This was started by a guy who runs the website blogcabins.blogspot.com/ and it's made it's way around the internet like chain mail. I was tagged by Dan Johnson at filmbabble.blogspot.com:
A is for Apollo 13 (1995), my favorite film from my childhood. It's an amazingly tight and exciting docudrama that even made me want to go to space camp and be an astronaut. Ron Howard has rarely ever been so good. There are a lot of good As, however: American Graffiti, the best coming-of-age film ever, in my opinion, as well as
B has a lot of good sci-fi flicks: Blade Runner, Brazil....but I'm going to go with Back to the Future (1985), another classic film that I grew up on and I find unforgettable.
C is for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1973), neo-noir film and one of the greatest classics of all time. A great story of such emotional resonance and poetry. The dialogue and performances by John Huston and Faye Dunaway are to die for. Charade, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of God, City Confidential, and a family film I really like called Cheaper by the Dozen were all ones I considered
Although, I was thinking of drawing attention to the old-school sci-film The Day the Earth Stood Still which is being remade, D is for Double Indemnity (1944). When we talk of good dialogue, the way Billy Wilder was superhuman in his ability to write sharp stylized dialogue, and there's no better example of this than the interplay between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck's characters as they attempt to plan a perfect murder.
For E, I couldn't really think of too much, except the musical Evita (1996), which made a splash in the 90's but had a rather short shelf-life and only people who followed Madonna's career incessantly would even remember this. Perhaps, Alan Parker's dismal rep or the timing (musicals didn't really regain their steam until Moulan Rouge or Chicago, let alone operettas) sunk the film, but it was an interesting piece of work. The score was great, Antonio Banderas did his best work here, and the subtext is almost as detailed as a textbook on Latin American history.
F is for From Here to Eternity (1953) which stands as my favorite war film. Montgomery Clift plays a tragic antihero in an army private in Hawaii during World War II who refuses to play the bugle or box for his company, out of principle and Frank Sinatra won an Oscar as the man who befriends him and lives to tell the tale. Also famous for the make-out scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.
G is for Grand Hotel a Best Picture Oscar winner that doesn't get much credit for anything these days. It starred five of the biggest stars of the 1930's and was set in a hotel where the lives of five guests intertwine, it’s breezy, lively and light-hearted enough to rival an art deco musical in escapist value. At the same time, it is a very telling story of class conflict that resonates with a lot of weight when the five stories come together so serendipitously
H is for High Noon, socially powerful, tightly coiled, notable for its score, cinematography, social climate in which the film was made, the gun battle at the end, and its real-time gimmick that was the precursor to the TV show 24. I can't really think of too many other H's but House of Sand and Fog comes to mind, or from the same year (2003) Hollywood Homicide. In the latter, Harrison Ford sort of mails it in as a cop who doesn't care about his job and wants to sell real estate while on duty. Not many people got the joke but I did.
I could be for It's a Wonderful Life or another Frank Capra classic It Happened One Night, but I'll go with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
J is for Junebug (2005), the North Carolina-set family melodramedy (new word I just coined) that launched Amy Adams' career. The other ones that come to mind are the historic picture Jazz Singer, Sam Mendes' docudrama of an uneventful war Jarhead, and the recent It film Juno. However, Juno tried just a little too hard to be hip, and Junebug just let it all flow naturally.
K could easily be for King Kong, but I wasn't crazy about the old King Kong and have yet to see the new one, so I now have a choice between two older films, neither of which is regarded as a great classic but which I'm personally fond of. There's Vincente Minelli's musical Kismet which came at a later point in his career and he denounced as a failure in his autobiography. Don't be so hard on yourself, Mr. Minelli, I personally loved the musical take on the Arabian Nights tale with the enchanting songs including "Stranger in Paradise." However, in honor of my grandmother's birthday, I will go with the John Huston film Key Largo (1948) where the bar where much of the film was shot at, still stands on Key Largo. Modern-day gangster films need to show a lot of carnage to illustrate just how bad the gangster is, but Edward G. Robinson showed that all you need is some flair and style and a muggy facial expression.
L is for Last Samurai (2003). The art direction is superb and it stands out quite a bit from all the recent historical epics because of its sincerity. Ken Wattanabe gives a great performance that's deserving of that Oscar nomination and as an interesting footnote, it was Tom Cruise's last big successful role before Oprahgate derailed his career.
M is for Manchurian Candidate (1962), an amazing story, political thriller, mystery, and showcase of great acting. This movie had people worrying about ammending the constitution to include foreign-born citizens as eligible for the President and had me worrying about John McCain, a former P.O.W., as being President as well.
N was originally for Network, before I remembered that North by Northwest (1959) also begins with this letter. Thrilling, romantic, endearing, shot in great locations, everything a good film should be, and it's the epitome of Hitchcockian style
O is for On Golden Pond (1981), the story of a somewhat dysfunctional father-daughter relationship that a daughter attempts to fix in her father's last days, starring real-life father and daughter Jane and Henry Fonda. Katherine Hepburn was also in the film. To show that I don't completely dislike the Coen Brothers, I would have included their Mississippi-set epic Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and truth be told, it was pretty much a tie between these two great films.
P was one that I had the most difficult time with, I could think of three that I really liked: Prairie Home Companion, Pirates of the Carribean and Paths to Glory, but I chose Prairie Home Companion (2006) largely because I already have enough from the action/blockbuster genre on my list. PHC was Altman's swan song and was an eerie foreshadowing of his imminent death within a few months of the film being released. The movie is highly entertaining, quietly profound, and has all the strengths of an Altman film.
Q is for Quiz Show (1994), Rob Redford's gripping docudrama about the Game Show scandal of the 1950's with performances by John Turturro and Ralph Feinnes that make for two very interesting portrayals of real-life figures who everyone knew so little about beneath the surface (i.e. they are basically remembered as two guys who cheated on a game show but no one even knew why)
For R, I'm going to go a little foreign with Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game (1939), rated consistently near the top of the best films of all time by Sight and Sound's decennial poll.
S, like P, has a lot of options I consider of equal merit: Star Wars, Singing in the Rain, Swing Time, Stagecoach, Searchers, etc. To break this tie between musicals and Westerns, I'm going to go with a biopic, Billy Wilder's Spirit of St. Louis (1957), which I saw in 9th grade and absolutely loved. It was quite an achievement to be able to make us engaged to what was essentially a one-man show.
People will always remember Citizen Kane, but for me Orson Welles is a genius because of his last film (in America, at least) Touch of Evil (1958) which is my T.
The letter that took me the longest to think up a film is Undeclared (2006) for the U. Starring Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Lewis Black and Maria Thayer, the film is a spot-on comedy that brought me back to the days in high school where I was scared to death over not getting into my top choice college.
V is for Vertigo (1958). Just the story alone makes it a winner. Tell a three-line summary of this film to anyone and see if they're not intrigued. I imagine that there was the most consistency on this letter among the other lists without actually looking.
For W, I'll go with the culturally delicate and serene cop drama Witness (1985) in which Harrison Ford must hide an Amish boy from corrupt cops in an Amish community where he is a fish out of water. I was also strongly considering Wild Strawberries, just to prove that I've seen more than one foreign film, but no need.
X is for X-Men 2 (2003), the best in the trilogy although I will take a bold stand in saying that X-Men 3 is almost as good.
Y is for You Can Count on Me (2000), the brother-sister relationship piece which launched Laura Linney and Mark Ruffallo's careers. It almost won Kenneth Longorean an Oscar for screen-writing as well.
