Oscar Boot Camp

We've Moved!

2011-08-08T14:38:00.001-04:00

Find us at our new home:

www.oscarbootcamp.wordpress.com

We decided to make the change for one reason:

My sanity.

I was having so many glitches with formatting that I would pull my hair out every week. So now we are with Wordpress, who may not have as many formatting options, but everything looks like it's supposed to when published.

Sorry, Blogger.

~Anna

Cimarron

2011-08-07T14:48:00.005-04:00

Cimarron (released February 9, 1931)
Director: Wesley Ruggles
Starring: Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Estelle Taylor, Roscoe Ates
Produced by: William LeBaron
Written by: Howard Estabrook (based on the novel by Edna Ferber)
Music by: Max Steiner
Cinematography by: Edward Cronjager
Distributed by: RKO Pictures

Context This

Eighty years is a long time, especially in the film industry. This amount of time has great impact on attitudes, cultural references, technological advances, and the collective memory of those who watch movies.

Cimarron won for Best Picture for the Academy Awards for 1930-31. I would imagine most people my age have never heard of it. Most of the people who saw it in the theaters are dead. Certainly everyone who was in it is dead. Today's world has almost no memory of this film that was judged to be the best of the best for that year.

But there are other movies from that year that are more memorable today than Cimarron. For instance, the 1930-31 span also produced two rather famous pictures: Little Caesar (with Edward G. Robinson) and Public Enemy (with James Cagney). Neither one was even nominated for Best Picture (or Best Actor) but both make a stronger mark in time than Cimarron has.

Sabra Cravat has that "Get me the @#$% out of here" look.

The movie was based on Edna Ferber's book by the same name. Turning books into movies has certainly been a phenomenon that has been with us since the beginning of motion pictures. The story follows the trials and tribulations of the Cravat family as they make their way from Witchita into the new territory of Oklahoma. Yancey and Sabra Cravat (played by Richard Dix and Irene Dunne) are a young couple who are suffocating under her well-to-do family's thumb. They move to the upstart town of Osage, OK where Yancey starts the town's newspaper, the Oklahoma Wigwam. The Cravats face all sorts of challenges with the riff raff and gunslingers that are drawn to the new boomtown. I was astonished at the shooting skills of all. Why Yancey himself draws his pistol and shoots from the hip, intentionally grazing the ear of Lon Yountis, the baddest, meanest outlaw Osage had to offer.

Watching this movie out of context would make one wonder just what the hell was the Academy thinking? The acting was overly melodramatic. But the film industry had only just moved out of silent pictures into the realm of talkies. Acting needed to be overblown in the silents to compensate for the lack of speech. Also, because sound had been so recently introduced, the technology wasn't advanced enough to give the quality we are used to to day with our Dolby 6.1 surround sound. Sometimes words were muffled, and no matter how high you turned up the volume, some words were just lost.

Sabra's domestic bliss lasts about three seconds beyond this point.

The story was still interesting. Spanning 40 years, we see the young family torn apart my Yancey Cravat's wanderlust and inability to stay in one place. Yancey actually abandons his family for five years in his quest for adventure. Then when he comes home he expects his family to welcome him with open arms. His children do, but his wife is torn between her relief at seeing him again and ripping his head off. She lets relief win, but Irene Dunne, I felt, did an admirable job of conveying that struggle within Sabra.

I do find it interesting that this story had such a mix of modern and antiquated ideology. On the one hand, the script makes no bones about putting down Indians, Blacks, and Jews. And yet the close of the movie sees Sabra Cravat being elected the first female Congresswoman to represent the State of Oklahoma in Washington. Even so, Yancey Cravat himself defends a prostitute in court, and has very tolerant ideas about Indians for a man of his time. Although I did notice he speaks of the Indians being robbed of their land, and yet takes part in the land rush to claim a bit of it for himself.

There were some rather comical parts. The first scene in the Venable home in Witchita (the childhood home of Sabra) we see a dining room scene briefly before it focuses in on one of the characters. I saw it and my brain did a "what the HELL was that?" It looked like there was a human being suspended above the table in a cage. And I was wondering if all those rumors about what dirty things the Victorians got up to behind closed doors was true.

When the camera cuts back to the whole table I see in fact my brain wasn't entirely wrong. There was a human suspended above the table. A young black boy named Isaiah was laying on a platform up near the ceiling, fanning the folks seated below with a large feather fan.

Wow. I can see why TCM doesn't have this one it its rotation. It was almost like a scene out of Blazing Saddles, only without the irony.

However, coming away from this film, I can see why it won over other films. There are some very high-brow themes that run through this picture that the Academy would love, even back then. Ideals like progress, pioneer spirit, and success through hard work are freely strewn through the picture. At the end, however, I felt the movie was less about Yancey and his freewheeling spirit, and more about Sabra and her constancy that were the foundation of this story. She comes out the real hero in the end.

That said, I've seen both Public Enemy and Little Caesar, and the writing in either script totally outstrips Cimarron's. I wondered why on earth Cimarron was nominated in nearly every category, while the other two pictures scored only one nomination each, and won nothing? And then I learned about "The Code."

The Academy didn't have the cajones to recognize real talent.

For those of you who may not know, a code of censorship guidelines was imposed on the production of movies in 1930, although it was not rigorously enforced until 1934. These codes restricted the portrayal of violence, crime, vice, drug use, and all sorts of nefarious activities. Both Public Enemy and Little Caesar were both pictures that flouted the rules set forth in the code, portraying organized crime in a very favorable light. I would imagine then, that the MPAA couldn't go ahead and award these movies for blatantly ignoring the code it had just adopted.

Like The Greatest Show on Earth, we again find a film that won because of politics and not on its own merit.

~Anna

He’s no Stay-at-home Dad

I found it interesting that Edna Ferber’s historical novel, Cimarron, was brought to the screen only a couple of years after the book’s release. This would lead me to believe there was plenty of interest generated in the story of the late nineteenth century land rush for the Oklahoma Territories. Really? I guess that’s what people were into back in the early ’30s. Or maybe with the Great Depression starting to pick up a head of steam Americans were desperate to flock into movie houses and watch anything that took their minds off the worsening world outside the theaters. Still and all I don’t wish to bash this picture straightaway. Truth is I actually enjoyed it more than I thought. I should add that I did so with the same sort of quaint and slightly amused interest one would study an ancient Model T Ford.

Tedium: Film at eleven.

To a greater or lesser extent all movies are creatures of their times. They reflect the fashion, social mores and habits of speech that were prevalent at the time of their production. This might seem like a belabored point here, but as we re-watch this movie from a widening gap of eighty years, we might bear in mind the maxim of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus who stated: “Noting is more constant than change.” And things certainly have changed since this motion picture hit the screens. The science of film-making has obviously advanced and it is evident throughout the picture. Camera angles and shots seem rather staid, stilted and stagy to a degree. A good example is the justly famous beginning shots of the picture that represent the start of the land rush. It is written that over five thousand extras and twenty-eight cameramen were used to film this sequence which for its time must have had a tremendous effect on audiences. Watched today however, it dissolves into a rather tedious elongated scene (2 min, 7 sec) of racing wagons bouncing across the prairie. The sheer numbers of them however is still mighty impressive.

Darling, someday your descendants will invite
everyone home for milk and cookies.

We are constantly reminded that we are not too distant from the stage while watching each scene unfold. The actors, in particular Richard Dix who portrays Yancey Cravat, tend to overplay for the camera. Coming from the stage and silent pictures, it must have been difficult at first for the players to tone down their exaggerated mannerisms which would have been expected of them when treading the boards where such things were embellished for the benefit of audience members seated in the back row. Acting in silent movies would have also added to the inflated gesticulations as now words could be used to communicate characters’ thoughts instead of overblown reactions. Thus Dix as Yancey hams it mightily through his scenes and in truth, makes an enjoyable time of it for the modern-day audiences. And excuse me for saying, but am I the only one who thinks I am looking at the spitting image of the late comic actor, Andy Kaufman when we first set eyes on Yancey Cravat in the saddle sporting his white hat? It’s almost scary how much they look alike. I was also amazed to see who I thought was Carol Burnett in the role of the prim and proper Mrs. Tracy Wyatt, played by Burnett look-a-like, Edna May Oliver. Wow!

Yancey Cravat is introduced to us as part of the thousands ready and willing to carve out their little piece of America at the beginning of the land rush. His character is thus set for the rest of the picture. Restless and eager to push on, he is the embodiment one supposes, of the great pioneering spirit of the late nineteenth century. Well, he might fill that role admirably, but he certainly makes a piss-poor husband and father. At one point in the middle of the story, his wanderlust hits him bad and he lights out, leaving his poor wife, Sabra (played by Irene Dunne) to mind the children and the family business (running the newspaper: The Oklahoma Wigwam) back in the burgeoning town of Osage. Whatta jerk! Of course, throughout the movie one has hints that before he married, Yancey was running with bandits and having a wild time of it in the rather ambiguous territory named Cimarron. I assume then we are to regard Yancey as a sort of lovable rogue, not willing to be tied down to anything as frivolous as a wife and two children. That is truly the only way you can look at his character in the light of how he is portrayed throughout the film.

Yancey Cravat: Piss-poor husband and a fantastic shot.

His handling of the riff-raff in Osage, and in particular the evil Lon Yountis (you gotta love these names!) is priceless. The leading men of the town chose Yancey to give a sermon at the first meeting of the Osage Methodist Church. Since the town hasn’t got a proper house of worship built yet, the meeting is conducted in Grat Gotch’s Hall of Chance, a gambling tent – the only place in town big enough to house the event. Yancey shows up in the guise of a pistol-packin’ padre, Bible in one hand and six-shooters firmly holstered. In the middle of his sermon, he must gun down Lon who stands in the back and tries to shoot him first. One watches these scenes with an open jaw…

Great Balls of Fire! Even Jerry Lee Lewis would have
been impressed with that head of hair.

There are numerous subplots enmeshed throughout the picture and in one of them, Yancey has to defend a whore with a heart-of-gold. While he makes his case (because of course in addition to being a pseudo-preacher and newspaperman, he is a former practicing lawyer too) I dare anyone to try and concentrate on his plea while concurrently watching the ridiculous ball of hair clinging to the right side of his temple become a living thing; bobbing and tossing about with abandon while below its owner chews up the scenery. Egad, but that’s some unintentionally funny stuff. Now since I’ve waxed poetic on noses [All the King’s Men] and teeth [The Last Emperor], I feel I should say something about Yancey’s hair. What in the hell is that all about?! Huge hanks of it flow out from both sides of his head and at times makes him look like he’s sporting goat horns. Was this the style back then? Frankly, I can’t see when this type of coif would ever be in style.

This movie is never going to receive an NAACP picture award due to its rather cavalier handling of minorities. Actor Eugene Jackson’s portrayal of Isaiah, the Cravat family’s young black retainer is filled with the accepted mugging for the camera and comic relief such characters were expected to provide eighty years ago. It must drive the PCers of today plum crazy. However in the moviemakers’ defense, several times throughout the film Yancey is portrayed as a character sympathetic to the Indians’ plight and by the end of the picture, his son has taken on a Native American wife.

While Yancey runs off for years-on-end to do his thing, Sabra must fend for the family and in doing so ends up a much stronger character than her husband. Her iron will and perseverance rewards her by the end of the movie with a seat in Congress! At the close of the picture we meet Yancey for the final time. In the succeeding years he has turned into a drifter hanging around the oil fields that have everywhere sprung up in the state of Oklahoma. Why he would leave a loving family to end up like this we are never properly told. However we are described his heroism as it is his selfless action that saved the lives of the oil men working around a rig that unexpectedly gushed, sparing them but mortally injuring him. Sabra upon hearing this, rushes to her dying husband and cradles his head in her arms as he utters his final words to her: “Wife and mother… stainless woman. Hide me in your love.” Quick, grab your hanky.

Touted as the “first Western” to earn an Academy Award, Cimarron is an interesting piece of history that must in part be watched as such in order to properly understand it.

--kak

Next up: How Green Was My Valley (1941)

The Last Emperor

2011-07-31T16:18:00.004-04:00

The Last Emperor (releaased October 23,1987)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Starring: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong

Produced by:Jeremy Thomas

Written by: Mark Pelpoe, Bernardo Bertolucci

Music by: Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, Cong Su

Cinematography by: Vittorio Storaro

Distributed by: Columbia Pictures

Made in China

A huge film lost in the aftermath of economic turmoil.

The bio-pic, The Last Emperor was an award-winner I’d never seen up to this point in my life. Indeed, I’d heard so little about it in the ensuing twenty-four years since its inception that it arrived on my TV monitor the other night as something of a shock to me. As I sat through the 219 minutes of the life of Emperor Puyi I had to ask myself, how in the world could a motion picture this big slip under my radar? I vaguely recall reports at the time of a Western movie given first-time access to be filmed in Beijing’s Forbidden City, but that was about all that got through. I remember I was living in northern California at the time and worked at a mutual funds company. This in itself is innocuous enough but to realize that the picture was released on October 23, 1987, and the horrific stock market crash known as “Black Monday” occurred four days previous on the nineteenth probably had a little to do with the fact that as the economic world crashed to its knees, those of us laboring within the industry were running around like headless poultry trying to make sense out of it in the weeks after the disaster. Little thought would have been given to the quaint divertissement of watching movies. But I surely digress…

"Alizarin crimson for those happy little banners!"

