tell you guys what - if you really want to know my thoughts and the plot twist we thought up, go rent the movie. After you've watched it, come back here and leave a comment on this post, and then we can discuss and debate. :DMandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-63053096984944000362011-02-25T23:05:00.000-08:002011-02-28T19:16:50.865-08:00The General (1927)Sorry I'm late to this review - schedules been a bit messed up this week due to my <i>awesome wife</i> and <i>awesome brother</i> appearing in awesome productions of The Vagina Monologues and Jekyll & Hyde respectively (he was Jekyll). Next week's (this week's) movie will be delayed a few days and we'll be back on schedule by next weekend.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>So... I'm having an uncomfortable relationship with this movie. <i>The General</i> was a terrible flop on release in '27, arguably leading directly to the collapse of Buster Keaton's career, and then a few decades later began to earn a new reputation as one of the greatest films ever made. This sort of reversal happens from time to time (it appears to be happening now to <i>Blade Runner</i>), and generally I find in these cases that the truth lies in some complicated place in the middle. That's certainly the case here. I can see, intellectually, what latter-day fans see in it. I can see where it's new; before-its-time; subversive; upending the sentimentality of Chaplin. I can certainly appreciate its precision, and the incredible blood, sweat, and tears that must have gone into such an undertaking. I can see all that, on an <i>intellectual</i> level. But in my gut... I'm not feeling it.<br />
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I'll start with Keaton's deadpan humor. I <i>loved</i> it... in theory. Yet I didn't laugh at it much. It was usually a smile of appreciation because I could see what he was going for, mixed with frustration that the joke didn't quite hit its mark. Often this was a problem of timing or presentation. At one point there is some business with an errant boxcar that he's trying to get rid of. The payoff is a deadpan double-take that is brilliant in design and perfectly performed, but undercut somewhat by the buildup. The problem is that there are some complicated mechanics going on in the joke, and other things to worry about, and of course I didn't know at the time that it was a joke so I didn't know to pay attention. So he'd just <i>finished</i> the double-take when it clicked in my mind what he was reacting to. And I laughed, because it was a clever and unexpected choice. But I didn't laugh <i>enough</i>, because I was thinking about it too much; piecing the sequence of events together in my mind. What's that? Am I horrible for suggesting the joke wasn't that funny because it required an intelligent audience who is paying attention? That's not really what I mean, of course - it wasn't too complicated, just too slowly presented maybe. But the bottom line is that it came across like when somebody has to explain a joke to you. It didn't matter that I was explaining it to <i>myself</i>, it still took the edge off the humor. I was laughing... <i>about</i> it, but not really <i>at</i> it. And slowness was a consistent problem. The film is not tightly edited, and each gag is given plenty of time to cool off before the next one. Momentum is a large part of comedy (that's why they have warm-up acts for live audience shows like The Daily Show), and <i>The General</i> just couldn't keep any, even when it was otherwise working for me.<br />
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More serious problems arose from what I perceived as dissonances of character and tone. Who is Johnny Gray anyway? (Well, he's Keaton's character for one - maybe I should have <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017925/">summarized</a> this stuff first...) His deadpan and repressed demeanor suggest an intelligent man, if lonely. And some jokes rely on his cleverness and professional knowledge. But a few others rely on his being incredibly unobservant or even flat out stupid. His myriad stunts on the train display great physical dexterity, sometimes in a way that suggests the character is dexterous (clearing two planks for the price of one from a moving train? Wow!), but usually just the opposite - using his dexterity to play a complete klutz. What are we supposed to believe about Gray? For all Keaton's supposed perfectionism, it didn't seem to me he has the character completely figured out. He seems to be whatever the joke requires him to be. And what's worse is that the whole movie is like that. It's set during a war, the stunts and the action are intense, and the humor ranges from subtle character observations to extremely silly slapstick. Near the end a gag with a broken sword gets its punchline in the form of an enemy soldier stabbed through the back. Ha ha? At least the girl is consistent - she's pretty much annoyingly stupid all the way through. In many ways I am reminded of a Will Ferrell comedy. I don't really like Ferrell, mostly because instead of giving us earnest characters who get into comedic situations through no fault of their own, he gives us characters he knows perfectly well are completely despicable buffoons, and asks us to laugh right at them. Which I guess a lot of people do, but mostly I just feel awkward and uncomfortable. That happens a lot in <i>The General</i>. Another pratfall! HAHA! Everybody just got soaking wet! Again! HAHA! Look at the stupid woman forget the instructions he just gave her! HAHA! There are contexts in which this kind of thing is funny, but this ain't it. I want to like and care about these characters, because that's what will drive the intensity of the action (the whole movie is one big chase scene), but Keaton laughs at too much, and I can't connect.<br />
