[video]
Ah, Hepburn and Tracy, what a pair. This fantastic 1949 comedy from director George Cukor stands out for two big reasons. One, the cast. Alongside the famous duo are quite a few stage actors in their first major screen roles: Judy Holliday is fantastic (and won herself the job to reprise her Broadway role in 1950’s Born Yesterday, which won her an Oscar). Singin’ in the Rain’s Jean Hagen. Energetic comedian David Wayne. And not just these actors, but every single role is filled out completely, down to the littlest part (especially a “strongwoman” brought to the courtroom as a character witness).
The other fantastic thing about this film is the wonderful realism of the marriage between lawyers Adam (Tracy) and Amanda (Hepburn). They’re on opposite sides of an attempted murder trial: Doris (Holliday) discovered her husband in the arms of another woman, and shot at them both. Adam sees this as straight-up attempted murder, but Amanda says if the roles were reversed, it would simply be seen as a man protecting the integrity of his family. And so the fireworks begin.
In the beginning, the two are loving to each other, both at home and in the courtroom (wonderful little flirtations under the table). But as the trial goes on, and each is hoping to win, we start seeing rifts in their relationship. Their perfect little household is not so perfect after all. The little tiffs at home are brought to the courtroom the next day, and the courtroom antics are in turn brought home that night, creating an infinite loop of professional competition squeezing out supportive matrimony.
For a film that could easily have played the screwball angle and been done with it, the complexity here is refreshing.
[video]
If you had told me this dark, violent, cerebral 1935 drama was directed by the great Expressionist Fritz Lang, I would have believed you. Set during the Black and Tan War with the IRA, a former Republican Army member, down on his luck and desperate for money, squeals on his buddy for the reward money. Once his buddy his shot dead, the guilt takes him through various stages of paranoia, suspicion, and denial. He starts spending it, buying people drinks and food and giving money away to others in need. This might make him feel better, but it also raises the suspicions of the IRA, who find it peculiar that this poor man suddenly has a lot of money to spend.
The dark cinematography, double-exposures to show the character’s guilt and conscience, and the shockingly realistic violence all point to the German Lang. But he didn’t come to the US until this year, going on to make his first Hollywood film Fury in 1936. No, this is the great American director John Ford (who won a Director Oscar for it).
It’s really a bold piece of filmmaking. I can’t think of a Hollywood film from that era (pre-Lang, at least) that so fully embraced the shadowy photography that the Germans pioneered. While it gets a bit overdramatic in very few moments, overall it’s an impressive and groundbreaking film. Ford may be best known for his Westerns (many of his silents have since been lost), but this is a bold embrace of a foreign style before that style had become popular.
[video]
I’m in the middle of the first draft of a new screenplay. I haven’t been in this specific place since last spring, when I started the noir script. Since then, it’s been rewrite after rewrite on that one, up until earlier this month. Now the noir is done and making the rounds, and I’ve time (and the mental room) to focus on a brand new story.
For me, there’s always this back and forth fight with a first draft. I came up with the concept for the film - the elevator pitch, if you will - a few months ago. It percolates in the brain for a while; I’ll think of a new twist or a certain potential scene or set-piece, write it down. I amass a huge Word document, filled with notes that are all over the place.
Then, something clicks. A few notes throughout that giant document will connect in a new way that gives the whole script a solid shape and momentum. From there, the story is in my head almost all the time, but now with a specific direction. Scenes or moments that don’t fit are discarded, scenes that do are dwelled on: on bike rides, trying to fall asleep, in the shower. All the time.
With this particular script, I’ve done an extensive outline to understand the structure of the film. This is new to me: Shooting in Paris just came out of me, no idea where it was heading. The Hooverville Dead was pretty much the same deal (and then months of rewrites). But this one is a thriller with a particular science twist, so I don’t want to get overwhelmed with the rules of the world while I write (nor do I want the rules of the world to overwhelm the story or the reader).
But outline or no, I always go through the same process when I’m actually writing the first draft. Some days I’ll be excited, ready to dive back in and pick up where I left off. Other days, I procrastinate because some voice inside says, “What if you start working on it, and it’s not as good as you thought?” It’s not that I don’t know what’s coming next, I usually do (I tend to find a point where I know what comes next, and stop there. That way I can get back into the story somewhat easily the next time I sit down). Those types of thoughts happen all the time, swinging back and forth:
This is gonna be great. No it’s not. Yeah, it’s pretty damn cool. But not cool enough. What about this Scene? It’ll be awesome! No, it’s contrived. The Scene leading up to it is pretty tight, though. No, it’s all good, people will love it. What if they don’t. It’s great. It could be better, but I’ll get there. It could be better, but maybe I’m not good enough to pull it off.