I’m guessing Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci can really tolerate the color red. He must have because that color is so prominently displayed splashed heavily upon the walls of the immense buildings within the Forbidden City. It is lacquered thick on the massive doors that hold the child-emperor, Puyi (John Lone) a veritable prisoner in his own kingdom. It seems to permeate the very film stock upon which the picture is shot. It is of course the color of good fortune to the Chinese and BB captures it beautifully in this visual masterpiece whose thousands of other colors dazzle the constant watching eye. We seem to overlook at times that movies are first and foremost a visual medium, but one can hardly forget this viewing The Last Emperor. Bertolucci’s palate of color is as loaded, vibrant and varied as they come. (Bob Ross is not the only master capable of commanding the colorful attributes of phthalo blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow!)

The story relates the checkered career of the last Chinese emperor before the battling warlords fragmented the country and made it an easier prey for the burgeoning communists to conquer. Told in a series of flashbacks as Puyi sought to escape the Red Chinese roundup of what they considered to be political prisoners, color (or the absence thereof) is again used to great affect. The more recent episodes filmed in the communist prison are wholly stark in their total absence of color when played against the pomp and riotous color of the Forbidden City flashbacks.

Pu Yi is shocked no one wants to
bathe and dress him anymore.

Coddled as only a ruler of an empire still fixated in the middle ages could be, we follow Pu Yi’s charmed life behind the massive walls in the center of the Chinese Empire. The sheer scale of the visuals is at times breathtaking beyond belief and Bertolucci does the almost impossible job of keeping the story focused on the characters despite them being swallowed up in the vast backdrop of unearthly-sized buildings, immense public squares, grand stone staircases and rooftops that stretch away to the horizon.

Most of the sympathy for the child-emperor comes from the tried and true, almost fairytale-like conundrum of having him waited on hand and foot by a thousand royal eunuchs and hundreds of imperial staff, as amongst it all, little Puyi bewails his fate of never being allowed to leave the Forbidden City. He is a non-functioning monarch prisoner behind his own imperial walls. He longs to see the world on the other side of those massive red doors which are always firmly shut against his leaving. It is ironic to consider when he finally does make it out, he enjoys several years of freedom before becoming a prisoner (again) of the Communists in 1945 who accuse him of playing into the hands of the rapacious Japanese as their puppet ruler of the puppet state, Manchukuo (Manchuria).

Yes, thank you... keep those lips closed!

The familiar face of Peter O’Toole surfaces as the Scottish tutor, Reginald Johnston. He is charged with educating the young emperor in the ways of the modern world. It is surprising now that I think back on it how little O’Toole had to say in this film. There are no large blocks of dialogue that gush forth nor any montage scenes of the teacher/pupil hard at work. And yet by adroitly weaving their tale, the filmmakers get the impression put across that the connection and camaraderie of the two characters was close. I still have an American’s squeamish aversion to staring at a mouthful of rotten Irish teeth and Mr. O’Toole’s choppers can never be mistaken for a set of piano keys. However, I figured I persevered through the fantastic array of noses in All the King’s Men, so I knew I could probably handle staring at some bad teeth…

I sensed the epic feel of the first half of the picture abandoned somewhat as we settled into the flashbacks of the emperor’s later life. During the second half we are treated to the intrigues of Puyi’s Manchukuo ruling period and the problems of juggling a royal wife, a royal consort and the ever menacing Japanese as the world raced headlong into World War II. Still, despite the loss of those incredible visuals, the story moves along as the fates close in on China’s last emperor, finally culminating in his incarceration in a political prison. And as grand as the picture opens, it closes with the final scenes of Puyi, now a released and “re-educated” proletariat gardener, puttering around amongst his vines. I must say that as portrayed by John Lone, Puyi is a formidably even-tempered character. He seems as at ease around his few tomatoes as he was commanding a staff of thousands in Beijing.

And now, there only remains for me to make mention the arcane fact that The Last Emperor has got to be the only movie of all the Academy winners that has earned the little statue for a motion picture that includes a shot early in the film of royal doo-doo! I must confess I knew that would intrigue some of you…

--kak

Italians portray the Chinese in English

Lone and Chen play the last imperial rulers of China.

Wow, that was a long movie! Even so, at 2 hours and 42 minutes, The Last Emperor is still only the second longest movie we’ve watched for Oscar Boot Camp. The Greatest Show on Earth ran a little longer, but this one was much less painful to view.

And you know, I don’t really remember hearing about this movie back in 1987. I have a theory about this, though. When the movie was released, I was thirteen and in the eighth grade. Most thirteen-year-olds I know aren’t all that concerned with political history, especially of foreign countries. Throw in that the most well-known actor in the film is Peter O’Toole, who wasn’t exactly heartthrob material at the time, and you’ll see there was nothing to draw my adolescent brain. No hunky superstars, nothing modern and glitzy, and nothing “cool.”

Set primarily in the first half of the twentieth century, this movie portrays the life of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China. I must admit I know very little of Chinese history, and this movie certainly brought me up to speed on their last 100 years or so. From the ridiculously plush splendor of the Forbidden City to the grueling harshness of a Communist prison camp, Pu Yi (played by John Lone) lives through some pretty fantastic situations.

Ack! I can't stand the cuteness!

Pu Yi ascended the throne when he was just three years old. Like most royalty, he was treated with the greatest care. He had servants to bathe him, feed him, taste his food, dress him, and choose his wife. No privacy was allowed him, and he was considered to be a god, human perfection on earth. That’s one of the problems with being chosen by God to rule, isn’t it? From birth the whole empire holds its breath, hoping some disaster (great or small) won't befall him, putting him into an early grave and those left behind plunged into political upheaval.

The movie made me gasp several times from the sheer vastness of the Forbidden City and all the people they employed as extras to fill it. This was before CGI, folks, and the cast must have run to the thousands. The costumes were breathtaking, the sets elaborate, and wealth extravagant. It was a feast for the eyes, for sure, with yards of Chinese silk in bright colors.

I find it extremely interesting that this film was made by Italians, about China, and all in English. I wonder if it were made today if they would have chosen to do it in Chinese with subtitles to give it more authenticity. Since the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, subtitles seem to be more acceptable, lending more street cred to the picture. Not that I think this movie was inauthentic. Of course, not knowing much of Chinese history, I can’t speculate as to how close to the truth this film actually was. I know filmmakers often condense and rearrange events to make them fit their time frame better. However, it was slightly jarring to watch the inhabitants of the Forbidden City speak to each other in English. I got over it, but I think I would have preferred subtitles.

Joan Chen plays the newly wed Empress who is
impressing the Emperor with her skills.

The acting was quite good. John Lone, plays the adult Puyi, and he looks startling like the real thing. Joan Chen and Vivian Wu play his wife the Empress and his number two consort respectively. Both ladies did admirable jobs, but I thought Joan Chen did an especially good job playing the wife. From beautiful young princess to debilitated opium addict, she certainly had a range within the role.

There were only two things about this movie that I didn’t like. The first was it felt a little flat to me. It was gorgeous, a spectacle, no doubt. I didn’t really feel a connection to any of the characters. I think the trick of great movie-making is to find the connection between your leading man (or lady) and show the universal human within them that resonates with everyone. I suppose finding a way to relate the Emperor of China to everyman is a real challenge, but I think it can be done. I don’t feel I learned enough of the interior landscape of Puyi’s mind to make him a convincing character. And I don’t think the fault lies with the actors here… I think the script could have been better.

The second thing I had a problem with was the length. Again, a tighter script could have helped with that. Beautiful imagery can’t cover up the fact that there was too much here, and needed to be cut down. A lot of the childhood scenes I think could have been eliminated. How many times do we have to have the point pressed that this boy is an Emperor who can do what he likes and not be punished for it?

The Last Emperor was beautiful for sure. However, I didn’t feel it had the emotional oomph to make it a truly great picture. Apparently the Academy disagrees with me, since it won in every category it was nominated, including Best Director for Bertolucci, Best Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won nine Oscars in total.

I guess I must be a contrarian, or really stupid. If it’s the latter, no one tell my mother. She’d be devastated.

~Anna

Up Next: Cimmaron (1930-31)

Rain Man

2011-07-24T12:08:00.007-04:00

Rain Man (released December 16, 1988)

Director: Barry Levinson

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino

Produced by: Mark Johnson

Written by: Barry Marrow, Ronald Bass

Music by: Hans Zimmer

Cinematography by: John Seale

Distributed by: United Artists

Faulty Memories

Last week we pulled Rain Man out of the box. Ever since then I’ve had that song in my head. You know the one: “My grandma and your grandma sittin’ by the fire…” It’s been there all week, and to be honest, I was never a big fan of it. It does take me back though, to my freshman year of high school. Huh. Maybe that’s why I don’t like the song. But that’s a story for the shrink, not for you.

You're so vain... you probably think
this movie's about you...

Regardless of what was going on in my life during the Christmas season of 1988, the movie certainly does reflect the late 80s with flair. Like The French Connection, this movies is defined by its decade. Only this time instead of the gritty hideousness of the ugliest decade of the 20^th century, we have images of the “Me” decade. And Charlie Babbitt (played by Tom Cruise) is the epitome of that ideal.

Charlie imports fancy sports cars in Los Angeles, wears expensive suits, and has a modelesque Italian girlfriend. Watching this movie now, the character of Charlie reminds me sharply of Cruise’s performance in the movie Jerry Maguire. He played both parts so spot on I wonder if this is “his” role, much like Mel Gibson seems to gravitate towards playing characters hell-bent on revenge. Charlie Babbitt is ruthless, slimy, and overly concerned with his image. He suppresses all emotions except anger. He’s a prick.

Not exactly Thelma and Louise...

The ubiquitous monkey wrench is thrown when his father dies, leaving all the $3 million estate to his brother Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman) , an autistic savant who doesn’t understand the concept of money. Charlie didn’t even know Ray existed. Ray had been sent to live in Walbrook, a mental institution in Charlie’s hometown of Cincinnati. When Charlie visits Ray he coerces him into the car (a 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible – Charlie’s inheritance) and takes off. He thinks he can trade Ray for his half of the money, so he sets out for California.

Charlie’s life quickly implodes on the road. His business goes bust from the absence of his fine machinations (i.e. his gift of keeping his customers hanging on through bullshit), his fiancée leaves after she realizes his motivations for keeping Ray, and Raymond himself proves to be extremely hard to handle. A slave to his routines and rituals, Ray must watch The People’s Court every day, eat with toothpicks instead of a fork, and a whole host of other things to keep him comfortable and not pitching a screaming fit.

Susanna: "How was it?" Raymond: "Wet."

I’ve seen a lot of Dustin Hoffman’s films, and I think he’s an amazing actor. From The Graduate, to Tootsie, to Kramer vs. Kramer, he never fails to find a new and interesting role to play, and he plays them incredibly well. Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Rain Man, and it is easy to see why. His portrayal of Raymond Babbitt is so convincing, I forgot he was Dustin Hoffman. That, in my opinion, is the hallmark of a great actor.

My original impressions of this movie as a fourteen-year old were this was a great movie. What wasn’t to love? It had hot Tom Cruise (who had just rocketed to stardom on the con trail of Top Gun). It was funny (“K-Mart sucks” anyone?) and it even had the glitter of Las Vegas thrown in towards the end.

Los Angeles: the new city of Brotherly Love

Watching it last night left me feeling very different. Instead of funny and clever, I now find it to be sad and rather depressing. Tom Cruise’s character is no longer hot, but a rather pathetic jerk with shiny pants and too big hair. (Could someone get him a tie, please?) The movie is no less commanding, maybe more so now that I see it from an adult’s eyes. I can see now the finer subtleties that were lost on me as a newly minted teenager. Charlie’s character does shift from callous bastard to caring brother, but he still retains his self-centered attitude. Being pushed out of his comfort zone, Ray does make progress in learning to connect with people.

Rain Man is certainly not a light and happy movie. However, it does for really the first time bring to light the nature of autism. I didn’t know what autism was before this movie, did you? I’m telling you as a librarian, we buy just as many books about that as we do cancer these days. I believe this movie was instrumental in bringing autism out of the murky shadows of mental illness and defining it for the general public.

Now if I could just get that damn song out of my head.

~Anna

Not Your Typical Buddy Film

Hollyweird be thy name...

My initial reaction to seeing Rain Man is a mixed one. While I can imagine pitching this idea to producers may have been an interesting and exciting exercise, I would have liked the end result to have been somehow… different. The film’s overwhelming positive reviews and acceptance notwithstanding, I found the story a bit too forced in some scenes. I wonder how many people think of Tom Cruise’s role as the selfish and driven Charlie Babbitt a stretch for him. I for one must admit that under the influence of his recent behavior I could not cozy up to his character, even at the end of the film where he apparently has seen the light and accepts his new-found autistic brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). It’s probably not in my best interest to critique a performance with all of the actor’s personal off-screen baggage influencing me, but there it is. The make-believe Hollywood and its actors and the real-life Hollyweird and its denizens are oft times difficult to keep apart.

It's not easy being an unfeeling ass.