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Finally, while I hate to disparage the stunts in this movie - that must be some sort of sacrilege - they just didn't dazzle me as I hoped. I mean, again intellectualizing it, I can see how incredible they were to choreograph and perform, and how dangerous. This movie takes place on real, live moving trains. No cutaways, and no stuntmen. You can't overstate how incredible the action in this movie is on a technical level. But beyond that, it still has to work comically, and dramatically. If the stunts were jokes, the comedian would be building them up, expanding on them, doubling back to tie into an earlier joke. You know, setups and payoffs and all that. In an earlier film, Keaton has a great stunt with a tall ladder leaned on a fence. He climbs up to escape a policeman, until he reaches the top and the ladder tilts over the fence like a seesaw. But there's another cop on the other side, so he goes back. The cops grab for the ladder, and soon several are hanging off each end, changing the balance dramatically as they go. After some back and forths of increasing complexity, Keaton takes advantage of the physics of the situation for a clever escape. <i>That's</i> what I was looking for. Those classic silent-era stunts are whole set-pieces that build and double back on themselves. Logically. Inevitably. That's what makes them so funny. There really isn't anything like that in <i>The General</i>. Most of the stunts are just stunts in the modern sense - guy jumps from one train car to another. Guy takes a pratfall. They're impressive if you're thinking about how they were made in the real world, but if the movie has really grabbed you, you shouldn't be thinking about that, should you? Unfortunately the few exceptions (tossing beams into the fuel car) come late in the film when I was getting especially impatient with the slapstick. Of course, I have to say I'm not sure how fair a criticism this is - again, this was all shot on<i> real, moving trains</i>. Which were not only dangerous, but expensive and hard to work with. These could very well be the best gags that could ever be made under such circumstances. It's a good excuse. But it's still an excuse.<br />
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Actually, that suggests one final observation, which may explain much of my disappointment. These days, we would describe these silent movie comedy antics as "cartoony," which is silly because the cartoons we're referring to came after the great silent clowns. We should call cartoons "Keatony." I certainly see more of Keaton than anybody else in the personality of the old Warner cartoons, and I'm sure he was a great inspiration to them. But also perhaps a victim of his own (eventual) success. Gnaw on this: we often blame the advent of sound for killing the careers of the silent clowns. But what else happened in 1928 after <i>The Jazz Singer</i> came out? Among other things, <i>Steamboat Willie</i>. The cartoon shorts from Disney and, later, Warner Bros. took their art and, thanks to the freedom of animation, brought it to a level far beyond the capabilities of live actors. The unreality solves the tonal dissonance, and takes the stunts past "dangerous," past "suicidal," and straight off the cliff. Literally. So I can appreciate Keaton's place in history - just as I can appreciate <u>The War of the Worlds</u> despite the silliness of reading about flying saucers and ray guns from a modern vantage point. But I can't really get into it. It comes across as adorably quaint. I liked <i>The General</i> insofar as I can see how it was an important step in the evolutionary process that eventually brought us <a href="http://www.spike.com/video-clips/i8ftl4/whats-opera-doc"><i>"What's Opera, Doc?"</i></a>.<br />
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On a side note, we watched this on Blu-ray, and it was definitely worth it. You might not expect it from an 85-year-old movie, but the photography was beyond excellent and benefits strikingly from the HD master. No doubt the film hasn't looked this good in any venue since before you were born.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: Err, in a few days, I mean. <i>Sunrise</i>, from director F. W. Murnau.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-61474190156090598392011-02-23T19:46:00.000-08:002011-02-24T01:15:58.788-08:00The General (1927)Okay, this one was weird. I'd never seen a Buster Keaton movie before, so I was really looking forward to this. I was expecting something like the earlier Charlie Chaplin film we'd seen, only a different face. I fully expected to really like it, because Buster Keaton is a really famous name; practically synonymous with comedy.<br />
