In Old Chicago (1937)

 I saw three classic films. I was going to write a little bit about all of them. The other two were Little Foxes (blah, too melodramatic, but Teresa Wright was good in it) and Lust for Life (the score was overdone and Douglas is at his hammiest here, but I appreciated Vincente Minnelli's work), but I thought I'd write about the third and I ended up writing a full review.

In Old Chicago (1937)-I knew Alice Brady won an Oscar for it, and it was about two brothers torn apart by Chicago politics (which is a pretty intriguing city to explore as opposed to, say, Orlando or Knoxville politics). I don't believe this film is well-remembered today but it certainly was pretty epic in its time. The film was Fox's  response to the MGM film San Francisco in which fictional lives intersect with a major historic event. Because that event is the San Francisco earthquake it's as great an excuse as any to make things go boom and combine a period piece with a psuedo-disaster film.

In this case, the story is the Chicago Fire. I also vaguely knew about Mrs. O'Leary's cow supposedly starting the Chicago Fire (not really true), but I didn't know that the Chicago Fire figured into the story when I was watching the film. I can't speak to whether the film was advertised that way, but I saw that her name was Mrs. O'Leary (Alice Brady) from a sign of her laundromat and she owns a cow, so I did spend quite a bit of time wondering if the pieces will fit

What I later learned from the production notes is that the story was reverse-engineered from the Mrs. O'Leary character. Because there's not a lot of history to draw from, O'Leary is a symbol from which Alice Brady can act her heart out to an Oscar and from which the writers can lay the symbolic groundwork. She represents a certain Yankee ingenuity.  Her establishing character moment is when she reacts to an unpleasant encounter with a snooty socialite by offering to clean her dress for a price.

Her sons represent the dark and lighter sides of that ingenuity, and there are references made to the fact that the O'Learys are a special kind of clan. The older son (Tyrone Power) is a lawyer who leads a life of service. The middle son (Don Ameche, kind of funny because I've only ever seen him as an octeganarian in Cocoon) is a lot more fun but he's a pretty bad guy. He makes his living as a gambler with the capacity for some pretty devious (and clever) schemes for taking power through the city. The younger son does almost nothing except marry a Swedish girl and identify a dead body at the end, which makes me wonder why he was even included in the script. Her her children are pretty much entirely fictionalized anyway, right? Also, I believe it's Andy Divine who's in there somewhere with this uniquely squealy voice. Did anyone inform him this wasn't a comedy?

In a lot of ways, this film reminded me of Gangs of New York right down to one of the shots of two marching armies approaching each other on the street. It's about a city coming of age and characters morally doing the same.

I found it refreshingly devoid of genre trappings. It was about crime but it wasn't a generic gangster film, it was about family dynamics but it wasn't a sappy melodrama.  It was appropriately epic.

Seven More Classics I Recently Saw for the First Time

The Sting (1973):

Why it’s a classic: For reuniting the two biggest stars of Hollywood four years after they made a big splash together with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and packaging it with excellent production values at a time when period pictures were in (think The Godfather, Chinatown, Murder on the Orient Express), “The Sting” was awarded Best Picture in the 1973 Oscar race. On top of that, the “Sting” is a positively loaded crowd-pleaser.

Did it live up to the hype? From the expansive supporting cast to the sepia-toned color palate to the complimentary age-appropriate score, there is a lot to like about this show. Even more than “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, this is a testament to Redford and Newman’s star power and even a meta-commentary of sorts on the nature of the star. Hard to also discount Robert Shaw’s turn as a terrifying villain. The man is so still and focused, I could have easily been convinced I didn’t see him blink.

Poseidon Adventure (1972):

Why it’s a classic: In the 70’s, disaster films were among the highest grossing films of their day, had some of the best casts, and were nominated for Oscars all over the place (“Airport” and “Towering Inferno” even got BP nominations). The Poseidon Adventure, set aboard a cruise ship, pulled together five Oscar winners (Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, Jack Albertson, Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine) along with Roddy MacDowall and Arthur O’Connell.  As evidence of its cult status, the film has even been looked upon as a religious allegory (it features two preachers with contrasting views) and spawned re-showings and convention-type events.