Z is for Zoolander (2001). To be clear I don't really like this movie and only find it mildly tolerable, but Z is a letter which gives me very little manuevering room
Showing posts with label Grand Hotel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grand Hotel. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Best Picture Oscar Winners
This has been kind of a labor of love for me that I've been chipping away a bit at each day. I got the inspiration from 79bestpictures.blogspot.com, a very creatively planned-out blog. An asterick means I haven't seen the whole thing from start to finish. I've seen Lawrence of Arabia pretty much all the way to a point near the end, I'm pretty sure. All I know is I was watching that for hours on end and it still didn't end.
Anyway, I've got just a few more pictures to go.
No Country for Old Men (2007)-Massively overrated film. I know the Coens have been in kind of a slump with Intolerable Cruelty (good but not great and even worse, not ambitious), Man Who Wasn't There (technically good but had no soul), and Ladykillers (misguided and crass) but let's not award them for the first thing they do that's good. But that's assuming that this is a good film. If it has a plot, the film doesn't really care much about it. Or characters. It basically offers three things: 1) an innovative choice for the villain's weapon 2) a couple very good actiing performances (Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem) and 3) cool scenery.
Departed (2006)-I wrote about Departed so much in other entries that just click on departed down below for a couple interesting posts on Departed and the Indiscriminate Nature of the Gun and how I think as a genre film, Departed might be in danger of not having a long shelf life because it's such a straight genre film. Departed, though, was my third favorite picture of the year (behind Little Miss Sunshine on Flags of Our Fathers)
2003-2005-Haven’t seen any of these three best picture winners but I have seen 10 of the 12 other best picture nominees from these three years. I’m not ashamed of it either. A picture has to appeal to me to get me to see it. I rarely see a picture that I don’t want to see unless I like it. I gave up on Lord of the Rings after Part I.
Chicago (2002)-Chicago won because it successfully revived a lost genre that was very integral in the history of film. Some might argue that Moulan Rouge did that the year before, but Moulan Rouge was more like a musical on crack. It was a lot of glitz and glamour, songs burst out of characters with little motive, and the average shot length was a disorienting 1.5 seconds in the musical numbers. To me, Chicago was much more in the spirit of the film musical and worked a lot better.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)-2001 was a very week year and A Beautiful Mind was deservedly the best of them. I felt that despite being at the center of the film’s marketing campaign (as in the love scenes were featured in the trailers) the romantic subplot between Connelly and Crowe was pretty weak, but other than that it was a film I liked. It dealt with issues of how to deal and cope with life after success. Most of the movie wasn’t about a man’s rise to greatness. He accomplished the greatness early in the film, and he had to deal with rediscovering himself.
Gladiator (2000)-Gladiator had everything that I like to see in a best picture or a best picture for that matter: an epic feel, a grand ambition, big production values, a marquis star, pathos, and theme that’s relevant to the present. Gladiator’s theme was about perceptions of power and how power through the masses is dependent only on what those who are in power chose to filter to the masses. The emperor and Aerelius derived their power through a mandate from the masses and that was dependent on what the people saw in the arena. You could have somewhat easily drawn parallels between the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and the Colliseum with Bill Clinton, Kenneth Star, and CNN. Traffic might have been a more innovative picture and when that happens it really hurts the legacy of the best picture and inspires hatred never before seen by movie buffs (see Forrest Gump, English Patient, Dances with Wolves, Shakespeare in Love).
American Beauty (1999)-I lost my objectivity as a film critic when I saw this. I wasn’t a film critic back then, of course, but just the same. The film was just depressing beyond belief and affected me to the point where I really couldn’t make a judgement on it. It captured the uniformity and despair of suburban life to such a realistic extent it was scary and gave me less hope in finding meaning of my own suburban existence. Some might think that’s silly to become so affected by just a movie, but if I didn’t get so much into movies in the first place, than I wouldn’t want to be a film critic. Ironic.
Shakespeare in Love (1998)-Like Gladiator, my film professor told me it had a very poetic theme: that love can exist on stage and be created through art. It’s a self-reflexive postmodern romantic comedy so it can be seen as the evolution of the post-modern comedy. It’s a good film, but in terms of grandeur, I felt it lacked the greatness of a best picture oscar winner.
Titanic (1997)-While something like L.A. Confidential was hailed by film critics as the better picture in retrospect, Titanic was just a massive unstoppable phenomenon at the time, and I like it today in retrospect. It broke every box office record conceivable and was just something like “The Ultimate Movie.” At the same time, it wasn’t really included on many “best of the century” lists in the next couple years and a lot of mega blockbusters have come along since then with equally big production values. The closest big budget blockbuster in recent years to have a chance of getting the attention of the Oscars as a picture (not just a technical awards extravaganza) was King Kong and it only won the technical awards, and wasn’t even considered for anything like story, actor, director, or picture. The times are now different than when Titanic was around: You can be a big budget high money grosser or an oscar winner, but not both.
Forrest Gump (1994)-Forrest Gump is a sentimental favorite that plays on emotion and nostalgia rather than innovative reworkings of genre material. A critic who thinks with his head will favor Pulp Fiction 9 times out of 10 over Forrest Gump. The problem with Forrest Gump is it’s not a film people want to see twice which is why its shelf life withers in comparison to Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction, but we have to put ourselves back into 1994 when Forrest Gump was both the must-see movie of the year for the movie going public and an enormous critical hit. I’ve written about this in other posts and have even published an article on this.
Schindler’s List (1993)-“The Color Purple” aside, Schindler’s List was Spielberg’s coming out party as a serious filmmaker. The truth though is that among the academic community and art house types, Spielberg is considered the #1 person to blame for the supposed decline in the state of film because it can be argued that his enormous commercial success (mainly Jaws & Indiana Jones) had the accidental effect of restructuring Hollywood towards relying more on one big blockbuster to carry studios’ loads and leading to this sequelitis-infected blockbuster-oriented era we’re currently living in. Schindler’s List was Hollywood’s way of saying, “You know, you really are a good filmmaker after all.” The art house community still hasn’t caved in despite the fact that Spielberg made the two most revered films of the 90s in Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, but oh well.
Unforgiven (1992)-This could arguably be considered the only Western ever to win a best picture Oscar. Most sources will tell you that three Westerns throughout film history have won best picture awards: 1930’s Cimarron, and 1990’s Dances with Wolves (which I’ve seen about 2/3 of) are frontier stories but aren’t really true Westerns in my opinion. This is a shame, considering The Searchers and High Noon are the two best Westerns ever made, and there are a small handful of Westerns that might be considered better than Eastwood’s film, but it’s a very small number. Eastwood’s picture stands out as a great personal statement from a former actor reflecting on the genre that made a name out of him. It’s a very intelligent and concise film on many levels.
Silence of the Lambs (1991)-This film is the reason I didn’t follow the Oscars in any capacity whatsoever until approximately 1999. During the 1992 Oscar ceremony, I was 8, and my mom said I was not adult enough to watch the Oscars but I did and the short clips of Silence of the Lambs the ceremony showed were enough to scare the hell out of me. From there, I concluded that the Oscars were about terrifying and disturbing movies that I was too young for. Nevertheless, this movie still scares the hell out of me and is a film I find disturbing on a base emotional level, but I suppose that’s a testament to the power of the film, I suppose. I have more of a Frank Capra attitude on films and prefer their power to uplift people, rather than scare the shit out of them with disturbing images of guys who want to eat and torture each other, but, yeah, I suppose there’s a wide range of films out there, even the films on the darker end of the spectrum and it’s better than a film like Sin City that’s dark and nihilistic just because it’s cool. I would just find it odd that in the glamorous eternally optimistic Tinseltown, people would vote for a film about a disturbed cannibal of all things. If Silence of the Lambs won an Oscar, what’s next? Resident Evil?