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But....<br />
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This. Was. Stupid.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I hate to be so blunt, but there's just no other way to put it. The movie was WAY over the top, to the point where I was just rolling my eyes at the sheer dumbness. The others who were watching it were practically falling off their chairs laughing, but I just felt annoyed. I didn't think it was humorous at all.<br />
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The basic plot is that Buster Keaton is a train engineer in the South, and the Civil War breaks out so everyone rushes to enlist. The girl that Keaton's trying to woo is a flighty, brainless twit who tells him not to speak to her again until he's in a uniform. Nice. Of course, the rebel army won't enlist him and doesn't bother to tell him why, so he's left trying to figure out any possible way to become a soldier.<br />
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The Union troops meanwhile plot to steal his train (the titular "General") and drive it north, destroying bridges and tracks behind them to disable the rebels. But Keaton is having none of that because this is his train, dammit. So through a series of ridiculous and completely unbelievable hijinks he manages to chase the Union soldiers all over the South and foils their fell plot, winning his train back and earning a commission as a Confederate officer and the love of his airhead girlfriend. Hooray, happy ending.<br />
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Robin says I need more detail in this rant, so let's see. One of the dumbest events was when Keaton and the Twit (who was kidnapped by the Union soldiers since she was on the train when it was stolen) are escaping from the Union safehouse. She gets her foot caught in a steel bear trap, and Keaton pries it off her leg only to get it caught on his own. He gets free of it somehow and neither one has even the slightest scratch on them and continue to run away, right into the path of a bear. Of course. But nothing comes of it. They just change direction and exit, not pursued by a bear. Dumb. Ummm, what else. How about chopping wood and trying to throw it onto the wood car of the train so they'll have fuel, but every log misses the car, either because it falls short, goes too far, or lands right on the precariously balanced few that landed on the edge of the car and toppled them all off. DUMB. I can't think of any more specific examples. The whole thing was stupid, and I'm very irritated right now. I'm especially irritated because I can't find any reviews online who agree with me. I hate being alone in my opinions; it makes me feel like I'm wrong to feel the way I do. Why do 93% of the Rotten Tomatoes audience love this film when I hated it so much? Are they all dumber than me? Or am I stuck up and elitist?<br />
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I think what bothers me most about the wood chopping scene, for example, is the sheer waste of time nature of it. Slapstick comedy or not, this movie is about a train chase. Quit buggering around with throwing the wood all over the place! Get it on the train and get back to the chase! I wanted them to play it straight. I wanted an exciting chase movie. Giving this subject the slapstick treatment just seems really wrong. And it's made worse by the fact that this is based on a true story. The theft of The General and the subsequent chase to recover it actually happened! That's an exciting story. Why couldn't they have made a movie that told it like it was? Turning it into a slapstick comedy feels really disrespectful. <br />
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Next week is something called "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans" which Robin assures me is not an Adam and Eve story. I have no idea what else it could possibly be about with a title like that though...guess I'll see in four days.Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-2458471357374866382011-02-13T15:25:00.000-08:002011-02-14T09:58:28.429-08:00The Big Parade (1925)Those of you who read this blog faithfully most likely noticed that I did not post a review last week for "The Thief of Bagdad". I wish I had a more noble excuse for this, but the truth is that I fell asleep numerous times during the film from sheer boredom and consequently felt awkward trying to write a review or response to something I mostly slept through. :P<br />