Does it live up to the hype?: Like the best of Roland Emmerich’s films (the filmmaker of “Independence Day” and “Day After Tomorrow” and spiritual successor of this trend), this is a tightly-scripted action film on a scale of grandeur that’s beautifully pulled off. It also can’t be underestimated that the first time watching this film, you don’t know how it will end and it’s pretty clear that all casualties are on the table. It also helps that none of the big-name actors at the time were stars that overshadowed the rest of the cast so the film has a great even-keeled ensemble feel with an even spread among multiple compelling stories.

Carrie (1976):

Why it’s a classic: The opening tracking shot during the credits is up there with “Touch of Evil” as the greatest in history and it is the first Stephen King adaptation to be put to film (his debut novel no less). It is one of the most highly acclaimed horror films in history in terms of mainstream appeal.

Does it live up to the hype?: The film is primarily known for being such a well-told tale of adolescent carnage and while it’s tonally difficult to grapple with, I could accept that there was some heavy symbolism that would take some effort to work out with (generally a good thing).

What stuck out to me for the strong characters and relationships. Sissy Spacek (who would go on to be nominated for six Oscars) is the epitome of that feeling all puberty-ridden teenagers have of feeling alien in their own body. Carrie’s singularity is also better defined by the happy-go-lucky coterie of girls who so casually exhibit cruelty towards her and Nancy Allen (who plays the ring leader) deserves credit for that. Piper Laurie was nominated for an Oscar for her role as the fundamentalist mother but Betty Buckley can’t be underlooked for her performance as a gym teacher so sweet and understanding that I kept wanting to press the reset button on my adolescence so I could have her in it.

King Kong (2005):

Why it’s a classic: Peter Jackson followed up his blockbuster-defining trilogy Lord of the Rings and his cache of Oscars with a remake of the 1933 classic that was one of the most ambitious films of its day. Jackson cited the original King Kong as his first cinematic love and media reports suggested he drove himself to exhaustion trying to recreate it for the CGI era. Although the film didn’t deliver Titanic-levels of return at the box office and lost the December battle to “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, its $218 million domestic gross ($550 million international) was solid enough to call it a success. More importantly, it garnered excellent reviews and had enough buzz to merit an outside shot at a Best Picture nod (exceedingly hard for Blockbuster films in the 5-film era).

Did it live up to the hype? Although a little on the long side, it’s definitely worth it. The film’s first act doubles as a scene piece of Depression-era struggles (like “42^nd Street” or Tim Robbins’ “Cradle Will Rock”) that could be its own movie, the second act is a cheesey romance and comedy of manners between Adrian Brody and Naomi Watts, the third act is essentially a giant monster film like Godzilla, and the fourth act is an allegory for the follies of man in thinking they have a right to cage the animals.  The quality of the film on every level ties the disparate parts together and it’s hard to understate how amazing Naomi Watts is in playing off a CGI age.

Princess and the Frog (2009)

Why it’s a classic: This late entry into the canon of animated Disney musicals is the first Disney musical to feature an African-American role in the archetypical princess character. It also made headlines for its retro method of 2D animation at a time when animated films were trying to push the uncanny valley of realism (the worst offender would be the utterly pointless “Lion King” remake a decade later). The film was nominated for two Best Song Oscars from Randy Newman’s score and competed in an incredibly deep Animated Film category (“Fantastic Mr. Fox”, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, “Coraline”, and “Up” came out the same year).

Did it live up to the hype? Definitely! I give this film three zip-a-dee-do-dahs and a chim-chim-a-ree. The film sets itself apart through a regional specificity that comes from doing great research and sprinkling it organically into the story. The map of New Orleans, the details about Mardi Gras, the culinary and architectural delights of the city, and the mystique of voodoo (used in both the characterizations of the villain and the wise elderly savior character) are all things that have some footing. The film also dares to imbue characters with regionally speficic and often unintelligible accents, fear of backlash be damned, and it’s beautiful. The downtrodden protagonist Tianna is juxtaposed with her wealthy friend Lottie and his father Big Daddy Bouffet and the privilege of the Bouffet clan isn’t ignored while the bond between the two parties and the lesson of voluntary benevolence is celebrated.

Nine to Five (1980)

Why it’s a classic: The 2^nd highest grossing film of 1980 is probably best known for its iconic title song that doubles as an anthem for punch card working life resiliency. The unlikely pairing of Hollywood royalty Jane Fonda, comedienne Lily Tomlin, and singer Dolly Parton produced a lightning-in-the-bottle chemistry that led to a lifelong friendship.  The story of rebelling against a handsy boss (Dabny Coleman) through a haphazard hostage scenario likely resonated as a feminist power ballad in 1980 and probably resonates more with the #metoo movement today.