An example of a less than believable scene was near the beginning of the movie in Charlie’s “auto sales office”. I realize the reason for filming it was to establish Charlie Babbitt’s odious character, but the conversations on the headsets sounded a bit too forced to me. Throughout the road trip, Charlie’s rather easy acceptance of Raymond’s decidedly annoying and difficult tantrums seemed unrealistic, although perhaps he was keeping that "thought of half of his late father’s 3-million dollar inheritance in the back of his mind. Overall, I sensed Cruises’s portrayal of Charlie was lacking that last little bit of umph to make me a believer, and him a truly sympathetic character. Their final scene together at the table when the doctors leave the room was something that worked and should have been exploited more.

The cast-list at the end of the film was of interest as it contained the names of a number of doctors who were “consulted” in helping the producers create the character of Raymond Babbitt. Of course, in Dustin Hoffman’s hands, the character of the idiot savant was adorable and interesting. And as this was written as a “feel good movie” firmly in mind, how then can the portrayal be otherwise? Still, one wonders how many people could survive that same trip in the real world and come out the other side wholly sane. Or would they have succumbed to the awful temptation of murdering poor Raymond and dumping his body in a ditch somewhere between Cincinnati and Los Angeles just for a little peace and quiet.

Still waters run deep.

Their brief foray into Las Vegas contained what I thought was the best shot of the entire picture. It included the long-held close up of Raymond’s face as he sits at the card table and becomes a study in stillness. Director Barry Levinson brilliantly chose to move in very slowly with the camera as in the background, we hear unabated, the hustle and bustle of the rest of the casino which in turn accentuates what Raymond, unbeknownst to anyone else, is doing. That Hoffman can put so much acting into a still face is amazing. His eyes glaze over and you can almost “hear” him counting those cards. It was a very subtle yet bravado piece of acting.

Overall, while I can applaud the idea behind the story and film, its final execution seemed to lack a certain finishing touch, for want of a better term. And in the back of my mind I wonder how much the fact of portraying a dysfunctional character in a sympathetic manner played into the balloting decisions of the Academy members. At times, Hollywood can be awfully touchy-feely.

--kak

Up next: The Last Emperor (1987)

An American in Paris

2011-07-17T15:25:00.004-04:00

An American in Paris (released October 4, 1951)

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Starring: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary, Nina Foch

Produced by: Arthur Freed

Written by: Alan Jay Lerner

Music by: George Gershwin (music), Ira Gershwin (lyrics), Saul Chaplin (uncredited)

Cinematography by: Alfred Gilks, John Alton (ballet)

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Joie de vivre in Gay Paree

Please excuse me while I don my sou’wester and grab for my umbrella as it seems to be raining romantic musical comedies around here at the Oscar Boot Camp. An American in Paris was pulled out of the box earlier this week and so Anna and I dutifully set up the machine and sat down together to watch Gene Kelly singin’ in the clear skies of Paris.

It was a showstopper a minute...

I was pleasantly surprised to discover this film was a joyous paean to life and love played out in the French capital which by the way looked much more realistic than the ersatz streets of London in My Fair Lady. But perhaps this is attributable to the fact that MGM was not averse to putting on such cinematic extravagances while Warner Bros. was not normally in the business of budgeting elaborate, musicals.

The plot to this picture, such as it is, is certainly no elaborately twisting Hitchcockian mystery, set up to keep the viewer guessing till the very end. In fact, scriptwriter Alan Jay Lerner concocted the barest storyline upon which to hang the marvelous music of the Gershwins and the dancing prowess of Gene Kelly. The fact that it worked and moreover won the coveted Best Picture award is a testament to the talents involved.

I can almost always tell an MGM picture from this period because of the unabashed saturation of color and the bright lighting under which it is filmed. An American in Paris is no exception. It’s a veritable feast for the eyes with an inherent brightness to it that seems to make everything you’re watching bigger than life.

Gene Kelly as the happy starving artist.

There is certainly exuberance to Jerry Mulligan’s character, played with such joie de vivre by Gene Kelly. Without a doubt he has to be the most cheerful starving artist in all of Paris. His perfect foil is his friend, Adam (Oscar Levant) an equally struggling artist who dreams of playing the concert piano. He is the wisecracking contrarian through whom Mulligan learns of the young French girl Lise, played by Leslie Caron in her film début. If there is any depth to the plot, it is to be found here with Lise falling for Jerry who in turn falls for her while concurrently being wooed by society woman, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch) who wishes to sponsor Jerry’s paintings. But Lise is engaged to Henri a cabaret singer played by Georges Guétary. Unwittingly then, Henri and Jerry are after the same girl. Ooo-la-la!

Jerry and Adam tra-la-la-ing in Adam's garret apartment.

While everything is sewn up rather quickly but unconvincingly during the last minute of the movie -- is Henri really smiling while he watches Lise leave his cab for Jerry waiting for her at the top of the steps? Whatta chump! -- the real reason the film is a hit is of course because of the music and dancing. Kelly does things with his feet and body that look so effortless and natural one almost believes he always moved that way. The amusing little vignette at the beginning where he “rearranges” his tiny garret apartment from his sleeping quarters to his living quarters is a gem. The musical/dance numbers come fast and furious in this picture, and one should pay special attention to the fluid camera work in the “Tra-la-la” sequence. And there is something very cool about lighting those stair risers during the “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” number, as Henri ascends them.

The final big number choreographed to Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” serves as the highlight of the picture. It is interesting to note the use of Caron’s ballet movements interspersed with Kelly’s natural dancing and how they made it work.

A worthy Best Picture winner for 1951, I still can’t for the life of me comprehend how the Academy offered a similar statuette to the next year’s winner: The Greatest Show on Earth!

--kak

Gene Kelly est très chaud

Yes, please...

Gene Kelly is hot. Never was there such a manly man to dance on the big screen. I read a brief bio on Kelly (we share the same birthday!) and he said his Mom made him and his brother take dance lessons when they were boys. They quit because the other kids called them sissies. But he said he went back to dance class at fifteen because he discovered it

was a great way to get girls.

We watched An American in Paris last night. I’d never seen it before, nor did I even know what it was about except, well, Americans in Paris.

The story centers around Jerry Mulligan (Kelly) who stays in Paris when he gets out of the service after World War II. He decides he wants to try his hand at painting and reasons the best place in the world to do this is Paris. He lives in a tiny garret apartment next door to his buddy Adam Cook (played by composer and actor Oscar Levant), another American and concert pianist who is always preparing for a concert, but never actually performs. They are both scraping to make ends meet and living the starving artist lifestyle.

Ms. Roberts checks out the merchandise... and the paintings.

There are two central plots that intertwine in this film. One is about Jerry, his art, and the wealthy patroness that wants to keep him in her pocket. The other is about Lise (the debut for pixie-faced Leslie Caron), a shop girl who catches Jerry’s eye at a club and he pursues with great persistence. Lise is already engaged, but keeps this information from him as they fall in love. Of course, broken hearts and disaster ensues, but it’s a musical from the fifties, so you know it has a happy ending.

Gene Kelly is hot. Oops, I said that already, didn’t I? Not only that, but extremely talented and creative. He did all the choreography for this picture and it was incredible. In 1928 George Gershwin wrote a “symphonic tone poem” with the same title and is used as the music for the grand finale of the film: a seventeen minute ballet performed in a picture drawing set in the City of Light.

I loved the look of this movie. Like My Fair Lady, it was completely filmed on sound stages in Hollywood, but MGM did a much better job. They knew it was going to look like a set so they created an almost painterly feel to it. The color palette was vibrant: lots of reds and oranges mixed with dark teal, blues and soft gray. It was almost as if one had stepped into one of the paintings Jerry Mulligan was trying to sell on the street in the Montmartre. And indeed, the ballet was a vision Jerry has where we are sucked right into one of his sketches. The whole aesthetic of the film is a dreamy, fairytale quality. But a jazzy fairy tale, with lots of Gershwin hits and fabulous dance numbers.

With such elfin looks, I wouldn't be surprised
if she were hiding pointy ears.

I love watching dancers. There is something so pure out of making art with your body as the tool. And Gene Kelly is so good: athletic, graceful, and did I mention hot? He makes even the toughest moves look easy and makes me want to try dancing again… almost.

Leslie Caron was charming. Her impish looks and fluid grace make her a pleasure to watch. And then there’s the cute little accent which makes her attempts to tell off Jerry Mulligan downright adorable. She’s quite a dancer too, and she and Gene are matched very well as partners.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how much I liked Oscar Levant as Adam Cook. He kind of reminds me of John Cryer and he was the comic relief. My favorite scene was when he is sitting between Jerry and the French singer, Henri Baurel. Both are talking about the women they are in love with and Adam is practically choking on his cigarette and coffee because he realizes they are the same girl.

No room for anything but happy.

I loved this movie. There is something about it that makes me want to grand jeté down my street. Maybe it’s because of the music. Maybe it’s because Gene Kelly is always so dang happy, and joy just beams out of his face like a searchlight when he’s dancing. This would be a great movie to watch on a rainy day, or when you’re feeling sad. It's got everything you need for a boost: technicolor, jazz, snappy dancing, and a happy ending.

And Gene Kelly is hot.

~Anna

Next up: Rain Man (1988)

All the King's Men

2011-07-10T14:39:00.006-04:00

All the King's Men (released November 8, 1949)
Director: Robert Rossen
Starring: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek, Mercedes McCambridge
Produced by: Robert Rossen
Written by: Robert Rossen, based upon the novel by Robert Penn Warren
Music by: Louis Gruenberg
Cinematography: Burnett Guffey
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures

Really Bad Eggs

I mentioned in my post on The English Patient that I often have issues with books that have been turned into movies. For All the King’s Men, this was mostly the case. I read the book in 2007 when I was leading a Pulitzer book discussion series. This was the fourth and last in the series. Robert Penn Warren won the prize in 1947, and the film with the same name won the Academy Award for Best Picture two years later.

Usually the book/movie sequence happens like this for me: I read a book. I love it. Hollywood turns it into a movie. I see the movie and am greatly disappointed. For the most part I don’t go to movies anymore if I’ve seen and loved the book.

The difference with my situation with All the King’s Men, was that I hadn’t really loved the book in the first place. Like I mentioned, I read it about four years ago and even discussed it extensively. I was surprised when we watched it how very little I remembered of the book. It’s not my memory failing either, I think it’s just that the book was not really my cup of tea.

L to R: Crawford as Stark, Huey Long

I’m not a huge fan of politics, for one. Don’t get me wrong, I vote and take it as a great responsibility for being an American. But I groan each time a presidential election comes around because of all the hype and propaganda, and the grand speeches and the piecrust promises. The mudslinging and backstabbing are hideous to watch and make me so weary. Therefore, when you present me with a story about the corruption and greed that comes from high positions of power, well, I’m not all that interested.

Willie Stark is the central figure in this story. Coming from a poor, uneducated background, we first meet him running for local office in the small fictional town of Kanoma. The state is never mentioned, but we know it’s in the Deep South. Willie is closely based on the very real governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, who was assassinated in 1935 as he was gearing up the political machine to make a bid for President of the United States.

When we first meet Willie (played by Broderick Crawford), he was labeled an honest man with courage, who was running for Kanoma County Treasurer. From there he is asked to run for governor of the state in a hope he’d split the “hick vote.” He does, but not before he finds his voice and starts giving impassioned (and liquor-fueled) speeches about bringing the truth to the “dumb hicks,” of which he proclaims to be. He finally wins on his third bid and his own descent into corruption is fast and quick. He does do many great things for his state – he builds roads, schools, and hospitals, he brings his state out of the horse-and-buggy era and into the twentieth century. But the means by which he accomplishes these ends is just as despicable as the men he was originally fighting in Kanoma County.

Anne and Jack before Willie comes between them.

In addition to this main thrust of the narrative is the secondary story of newspaper man Jack Burden, who originally covers Willie’s early runs for office. Jack, in contrast to Willie, was raised in an affluent, country-club atmosphere complete with a dickwad stepfather and a drunk mother. He is in love with Anne Stanton, a neighbor who was the daughter of a former governor and the sister to Adam, a doctor Willie later appoints to head the free-care hospital he is building in the capital. It is this trio of characters that make up the complexity of the picture and the novel. All three are taken in by Willie to some degree, and it ends up his undoing in the end.

All right, I’ve told you about the movie. What did I think of it? In truth, I didn’t like it, but that has to do a lot with my own personal likes and dislikes. This is not a movie that I would gladly skip to the movie theater to see. The story is compelling, to be sure, but in the end, I could tell you I’ve seen it too many times in real life to want to waste my time watching a movie about it.

In all, I think the adaptation of the movie from the book was actually pretty well done. I can only imagine how hard it must be to take a book as complex as this one and translate that into a film. There were a few things lost, most importantly I think, was Willie’s gradual decline into corruption. The book portrays it as a more subtle progression. In order to keep the time short in the movie, he seems to go from honest man to fat cat swindler almost overnight. And the catalyst that gets him there? Why booze, naturally. Interesting comment by the director, Robert Rossen, who also wrote the screenplay.

There is part of me (on a strictly academic level) that wants to watch the 2006 version starring Sean Penn to see another interpretation. But it’s a very small part, and I’m sure if I lie down a while it will pass.

Poor bastard.

My final feelings come down to this: indifference. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t horrible. But I do remember getting to the end of the movie, and almost simultaneously Kosta and I asked, “Would someone shoot this guy already?”