*Dances with Wolves (1990)-I’ve seen about 2/3 of the film, so I’m not the true expert, but it looks like a film that’s like a serious evening at an upscale theater where you pay upwards of $100 a seat: a rich cinematic experience provided you’ve got the patience to stay with it. It’s essentially an epic. If you watch it on TV, you’d probably call it boring because you’re not getting the full experience. For his part, Kevin Costner, knew it was a risky project, but he said he liked the epic and I applaud him for that. Of course, people will always compare it to Goodfellas and it will suffer for that, but now that Scorsesee has his Oscar, can’t we put it all behind us?
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)-This film certainly doesn’t feel like a best picture winner and raises the question of whether there’s a certain requirement of a picture to deserve the honor of best picture. History has shown that there’s an incredibly wide range of pictures to get the honor and no real formula. Still, I tend to think that all the best pictures have a boldness in vision which includes a certain thematic gravity. I feel like Driving Miss Daisy brushes on ageism and interracial themes but at too much of a distance to feel like a profound statement has been made. I am pretty sure that in this decade’s Oscar-oriented November and December templates, Driving Miss Daisy would never have stood a chance at a nomination. It would be considered a pleasant character-driven film that would get some good reviews but would get drowned out by more ambitious films. Matchstick Men, Interpreter, The Weatherman, and Secondhand Lions are films that come to mind in this category. This is made all the more odd when we consider how great of a year 1989 was with Crimes and Misdemeanors, Henry V, Dead Poets’ Society, and Do the Right Thing.
Rain Man (1988)-I think this film also lacks a little bit of the ambition I spoke of with Driving Miss Daisy but the acting is so impeccable here that it puts the film on a different level. Dustin Hoffman gives the performance of a lifetime and Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman have such convincing chemistry. Another thing to consider is that Barry Levinson was on a role at the time with hits like Diner and Good Morning Vietnam, and in a decade increasingly oriented toward testosterone-laced blockbusters, Levinson’s films brought a deeper exploration to the masculine hero.
*Platoon (1986)*-I’ve only seen parts of this film. We watched it during a couple periods of my 11th English class in the last week of the school year. It felt like a very gritty war film that put the viewer into his point of view.
Out of Africa (1985)-A good epic film that features one of Robert Redford’s great performances. Sidney Pollack is only the 2nd best director named Sidney from the last 30 years, and it’s a shame that the great Sidney Lumet never won an Oscar.
Chariots of Fire (1981)-I’ve reviewed this film before, but essentially I felt it was a film that didn’t get the credit it deserved. My theory: Too often we expect a sports film to feature characters set against each other, and the fates of the two protagonists, who were rivals to some extent, do not end up in a climactic moment where they must compete over the same medal. I felt the film was a great character study and the stylized tone made for a great period piece.
Annie Hall (1977)-Woody Allen never made a truly great film in my opinion. He made a number of very good films. Annie Hall isn’t my favorite film of his: I appreciated some of the innovative gimmicks he uses to tell his story, but I found the storyline annoyingly disjointed.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)-I’ve seen the film two or three times, and this time, I'm just going to nitpick: Somehow the ending doesn’t seem right to me. I mean, do we really think that Chief is self-conscious enough to know what he’s doing? Remember: everyone but Randall McMurphy was, in fact, retarded. In a symbolic sense, there’s a lot to be read into this story with themes of oppression of independent-minded people, but in practicality, does the story really make sense? What makes the evil Nurse Ratched tick? In real life, why would she care about lobotomizing Murphy?
French Connection (1971)-Well, if anyone’s going to accuse the academy of being high brow, don‘t forget they gave an Oscar to the movie with the most kickass car chase ever. It’s a neat movie and I once attended a Q & A with William Friedkin about the film, so having heard his opinions on what he was trying to do I now respect the film that much more. Nowadays however, stories about cops are a dime a dozen from Shoot ‘em Up to We Own the Night to Narc to The Recruit to Training Day to whatever, but Friedkin’s film stands out for being a product of its era, at the very least.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)-The film competed against counter-culture pictures such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, which might have made In the Heat of the Night the less hip choice. I think, however, that this film marginally deserves to be considered one of the greats. Of the four Sidney Poitier films I've seen, it has his most meaningful performance. I don't say "best" because he's pretty much the same in everything but more that it's a great use of Sidney Poitier (Not to knock Poitier's acting, but I don't see him an actor giving a performance as a civil rights pioneer carrying the weight of African-American actors on his back and making choices designed to give blacks dignity on screen. That's at least at least how he's been framed historically). The film has a palpable sense of danger, two strongly defined characters, two great performances, and a chemistry between the two leads that is definitely something.
Sound of Music (1965)-Julie Andrews + Adorable Children + Sweeping vistas + Music + Backstory involving Nazis and WWII = Oscar. What else can you say?
My Fair Lady (1964)-With Born Yesterday, Bringing Up Baby and Philadelphia Story going unrecognized, I think My Fair Lady was a career achievement award for George Cuckor than it was recognition for an innovative film. The film has some great musical numbers and great performances by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison but does fall a little short of the bar expected of an Oscar-winning musical. I also wonder if it is fair to judge My Fair Lady on the fact that the songs, one of the film’s main strengths, weren’t originally written for the film, anyway.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)*-An epic among epics. Peter O'Toole imbues Lawrence of Arabia with traits of an uneasy man who's been pinned for a loser his whole life but who's also taking the biggest risks of his life. It's a performance where you're just trying to think "What's making this guy's head tick." Let me just say, holy crap, is this a long movie. Watching it was like a marathon that I dropped out of at mile 21.
West Side Story (1961)-This is a film for the ages as far as I’m concerned and as the kind of musical innovative enough to break the mold of its genre to be deserving of a best picture (unlike My Fair Lady). For someone who isn’t in to musicals, I’m sure that they can appreciate the quality of the dance sequences even if it’s not their thing.
Apartment (1960)-According to Cameron Crowe’s book “Conversations with Billy Wilder,” When Billy Wilder accepted his Oscar, the guy handing it to him said “you know, you’ll probably never top this one” and he was probably right. The Apartment is not only an absolutely amazing film and personal favorite that I could go on for hours about, but it’s one of the few comedies to ever win best picture and that’s hard to do. I’ve also never seen a comedy that so effortlessly provided social commentary and satire. I'm not really someone who is strongly aware of mise-en-scene (the way the scene is framed in th camera) when I'm watching a movie, but this is one of the first instances where the art of it jumped out at me. Particularly, the way the cubicles in the Office call to mind a modern-day equivalent of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)-Like Apartment and West Side Story, I’m not judging them on the level of Oscars but films among the best ever made and this transcends the question "did it deserve an Oscar." For me, the question is can you possibly shower it with enough Oscars and praise? It is my second favorite war film (we’ll get to the first in a couple minutes) and easily one of my 20 favorite films of all time, approximately. The protagonists are so interesting, with Alec Guiness forming such an interesting contrast to William Holden and such startling similarities with Sessuye Hayakawa, (Guiness and Hayakawa give two amazing performances too). The score and scenery is top notch, the ending is one of the most shocking I've ever witnessed.
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)- I can't help but acknowledge the sentiments that the selection of this picture almost single-handedly strips the "best picture" club of its integrity, but I think in examining why this film was so unfit to join the ranks of Oscar-winning films, then we get somewhere in terms of establishing what we expect from the Best picture winner. Perhaps, the lack of a theme? The lack of importance? Was it too enjoyable? Too little dramatic tension? The cameos cheapen the experience? In any case, it's certainly an enjoyable film of considerable scale if you don't think too hard about what the award means. I think of it as a spectacle of places and people and there's the certain extravagance to it that classic film buffs might look back to the olden pictures for with nostalgia.