That’s the voice in my head constantly whilst writing a first draft. When it’s positive, it gets me pumped up and ready to plow through multiple pages (12 pages today!). When it’s the self-doubt version, I’m almost too scared to start writing, lest I hate what comes out. It’s a first draft, it’s not supposed to be perfect! But sometimes that little voice thinks it can see the future version - or lack of one - and chime in to poke at me. And so I fight back.
The cool thing, though, and why I’m confident calling myself a “writer”: I fucking love the fight.
BREAKFAST FOR TWO
This 1937 screwball comedy, directed by Alfred Santell and starring Herbert Marshall and (my movie girlfriend) Barbara Stanwyck, feels like a true B-movie (in the original, double-feature sense of the word). It’s short, a mere 67 minutes. Its story is simple and ludicrous at the same time: a rich playboy wakes up after a night of partying to find he’s taken home Ms Stanwyck (or rather, she brought him home). For some reason, she becomes enamored with this guy, despite his reputation and lack of business savvy. Being rich herself, she devises some elaborate plot to buy his company and slowly force him into a corner long enough for him to stand up and take the rightful reins himself. Along the way, maybe he’ll fall in love with her, too.
It’s just as deliberate as it sounds. The comedy is fairly broad, relying on physical comedy (like a quintet of bearded window washers that show up for no reason other than the story needed a distraction, or a Great Dane climbing onto an old geezer’s lap), and silly little puns:
“Read this for me, will you?”
“Of course, sir. I studied elocution, graduating Magna Cum Laude.”
“Well, read it Magna Cum Louder. Funnier, too!”
That kind of stuff. There’s a mild foodfight, a boxing match between Stanwyck and Marshall, a silly butler, an officiating priest that just can’t get a break, and the aforementioned Great Dane’s constant meddling. It’s a good example of the type of film that would play after the Mickey Mouse short, the newsreel, and a true classic like Topper: enjoyable for the moment, giving you your nickel’s worth, and forgettable as soon as you leave the theater.
This fun little 1931 comedy from Frank Capra has some interesting stories behind it. First, poor adorable doe-eyed Loretta Young. She finds herself cast in a Frank Capra film called Gallagher, playing a character named Gallagher. Can’t beat it! Only, the other female lead in the film is a hot new thing named Jean Harlow, and fresh off success in The Public Enemy, the studio decided to change the name of the film from Gallagher to Platinum Blonde. Dang.
More incredible (and devastating) is Robert Williams, a stage actor appearing in his first leading role (and only his sixth film). He’s electric, like a 1930s’ Kevin Kline: rapid-fire delivery with vaudevillian skill, a dry quick wit that seems to find little bits of humor in everything. This film would have made him a star, no doubt, and he very well may have been a comedic powerhouse for decades. But he died three days after this film’s premiere, of a ruptured appendix. (Harlow herself also died too young, at the age of 26 in 1937, due to kidney failure)
The movie isn’t perfect, you can feel Capra trying to find the energy of it at times. But then again, average Capra is above-average most-anyone-else. Williams plays Stew Smith, a clever newspaper reporter with a clever co-worker (Ms Young), who marries into the rich family of his new bride Ann (Harlow). What follows is a typical Capra theme of a young Joe American being thrust into new and extraordinary situations involving class and money. Some scenes go on a little too long (in the same way many Apatow comedies do today - not knowing when to cut, trying to get just one more laugh). We’re supposed to cheer against his marriage to Harlow (the original title probably would have helped that a little more), shouting at the screen “Don’t let her change you!” But Harlow’s Ann isn’t too terrible, and so Stew finds himself simply idle instead of unhappy (see the “puttering” scene I linked to above). That’s not a very active state for your main character, and the movie does suffer a little because of it.
All said, not Capra’s best by far, but very enjoyable, mostly due to the lovely performance by Williams. Watching him here, you can’t help but think what a career he might have had, what other classic roles might he have cemented into our memories. Tragic.
I enjoyed Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, and this film once again stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster (among others, a real all-star cast). Here, Woody is an LA cop, circa 1999, with the department embroiled in the Rampart scandal. Woody himself has a questionable record, and when he’s videotaped beating a man who crashed into his cruiser, he becomes a new poster-boy for police corruption, one the city is eager to exploit to get the press off the Rampart debacle.
And so there it is. The script, by Moverman and crime novelist James Ellroy, doesn’t do much except simmer along. Woody broods, has family problems, difficulty connecting with his daughters, and problems with authority. He womanizes with no real purpose, drives around with no real purpose, even seems to do his policework with no real purpose, despite multiple confessions that it’s his whole life.