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The same cannot be said for last night's film, "The Big Parade". I will admit that this movie was not at all what I expected from the title. Call me naive, but I rather figured the movie would be about...a parade. War didn't even enter my imagination. I knew this was the highest grossing film of the 20s, so I was expected a light-hearted, feel good movie about a parade complete with floats, marching bands, and excited crowds. Upon further reflection though, there's really not much plot to be had with that kind of setting, is there?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>So, "The Big Parade" is about war. The Great War. What struck me as most interesting was how this movie showed both sides of the war experience. First we see the patriotic excitement of going to war, complete with the titular big parade and exuberance over enlisting. Suddenly the useless rich boy has a Purpose, and his father can now be proud of him. Then we see the "hurry up and wait" phenomenon as the soldiers get to France and basically do nothing for an undetermined amount of time. Next we see actual battle, and it's horrific. At least as horrific as filmmakers in the 20s could be. There is some blood shown (this is after all before the Hays Code of movie censorship that lasted from 1930 to 1968 and prohibited such unpleasant things like bleeding, drinking, miscegenation, and sex outside of marriage). Lastly we see our hero return to the now peaceful part of France (sans one of his legs; a sacrifice to the War) where he is reunited with his love and they presumably live happily ever after.<br />
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I liked this method because it came off as a more fair and balanced view of war. It was neither overly positive and pro-war nor bitter, depressing, and anti-war. No judgments were passed or blame laid about the causes of this particular war, and nobody was painted as a clear villain to be hated. I thought it was very realistic in its depiction of the home front excitement vs. the reality of spending most of the time waiting around, but still showing us the brutal horrors of actual fighting. I felt a better understanding of war from this film than I've felt from other war movies (particularly ones that were trying to advance a specific ideology). This film's quiet presentation with no Message being hammered into our heads ended up leaving a bigger impact than most movies with a Message do. Lesson to the filmmakers: don't overdo it. Let the film speak for itself. You might be surprised what your audience walks away with.<br />
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All that said, I can see why this movie was so popular. There are elements that are hysterically funny, such as the barrel incident Robin recapped and the cake. I was impressed here because the film was showing that even during times of war, life goes on and humorous things do happen. I think we sometimes get caught up in the drama of war and tell ourselves that simple pleasures such as laughing at something silly are somehow Wrong during wartime. During times of war we're all supposed to suddenly become dour and humorless because of the atrocities happening elsewhere on the planet. I say bravo to King Vidor for reminding us that humor is as much a part of human nature as the brutality of war. Both can and do coexist in people.<br />
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But the movie isn't all fun and games. As I said earlier there are segments of battle and we do see people die, including one of the main characters. There is one scene that I found particularly moving that Robin sort of glossed over. It's towards the end of the film, just after our main character has been killed. Jim, the main-main character (if you'll pardon the clumsy distinction) has ventured out into no-man's land to claim his friend's body. He's full of rage and wants his revenge on the bastard that killed his friend. He gets shot in the knee but his rage is so strong that he continues to crawl through no-man's land in pursuit of the German soldier who shot him (who is also injured, presumably by Jim). Jim slides into the German's foxhole, grabs him roughly, and is about to finish him off with a bayonet when he pauses and really looks at his foe. The soldier is just a kid (well, a teenager, but younger than Jim). After a long, tense pause, Jim lets the kid go, and gives him a cigarette. The kid is terrified but says nothing. Not long after, he dies, and Jim is left in this "enemy" foxhole, with the corpse of a kid who was only following orders. I sensed an attitude shift in Jim at this moment, as he realizes that war isn't so simple as "good guys vs. bad guys". This was a powerful moment.<br />