From Here to Eternity (1953)-My favorite war film. Some might dismiss too loose of a narrative with two stories that have little to do with each other, but I think it paints interesting portraits of five unique characters and it's a very captivating epic. Montgomery Clift's character in particular makes such a strong impression. What would prompt a man to that level of stubborness, that he won't box or play the trumpet unless he does it his way? I often think when I watch it, that that trait is parallels the entire military structure.
Greatest Show on Earth (1952) - Greatest Show on Earth is grouped in with Around the World in 80 Days as one of those films that should never be uttered in the same sentence with the other winners but I found it a very good story and I think there's a lot more to be remembered from the film than the train crash scene. It is somewhat of an ensemble piece and I'm not sure if the way that, say, James Stewart isn't really relevant to the story but takes up screentime in a pleasantly time-consuming way is what makes the film feel irrelevant.
American in Paris (1951) - American in Paris was pretty much MGM and the Arthur Freed Unit at the top of their game. Gerswhin's score, Minelli's escapist sensibilities, and Gene Kelly's charm are the perfect combination, and Levant and Caron are good additions as well, although the guy who replaced Maurice LeChavilier as the French man was really quite a pushover. The problem which couldn't have been anticipated back in 1951 was that in 1952, an even greater film came out, "Singing in the Rain," which is now remembered as the highwater mark of the MGM Musical era, but again they didn't have a time machine, so let's not fault them. Also, worth noting: 1951 was one of the most competitive years in film history with three other films from AFI's top 100 (A Place in the Sun, Streetcar Named Desire and African Queen) coming out that year, so American in Paris gets a bad rap for that.
All About Eve (1950) - A cynical and twisted picture that's so marvelously done. These days, to explore the dark side of human nature, filmmakers need to incorporate murder or some other crime into a plot. I love how All About Eve is so dark yet no one is really doing anything "wrong" in a sense. Anne Baxter stands out as the conniving Eve who's loved by everyone except for the one person who's career she is destroying. Ironic that this came out in the same year as Sunset Boulevard which is the only other dark satire of Hollywood that comes close to this one.
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947) - I've seen this film twice and each time it hits me in a very funny way. I like the thematic content but the actual storyline becomes dull somewhere along the way. Gregory Peck might have given one of the best performances in cinematic history in To Kill a Mockingbird but he's a little dry and unconvincing here. When he talks about how someone's trying to pick a fight "with his girl," like he's John Trovolta in Grease, it just makes me cringe. It's a film with too much exposition and talking away as well. It's certainly curious how Elia Kazan never came under fire in the way Stanley Kramer did for having films that were overly preachy.
How Green was my Valley (1941)-Yes, it beat Citizen Kane, but it's actually one of John Ford's best films and shows the master at his best. Orson Welles revered John Ford and watched Stagecoach 30 or 40 times in preperation for making Citizen Kane, so I imagine if his masterpiece was going to lose out at the Oscars, he wouldn't have wanted it to lose to anyone but John Ford.
Rebecca (1940)-Hitchkock did stick entirely to one genre which was a self-created one, but in within his work he takes his Hitchkockian qualities and makes textbook examples of other genres with a Hitchkockian spin: Strangers on a Train is a perfect example of noir, Psycho is the precursor to all those horror movies that flood our theaters, and the lavish Oscar-winning book adaptation is Rebecca. In other words, I think that while other Hitchkock pictures might have been better, Rebecca might have been the film with the most grandeur to it. It also helps that Joan Fontaine and Lawrence Olivier turn in two of the best performances of Hitchkock protagonists I’ve seen and Mrs. Danvers is quite a villain. I’d probably rank Rebecca as one of my top five or six Hitchkock films.
Gone with the Wind (1939)-Gone with the Wind WAS the biggest picture ever. It outranks Titanic in terms of intake when you adjust for inflation and THEN you have to realize how little a ticket cost back in the day as well. It might be argued that until Gone with the Wind, movies weren't that big of a deal. All the things from Gone with the Wind, the music, the color, the scope and scale of the images on screen, the performances, and most importantly the impact of the story and dialogue took audiences to a level they'd never seen before. That doesn't mean it's the one must-see film we all should be dying to see in present day because it's so awesome, but it still gets plenty of commendation which is important because nothing really can compare to Gone with the Wind in terms of public impact. I notice that lists generated by users, like the 2 online top 100 polls polling internet critics and regular movie fans as well as the imdb top 250, it doesn't rank particularly high.
The Life of Emile Zola (1936) - A fairly run-of-the-mill 30's film. I wouldn't call it anything particularly special. I'd say it's interesting if you're interested about learning about the person of Emile Zola. Good crib notes for a history essay.
It Happened One Night (1934) - Like Gone with the Wind, it's impact on the general public can't be underestimated. This film single-handedly made Columbia Pictures and Frank Capra's career. The film was the pinnacle of screwball comedies: Through a romance of two different classes, it gave hope to audeinces struggling during the Depression but the movie didn't just connect to audiences back then, I think more than Gone with the Wind, even, It Happened One Night is timeless. It's handling of the battle-of-the-sexes theme still reads well today and it's a great deal of fun. Truly, an underrated film.
Grand Hotel (1933)-See "Grand Hotel" tags. I absolutely adore this movie.
Anyway, I've got just a few more pictures to go.
Best Picture Winners I’ve Seen:
No Country for Old Men (2007)-Massively overrated film. I know the Coens have been in kind of a slump with Intolerable Cruelty (good but not great and even worse, not ambitious), Man Who Wasn't There (technically good but had no soul), and Ladykillers (misguided and crass) but let's not award them for the first thing they do that's good. But that's assuming that this is a good film. If it has a plot, the film doesn't really care much about it. Or characters. It basically offers three things: 1) an innovative choice for the villain's weapon 2) a couple very good actiing performances (Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem) and 3) cool scenery.
Departed (2006)-I wrote about Departed so much in other entries that just click on departed down below for a couple interesting posts on Departed and the Indiscriminate Nature of the Gun and how I think as a genre film, Departed might be in danger of not having a long shelf life because it's such a straight genre film. Departed, though, was my third favorite picture of the year (behind Little Miss Sunshine on Flags of Our Fathers)
2003-2005-Haven’t seen any of these three best picture winners but I have seen 10 of the 12 other best picture nominees from these three years. I’m not ashamed of it either. A picture has to appeal to me to get me to see it. I rarely see a picture that I don’t want to see unless I like it. I gave up on Lord of the Rings after Part I.
Chicago (2002)-Chicago won because it successfully revived a lost genre that was very integral in the history of film. Some might argue that Moulan Rouge did that the year before, but Moulan Rouge was more like a musical on crack. It was a lot of glitz and glamour, songs burst out of characters with little motive, and the average shot length was a disorienting 1.5 seconds in the musical numbers. To me, Chicago was much more in the spirit of the film musical and worked a lot better.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)-2001 was a very week year and A Beautiful Mind was deservedly the best of them. I felt that despite being at the center of the film’s marketing campaign (as in the love scenes were featured in the trailers) the romantic subplot between Connelly and Crowe was pretty weak, but other than that it was a film I liked. It dealt with issues of how to deal and cope with life after success. Most of the movie wasn’t about a man’s rise to greatness. He accomplished the greatness early in the film, and he had to deal with rediscovering himself.