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,

Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

When you look at the entire nursery rhyme from which the title of this movie (and book) is taken, it illustrates the story very well. What is also interesting is that Humpty Dumpty while never described in the poem itself, is always depicted as a large egg man—fragile, weak, and easily crushed. And while Willie Stark seemed the opposite of these things, ultimately he came to the same end as the egg man of the nursery rhyme.

~Anna

“Starkness”

I have always harbored reservations about watching this film even though I had never seen it before. In my mind I was concerned with the unappealing combination of it being shot in grainy black and white, having politics as a subject matter, and exhibiting a cast that wouldn’t exactly pack them into the cinemas on a Saturday night in 1949.

Team Willie

That writer-director, Robert Rossen was going for a gritty and (excuse the pun) stark look there can be no doubt, however, after viewing it, all that grittiness tends to leave a rather abrasive memory of the film on a whole. It certainly wasn’t a pretty picture to watch, and maybe Rossen shot it that way, but in doing so, it left a distinct and unattractive impression on me. Although being filmed in the late Forties, the look and feel of the film seemed more in tune with the Dust Bowl Thirties. Rossen reportedly used local people for his crowd scenes – a lot of them shot outside Hollywood – which contributed to the hard look of the film. Even during the supposed idyllic interludes when reporter-narrator Jack Burden returns to Burden’s Landing, the place he grew up in as a child, one can hardly get excited about the weedy-lined, sluggish river over which his car is ferried. I guess that since the story took place in a southern state (Louisiana being the unnamed place) and amongst the poor farmers who ended up being the core constituency for populist leader Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), one cannot expect to see starched shirts, smart fedoras and evening gowns.

It's hard to be humble when you have a giant head.

In keeping with the raw visual nature of the film, the characters were pretty much a despicable bunch. I don’t think I can ever recall watching a film without at least one redeeming character. This film had none. In fact there didn’t seem to be a gentle soul amongst the lot of them. Willie Stark (based on the controversial governor, Huey “The Kingfish” Long) started his political career fighting corruption in the backwater towns of the state until he ended up being the biggest proponent of it in the governor’s mansion. Along for the ride was a cast of characters who sacrificed honor and decency for the chance to climb to the top with him. I’m guessing Robert Penn Warren who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel upon which the film was loosely based was not a big fan of crooked politicos. He certainly didn’t see much to admire in their machinery. Stark surrounds himself with a collection of thoroughly scheming and devious people including Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge) and the bought-off newspaper man, Jack Burden (John Ireland). Burke, who at first is brought in to masquerade as one of Stark’s political handlers, actually U-turns and ends up becoming his top campaign aide. McCambridge garnered a Supporting Academy Award for her portrayal which is an interesting fact considering the positively nasty and brutish role she had to play. Jack, who sold his soul early in the film, ends up eliciting very little empathy even though he clearly has several clashes of conscience as the story unfolds.

Mercedes McCambridge plays the flinty Sadie Burke.

In this film, the viewer is left waiting for someone – anyone – to step forward and do something honorable. But it never occurs. Characters who we think might end up doing the right thing invariably take the low road and end up in a state of misery or worse, dead. Consider Judge Monte Stanton, a character who seems immune from Willie Stark’s rapacious and corruptible grasp. He ends up shooting himself when through Jack’s investigations; an unsavory incident from his past is uncovered. The fact that Jack had once loved and admired the Judge makes this scene that much harder to watch. It seems as if the corrosiveness of Willie Stark permeates everyone and everything in which it comes into contact. Anne and Adam Stanton, the brother and sister team who begin the movie with such promise also fall under and get crushed beneath the Stark political machine. In fact, after it is revealed that Anne sleeps with Stark, all our hopes lay with Adam, the one last redeemable character in the film who fights Stark ’til the end when unable to defeat him, he actually assassinates him and is in turn gunned down by Stark’s bodyguard, Sugar Boy. Watch, by the way, how many shots Sugar Boy pumps into Adams’ prone body. It was reported that Carl Weiss, the physician who assassinated Huey Long was summarily gunned down an instant later by Long’s cadre of bodyguards, who shot him 62 times!

In its overall look and feel, would have to admit that All the King’s Men has to be the starkest film ever to receive the Academy Award.

Clockwise from top left: misshapen snoot, nose full of nickels,
luxuriant trunk, and hatchet.

Finally, if the reader would indulge my irreverence for a moment I would be remiss if I did not mention a small detail I found rather amusing in this otherwise totally humorless film. All the King’s Men has to have been the only movie in cinema history to display as grandiose a collection of proboscises as has ever been committed to celluloid. Consider Broderick Crawford’s broken and misshapen snoot. Then we move on to John Ireland’s “nose full of nickels”. And how about actress Anne Seymour’s luxuriant trunk? Toss in character actor Walter Burke’s noteworthy conk and Mercedes McCambridge’s hatchet and you have a pretty amazing assortment of smellers. One is just thankful that Karl Mauldin and Barbara Streisand were not included in the cast…!

--kak

Up next: An American in Paris (1951)

My Fair Lady

2011-07-04T17:34:00.004-04:00

My Fair Lady (released December 25, 1964)
Director: George Cukor
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper
Produced by: Jack Warner
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner, George Bernard Shaw
Music by: Frederick Loewe (music), Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics)
Cinematography by: Harry Stradling, Sr.
Distributed by: Warner Bros.

Lady Fair

Really? Another musical to review? We just got finished writing about The Sound of Music didn’t we…? Okay, maybe that was a while back, but I was still slightly astounded to discover this film being pulled from the box on the heels of the Von Trapp adventures in Austria. I must admit that for someone who is not a big movie musical fan, I have caught myself humming tunes from My Fair Lady from time to time throughout my life. I will even admit to crooning some verses along with the CD player in an old friend’s rebuilt Camaro as we sped across miles and miles of open searing desert in the American Southwest while on a road trip a few years back. Richard happily possesses a fine voice, and I can only imagine the astonishment of the Navajo people and Gila monsters on the sides of the road as we raced by and they caught snatches of “The Rain in Spain”.

It fell to Warner Bros. and director George Cukor to bring this iconic stage musical to the big screen. In general, the look of the film was stagy; no doubt this due to its production on the Warner soundstages in Burbank, and because of this, in my opinion it really didn’t have the right “Edwardian English” look and feel to it. I believe it would have helped deflect bit of the disappointment many people felt in not seeing the original Eliza Doolittle of the stage version (Julie Andrews) in the title role instead of Audrey Hepburn. However at the time, Audrey had earned her chops before the cameras and Julie had not, and upon such fine points of cinematic etiquette film classics blossom and flourish or wither and die.

Erm, the street where you live looks like a sound stage...

I suppose we can’t find much to carp about Miss Hepburn’s lip-synching when in the same production we have Mr. Rex Harrison’s half-spoken, half-sung renditions, but then again he never claimed he could sing and indeed, his delivery managed with such bravado, comes across as quite natural. This, one imagines, is how the puritanical Henry Higgins would sing if forced to do so. At any rate, it certainly worked for him on the stage in London for those oft-repeated performances…

This singing gig is a breeze!

And speaking of singing, it still startles me a bit to see the late and venerable Jeremy Brett warbling “On the Street Where You Live” as the rather foppish suitor for Eliza’s hand, Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Sherlock Holmes would never chase after a woman like that would he?

Freddy never used his powers of deduction
to discover he was a git.

And yet despite these admittedly trivial cavils (which however added together leave one with a less-than-enthusiastic overall feel for the film) I did enjoy watching this version of what has been termed “the perfect musical”. The story in whatever guise one approaches it; ancient Greek myth, 19^th Century play, or 20^th Century musical has all the charm, freshness and sophistication of a classically good story.

I have sometimes mused upon what an indescribable rush of perfect joy Lerner & Loewe must have experienced when they originally came up with the pairing of words to music, being the only two in the world at that moment to know that they had just created something of true magnificence.

--kak

My Unfairly Treated Lady

Audrey... practically
perfect in every way.

I love Audrey Hepburn. I want to look like her – lithe, graceful, with a swan’s neck, and huge eyes fringed in dark lashes. The few men I’ve told this to don’t get it. They tell me she’s got a big nose, no tits, and is too skinny. But I don’t care… there is something about her smile and voice that convinces me that she’s never been anything but happy.

It’s nice little fantasy.

I was excited to watch My Fair Lady. It isn’t one I’d seen as a kid – we seemed to be a Rodgers and Hammerstein household and not a Lerner and Loewe one. I figured I’d be in for a treat. It has Audrey Hepburn, gorgeous clothes, and some great music. What’s not to love?

Have you got an hour?

Let’s start by comparing and contrasting it with The Sound of Music. Both originated as stage plays, and while the movie version of SOM is visually gorgeous (how can it not be filmed in Salzburg?), I felt MFL was still very much a stage play. All outdoor scenes were obviously filmed on a soundstage. Maybe that was the look the director was going for, I don’t know. I do know that it seemed less authentic to me.

The music was great. Lerner and Loewe are no slouches when it comes to writing catchy songs that could crawl into your ear and burrow into your brain. (But in a good way.) My husband can do all of Henry Higgins’ parts from memory. I have to admit that’s awfully cute.

A prisoner of the gutter

Now let’s talk about the story. Henry Higgins is an English gentleman (and that’s figuratively, not literally) who says the only thing separating the classes is a lack of education and proper speech. (I suppose he'd consider it crass to mention something as inelegant as MONEY.) He picks Eliza Doolittle, a lowly flower seller and bets with his buddy Colonel Pickering, that he could pass her off as a lady with a bit of training up. He plucks her from the mud of Covent Garden and installs her in his townhouse. Surely a stroke of luck for poor, dirty, ignorant, uneducated Eliza, right?

All right, here’s the poop: this plot makes me itch. It makes me fume, steam, and rage. I am completely disgusted with the character of Henry Higgins, who sees Eliza Doolittle not even as a human being. He takes all the credit for her hard work, and never once considers Eliza has feelings, intelligence, or even a pulse. I find Eliza Doolittle to be delightful – funny, sharp, and full of spirit. After Henry has won his bet, he doesn’t see he has ruined her: she’s not really a lady and can’t ever belong in high society, and she can't return to her former life because she'd be resented for trying to rise above her station. She is a human being trapped in the ether without a place in the world.

In short, Henry Higgins is a worm.

G.B. Shaw: satirist or worm?

My problem stems from the source of this musical: George Bernard Shaw. He wrote Pygmalion, the play upon which My Fair Lady was based. I don’t know enough about him to understand if he intended this as a piece of satire. Or was Henry Higgins’ world view his own? Either option is a bad one. If he wrote it as a biting piece of satire, what would possess a person to set it to jaunty music? The theme and style of the film are at extreme odds with each other. I feel like I’m chewing aluminum foil while watching it. But on the verso, if Shaw was just as much of a worm as Henry Higgins, why do people find this a charming story? It has been venerated as “the perfect musical.” But how can you call it that when it is full of despicable characters, classism and misogyny? It makes me want to scream. And I am. Right now. In my head.

And the ending? If they were still alive, I’d hunt down the parties responsible and smack them with Henry’s slippers for that kind of ambiguous crap. But that’s just me.

~Anna

Up next: 1949's All the King’s Men

Gladiator

2010-05-02T14:18:00.025-04:00

Gladiator (Released May 5, 2000)

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Honsou, Richard Harris

Produced by: Douglas Wick, David Franzoni, Branko Lustig

Written by: David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson, story by David Franzoni

Music by: Hans Zimmer, Lisa Gerrard

Cinematography by: John Mathieson

Distributed by: DreamWorks

Aren't You Glad It's Gladiator?

Ahem.

I realize it has been a rather long hiatus for us here at Oscar Boot Camp. I won't make excuses, or bore you with the details. I am truly sorry that life got away from us at Chez Karras, but we are back, and ready to rumble. Or watch movies. Whatever comes first.

We did watch Gladiator last November. I'd seen it before and liked it, but never gave much thought to what made the movie so good. (And let me qualify this statement by saying that I thought it was a good movie, though not a great one.) Let's see what we have:

1. Russell Crowe in a short skirt.

Hello, salty goodness...

Well the short skirt was hot, but it wasn't just Crowe's sex appeal that made him well-suited to the role of Maximus Decimus Meridius. Crowe does well in roles of manly fortitude (Master and Commander, Cinderella Man, etc.) where physical prowess is a necessity. This movie was no exception. He fought on the battlefield, he fought in the ring, he fought the Roman Emperor, for crying out loud. (And I'm sorry, but the name Maximus? Why not just call him Biggus Dickus and be done with it?)

2. Joaquin Phoenix as the Emperor Commodus.

This guy is one hell of an actor. And he did such a subtle creepy good job of this role. Commodus certainly had some family issues, one of which was lusting after his sister. Even his physical appearance for this film was spot on. He looked bloated, ill, and nuts. (But maybe that's just him.)

A right sick, twisted bastard.

3. Gorgeous cinematography

The golden glow of the sunlight in the Mediterranean notwithstanding, this film was a jewel to look at.

4. Music by Hans Zimmer

Zimmer always does a good job of sweeping epic music. And he has such a unique signature to his sound. The music gets the blood up, it makes you feel like sword fighting yourself.

These and other elements such as the beautiful Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, and Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius are definite attributes. And then there is Maximus' line, "What we do in life echoes in eternity." Pretty good sound bite. Maybe a little melodramatic, but I can say I wish I wrote it.