Seemingly to make up for the anemic (though well-acted) story, Moverman’s camera lacks any consistency, trying to inject energy into the film. Crane shots with no purpose, deliberate framings. There’s one scene with the DA where the camera is continually panning right, in a circle with multiple cuts; I suppose it symbolizes the ‘running in circles’ obstruction that Woody gives the DA, but it just seems sloppy and junior varsity. Then he seems to (attempt to) channel Fincher in some random techno/sex club scene that has no place in the story, let alone in the visual tone.
Nothing new here, and not really well told, either.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN - Absolutely loved this film last year. Imagery you want to devour, and the thrilling tension of an unreliable narrator.
CORIOLANUS - Heard great things about Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut. It’s on the queue.
MAN ON A LEDGE - It’s about a man who’s somewhere. Not sure where, haven’t seen it.
GONE - Sounds like Taken, only a bit more passively hopeless. “Has she been taken?!” “Nope, she’s gone.”
[video]
Ah, the good ol’ days, the 1880s. When you could classify anything a woman does that is displeasing to men as “hysteria”: upset, tired, anxious, angry, bored, screechy. It’s a medical condition, that is eased by a treatment that, um….. well, provides a certain ‘release’ for the woman by the doctor. It’s either that, or a “removal of the hysteria”, a hysterectomy (talk about a War on Women).
This fun little comedy tells the story of an optimistic young doctor (Hugh Dancy) joining such a practice, and in realizing that his right hand just can’t keep up with the demands of constant ‘pelvic massage’, comes up with an electric vibrating massager. That part is fun and cleverly naughty: the characters of a costume drama navigating female orgasm as if it’s a medical procedure, the contrast of proper high class manners with playing with the very core of sexual pleasure.
Of course, this is one of those stories where the medical ignorance of the time shines a light on the lingering problems of such biases today. The War on Women is still in the news today, with the contraception debate, abortion rights, and equal pay. Here we have an entire society that see a woman getting no actual pleasure from her ‘procedure’, only medical relief from a physical condition. In this context, you’d expect that parallel to be addressed, and it is. Unfortunately, the way it’s addressed is a little too by-the-book. Maggie Gyllenhaal, the doctor’s daughter, is the very opposite of all the women in the film: she volunteers at a shelter for women and their children, she’s outspoken and crass and confrontational and opinionated and, well, hysterical! I suppose she’s the late 19th Century’s answer to the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”; she embodies everything the film is about, and everything the lead male needs to guide his reawakening. It’s a bit too on the nose, and I could really see how much of a missed opportunity it was. So the comedy bits are a fun time, but the film’s deeper meaning is watered down to a basic formula.
On Turner Classic Movies, Tuesday morning at 7:30am EST/4:30am PST, is that naughty naughty classic from 1933, Baby Face. See my movie girlfriend Barbara Stanwyck sleep her way all the way to the top!
There’s some great history behind this film, too. The original cut was long lost, leaving us only with the censored version, until an original negative was discovered in 2004.
I dig Cameron Crowe, most of the time. But when I saw the trailer for this, it just looked like a horrible sappy mess. Add to the mix Crowe’s last film, 2005’s poorly received Elizabethtown (which led to the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” meme), and I cast a cynical eye this film’s way.
The good news: it’s not nearly as sappy as the marketing makes it seem. The bad news: it feels like a first-time writer/director is trying to follow the Crowe Formula. Based on a memoir, Benjamin Mee, having lost his wife to cancer and struggling to raise his two children, decides for an extreme change: he buys a zoo. An eccentric group of zoo employees are now his family, and we hope that in fixing up the zoo, he can fix his family. And himself.
It feels just that straightforward and formulaic. It’s not horrible, but it doesn’t have that character-driven energy and spontaneity of previous great Crowe films. It’s a little too precious at times, though to Crowe’s credit it doesn’t seem intentionally so. Damon holds the film together quite ably, and Johansson seems like an actual adult for probably the first time in her career. But in the end, it’s simply too Cameron Crowe paint-by-numbers. Some clever little lines and call-backs to those lines (though none as lasting as “show me the money”, “you complete me”, “rock stars have kidnapped my son”, or “sport of the future”), a soundtrack spanning current indie and classic rock (with a score by Sigur Ros), and an attempt by a man to gain a new freedom, a new start, and a new perspective by taking a huge chance.
Went hiking in Monrovia Canyon Park today. Made me miss Ithaca something fierce.