Gladiator (2000)-Gladiator had everything that I like to see in a best picture or a best picture for that matter: an epic feel, a grand ambition, big production values, a marquis star, pathos, and theme that’s relevant to the present. Gladiator’s theme was about perceptions of power and how power through the masses is dependent only on what those who are in power chose to filter to the masses. The emperor and Aerelius derived their power through a mandate from the masses and that was dependent on what the people saw in the arena. You could have somewhat easily drawn parallels between the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and the Colliseum with Bill Clinton, Kenneth Star, and CNN. Traffic might have been a more innovative picture and when that happens it really hurts the legacy of the best picture and inspires hatred never before seen by movie buffs (see Forrest Gump, English Patient, Dances with Wolves, Shakespeare in Love).
American Beauty (1999)-I lost my objectivity as a film critic when I saw this. I wasn’t a film critic back then, of course, but just the same. The film was just depressing beyond belief and affected me to the point where I really couldn’t make a judgement on it. It captured the uniformity and despair of suburban life to such a realistic extent it was scary and gave me less hope in finding meaning of my own suburban existence. Some might think that’s silly to become so affected by just a movie, but if I didn’t get so much into movies in the first place, than I wouldn’t want to be a film critic. Ironic.
Shakespeare in Love (1998)-Like Gladiator, my film professor told me it had a very poetic theme: that love can exist on stage and be created through art. It’s a self-reflexive postmodern romantic comedy so it can be seen as the evolution of the post-modern comedy. It’s a good film, but in terms of grandeur, I felt it lacked the greatness of a best picture oscar winner.
Titanic (1997)-While something like L.A. Confidential was hailed by film critics as the better picture in retrospect, Titanic was just a massive unstoppable phenomenon at the time, and I like it today in retrospect. It broke every box office record conceivable and was just something like “The Ultimate Movie.” At the same time, it wasn’t really included on many “best of the century” lists in the next couple years and a lot of mega blockbusters have come along since then with equally big production values. The closest big budget blockbuster in recent years to have a chance of getting the attention of the Oscars as a picture (not just a technical awards extravaganza) was King Kong and it only won the technical awards, and wasn’t even considered for anything like story, actor, director, or picture. The times are now different than when Titanic was around: You can be a big budget high money grosser or an oscar winner, but not both.
Forrest Gump (1994)-Forrest Gump is a sentimental favorite that plays on emotion and nostalgia rather than innovative reworkings of genre material. A critic who thinks with his head will favor Pulp Fiction 9 times out of 10 over Forrest Gump. The problem with Forrest Gump is it’s not a film people want to see twice which is why its shelf life withers in comparison to Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction, but we have to put ourselves back into 1994 when Forrest Gump was both the must-see movie of the year for the movie going public and an enormous critical hit. I’ve written about this in other posts and have even published an article on this.
Schindler’s List (1993)-“The Color Purple” aside, Schindler’s List was Spielberg’s coming out party as a serious filmmaker. The truth though is that among the academic community and art house types, Spielberg is considered the #1 person to blame for the supposed decline in the state of film because it can be argued that his enormous commercial success (mainly Jaws & Indiana Jones) had the accidental effect of restructuring Hollywood towards relying more on one big blockbuster to carry studios’ loads and leading to this sequelitis-infected blockbuster-oriented era we’re currently living in. Schindler’s List was Hollywood’s way of saying, “You know, you really are a good filmmaker after all.” The art house community still hasn’t caved in despite the fact that Spielberg made the two most revered films of the 90s in Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, but oh well.
Unforgiven (1992)-This could arguably be considered the only Western ever to win a best picture Oscar. Most sources will tell you that three Westerns throughout film history have won best picture awards: 1930’s Cimarron, and 1990’s Dances with Wolves (which I’ve seen about 2/3 of) are frontier stories but aren’t really true Westerns in my opinion. This is a shame, considering The Searchers and High Noon are the two best Westerns ever made, and there are a small handful of Westerns that might be considered better than Eastwood’s film, but it’s a very small number. Eastwood’s picture stands out as a great personal statement from a former actor reflecting on the genre that made a name out of him. It’s a very intelligent and concise film on many levels.
Silence of the Lambs (1991)-This film is the reason I didn’t follow the Oscars in any capacity whatsoever until approximately 1999. During the 1992 Oscar ceremony, I was 8, and my mom said I was not adult enough to watch the Oscars but I did and the short clips of Silence of the Lambs the ceremony showed were enough to scare the hell out of me. From there, I concluded that the Oscars were about terrifying and disturbing movies that I was too young for. Nevertheless, this movie still scares the hell out of me and is a film I find disturbing on a base emotional level, but I suppose that’s a testament to the power of the film, I suppose. I have more of a Frank Capra attitude on films and prefer their power to uplift people, rather than scare the shit out of them with disturbing images of guys who want to eat and torture each other, but, yeah, I suppose there’s a wide range of films out there, even the films on the darker end of the spectrum and it’s better than a film like Sin City that’s dark and nihilistic just because it’s cool. I would just find it odd that in the glamorous eternally optimistic Tinseltown, people would vote for a film about a disturbed cannibal of all things. If Silence of the Lambs won an Oscar, what’s next? Resident Evil?
*Dances with Wolves (1990)-I’ve seen about 2/3 of the film, so I’m not the true expert, but it looks like a film that’s like a serious evening at an upscale theater where you pay upwards of $100 a seat: a rich cinematic experience provided you’ve got the patience to stay with it. It’s essentially an epic. If you watch it on TV, you’d probably call it boring because you’re not getting the full experience. For his part, Kevin Costner, knew it was a risky project, but he said he liked the epic and I applaud him for that. Of course, people will always compare it to Goodfellas and it will suffer for that, but now that Scorsesee has his Oscar, can’t we put it all behind us?
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)-This film certainly doesn’t feel like a best picture winner and raises the question of whether there’s a certain requirement of a picture to deserve the honor of best picture. History has shown that there’s an incredibly wide range of pictures to get the honor and no real formula. Still, I tend to think that all the best pictures have a boldness in vision which includes a certain thematic gravity. I feel like Driving Miss Daisy brushes on ageism and interracial themes but at too much of a distance to feel like a profound statement has been made. I am pretty sure that in this decade’s Oscar-oriented November and December templates, Driving Miss Daisy would never have stood a chance at a nomination. It would be considered a pleasant character-driven film that would get some good reviews but would get drowned out by more ambitious films. Matchstick Men, Interpreter, The Weatherman, and Secondhand Lions are films that come to mind in this category. This is made all the more odd when we consider how great of a year 1989 was with Crimes and Misdemeanors, Henry V, Dead Poets’ Society, and Do the Right Thing.
Rain Man (1988)-I think this film also lacks a little bit of the ambition I spoke of with Driving Miss Daisy but the acting is so impeccable here that it puts the film on a different level. Dustin Hoffman gives the performance of a lifetime and Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman have such convincing chemistry. Another thing to consider is that Barry Levinson was on a role at the time with hits like Diner and Good Morning Vietnam, and in a decade increasingly oriented toward testosterone-laced blockbusters, Levinson’s films brought a deeper exploration to the masculine hero.
*Platoon (1986)*-I’ve only seen parts of this film. We watched it during a couple periods of my 11th English class in the last week of the school year. It felt like a very gritty war film that put the viewer into his point of view.
Out of Africa (1985)-A good epic film that features one of Robert Redford’s great performances. Sidney Pollack is only the 2nd best director named Sidney from the last 30 years, and it’s a shame that the great Sidney Lumet never won an Oscar.