When Kosta and I watched this together for the first time, he pointed out a few bloopers in the film. For instance, in the scene where Maximus battles the Amazon warriors, a chariot spills over revealing some kind of tank that is obviously not supposed to be seen. I went to www.imdb.com to see what else they list, and I was shocked at how long the list of bloopers and continuity errors there were. What gives?

I liked this film, but I can't say I thought it was outstanding, and worthy of Best Picture of 2000. I felt that perhaps there was lots of action, but not a lot of depth to the characters.

~Anna

Hail, Big Budget Epics!

Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) proved that there is still success to be found and money to be made in the making of big-budget historical epics. In fact, the trends for filming ancient narratives continues to this day, a decade later, in large part due to the influence of this motion picture. While not all of the films have enjoyed the popularity of Gladiator, there apparently exists an interest in the movie-going public for pictures set in ancient Greece and Rome.

No, not a cast of thousands, but clever CGI.

As one can expect from a Ridley Scott film, there is much to take in visually. His scenes, both on the small and large scale are artfully composed and with a "little help" from the boys in front of the CGI (computer generated imagery), computers, he transports us to Rome and the ancient world, circa AD 180 with all the pomp as well as the mud and dust.

For historically astute movie-watchers the story line of the fictionalized general-turned-gladiator Maximus, and the sociopathic emperor Commodus, scheming their way through the picture do tend to make one squirm in one's seat. The professional historians hired on the project to make sure the film makers stay somewhat true to what facts are generally known about the period must have been squirming themselves -- one thinks of the movie: Troy (2004) and shudders...

Nevertheless, being historically accurate does not necessarily fill seats in a movie house and Scott and the screenwriters fall back on the old but tried-and-true story gimmick that works to perfection time and again; that of revenge.

The cast fits snuggly in their individual roles, with Joaquin Phoenix giving a bravado performance as the truly creepy emperor, Commodus. In one very brief shot during the scene where he looms over his young sleeping nephew, Lucius Verus, Scott brings Commodus' face into frame from a deeply out-of-focus shot and for an instant while blurred, the face resembles a human skull. Given the character's evil persona, it turns out to be a most appropriate visual. Russell Crowe's solid portrayal brings strength to the morally strong character of Maximus and is indeed a solid foundation upon which this long movie rests.

There will be blood...

There is one interesting note in this Academy Award winner that I find rather fascinating. It is the subtle, yet telling dissimilarity between what the dying emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) believes Rome is and what we are shown Rome is upon the bloody sand of the Coliseum. Aurelius, one of the more intellectual emperors, believes Rome to be the one light in an ancient world filled with darkness. This is fine as far as noble speeches go, but one wonders if the luckless victims of the gladitorial games would have agreed with him. After all, in the center of the "civilized" capital city of the ancient world there were The Games, dedicated to fulfilling the entertainment need of the masses with the lives of its unfortunate participants. Plato, for one, would have blanched at the thought.

Still and all, Gladiator remains one of the more enjoyable and entertaining Hollywood romps into the Classical World and is evidence that there are still little golden statues awaiting the makers of good solid story telling, no matter if the characters dress in shirts and ties or tunics and armor.

--kak

Up next: My Fair Lady (1964)

The Sound of Music

2009-11-09T14:00:00.045-05:00

The Sound of Music (released March 2, 1965)

Directed by: Robert Wise

Starring: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer,

Produced by: Robert Wise

Written by: Ernest Lehmen, Based on the libretto by Howard Lindsay and the autobiography by Maria von Trapp

Music by: Richard Rodgers (music/lyrics), Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics), Irwin Kostal (musical score)

Cinematography by: Ted D. McCord

Distributed by: 20th Century Fox

Ten Things about The Sound of Music

When you have such an intimate relationship with a movie as I have with The Sound of Music, you would find it impossible to remove yourself enough to write a critical essay about it. So I won’t even attempt it. Here are 10 things about the movie that I can relate to you that have occurred to me over the years.

The Von Trapp children in their straight jackets

1. I first saw this movie on the television in my grandmother’s room. She lived with us when I was a kid, and it was on TV one Saturday evening. I remember it being hyped as a big event. This was in the days before cable really had a grip on

America, and movies weren’t cycled through the American psyche like fabric softener. I remember being enchanted with the movie immediately. I was probably 6 at the time. Naturally, I wanted to be Marta. (Gretl was younger than me at the time, and I thought Marta was prettier anyway.) The thing I remember though, was that same night my father was watching Caddyshack in the living room. We had just gotten Showtime (our one cable station!) and I was forbidden to go in there while he was watching it. I remember hearing him howl with laughter. And even though I was totally engrossed with The Sound of Music, there was a tiny little part of the back of brain that wondered what verboten things I was missing. I found out later: not much.

My favorite dress of Liesl's.

2. I love the color and texture of fabrics used in this movie, and not just in the costumes. Of course, the costumes were wonderful – very subtle pastels were used for Maria and the children. Lovely plums, charcoals and moss greens for Captain vonTrapp, and brighter, more vibrant colors for Baroness Schrader. And there is a lot of softness to the fabrics of the clothing – velvets, satins, and chiffon are used quite a bit. For instance, in the scene where all the children are scared of the thunderstorm, I remember wishing I could dive into the softness of Maria’s comforters – spiders be damned. I also love the dress Liesl wears in the scene whereshe sings “Edelweiss” with her father. A lovely spring green with eyelet sleeves and collar and beautiful periwinkle flowers embroidered on it.

3. When I was a kid, I though Rolfe was super cute. I suppose he still is. I’ve always liked the blondies. Too bad about the Nazi thing.

My taste was eclectic even as a six-year-old.

4. When I had my first record player, my mother let me listen to her original soundtrack on vinyl. And I did. Over and over. I used to alternate between that and Disney’s Mickey Mouse Disco. (Anyone remember “Macho Duck?”) I have heard of these singalongs they have at the Hollywood Bowl. If I could fully embrace my geekdom I would be all over it.

5. In the scene where Maria and Captain von Trapp finally get together, I always giggle. It was a slow moving part of the movie for me when I was a kid, and my brain wandered. There is a part when the two are standing in the gazebo, singing “Something Good,” and they are standing together in a silhouette. At the very end of the song, Captain von Trapp kisses Maria, and in the shadows his profile looks like a gorilla. You’ll have to watch it yourself to see. But there he is: Gorilla von Trapp. Kosta positively howled with glee when I paused the DVD to point that out.

6. I remember being in college and brining up a reference to the movie in a conversation with a guy and he made fun of me for liking the movie. I was stunned. Not for being made fun of, but because there were people out there who didn’t love this movie. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t a natural, intrinsic part of every American kid’s childhood like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and The Wizard of Oz.

She's smiling now, but watch the fists, sisters.

7. I always thought it was really mean that the nuns sang, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” at Maria and Georg’s wedding. Seriously, if someone called me a flibbertigibbet and a clown on my wedding day, I’d slap them silly. I don’t care if you are a nun.

8. I noticed something new when I watched it this time: when Maria returns to the Von Trapp family after the Reverend Mother tells her to “Climb Every Mountain,” she is wearing the outfit that the new postulant is wearing in the scene before. I never thought about that before. Earlier in the film when Maria first comes to the Von Trapp household, Captain Von Trapp tells her she must have some new dresses because the one she has one won’t do. She explains that when they enter the convent, they give all their clothes and worldly possessions to the poor. And he asks about the dress she has on, and she says, “… the poor didn’t want this one.” So you see, they keep the continuity by putting the newly donated green dress of the postulant right back on Maria to return to the Von Trapps’ in style. Forgive me, I notice stupid little things like that.

Maria returns from the abbey in a recycled dress
that fits awfully well.

9. For most of my life, I have watched this movie when it was on television. In fact, that was the way I saw it for the first time. And they edited it for TV, you know. So when I see the movie in its uncut entirety it is like a present – there are all these little bonus scenes put in, and most of them are funny! Like the one where Maria tells the Reverend Mother that Sister Bertha always makes her kiss the floor when they have a disagreement, so she has taken to kissing the floor when she sees her coming just to save time. Also, there are several scenes that I thought were important to setting the political mood of the movie. There is an earlier scene between Max and Captain Von Trapp that is cut out where the Captain gives Max a good tongue lashing for not being strong enough in his convictions against the Anschluss. I think cutting scenes like these makes the movie lose some of its tension. (And let’s face it, there isn’t much to begin with!)

that.

Not bad for the fruition of one's work, eh?

10. Today I was struck by how the writers (of the screenplay and the music) must have felt to watch this movie for the first time. What an amazing set of goose bumps they must have gotten hearing Julie Andrews belt out that opening song. Good Lord, what a set of pipes that woman has. My husband and I have been working with a partner to write for a potential kids cooking show, and there has been some interest. And I don’t want to jinx it, so that’s all I’m going to say about it save this: I too, think about what it would be like to see my words said by actors on a screen, no matter what size. Just to know that the creative work that came out of your brain is actually entertaining people is a big part of what keeps me working at it.

~Anna

Achtung - You vill like this movie!

My wife’s eyes glittered with delight after she reached her hand the box which contains all the movie titles on little slips that we select once-a-week. From her enchanted expression I could only surmise she had randomly picked something close to her heart.

She did.

The Sound of Music remains one of her “favorite things” and so she was overjoyed to share the picture with me again. I had actually watched it for the first time in my life after her repeated insistence that we do so last year some time. I must admit it was not as odious a chore I initially thought it would be. Rogers & Hammerstein’s music needed to grow on me a little more, and happily it has.

You wouldn't know it, but there's a 70 piece
orchestra hiding under the bed.

I must first confess that I do not go running to the theater to catch every musical produced. There is something inherently weird about characters in film breaking out into song with an accompanied 70-piece orchestra hiding somewhere behind the hay bales or china cabinet, but I guess to truly enjoy such things one must be willing to suspend one’s reality just enough to understand (if done right) the music flows naturally from the story line and helps develop the characters. So much for my humble take on matters I know little about.

While waiting to warm up to the music, I certainly had no problem feasting my eyes on the landscape.Austria and the Alps being

Austria and the Alps, this was not a very difficult thing to establish on film – a visualmedia. And in adroitly marrying the breathtaking scenery with Julie Andrews’ opening number, the creators made it a sure bet that they had a winning picture on their hands. I believe this movie attains its status in no small part because the lush backgrounds are so perfectly in sync with the music.

Rolfe: the Nazi menace.

While taking several liberties about the von Trapp family story, The Sound of Music did convey a fin de siècle sense of the Austrian Empire, though in truth it had ended well before the events portrayed in the movie. The oncoming Nazi menace was also handled well, hovering as it did in the background (for instance, in guise of the character, Rolfe) and waiting to strike.

The von Trapp children come across at times as a little too cutesy for my taste, but then this is considered a family movie and it was planned and written and in the earlier part of the sixties, before that decade went culturally out-of-control.

The music, as I said, is beginning to grow on me and I can certainly hear some of the tunes in my head now as I type this. I am not wowed by all the songs and that is probably a sacrilegious thing to say to SOM fans, but there you go.

I did enjoy the background scenery at the beginning of the “Do-Re-Mi” number as it was shot across the Salzach Valley with the Castle Hohenwerfen prominently displayed. Three years later, that same castle would end up in a much more sinister guise. It would become the Schloss Adler, the central set-piece for the war picture, Where Eagles Dare.

If I had to pick a song in the show that stayed with me it would have to be “Edelweiss”. Simple and charming, its lingering effects on one’s musical memory are natural. But I guess that’s what makes classical musicals so classic. Sadly, another tune runs through my head unaccountably from time to time, and seemingly out of nowhere, the lyrics: “High on a hill was a lonely goatherd….” will make its uncomfortable presence felt. Damn you, The Sound of Music!

Oh-da-lay-hee-hoo!

--kak

Up Next: Gladiator (2000)

I am thwarted...

2009-10-26T14:56:00.002-04:00

Apparently the gods were not with me this week. Did I forget to make a crucial sacrifice? A magnum of champagne and a celluloid necklace to the goddess Filmenetta? Or maybe just a gram of coke and a sloppy kiss to that naughty old satyr, Bacchus Cinematicus?

Either way, The Sound of Music did not get watched this week. And it was not for lack of trying. We knew we were going to be busy Tuesday night. And even though my darling husband was reluctant to watch one of my favorite movies with me, I knew I could sneak it in somewhere. Wrong!!! We are working on a writing project with our writing partner, and all of a sudden, we have a deadline! Very exciting, but also very harrowing, considering it is barreling towards us at an alarming speed and my husband and I both work 40 hours a week. So we worked every night, and most of Friday (of which we had off). The deadline was met, but the movie remained unwatched.

Undaunted, I packed our copy of The Sound of Music into our weekend bag. We went to visit my parents in Orlando and to go to EPCOT and the Food and Wine Festival. We spent most of Saturday watching the Gophers lose spectacularly to Ohio State, and me sitting on the floor making a glorious mess with paper and rubber cement. (I'll post about that some other day in the future.) In the evening we went to EPCOT and sampled lots of goodies from around the world: spanikopta from Greece; a pint of Strongbow cider from England; kefta and falafel from Morocco; spicy tuna roll and sake from Japan; and some outstanding crawfish etoufee and praline bread pudding from the U.S. (Louisiana had the spotlight this year.) I found out I am not a fan of sake. When we got home we watched the Gators vs. Mississippi State that we tivo'd so my darling husband wouldn't have to miss his precious football. Gators are still undefeated, which is quite impressive. Too bad they're not my alma mater. Gophers don't often strike fear in the hearts of their opponents. In real life or in football.