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The end of the film moves rather quickly, almost like the filmmakers just wanted to wrap it all up and be done with it. It's not badly done, but given the amount of time they spent on other aspects of the film it felt rushed. Jim comes home with his leg amputated (a stunning bit of movie magic - we figure they must have used a body double for these particular shots because the technology didn't exist yet to fake an amputation realistically). His father is very proud of him and can't wait to show him off like a prize marlin he caught while deep-sea fishing. His mother is relieved he's home and spends their entire reunion hugging and kissing him while crying. His brother is less than thrilled to have him back though as we learn that while he was gone this paragon of society has taken up with Jim's fiancee Justyn. But it's all okay because we know that Jim is in love with the French maiden Melisande. His mother tells him that he must return to her, and so he does. This is why I feel the ending was rushed - he's just returned home after at least a year of being away, missing a leg, and his mother is okay with letting him return to France for a girl and never return? I don't really buy that. But anyway, Jim returns, finds Melisande, and they kiss and hug and the movie ends on this happy note.<br />
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Overall it was a very good movie. The acting was not overblown melodrama such as we saw in the "Thief of Bagdad", for which I was grateful. The score, as Robin pointed out, was very well done. I confess I tend not to listen to scores as carefully as Robin does - for me it's all part of the whole experience and I can't analyze a score the way he can. But it was effective - happy and patriotic in some places, tense and dramatic in others, and all exactly as it should be to help us feel the "right" emotions. If I were to grade the movie I'd give it an A- because I do feel the ending suffered a bit and could have been better by not rushing it quite so much.Mandiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13431006367373370798noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-68533688033030476452011-02-13T14:37:00.000-08:002011-02-19T10:58:05.634-08:00The Big Parade (1925)<i>The Big Parade</i> tells the story of a rich American boy, Jim Apperson, who goes to war. Or does it? The opening goes to some lengths to make clear that he is both rich and idle. It also introduces two other men - who will become his buddies - one a bartender and the other a gangly construction worker. The class distinctions here are obvious, so it's noteworthy that the film does nothing further with them. You might expect some sort of friction to be caused, at least at first, whether dramatic or comical, but there's nothing. Once they're all packed into their uniforms and sent to France (this is WWI of course), they're all the same. Which I'm sure is the point.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The structure of the movie is simply to follow Jim's experience, which begins as innocent, exuberant "patriotism" (he enlists in order to impress a pretty girl). <i>The Big Parade</i> is filled with many big parades, the first an actual parade full of American "can do!" spirit as Jim heads to the recruitment office. His enlistment wins the heart of his father, and terrifies his mother, and then segues into another parade of marching doughboys as they arrive in France (the editing rather implies that they marched all the way there from New York, which, in spirit, I suppose they did).<br />
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And after all that marching and rah-rah excitement? Waiting. Holing up in a barn, and shoveling manure, and waiting.<br />
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It's not so bad after all, this whole war thing. His buddies entertain themselves by stealing wine and getting into other trouble, while Jim spends most of his time falling in love with the French girl who lives in the farmhouse, Melisande. They try to communicate, badly, through his little phrase book, and he attempts to introduce her to chewing gum (how cuuuuute!). This section - the longest part of the film - is surprisingly carefree and comedic. Almost slapstick, even. There's a particular part with a barrel that was so over the top it... well it <i>should</i> have been insulting, except it was so funny I couldn't hate it no matter how hard I tried. Another highlight is when Jim receives a cake in the mail from his mother, and, well, and it's the thought that counts, right?<br />
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Another parade. Finally Jim's unit is called to the front, and again the soldiers gather for a triumphant, patriotic march. Only this time, Jim is not quite in tune with the others. The parade is infected with panic as Jim and Melisande attempt to find each other in the chaos. The patriotic fervor is like the rapids of a swift river-- a lot of fun... when it's carrying you in the direction you want to go.<br />
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Another parade, more solemn this time, as a single file line of tanks and troop carriers stretches literally to the horizon. This is one of the film's most famous shots, involving (according to IMDb) over 100 airplanes, 200 trucks, and 4000 soldiers, all on loan from the Army.<br />