Chariots of Fire (1981)-I’ve reviewed this film before, but essentially I felt it was a film that didn’t get the credit it deserved. My theory: Too often we expect a sports film to feature characters set against each other, and the fates of the two protagonists, who were rivals to some extent, do not end up in a climactic moment where they must compete over the same medal. I felt the film was a great character study and the stylized tone made for a great period piece.
Annie Hall (1977)-Woody Allen never made a truly great film in my opinion. He made a number of very good films. Annie Hall isn’t my favorite film of his: I appreciated some of the innovative gimmicks he uses to tell his story, but I found the storyline annoyingly disjointed.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)-I’ve seen the film two or three times, and this time, I'm just going to nitpick: Somehow the ending doesn’t seem right to me. I mean, do we really think that Chief is self-conscious enough to know what he’s doing? Remember: everyone but Randall McMurphy was, in fact, retarded. In a symbolic sense, there’s a lot to be read into this story with themes of oppression of independent-minded people, but in practicality, does the story really make sense? What makes the evil Nurse Ratched tick? In real life, why would she care about lobotomizing Murphy?
French Connection (1971)-Well, if anyone’s going to accuse the academy of being high brow, don‘t forget they gave an Oscar to the movie with the most kickass car chase ever. It’s a neat movie and I once attended a Q & A with William Friedkin about the film, so having heard his opinions on what he was trying to do I now respect the film that much more. Nowadays however, stories about cops are a dime a dozen from Shoot ‘em Up to We Own the Night to Narc to The Recruit to Training Day to whatever, but Friedkin’s film stands out for being a product of its era, at the very least.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)-The film competed against counter-culture pictures such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, which might have made In the Heat of the Night the less hip choice. I think, however, that this film marginally deserves to be considered one of the greats. Of the four Sidney Poitier films I've seen, it has his most meaningful performance. I don't say "best" because he's pretty much the same in everything but more that it's a great use of Sidney Poitier (Not to knock Poitier's acting, but I don't see him an actor giving a performance as a civil rights pioneer carrying the weight of African-American actors on his back and making choices designed to give blacks dignity on screen. That's at least at least how he's been framed historically). The film has a palpable sense of danger, two strongly defined characters, two great performances, and a chemistry between the two leads that is definitely something.
Sound of Music (1965)-Julie Andrews + Adorable Children + Sweeping vistas + Music + Backstory involving Nazis and WWII = Oscar. What else can you say?
My Fair Lady (1964)-With Born Yesterday, Bringing Up Baby and Philadelphia Story going unrecognized, I think My Fair Lady was a career achievement award for George Cuckor than it was recognition for an innovative film. The film has some great musical numbers and great performances by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison but does fall a little short of the bar expected of an Oscar-winning musical. I also wonder if it is fair to judge My Fair Lady on the fact that the songs, one of the film’s main strengths, weren’t originally written for the film, anyway.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)*-An epic among epics. Peter O'Toole imbues Lawrence of Arabia with traits of an uneasy man who's been pinned for a loser his whole life but who's also taking the biggest risks of his life. It's a performance where you're just trying to think "What's making this guy's head tick." Let me just say, holy crap, is this a long movie. Watching it was like a marathon that I dropped out of at mile 21.
West Side Story (1961)-This is a film for the ages as far as I’m concerned and as the kind of musical innovative enough to break the mold of its genre to be deserving of a best picture (unlike My Fair Lady). For someone who isn’t in to musicals, I’m sure that they can appreciate the quality of the dance sequences even if it’s not their thing.
Apartment (1960)-According to Cameron Crowe’s book “Conversations with Billy Wilder,” When Billy Wilder accepted his Oscar, the guy handing it to him said “you know, you’ll probably never top this one” and he was probably right. The Apartment is not only an absolutely amazing film and personal favorite that I could go on for hours about, but it’s one of the few comedies to ever win best picture and that’s hard to do. I’ve also never seen a comedy that so effortlessly provided social commentary and satire. I'm not really someone who is strongly aware of mise-en-scene (the way the scene is framed in th camera) when I'm watching a movie, but this is one of the first instances where the art of it jumped out at me. Particularly, the way the cubicles in the Office call to mind a modern-day equivalent of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)-Like Apartment and West Side Story, I’m not judging them on the level of Oscars but films among the best ever made and this transcends the question "did it deserve an Oscar." For me, the question is can you possibly shower it with enough Oscars and praise? It is my second favorite war film (we’ll get to the first in a couple minutes) and easily one of my 20 favorite films of all time, approximately. The protagonists are so interesting, with Alec Guiness forming such an interesting contrast to William Holden and such startling similarities with Sessuye Hayakawa, (Guiness and Hayakawa give two amazing performances too). The score and scenery is top notch, the ending is one of the most shocking I've ever witnessed.
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)- I can't help but acknowledge the sentiments that the selection of this picture almost single-handedly strips the "best picture" club of its integrity, but I think in examining why this film was so unfit to join the ranks of Oscar-winning films, then we get somewhere in terms of establishing what we expect from the Best picture winner. Perhaps, the lack of a theme? The lack of importance? Was it too enjoyable? Too little dramatic tension? The cameos cheapen the experience? In any case, it's certainly an enjoyable film of considerable scale if you don't think too hard about what the award means. I think of it as a spectacle of places and people and there's the certain extravagance to it that classic film buffs might look back to the olden pictures for with nostalgia.
From Here to Eternity (1953)-My favorite war film. Some might dismiss too loose of a narrative with two stories that have little to do with each other, but I think it paints interesting portraits of five unique characters and it's a very captivating epic. Montgomery Clift's character in particular makes such a strong impression. What would prompt a man to that level of stubborness, that he won't box or play the trumpet unless he does it his way? I often think when I watch it, that that trait is parallels the entire military structure.
Greatest Show on Earth (1952) - Greatest Show on Earth is grouped in with Around the World in 80 Days as one of those films that should never be uttered in the same sentence with the other winners but I found it a very good story and I think there's a lot more to be remembered from the film than the train crash scene. It is somewhat of an ensemble piece and I'm not sure if the way that, say, James Stewart isn't really relevant to the story but takes up screentime in a pleasantly time-consuming way is what makes the film feel irrelevant.
American in Paris (1951) - American in Paris was pretty much MGM and the Arthur Freed Unit at the top of their game. Gerswhin's score, Minelli's escapist sensibilities, and Gene Kelly's charm are the perfect combination, and Levant and Caron are good additions as well, although the guy who replaced Maurice LeChavilier as the French man was really quite a pushover. The problem which couldn't have been anticipated back in 1951 was that in 1952, an even greater film came out, "Singing in the Rain," which is now remembered as the highwater mark of the MGM Musical era, but again they didn't have a time machine, so let's not fault them. Also, worth noting: 1951 was one of the most competitive years in film history with three other films from AFI's top 100 (A Place in the Sun, Streetcar Named Desire and African Queen) coming out that year, so American in Paris gets a bad rap for that.
All About Eve (1950) - A cynical and twisted picture that's so marvelously done. These days, to explore the dark side of human nature, filmmakers need to incorporate murder or some other crime into a plot. I love how All About Eve is so dark yet no one is really doing anything "wrong" in a sense. Anne Baxter stands out as the conniving Eve who's loved by everyone except for the one person who's career she is destroying. Ironic that this came out in the same year as Sunset Boulevard which is the only other dark satire of Hollywood that comes close to this one.
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947) - I've seen this film twice and each time it hits me in a very funny way. I like the thematic content but the actual storyline becomes dull somewhere along the way. Gregory Peck might have given one of the best performances in cinematic history in To Kill a Mockingbird but he's a little dry and unconvincing here. When he talks about how someone's trying to pick a fight "with his girl," like he's John Trovolta in Grease, it just makes me cringe. It's a film with too much exposition and talking away as well. It's certainly curious how Elia Kazan never came under fire in the way Stanley Kramer did for having films that were overly preachy.