Sunday morning, I was all prepared to watch the movie. I took the movie out of the bag and ambushed everyone with it. And then to my horror I opened the case to find only the second disc inside! Where was disc #1? I have to admit that we got the movie from the donation bin at the library and had not checked it, a mistake I will surely never make again! I sat there and fumed for about fifteen minutes, and then announced that I was going to Best Buy to buy the stupid movie. It was almost 10 in the morning by that time, and we had to start it soon because we were due to go out to brunch at 1. The Sound of Music is is a loooong movie.

Kosta said he would come with me, so we got dressed, got in the car, and drove the blessedly short distance to Best Buy. It was a few minutes before 10 and they weren't open, so we swung over to the grocery store to pick up essentials. When we got back to Best Buy, it was 10:01 and the parking lot was still very empty. That's when I saw they hours on the door. Monday - Saturday they open at 10... Sundays at 11.

I threw a little tantrum in the parking lot. Just a little one.

Then we went home and watched the Vikings lose a heartbreakingly close one to the Steelers. Yes, my weekend was full of football and nary a Von Trapp.

This morning (Monday) I decided we would watch it tonight. When I got to work I went to check it in the catalog. I work at the biggest branch (collection-wise) in the county. So naturally, we don't own a copy. Naturally.

Shall I try to purchase a copy of said film at lunch?? For once there isn't a Monday night football matchup my husband cares to watch. Will the gods bitch-slap me down again?

Stay tuned to learn if our hapless heroine gets her Austrian groove on this evening.

The French Connection

2009-10-20T13:05:00.027-04:00

The French Connection (released October 9, 1971)

Directed by: William Friedkin

Starring: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco

Produced by: Philip D'Antoni

Written by: Robin Moore (novel), Ernest Tidyman

Music by: Don Ellis

Cinematography by: Owen Roizman

Distributed by: 20th Century Fox

The French Connection didn’t connect with me

I understand a film in search of realism can be an exciting and rewarding thing to watch if handled with the utmost care. After all, most of us pay good money to enter theaters and be entertained by stories and characters somewhat removed from reality. William Friedkin’s, The French Connection sustains a gritty reality to it for 104 minutes, but I wassurprised to discover that after a while, I was less and less entertained.

Ah, look at all the ugly people...

I think it was a combination of things, really. I could have possibly forgiven the filmmakers for their lack of proper lighting, proper makeup for the actors, some less than stellar editing, or even the screeching, discordant soundtrack that was supposed to reflect some sort of edgy jazz theme as trademarks of a daring, edgy director, but all those things taken together just made the film look and sound really less than polished and professional. Yes, I understand that this film was not supposed to look slick, -- but wow! -- I don’t think I’ve ever seen an uglier looking movie. And after a while, I began to find the vulgarity rather tedious.

I think I know now where Martin Scorsese got the overall look for the hoods in his film, Goodfellas. Just check out the scene in the nightclub where Detectives Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are watching the drug kingpins at play with their “womenfolk”. Now that’s a pretty scary looking collection of people. The big hair and the dresses on the ladies still have the power to shock and horrify!

Buddy Russo: a kinder, gentler cop.

Don’t look for much redeeming character traits in the hero of the piece either. Hackman plays tough-guy Doyle without any noticeable concessions to humanity. Even though his aim is to take down the drug lords, one finds his methods odious and his character extremely hard to root for. It’s saying something when Roy Scheider is cast as the kinder, gentler cop.

The justly-famous (for its time) car-chase sequence with the elevated train through the crowded Brooklyn streets has lost a bit of its sting simply because car-chases nowadays are practically a raison d'être to current action directors, and let’s be honest – we’ve all seen a million of them by now.

Crash!

All these ponderous observations don’t leave me much to applaud when it is all said and done. And I am left with the personal estimation that William Friedkin as a director is over-rated.

As far as naming The French Connection the best picture for 1971, I am left wondering: were things that awful in 1971?

--kak

I’ve Been Called Worse

The French Connection won five academy awards. It gets glowing reviews from every source. I looked up reviews online and people wax poetic about its dark gritty nature, its exceptional editing, and its amazing writing. Everyone thinks it is the pinnacle of what an American crime film should be. The crème de la crème.

I thought it was skunk brains on a Triscuit.

I know that this essay (which is now indexed by Google!) might make some people angry out there, because I am about to rip this movie a new one. Say what you want, I’ve been called worse. This is different from The Greatest Show on Earth, because there was a reason (the Red Scare) that such a movie won. The French Connection seemed to have won on its own merit. And it beat out such movies as Fiddler on the Roof, A Clockwork Orange, and The Last Picture Show.

It was almost funny... almost.

I want you to know that when I sat down to watch this movie, I hardly knew anything about it. I hadn’t read anything about it online. I only knew what I had read on the back of the DVD case. I knew I liked Gene Hackman. (Anyone who can play a blind monk in Young Frankenstein and Lex Luthor is all right in my book.) I knew I liked France. What could be so bad?

The French Connection is the story of two detectives (Doyle and Russo) who stumble upon a huge shipment of drugs coming into the country from France, and they want to nail the bastards who are in on it. I can get behind that. Nailing crooks is always a fun movie past time. But there was so much wrong with this movie that the basic plot was all that was really right.

Doyle freezes his nuts off.

First off, there was no character development. I felt no connection to “Popeye” Doyle or Buddy Russo. They were two-dimensional. When the movie opens, we know they are cops. When the movie ends, we know they are cops, and that Doyle is more of a badass than his partner. I know that they both did a lot of stakeouts in cars, and froze their nuts off hanging around outside hotels, but that’s it. That’s all we know. I don’t know anything about their thoughts, their motivations, or their personalities. And that made the movie feel flat to me – very Super Mario Brothers. Strike one.

And Lord, was this picture ugly. Well, the 70’s in general were pretty bad, weren’t they? They started with a big bang, and hideously bled to death for a decade. Clothes, hairstyles, décor, cars, it was all one big, avocado, shaggy mess. And this movie was no different. When it first started playing, I believe I said, “Geez, this is a crappy transfer.” But apparently it was made to be that way – stark, grainy, and ugly…just like the streets of New York and the cops that defend them. (*snort*) Even the portions of the film shot in Marseilles, (in France, people) were not pretty. They made the French Riviera ugly too! Strike two.

Even Marseilles was ugly.

Apparently they were trying to make a statement here. I have a theory as to what that statement is, too. If you think about it, the world was just coming out of the 60’s which was the decade of the musical. West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Oliver all won best picture in the 60’s, and there were many more that came out as well. I wonder if The French Connection and the 1969 winner, Midnight Cowboy weren’t a direct backlash to the colorful almost carnival-like spectacle that a musical often produces. Come one, even West Side Story has gang members doing grand jetés in the streets. Not exactly gritty.

I felt the writing was confusing. Not only did the script run like a police report, (“We followed them here, then we waited outside for 2 hours, then we followed them there. They ate lunch. We stood across the street and froze. Then we followed them back to the hotel.”) but there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand. In the opening scenes of the movie, Doyle and Russo shake down a hood who has been dealing drugs in a bar. Doyle keeps asking him weird questions like, “Did you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?” I found out later from reading about the movie that he was just doing that to throw the guy off guard with crazy questions. How the hell was I supposed to know that? Was I just supposed to intuitively figure that out?

Strike three: the movie made me feel dumb. And it was full of stupid lines like this:

DOYLE

Apparently these guys talk like this.

Whatta you say we wait and give him

a tail?

RUSSO

Give who a tail?

DOYLE

The greaser with the blonde.

RUSSO

What for -- you wanna play Hide the

Salami with his old lady?

Who talks like this? Do people really talk like this? Please tell me people don’t talk like this.

It's hard to look tough in a LeMans.

There was a badass car chase, although probably not as much fun as Steve McQueen’s in Bullitt. A car chase is made cooler by the car you do it in. McQueen had a Mustang. (Heh. James Bond had a damn tank in Goldeneye.) Poor old Doyle had a crappy ugly brown Pontiac. However, that the car chase was one of the highlights of the film, and I did gasp in a few places, and dig my nails into my palm – especially when the lady with the baby carriage pops up in front of him.

So the movie gets three strikes from me. In baseball, that means you’re out. I don’t know what that means in the movies. It probably isn’t good though.

All right, I’ve said my piece. You are welcome to 5 minutes of rebuttal. And….begin!

~Anna

Up next: The Sound of Music (1965)

Mrs. Miniver

2009-10-12T15:33:00.007-04:00

Mrs. Miniver (released June 4, 1942)
Directed by: William Wyler
Starring: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers, Richard Ney, Henry Wilcoxon
Produced by: Sidney Franklin
Written by: Jan Struther (book), George Froeschel, James Hilton, Claudine West, Arthur Wimperis
Music by: Herbert Stothart
Cinematography by: Joseph Ruttenberg
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

K.I.S.H.

Keep it Simple, Hollywood

I really like old movies. There is something straightforward about them: what you see is what you get. Today’s moviegoer is too sophisticated for his or her own good. They expect fancy plot compositions, bigger and better special effects, and unexpected plot twists. And it is getting harder and harder to fool the audience. Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Crying Game, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, all of these have set the bar in Hollywood for the next generation. But let’s rewind for a minute and focus on a time when we didn’t have to try to dupe the audience with a lot of cleverness.

Mrs. Miniver was the Best Picture winner for 1942, and the United States was poised to enter World War II in Europe. I know my husband is going to talk all about the war, because that’s his thing, so I’ll leave him to that. What I want to focus on is the story itself: about a family trying to hang together through an extremely difficult time. The Miniver family lives on the Thames on the outskirts of London, in what they dub a “middle class household.” Oh please, if that is middle class, then I grew up poor white trash. The house was huge, they had 2 servants, for crying out loud. The Miniver family consisted of Mr. Miniver (Walter Pidgeon), Mrs. Miniver (Greer Garson), adult son Vincent (Richard Ney), and young children Judy (Clare Sandars), and Toby (Christopher Severn). I found out from my husband after we watched the film that Greer Garson actually married Richard Ney, her onscreen son after this film. He was only 11 years her junior, but the marriage didn’t last long. Apparently he was abusive and made some disparaging remarks about her age in public. Jackass. On the bright side it ruined his career.

This movie was also adapted from a book, although it was not from a true novel. The author, Jan Struther, originally wrote about Mrs. Miniver in a newspaper column. These columns were based largely on her own life, and became wildly successful in the face of World War II. When they were collected and published, they became popular in the United States as well, and Struther actually did a book tour after the book’s release. Both Churchill and FDR credit the movie as being the tipping point of American sympathy and our hastening to go to war in Europe. And they didn’t even have to show any blood.

And even while the movie didn’t have a tightly written plot, I still enjoyed watching it. It was almost like watching a series of newspaper articles – little vignettes woven together to create a greater picture, and that was satisfying. Over these smaller stories looms the threat of war, which is woven in several places: Vin enlists with the RAF, Mr. Miniver runs his boat back and forth across the channel saving soldiers from Dunkirk, and of course, the family eventually must take to their air-raid shelter at night as the Battle of Britain roars overhead. After hearing what falling bombs actually sound like, I now understand why my uncle never went to the fireworks on the 4^th of July – they are eerily similar.

I haven’t mentioned the main love story of the film yet. It is between young Vincent (Vin) Miniver and Carol Beldon, who is the daughter of Lady Beldon, of Beldon Manor. They of course hate each other at first, but fall in love, and when Vin enlists in the RAF, you just know that he is going to die. Hmmm, I guess old movies do have plot twists after all! Anyway, the most interesting thing is that I found Carol (played by Teresa Wright), bears a striking resemblance to Ellen Page, star of Juno, and the recently released, Whip It. What do you think? You really have to see her talk and see her facial expressions mannerisms to get the full effect, but I think some of it comes through in the pictures.

And finally, a word on the vile demon child TOBY! How did they find the ugliest child on earth and why would they immortalize him on film? I think he must be the spawn of a human woman and one of those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Ugly little thing, and a total spaz to boot.

~Anna

“MRS. MINIVER”

BOMBS AND ROSES

William Wyler and the folks at MGM did not for a minute even try to hide the fact that with the United States now at war (the Battle of Midway and this film opened on the same day) the American people needed some good solid propaganda to get them in the mood to concurrently face Hitler and the Japanese warlords. The U.S.’s direct involvement in the European war was still several months away (Operation Torch – The Invasion of North Africa, Nov ’42) but in the meantime an uplifting film featuring the long-suffering English, hunkering down and taking whatever the evil Hun could dish out at them was perfect fodder for Hollywood. In fact, Hollywood was handed a plum (or a rose?) as they bought the rights from authoress Jan Struther, who created the fictional character of Mrs. Miniver who first appeared in a newspaper series dating back to 1937.

Amid the bucolic scenes of English country life (reminiscent to me of the shots in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion) we meet the Minivers, your typical mid-level British family who slowly come to realize the maelstrom of world events is about to come crashing down atop their beautiful country home, “Starlings” located somewhere outside of London with the peaceful meandering Thames in their backyard. However, before the calamitous event takes place, we are made privy to another war in smaller scale taking place in the Miniver home. Vincent – Vin (played by Richard Ney), their oldest child of three has just returned from Oxford where his head is stuffed with ideas about the odious class divisions in English society. He has it out with a neighbor’s daughter, Carol Beldon (Theresa Wright) a member of the upper class he so despises but in true Hollywood fashion, as the film plays out, falls head-over-heels for her.