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Another parade? Of sorts. As the GIs advance to the front they are now in long, horizontal ranks, no joy left in their faces. It isn't a mad rush, but steady, measured paces. It becomes a tempo. Slow. Grim. <i>Steady</i>. In their steps, and in the editing and the music. (The score isn't original; this was the 1988 score by Carl Davis, which is <i>magnificent</i>, especially during this sequence. Understated but powerful in a way composers didn't understand yet in 1925.) A soldier falls here. Another there. Let me remind you this is a silent film - there is no crackling of gunfire, and no screams. They just fall. There is only the steady push of the music and grim faces as they step over bodies. Increasingly smoke begins to drift in. The silence brings a strange, unique quality to the sequence, which elevates it, I think. The practical distractions of combat are removed, leaving only emotion. It's almost dream-like.<br />
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The battle sequence is carefully constructed. The tempo slowly rises as the three friends approach the front, and fewer and fewer stand beside them, until there is a final dash for the foxholes. Then a long period of helpless waiting. The friends squabble restlessly. They don't seem terribly frightened - instead each is searching anxiously for a moment of heroism. A piece of the glory of war they were promised when they enlisted. There is none to be found, and a late night mission ends in tragedy, moral confusion, and finally just plain exhaustion. With the final push the tempo rises again; the cutting and explosions getting faster and faster until they almost flicker so fast it becomes a single, solid light. A vicious orgasm of war. And then black.<br />
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"Another Big Parade" reads the inter-title, and the long column of troops is seen again, this time heading back. Jim is rescued by the medics, though with a badly injured leg (which will later be amputated).<br />
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I've seen some describe <i>The Big Parade</i> as an anti-war movie, but I think that's going too far. It certainly isn't a relentlessly bitter condemnation like <i>All Quiet on the Western Front</i>. There's no suggestion that The Great War was, in and of itself, vain or dishonorable. But it's definitely an anti-romanticization of war movie. The whole thing is built around the stripping away of illusions. One by one they fall, until Jim is left literally in the dark in a hole in the mud next to a corpse, in a world without glory or justice. The reality of war is not something you have a parade about.<br />
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;">Waiting! Orders! Mud! Blood! Stinking stiffs! What the hell do we get out of this war anyway!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cheers when we left and when we get back! But who the hell cares...after this?</span>"<br />
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I may be reading too much into this, but the best times for Jim are those on the farm in France, when they are waiting. As in, not going anywhere - as in, <i>not moving</i>. The opposite of what happens in a parade. Both of the real truths Jim finds - his true love on the farm, and the real truth of war in the foxhole - come to him in moments of stillness, out of the rapid waters of surrounding events. After the war he returns to the farm, and finds peace and quiet, and love.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: Buster Keaton. <i>The General</i>. 'Nuff said.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-23668282016197408912011-02-06T21:39:00.000-08:002011-02-08T21:42:06.568-08:00The Thief of Bagdad (1924)Finally we've reached the first film on this list that I've seen before, although it's been a long time. And unfortunately it wasn't quite as good as I remember. There were few things objectively wrong with it, but it just seemed... a little full of itself. I thought I remembered a spirited adventure flick, but actually most of <i>The Thief of Bagdad</i> is quite sober and grandiose. It's an Epic, and a Timeless Classic, with a clearly stated Moral Lesson. A little <i>too</i> clearly stated, in fact. Often these things are couched in flowery, period language. "Happiness Must Be Earned" is so naked and straight-forward it pounds you in the gut like the butt-end of a pike.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Working up from the smallest problems, one of the first things I noticed was the very broad melodramatic acting. See, <i>this</i> is why I'm doing this project. Seen on its own, I might have assumed such performances were just the way it was done at the time, before they invented "real" cinema acting - but actually this is the first we've seen of this kind of broad, gestural acting. It was startling how naturalistic the performances were in the Teens, and equally startling now that we're finally seeing some real <i>melodrama</i>. Which I guess can't really be called a complaint - what this means is that the acting was a deliberate artistic choice - but it did catch my eye, and occasionally came across a bit goofy. However, while leading man Douglas Fairbanks was probably the worst offender, he also made it work better than anyone else. He has such commitment, such <i>panache</i>, it became easy to see why basically the entire gestural language of swashbucklers was stolen from him (the hands-on-hips Robin Hood laugh even appeared a few times, though he hadn't even played the role yet).<br />