How Green was my Valley (1941)-Yes, it beat Citizen Kane, but it's actually one of John Ford's best films and shows the master at his best. Orson Welles revered John Ford and watched Stagecoach 30 or 40 times in preperation for making Citizen Kane, so I imagine if his masterpiece was going to lose out at the Oscars, he wouldn't have wanted it to lose to anyone but John Ford.
Rebecca (1940)-Hitchkock did stick entirely to one genre which was a self-created one, but in within his work he takes his Hitchkockian qualities and makes textbook examples of other genres with a Hitchkockian spin: Strangers on a Train is a perfect example of noir, Psycho is the precursor to all those horror movies that flood our theaters, and the lavish Oscar-winning book adaptation is Rebecca. In other words, I think that while other Hitchkock pictures might have been better, Rebecca might have been the film with the most grandeur to it. It also helps that Joan Fontaine and Lawrence Olivier turn in two of the best performances of Hitchkock protagonists I’ve seen and Mrs. Danvers is quite a villain. I’d probably rank Rebecca as one of my top five or six Hitchkock films.
Gone with the Wind (1939)-Gone with the Wind WAS the biggest picture ever. It outranks Titanic in terms of intake when you adjust for inflation and THEN you have to realize how little a ticket cost back in the day as well. It might be argued that until Gone with the Wind, movies weren't that big of a deal. All the things from Gone with the Wind, the music, the color, the scope and scale of the images on screen, the performances, and most importantly the impact of the story and dialogue took audiences to a level they'd never seen before. That doesn't mean it's the one must-see film we all should be dying to see in present day because it's so awesome, but it still gets plenty of commendation which is important because nothing really can compare to Gone with the Wind in terms of public impact. I notice that lists generated by users, like the 2 online top 100 polls polling internet critics and regular movie fans as well as the imdb top 250, it doesn't rank particularly high.
The Life of Emile Zola (1936) - A fairly run-of-the-mill 30's film. I wouldn't call it anything particularly special. I'd say it's interesting if you're interested about learning about the person of Emile Zola. Good crib notes for a history essay.
It Happened One Night (1934) - Like Gone with the Wind, it's impact on the general public can't be underestimated. This film single-handedly made Columbia Pictures and Frank Capra's career. The film was the pinnacle of screwball comedies: Through a romance of two different classes, it gave hope to audeinces struggling during the Depression but the movie didn't just connect to audiences back then, I think more than Gone with the Wind, even, It Happened One Night is timeless. It's handling of the battle-of-the-sexes theme still reads well today and it's a great deal of fun. Truly, an underrated film.
Grand Hotel (1933)-See "Grand Hotel" tags. I absolutely adore this movie.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Themes of Grand Hotel
I often think you can't really get a movie until you watch it twice. I watch pretty much everything twice. The first time, i might be dozing off or not fully paying attention which might be part of the reason, but I pretty much watch everything twice, whether I'm trying to analyze it or just watching it recreationally.
Today I rewatched Grand Hotel, but I've already seen it three times, at least. Grand Hotel is close to my favorite movie of all time. I can't stress how great I think it is. Notice I didn't say "I can't stress how great it is" because it's not really considered to be a great film by everyone. It isn't on either of AFI's lists of 100 top films (although it's on the nominated 400) and it isn't on many other lists either (Film Four, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere Magazine, the LA Times, New York Times, etc.). It did win a best picture Oscar for 1932 so it joins an elite group of about 80 films ever to be named the best picture of its year by the film industry, but as films of the 1930's go, it's still not one of the best remembered (films with a better shelf life from the 1930's include: Swing Time, Top Hat, Trouble in Paradise, Duck Soup, The Blue Angel, It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth, Dodsworth, Mutiny on the Bounty, All Quiet on the Western Front, and pretty much every major picture that came out in 1939).
I've also heard criticism that it's not that special of a film, but I really thought it was truly one of the greats, and by clicking on the grand hotel label you can read my review of it.
Some other thoughts after rewatching it this morning on TCM:
-The film being made in the great depression, I started noticing the theme that monetary value permeates everything in life more. For example, Kringeline was upset with his room because it didn't cost enough and not because it wasn't a room of good enough quality. Doesn't that seem a little twisted? He also talks about how his goal was to spend all his money and seemed to have infinite amounts of it. Even if i was going to die soon, I wouldn't want to waste my money frivolously.
Mrs. Phlegm also was noticeably unable to live without money, not only in the symbolic but in the literal sense. She was, at first, unable to accept a date from the Baron because she didn't eat more than one meal a day. That's gotta be tough.
In this light, the Kringeline-Phlegm pairing has a complimentary nature to it: Someone with an urge to gives away his money vs someone with the most noblest of needs to have money (needing to eat). In other words, it's surely as much of an economic transaction as it is one of loneliness/friendship/romance (I'm honestly not sure what category that relationship falls in) and I think as unromantic as the ending seemed to a modern-day audience, it might have seemed more realistic to audiences in the Depression.
In an extremely sharp contrast, the Baron does not live with constant concern over whether he has money. He is mostly concerned with appearing that he has it, and it's only when he's exposed as "not a baron" that he breaks down into humiliation.
I also wonder if the story might be some allegory about Heaven or the Tower of Babel (and not the part of the story about different languages but about how man tried to build a tower tall enough to reach Heaven). Five reasons why:
1) The shots at the top of the characters on the balcony outside their hotel rooms portray this extreme, otherworldly height. It's like their an uncountable number of floors over the lobby.
2) It's called "Grand Hotel" and not a specific hotel. Just a clue that it's supposed to be metaphorical
3) I remember hearing in history class about how missionaries taught the natives of indigenous cultures in Africa about the bible so they could enforce subjugation. The idea was that you worked hard and endured subjugation by the Europeans and you'd be rewarded in the after life for it. That sounds similar to Kringeline's story arc. He toiled to his death in Prising's factory and got to meet him in status in the afterlife. If the film is based around class, Kringeline got to talk with "The baron" and be in a higher class.
4) Another reason that the Hotel symbolizes Heaven is that Prising is eventually exiled from it. When Prising who originally considers himself a "solid family man" makes an immoral business decision, it's his fall from grace. Of course, murdering could also do that too.
5) Greta Garbo's character was like an Angel. She physically was dressed like one and she had this aura of mystery surrounding her. She was rarely present in her room and when she appeared, her beauty suddenly converted the Baron from evil to good like an angelic vision.
Today I rewatched Grand Hotel, but I've already seen it three times, at least. Grand Hotel is close to my favorite movie of all time. I can't stress how great I think it is. Notice I didn't say "I can't stress how great it is" because it's not really considered to be a great film by everyone. It isn't on either of AFI's lists of 100 top films (although it's on the nominated 400) and it isn't on many other lists either (Film Four, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere Magazine, the LA Times, New York Times, etc.). It did win a best picture Oscar for 1932 so it joins an elite group of about 80 films ever to be named the best picture of its year by the film industry, but as films of the 1930's go, it's still not one of the best remembered (films with a better shelf life from the 1930's include: Swing Time, Top Hat, Trouble in Paradise, Duck Soup, The Blue Angel, It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth, Dodsworth, Mutiny on the Bounty, All Quiet on the Western Front, and pretty much every major picture that came out in 1939).
I've also heard criticism that it's not that special of a film, but I really thought it was truly one of the greats, and by clicking on the grand hotel label you can read my review of it.