There is another subplot brewing in the form of an annual flower competition held in the village whose first prize for most beautiful rose is taken every year by Carol’s aristocratic grandmother, Lady Beldon (May Whitty). It is a forgone conclusion that she will win it this year again just because she is landed gentry and wins it every year, but the introduction of an outstanding rose, grown by the village stationmaster and church bell-ringer, James Ballard (Henry Travers) adds to the complications as he has decided to enter it in the competition. In the film’s first scene, we see him offering to name the flower after Mrs. Miniver (Greer Garson). It is the perfect allegory as Kay Miniver is offered up to audiences as the quintessential English lady: beautiful, sophisticated, charming, reserved and levelheaded. She is everyman’s ideal of what a proper woman and mother should be. (Her one fault I will elucidate on later.) And what flower most represents the English than that of the rose?

Beneath all this polite melodrama is the running theme of class division in England and how world events – i.e., the War, was swiftly breaking down hundreds of years of aristocratic/commoner partition. I suppose when you’re hunkering down in a foxhole, there are no atheists, nor for that fact, lords or ladies. Everyone’s in it together. I am not sure how much of this class division in England was known to American audiences at the time, but if Hollywood filmmakers could make people of the U.S. understand what challenges the English were facing at the time, it would possibly be conceived as a sympathetic and good thing.

As far as the legendary British “stiff upper lip” attitude goes, the film does an admirable job highlighting that trait. Kay Miniver’s quiet disarming of a Luftwaffe pilot who was shot down and forced himself into her house at Lugar-point to steal some bread and clothes was supposed to show your prototypical English courage.

I similarly enjoyed the fantasy featuring her husband Clem Miniver, played by Walter Pigeon (with a distinct lack of a British accent) as he calmly(!) evaluates the damage done to his partially bombed-out house while puffing on his pipe and murmuring asides to himself. Yes, this movie is a total flight of the imagination, but one must see it in the context of its times. The British had to be shown to be courageous and enduring and holding the line against the Germans until the Arsenal of Democracy could arrive. Winston Churchill had glowing things to say about this film precisely because he understood the power of its message.

Even though you know this film is aiming directly for your heart, one marvels at the power of the finale at the flower competition when Lady Beldon unselfishly gives away her first place award and bestows the top prize to the Miniver Rose instead. Even more emotional is the scene where she awards herself second prize and the crowd stands and gives her a rousing ovation. It is a scene that is certain to create a lump in your throat. Soon after though, the real tear-jerking begins and leads way to the uplifting conclusion with the vicar’s powerful sermon ringing in our ears. Given the times, I can easily see why the Academy swooned over this picture.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the creepy little kid, Toby. The youngest of the Miniver clan, this strange little character blurts out all sorts of disturbing lines and looks rather half-crazed with his wild, staring eyes and unkempt hair. I enjoyed making fun of him throughout the film. Sorry, it’s the ne’er-do-well in me, and I found it odd that Mr. & Mrs. Miniver, in all other aspects a perfect screen couple, allows this unpleasant little tyke to act up the way he did without any hint of chastisement.

One last thought: the title is something of an enigma to me. Does it refer to the title character, or perhaps the flower that was named after her?

--kak

Up next: The French Connection (1971)

Kramer vs. Kramer

2009-10-05T14:00:00.007-04:00

Kramer vs. Kramer (released December 17, 1979)

Directed by: Robert Benton

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Justin Henry, Jane Alexander

Produced by: Richard Fischoff, Stanley R. Jaffe

Written by: Avery Corman (novel), Robert Benton

Music by: Paul Gemignani, Herb Harris, John Kander, Erma E. Levin, Roy B. Yokelson, Antonio Vivaldi

Cinematography by: Nestor Almendros

Distributed by: Columbia Pictures

A “Small Film” in Name Only

I thought the one of most astounding aspects of the 1979 Best Picture winner, Kramer vs. Kramer was that the story itself didn’t degenerate into the farcical. I might be getting too cynical in my advancing age, but in remaking this film I could very well imagine today’s version having Billy Kramer, the child, prattling on with pages and pages of much-too-clever, mature dialog, and contain a courtroom scene that would play out much longer and display much more meanness between the characters than the scene would ordinarily demand. Indeed, the beauty of the film was the balanced portrayal of how painful divorce can be for all involved. Believe it or not there was a certain amount of subtleness and deftness to this film which I think is lost on a lot of filmmakers today. It seems in movies nowadays there has to be an overabundance of just about everything, be it plot devices, character traits, edits, you name it. Kramer vs Kramer was as the producers themselves remarked: “a small movie” and thank goodness they kept it that way.

Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in their roles as the feuding couple brought an amazing level of realism to the story, but the most challenging thing about the film was in casting eight-year old Justin Henry as the child caught in the middle. The producers scored a coup with that decision. Without his truly believable acting, the film would have not had the resonance it otherwise enjoys to this day. The story develops naturally as a new life is imposed upon father and son after the separation and divorce. It’s not always pretty, but it rings true and I must admit the scene at the hospital where Billy gets stitched up after a fall in the park as too painful to watch (it is too reminiscent of a similar event involving my young nephew).

Kramer vs. Kramer is a movie that explores the raw emotions involved in family break-ups and because it does so in such a faithful and unbiased way, it remains a powerful film and one that justifiably earned its awards.

--kak

“Don’t Leave Me, Mommy…”

Oh God, I had no idea this movie was going to be so wrenching. I knew vaguely it was about divorce, and I thought it was going to be an ugly courtroom battle. And there was an ugly courtroom battle, but it was only a small part of the movie. The rest of the movie was taken up by Dustin Hoffman and Justin Henry digging my heart out of my chest with a spoon. There was no weeping, but there was definite moaning and wailing directed at the TV, and maybe a tear or two.

Dustin Hoffman plays Ted Kramer, an ad executive who is making it big in NYC and is on the cusp of greatness. He lands the biggest account of his life, and when he arrives home to share the news with his wife, Joanna (played by the amazing Meryl Streep) she announces she’s leaving him. And not only is she leaving, but she is also leaving behind their five-year-old son, Billy. She says as she is getting on the elevator that she doesn’t think she is any good for him, and he would be better off without her. Those are some powerful words. And I sat there wondering, “What kind of woman would leave her child?” I found out later, and it wasn’t the answer I was expecting.

Ted is left alone with a son he barely knows and has to care for him when he is used to spending 10+ hours a day at the office. Reality hits him hard, but I was very gratified to see his character man up and do the right thing. He learns how to do all the things necessary to be mother and father to Billy, and he gets his priorities in order. There is some comedy in Ted trying to learn how to take care of his son, making jury-rigged French toast, and such, but mostly it was pretty serious.

And in the courtroom where Joanna and Ted battle for the custody of Billy we discover why Joanna felt she must leave Billy behind. Joanna had gone through a terrible depression that had left her so low and stripped of any self-worth she truly thought she was harming her son by staying and being a mother to him. After she sought therapy she was able to get her head on straight and realize she wasn’t a terrible person. When Ted and Joanna tell their stories before the court, they both realize just how hard the other person had it, which surprised them. Ted was shocked that Joanna was on the edge of a nervous breakdown and he had never noticed, and Joanna never realized what Ted had to go through trying to tell Billy where his mother had gone.

Included on the disc was a small documentary on the making of the movie, which I watched after we viewed the film. It was probably done 10 years ago, and was interesting to see what Justin Henry looked like as an adult. But the most interesting comment to me was one Meryl Streep made about it being such a small movie. And I know what she means. Today we have movies that are epic in their scope and have huge casts of characters, elaborate sets, and spend millions and millions of dollars. Hell, DeMille did that in the 50’s with his The Greatest Show on Earth. But this movie is small – it has only a few characters, and it focuses on what would seemingly be a small subject: divorce. Everyone knows the divorce rate is 50%. People do it all the time. And yet someone went to the trouble to make a movie about the intimate landscape of divorce and exactly what it did to a specific family. And I think that was why this film was such a success. Everyone on some level can relate to it.

Whether you come from a broken home or not, you are probably close to someone who does. I myself am lucky in that my parents will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in November. But some of my best friends across my life have parents who were divorced (or should have been), and seeing this movie was like having a ringside seat as to exactly what that is like. For those of us who have experienced it first hand as an adult or a child, I am sure it was even more of an identifying experience.

This movie showed me that the smallest, most mundane things about life can be the most riveting, if we can just present them the right way. If the entire human population can identify with your story, and you have a crackerjack list of actors, you really can’t go wrong. It can be small, and it can be spare, and it can move you to tears and break your heart because you know it is authentic.

~Anna

Up next: Mrs. Miniver (1942)

The English Patient

2009-09-22T15:04:00.028-04:00

The English Patient (released November 15, 1996)
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas
Produced by: Paul Zaentz
Written by: Anthony Minghella, based on the novel my Michael Ondaatje
Music by: Gabriel Yared
Cinematography by: John Seale
Distributed by: Miramax Films

“Never Judge a Book by Its Movie"

I could say that being a librarian, I read voraciously, but that isn’t an inherently true statement. I read voraciously long before being a librarian ever crossed my mind, and (believe it or not) I know a couple of librarians who don’t read at all. For those of you who don’t read everything you can get your hands on, or don’t work with books every day, there are a lot of books that get turned into movies. And time and again, I am terribly disappointed each time I see a movie that has been adapted from a book I have read that I have loved, or even liked. There are reasons for this. Hollywood tries to cram a great (and lengthy) complex book into 120 minutes of film. Movies are visual, while books tend to explore the inner landscapes of the human brain. And then, the Hollywood movie machine needs to blow things up and put in new characters that were never in the book, while leaving important parts out. My husband has a huge problem with the movie Troy. No gods or goddesses, who were instrumental to the story, and they kill Agamemnon, who in the Homeric cycle has to live to go home and be murdered by his wife. Nothing is sacred anymore.

The English Patient was originally a book by Michael Ondaatje, and by some miracle, I actually have not read it. It was a relief, in some ways, because I didn’t want to sit there, and watch Hollywood butcher another lovely book for me, like they did with A Prayer for Owen Meany (anyone see the stinker Simon Birch?), The Princess Diaries, or all but the first Harry Potter movie. Set in Italy and North Africa and told in a series of flashbacks, Count László de Almásy (played by the yummy Ralph Fiennes) relates how he went from smoking hot geologist making maps in the desert, to crispy burned geologist barely able to move in

Ital

. Hana (played by Juliette Binoche) is a Canadian nurse who takes care of him in a ruined villa, who has her own ghosts. We learn of his ruinous and obsessive affair with the married Katherine Clifton (played by Kristin Scott Thomas), and of the disastrous consequences that followed. We also learn of Hana’s bad luck, and how she believes she is cursed, because everyone she loves is killed violently. These two wounded people are careful with each other and give each other kindness, but not quite empathy.

Now having said that I haven’t read the book, I can still say that this was a remarkable story, even if a remarkably unlucky and unhappy one. I feel that too often movies are too neat and tidy in their telling, and feelings and plots are all nicely resolved at the end. Even though we know what happens to László, we don’t know what ultimately happens between Hana and her love interest, Kip. Kip (played by Naveen Andrews, who most of you know as Sayid from Lost, and another yum), was an Indian soldier who was diffusing bombs in

Italy

. So who better to fall for him than someone who curses everyone she loves with a violent death? She doesn’t even have to work at this one. Actually, he doesn’t die, and it is the one ray of hope that I was left with. We know he and Hana have plans to meet in the future, and all we can do is hope that they make that connection.

The movie was full of raw emotion. I can’t find the words outside of hackneyed phrases to describe them: heartbreaking sadness, naked jealousy, wrenching grief, and above all, rotten luck. Boy, were these unlucky people! And yet, in spite of my trite descriptions, there was real human experience underneath, and it was palpable… breathing and writhing on its own. I am almost afraid to read the book now. I don’t know what will happen – will the movie end up disappointing me, as usual, or will the book??? For instance, there is a scene shortly after Hana sets up László in the villa, and she cuts off all her hair. Nothing is said about why she does this, and one assumes she does it for practical reasons. I imagine there is a lengthy section in the book that goes into the cutting of her hair and her thoughts and reasons for it. But we can’t get inside her head in a film, unless there is voice over, and that would have been ridiculous. We are not all Alan Ball.

Visually, the picture was like a piece of amber thrown on the green grass. That’s how it felt anyway, with the golden tones of the African desert juxtaposed against the beautiful green Italian spring. In the end credits, we see that the prosthetics were done by the Jim Henson Company. I guess they were the ones that made Ralph Fiennes look like Scooter. Actually, the makeup was very well done. He didn’t look like Scooter. Much. Actually, he looked a lot like he does in his role as Voldemort in the Harry Potter films.

The English Patient not only won Best Picture, it also won 8 other Academy Awards, and was nominated for 12. Juliette Binoche beat out Lauren Bacall for Best Supporting Actress, and it also won for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Musical Score, and Best Costume Design among others. I find Juliette Binoche to be absolutely delightful as an actress. I loved her in Chocolat too.