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I think what I object to about melodramatic acting is the way it can take a big black marker to the story and underline things, as if I'm too stupid to get it by myself. "<i>You see!??? You see the <u>Drama</u>?? The <u>HORROR</u>???</i>" And this "Get it? Get it??" mentality seems to have infected the rest of the movie, especially the editing. Almost every shot goes on a second too long, which adds up to a lot of wasted seconds in the end. A lot of frustrated seconds where the shot continues to hammer a piece of info we've already gotten. Even the title cards sit for too long. And there often seems to be a strange obsession with what I call "moving pieces around the board." A guy leaves on a boat. So we see the boat pull up. And he get gets in. And sits down. And the boat pulls away. And sails further away. And he's still in it. You don't need to show every maneuver for the audience to understand an action has happened. You can shorthand it - something that, again, other films of the time seem to understand better than I might have thought. But <i>Thief</i> has to have everything laid out nice and neat and clearly delineated and very patiently, presumably to make sure everyone is following along. Except it's harder to follow along because it gets boring.<br />
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But all this is the sort of thing you forgive or don't even notice in a film that has your attention. The real problem, I think, is the same problem most modern blockbusters have: too much plot; not enough character. The early passages of <i>Thief of Bagdad</i> were actually quite engaging. The thief messes with people, gets in trouble, gets out of trouble. He mouths off about his religious/political views, and winds up in a very creative and spirited chase through a yard of giant ceramics. He's cheeky, as a good swashbuckler ought to be, and his personality defines the film. But soon after the princess enters the story, things Get Down to Business, and nobody - not even the thief - is allowed a moment to expose personality. Instead it's all plot machinations. Soandso has this and is going there to get that to do the thing for the person in the place and blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. By the halfway point the movie hardly has any wind left in its sails. After that it has to be carried by special effects. ...Not such an old-fashioned movie after all I guess.<br />
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However, also like a modern blockbuster, the special effects <i>are</i> pretty great. The climactic magic carpet ride is the standout, getting an impressive amount of convincing, complex motion in the shots (i.e. not just a static shot of the carpet from the side while background scrolls past, which is done earlier in the film). But even more impressive than the effects are the incredibly lush and <i>massive</i> sets. I have to believe they were extended here and there with matte paintings, but I couldn't see the seams. This was a very complete and convincing world, and very, very elegant. I hope a future high-def restoration can find some more detail in these old prints, because this was clearly a film that was meant to be seen BIG. Actually, in a way, it occurs to me that almost everything about it - both weaknesses and strengths - comes down to that ideal: to be BIG.<br />
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By the way, this movie, along with its loose 1940 remake, provide most of the outline for Disney's <i>Aladdin</i>. I suppose <i>Aladdin</i> could even be considered a second remake. This one contains the poor thief who poses as a royal suitor to win the princess, while the 1940 film by Alexander Korda provides the supporting characters (including a genie), and a sizable amount of the art design. The remake(s) reinforce the positive qualities of the original. While I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped, it's clear to me the presentation failed the material, like a jewel in a dull setting. New settings (even not necessarily better ones) reveal how it shines.<br />
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NEXT WEEK: <i>The Big Parade</i>... if I can get hold of a copy. It's a funny thing: this was a huge success - the highest grossing movie of its time - yet it doesn't seem to have ever been released on home video post-VHS. Strange how legacies rise and fall. Everybody knows about Chaplin, but how many laymen have heard of King Vidor? If I can't find it... well, then I'd go for <i>The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i> - the other contender for biggest box office of the '20s - but it's just as hard to find. So.... I'll figure something out.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.com1