Some other thoughts after rewatching it this morning on TCM:
-The film being made in the great depression, I started noticing the theme that monetary value permeates everything in life more. For example, Kringeline was upset with his room because it didn't cost enough and not because it wasn't a room of good enough quality. Doesn't that seem a little twisted? He also talks about how his goal was to spend all his money and seemed to have infinite amounts of it. Even if i was going to die soon, I wouldn't want to waste my money frivolously.
Mrs. Phlegm also was noticeably unable to live without money, not only in the symbolic but in the literal sense. She was, at first, unable to accept a date from the Baron because she didn't eat more than one meal a day. That's gotta be tough.
In this light, the Kringeline-Phlegm pairing has a complimentary nature to it: Someone with an urge to gives away his money vs someone with the most noblest of needs to have money (needing to eat). In other words, it's surely as much of an economic transaction as it is one of loneliness/friendship/romance (I'm honestly not sure what category that relationship falls in) and I think as unromantic as the ending seemed to a modern-day audience, it might have seemed more realistic to audiences in the Depression.
In an extremely sharp contrast, the Baron does not live with constant concern over whether he has money. He is mostly concerned with appearing that he has it, and it's only when he's exposed as "not a baron" that he breaks down into humiliation.
I also wonder if the story might be some allegory about Heaven or the Tower of Babel (and not the part of the story about different languages but about how man tried to build a tower tall enough to reach Heaven). Five reasons why:
1) The shots at the top of the characters on the balcony outside their hotel rooms portray this extreme, otherworldly height. It's like their an uncountable number of floors over the lobby.
2) It's called "Grand Hotel" and not a specific hotel. Just a clue that it's supposed to be metaphorical
3) I remember hearing in history class about how missionaries taught the natives of indigenous cultures in Africa about the bible so they could enforce subjugation. The idea was that you worked hard and endured subjugation by the Europeans and you'd be rewarded in the after life for it. That sounds similar to Kringeline's story arc. He toiled to his death in Prising's factory and got to meet him in status in the afterlife. If the film is based around class, Kringeline got to talk with "The baron" and be in a higher class.
4) Another reason that the Hotel symbolizes Heaven is that Prising is eventually exiled from it. When Prising who originally considers himself a "solid family man" makes an immoral business decision, it's his fall from grace. Of course, murdering could also do that too.
5) Greta Garbo's character was like an Angel. She physically was dressed like one and she had this aura of mystery surrounding her. She was rarely present in her room and when she appeared, her beauty suddenly converted the Baron from evil to good like an angelic vision.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Grand Hotel review
Grant Hotel (1932) is one of my favorite films of all time and even though it's won an academy award it's widely overlooked by people who are into 1930's cinema.
Grand Hotel boasts the five greatest stars of their day all sharing the screen together. Of course now, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo and Wallace Berry are not names that the general movie going public is well-acquainted with which changes the viewing experience significantly. Nevertheless, some of the performances are transcendent. Without knowing anything about them it’s easy to understand why Garbo was considered such an exotic treasure, John Barrymore as a prototype for the matinee idol, and Joan Crawford has leading-lady material the likes of which would make Julia Roberts jealous.
Wallace Berry plays Mr. Prising a testy industrial giant on a business trip. Next door to him, John Barrymore plays a Baron whose title does not give him any wealth and he must resort to stealing. Joan Crawford plays a stenographer who’s sweet on the Baron but is hired by the industrial giant who desires an affair with her. Garbo plays a reclusive ballerina whose jewels are targeted by the Baron and Lionel Barrymore plays a nebbish employee of Prising’s Company who’s become terminally ill due to lack of health care provided by the company.
That’s just the introduction and I haven’t even gotten to what happens over the course of the story but needless to say, things do happen and more complications ensue, but briefly put, two people fall in love, one person loses his/her life’s possessions, one person loses his/her life, and one person gains his/hers.
Set in a hotel where the lives of five guests intertwine, it’s breezy, lively and light-hearted enough to rival an art deco musical in escapist value. At the same time, it is a very telling story of class conflict that resonates with a lot of weight when the five stories come together so serendipitously (although minor stint: in such a short movie, Greta Garbo has a couple extraneous scenes that don’t really mesh into the rest of the movie that well). It’s really a beautiful and profound story that really should be more advertised.
Grand Hotel boasts the five greatest stars of their day all sharing the screen together. Of course now, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo and Wallace Berry are not names that the general movie going public is well-acquainted with which changes the viewing experience significantly. Nevertheless, some of the performances are transcendent. Without knowing anything about them it’s easy to understand why Garbo was considered such an exotic treasure, John Barrymore as a prototype for the matinee idol, and Joan Crawford has leading-lady material the likes of which would make Julia Roberts jealous.
Wallace Berry plays Mr. Prising a testy industrial giant on a business trip. Next door to him, John Barrymore plays a Baron whose title does not give him any wealth and he must resort to stealing. Joan Crawford plays a stenographer who’s sweet on the Baron but is hired by the industrial giant who desires an affair with her. Garbo plays a reclusive ballerina whose jewels are targeted by the Baron and Lionel Barrymore plays a nebbish employee of Prising’s Company who’s become terminally ill due to lack of health care provided by the company.
That’s just the introduction and I haven’t even gotten to what happens over the course of the story but needless to say, things do happen and more complications ensue, but briefly put, two people fall in love, one person loses his/her life’s possessions, one person loses his/her life, and one person gains his/hers.
Set in a hotel where the lives of five guests intertwine, it’s breezy, lively and light-hearted enough to rival an art deco musical in escapist value. At the same time, it is a very telling story of class conflict that resonates with a lot of weight when the five stories come together so serendipitously (although minor stint: in such a short movie, Greta Garbo has a couple extraneous scenes that don’t really mesh into the rest of the movie that well). It’s really a beautiful and profound story that really should be more advertised.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Review of Bobby
Emilio Estevez's grandiose ensemble piece takes place at Ambassador Hotel over the course of the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Estevez who wrote and directed the piece is a little too overeager in his attempts to make the film a time capsule of the 60's with sloppily constructed newsreel montages, and references to things like CHADs that have the subtlety of hitting you over the head with a hammer. One of these references is fairly accurate, however: Anthony Hopkins, who plays a veteran of the hotel staff, asks one of the kitchen staff if he's seen the movie Grand Hotel, which is a lot of what the movie feels like. Grand Hotel was a best picture winner from the 1930s that boasted Hollywood's biggest stars (all 5 of them) all in the same picture. Estevez has done an admirable job in assembling his assortment of Hollywood's glitziest and most glamorous stars (preferring the showier Elijah Wood, Ashton Kutcher and Lindsay Lohan to thespians like Haley Joel Osmont, Tobey Maguire and Scarlett Johannson, for example). When stars like Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins and Christian Slater pop up without warning, it creates a sort of excitement that isn't usually present. Bobby plays out a lot like Nashville or Kansas City with different story lines going in their own directions and fusing together. Some of the story lines work and some don't but the ones that do are interesting enough to sustain us through the ones that don't. William H. Macy and Sharon Stone shine at the center of the film as the hotel's hard-nosed owner and his all-too-faithful wife, while Freddy Rodriguez, Christain Slater, and Lawrence Fishburne make for an interesting microcosm of racism in the hotel's kitchen. Shia LeBouf and Brian Geraghty provide comic relief as two straight-laced campaign workers discovering LSD and blotching the most important day of their young careers. What unites all the characters together, however, is their place in history when Bobby Kennedy was shot and Estevez's passion for the historic figure and his ideals, which lurk underneath the story lines, really stand out throughout the film.
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