I was very impressed with this film. I didn’t see all the films that were up for the Best Picture Award that year, but it certainly beat Jerry Maguire in my opinion. You complete me…meh. And as a side note, my darling husband may go on forever about how I wept over this film. Rest assured I did not. A tear or two may have escaped my eyes, but I did not weep. I’m saving that for West Side Story and Gone with the Wind.

~Anna

Sand, Villas & Forbidden Love

No one would presume to argue the point that the 1997 Best Picture winner, The English Patient was not gorgeously photographed. It was. Not since Lawrence of Arabia or The Road Warrior have I seen a more lusciously photographed wasteland. Oddly enough, the corresponding scenes at the crumbling Italian villa do not for me hold the same visual power. John Seale, the cinematographer had a wealth of color-saturated landscapes in

Tunisia

from which to paint his cinematic canvas and I found myself drawn to the desert and its “pure” appearance, bringing to mind the response by T. E. Lawrence when asked what lured him to the desert: “It’s clean.” was his answer.

The story unfolds with no concession to the clock, slowly revealing its central mystery like the shedding of skins off an onion. It is this languid sense consummation that marks the film and its director (the late Anthony Minghella) as a craftsman at the height of his story-telling powers. While some (Elaine Benis for one!) have chided him for perhaps dragging the story on, I felt the pacing right. I also found it somewhat amazing that the subplot of an event as grand and overpowering as The Second World War was properly cast in a secondary role throughout the film. To be sure, it was never relegated too far in the background, but Minghella as screenwriter and director cleverly kept it in its place as we learned the relationships of the central characters to one another.

He doesn’t make many, but whenever Saul Zaentz is involved in a film project, the little golden man is usually hovering about the vicinity.

--kak

Up next: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

The Greatest Show on Earth

2009-09-22T11:09:00.010-04:00

The Greatest Show on Earth (released January 10, 1952)

Directed by: Cecil B. DeMille

Starring: Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, James Stewart, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame

Produced by: Cecil B. DeMille

Written by: Frederic M. Frank, Theodore

St. John, Frank Cavett, Barre Lyndon

Music by: Victor Young

Cinematography by: George Barnes

Distributed by: Paramount Pictures

“THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH”

"WHAT WAS THE ACADEMY THINKING?!"

My wife says I have to compose an essay critiquing an Academy Award-winning movie that we’ve picked at random. She says we need to do this to ostensibly keep up our writing styles fresh between scripts and to better educate ourselves in the history of the cinema. All that is fine and good; even a noble endeavor perhaps, but our first randomly chosen film happened to be: The Greatest Show on Earth, voted Best Picture for 1952.

Ouch!

With unabashed delight, C.B. DeMille loaded his circus picture with enough ham and cheese to supply a corner deli. While there is no doubt there are some who still enjoy such things, I fear the majority of viewers nowadays would scoff at the simple, unsophisticated and terribly-dated storyline about a modern-day circus and the soap-operatic vicissitudes of its members. Between you and me, I’ve never really given much thought to what clowns do on their days off, or the love trysts between acrobats and elephant trainers, but apparently Cecil did, and more astonishingly, the Academy did too!

Wilde, Hutton, and Heston form a love triangle.

The show, sadly, has garnered the unenviable sobriquet of being one of the worst Best Picture picks in the history of the Academy Awards. Well, you don’t earn that title without a little effort. Taken as a whole, I really really have a hard time convincing myself that this picture was thought of as the best thing Hollywood could produce in 1952. If he is to be saluted for anything, C. B. DeMille and the folks at Paramount should be applauded for their courage to air such hokum for over two hours.

Doubt me? Watch and be amazed (and/or horrified) at the scripted lines: “…the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanized army on wheels, that rolls over any obstacle in its path…” Are we watching a show about a circus or Hitler’s invasion of

Russia

? Or, “You can shake the sawdust off your feet, but you can’t shake it outta your heart.” Oh boy.

Add to these immortal cinematic lines the sight of The Great Sebastian’s (Cornel Wilde) terrible fall from the high trapeze into a soft deep layer of sawdust doubling as the hard-packed circus ring floor. The stuntman’s body actually disappears into the sawdust! A little more judicious editing there would have saved that scene, C. B. The infamous dénouement scene involving Sebastian’s twisted claw of a hand (due to the accident) was unintentionally hilarious.

Buttons and Brad help the Great Sebastian after he falls. Nice pants.

Maybe it’s just that I’m not a Betty Hutton fan, but her character, Holly, the two-timing lady aerialist rather grated on me after her first ten minutes of screen time. The great Jimmy Stewart (as Buttons, the Clown) took part, but thankfully managed to play it entirely in clown makeup. Although I still fail to see the need to continue to wear the greasepaint after he was indentified as the murderous doctor on the lam.

As the detective arrives to take Buttons away, he is still in his makeup. Creepy! And speaking of creepy, lest we forget the very bizarre scene with the dancing, flying midget-on-a-rope, his pony, and clowns midway through the picture. Yikes! This is the stuff of nightmares…

But C. B. DeMille, being the consummate showman that he was, saved the best for last: the great circus-car train wreck. (I found this very apropos for this train-wreck of a movie). I shall allow the first-time viewer to see for himself how this calamity occurs. I wouldn’t want to spoil that surprise for you. I did enjoy however the fact that with half the train laying across his legs crushing the life out of him, Brad (Charlton Heston) is game enough to keep issuing orders to his dazed crew and carnies who gather around him. His most memorable admonishment was to order them to round up the escaped lions and tigers before the smell of blood had them feeding on the trapped survivors(!)

After the train wreck, Brad receives a blood transfusion from Sebastian.

I could go on, but then I would be beating a dead circus elephant. As corny and goofy as this movie undoubtedly is, I can see why some would press it to their nostalgic hearts with fondness. However, best picture for 1952.

I think not.

--kak

“There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.”

P.T. Barnum is famous for saying this. Cecil B. Demille followed that philosophy by suckering the public into buying tickets to his circus movie.

Probably not the most auspicious movie with which to start this project, The Greatest Show on Earth didn’t exactly live up to its name. Twenty minutes into the movie I was wondering when it was going to be over. And almost three hours later it was. This movie ran for 2 hours and 53 minutes. Does the actual circus even last that long?

The main plot is a love triangle set up between two aerialists, Holly (Betty Hutton) and The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde), and the circus manager Brad (Charlton Heston). Brad brings Sebastian in to help boost flagging ticket sales, but that bumps his girlfriend Holly out of the center ring. Holly, not to be outdone by some suave Frenchy, does a nightly chicken fight with the Great Sebastian 60 feet above the ground, much to the delight of the audience. Naturally, Holly can’t help but be attracted to someone who shares her passion. She remarks they are both like “two streaks of light with wings” when they are up there. (Yack…who wrote that??) Inevitably, Sebastian falls with no net and he lands in a heap on the ground. He ends up with a pathetic claw for a hand. Good times.

Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde actually trained as aerialists for their roles.

There is also the subplot of Buttons the Clown. Buttons is played by Jimmy Stewart, and he is never once seen in the movie without his clown makeup, which is decidedly creepy. We learn early the reason why he never shows his face: he is on the run from the law. But it is not until almost the end that we find out he was a doctor who performed a mercy killing on his wife and was wanted for murder.

Jimmy Stewart as Buttons the Clown.

The third act of the movie begins with what I like to call a metaphor for the entire film – a train wreck. The jealous elephant tamer who can’t stand to see the woman he loves (Angel, another elephant tamer) throw herself at the newly single Brad, causes the two circus trains to collide, causing mayhem. (I would add that you just can’t make this shit up, but apparently, someone did.) Lions and tigers escape their cages. (I was kind of hoping for an all-you-can-eat clown buffet, but this is a Demille film, not a Tarantino.) Brad is caught in the wreckage. The big top is torn to shreds. How will they go on? This is when Holly decides that she doesn’t love Sebastian at all. She loves the newly injured Brad, and she will do anything to save the show. And Buttons steps in to save Brads life so he doesn’t bleed to death, even though he is later arrested.

Gloria Grahame as Angel, the elephant tamer.

I knew I was in trouble watching this movie in the first few minutes watching Brad walk across the grounds, talking to the circus folk, giving advice here and there. He came upon an animal handler who had a giraffe with a sore throat.

Think about that for a minute.

Did you catch it? How in the bloody hell did the giraffe convey it had a sore throat? What is the universal animal sign for, “Gosh, my throat hurts?”

Seriously.

The writing was painful. It made me cringe in quite a few places, and the actors really couldn’t do much with the lines. I really thought Jimmy Stewart was the only one who didn’t come off looking like a total loon. Even Cornel Wilde (who I know can act – having seen Naked Prey) looked ridiculous. But maybe that had a lot to do with the costumes. Edith Head was the costumer, and they were pretty spectacular, but they were circus costumes, so of course they were spangly and skintight.

This plot I have described could have been done in a regular 120 minute movie, but Demille put in all these extra circus acts. And this is sort of like watching fireworks on TV – the effect is ruined because it isn’t live. But the circus acts are genuine with real Ringling performers, adding to the hokeyness of the production.

I am willing to bet that a lot of people who saw this movie when they were kids have fond memories and love the picture even to this day. I have big love for the Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson. I got it on VHS when I was about 8 years old and watched it until the tape broke. So I get loving bad movies because they were great to you as a kid. However, even as an 8 year-old kid, I probably would have had the presence of mind to know that it was a movie for kids, and not the “best movie of the year.”

I did do some reading about the Oscars for 1952. This was at the height of the Red Scare, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities had investigated Carl Foreman, the producer of High Noon (which was undoubtedly the favorite to win). Therefore, it is thought that Demille’s picture won by default, although there were three other pictures up for the honor including The Quiet Man, Ivanhoe, and Moulin Rouge. Many consider this the worst film ever to win Best Picture.

High Noon was robbed.

I do want to end with the one moment in the movie that made me shriek with laughter. It wasn’t supposed to make me laugh, but it did. Dorothy Lamour had an act in the circus where she comes out with a large group of girls dressed as hula dancers, and she sings “Lovely Luawana Lady.” The girls shed their blue and green shiny grass skirts, and ascend ropes to twirl about as the music plays. Then all of a sudden they pull out mallets and begin to play little xylophones attached to the tops of their ropes! How random!

Dorothy Lamour shakes her grass skirt for Emmett Kelly.

I guess you had to be there.

Up next: The English Patient (1996)

Drop and give me 81...

2009-09-22T11:07:00.005-04:00

Hi. This is Anna. I am going to be one of the two writers on this blog. The other will be my husband of almost 5 months. His name is Konstantine. His family calls him Kosta, but most folks call him Koko. We are coming to you out of south Florida where it is still stinking hot and probably will be for another month before it starts to cool down.
We both work at the same public library. That's how we met, actually. Almost 5 years ago I started as a new Reference Librarian at the place where he had been working at the circulation desk. We were friends for a year, and then we were more. After 2 1/2 years of dating he asked me to marry him, and last April 25 we got married. We are disgustingly happy. At least, with each other.

We're not so happy with our jobs anymore, but that's a story for another blog. (And one that won't get us fired, thank you very much.) We have both been writers for a very long time. Since we were both able to pick up a pencil, we've been writing stories. We are in the process of trying to break into screenwriting, which is incredibly difficult, and a very painful and arduous task. But one, we feel, that will be extremely rewarding and satisfying if we succeed.

That, actually, is where this blog comes in. We are both voracious readers, and have a huge library of books at home. While we are both extremely well read, there are major holes in our knowledge of movies. Koko knows lots about older movies (from the 60's and before), and I am more well-versed in contemporary films (being 18 years younger than my husband will do that). So when I was sitting at the reference desk yesterday, I got a wild hair up my butt to try this idea:

Since the beginning of the Academy Awards, there have been 81 winners (to date) for something equating Best Picture. I found that "Best Picture" was an award the academy started bestowing in 1962. Before that it was "Best Motion Picture," and other different arrangements of words that basically come out to the same thing. I wanted to watch them all and get a better idea of what The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences considered to be the cream of the crop over the years. But I didn't want to just go down the list either. So what I did was I wrote all the movie titles down on little slips of paper, threw them in a box, and we are going to draw them out one at a time. We'll watch the movie together, then we will each put some thoughts together, and write about it.

I like the idea. It pleases me to know that not only will I be learning more about movies, but we will be able to share our ideas with anyone who cares to read about them. Blogs are an interesting phenomenon. Anyone with the know-how and an idea (no matter how kooky) can put together a blog on whatever they damn well please, and anyone in the world can read it. In the old days of writing, it was so important not to let anyone see your work unless it was published through the proper channels in order to maintain integrity. And while I would still never be caught dead self-publishing anything, blogs seem to be a socially acceptable avenue for getting your voice out there. I am not saying I am trolling for a book deal out of this, but if someone wanted to offer me one, well...
And trust me, you will hear two distinct voices in this blog, with two distinct opinions. I am really excited about this project. Of course, we will continue with our screenwriting efforts. We need this creative outlet now more than ever to get us out of the misery that is our daily jobs.

So the first movie drawn out of the box? Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, winner of Best Motion Picture in 1952.

Oh, and just so you know, I am not going to give spoiler alerts. Know that if you read the blog post, you will know how the movie ends. If you want to be surprised when you watch it, then don't read the post until after you have viewed the movie.
~Anna