Did it live up to the hype? The days when a simple comedy can jump that high on the box office charts are long gone so it’s hard to judge it along the scale of today’s most popular comedies which rarely crack the top 15 in yearly box office. “The Hangover” might be the best example of a critically well-received blockbuster that made a dent in the box office charts today (“Crazy Rich Asians” and “Bridesmaids” were a little more successful critically but not financially).  The chemistry between the three is a-sparking and Dolly Parton, who was likely cast as herself, brings a certain amount of welcome pluck. It’s a bit broad as a comedy but entirely pleasing. The special effects to depicting the three women’s revenge fantasies also didn’t do much for me.

Pawn Broker (1965)

Why it’s a classic: It’s not well-known among Sidney Lumet’s repertoire but it’s one of his most personally affecting and stylistically innovative films. The story of a jaded Holocaust survivor who owns a pawn shop in Harlem is the first film to approach the tragedy from the point of the view of its survivors. It is also a massive stylistic departure from the New Wave with a jazz score, black-and-white, and raunchy realism (it’s the first film to show a topless woman in some context).

Does it live up to the hype: This film is more of a hidden gem than a classic, so there’s not as much hype to live up to and that’s a shame. The film is visually rich, meaningful, and doesn’t look or feel like other studio films from the era. It isn’t necessarily a light popcorn film but its darkness isn’t without meaning and there are slivers of a redemptive arc worth holding out for.

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Audrey Hepburn is such a sweet, precious concoction that it's hard to imagine her in a thriler. That is, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill her. In "Charade" (a widely available hybrid romcom-thriller that epitomizes the 60s), the villains are so quirky and even cute in a Looney Tunes kind of way that you never really feel like she's in danger.

In contrast, "Wait Until Dark" is a thriller that pushes that line. Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman, Susy, who's husband becomes implicated in a drug-trafficking scheme when a doomed mule passes him a doll with a stash in it. Like a Hithcock film, "Wait Until Dark" comes with its own meaningless McGuffin. A cold-blooded criminal (a young Alan Arkin fresh off his first Oscar nomination) enlists two fellow thugs to weasel the doll out of Suzy.

With Suzy's impaired sense of sight, the film is simultaneously a psychological thrill ride while maintaining a light tone as the two parties (Suzy is aided in part by an adolescent neighbor) engage in a battle of wits. The film wrings out a certain dramatic irony to the situation as we are privy to more than Suzy's point of view but she is still the character we are most emotionally attached to.

Adapted from a play by Frederick Knott, director Terrence Young milks the tension through keeping the play almost entirely in her apartment.

Seven Classics I've Recently Watched For the First Time

Credit: Blu-Ray.com

The Verdict (1982):
Overview: The Verdict is one of the most praised courtroom dramas of all time. It sits at #4 on AFI's list of courtroom dramas and was nominated for best picture. Before I watched it, a friend also told me that this was a comeback of sorts for Paul Newman.
Did it Live up to the Hype? Yes. It transcends the typical courtroom drama because it's a very good character piece. Its also an epic showdown of good verse evil or, more specifically, the corporate industrial complex. It is also hard to argue that Paul Newman isn't the bomb here though it's a bit odd that he's cast opposite a much younger woman (Charlotte Rampling). I know Newman was a sex symbol but was septugernarian Newman a sex symbol? It's also worth noting that there's not as many court scenes here as your average film of this genre. There are only three court sessions and much of the action is Paul Newman and associate Mickey (Jack Warden) dealing with the aftermath of an impulsive bad decision, along with parallel scenes showing James Mason working his skeevey tactics

The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Overview: John Sturges' second greatest film next to "The Great Escape" and the film that introduced him to Steve McQueen. Its one of the great professional Westerns with a star-studded cast and one of the best instrumental theme songs ever written.
Is it worth the hype? Yes. The cast might seem bloated but there's enough space to develop all their stories. The Mexican town feels as boxed in and fake as one of the alien planet sets on Star Trek but its a film rich in color and it feels in place for its time period. Its also a film with action scenes that are of higher caliber than many Westerns that came before it (though its not as impressive as Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpagh would later take the genre)

Being John Malkovich (1999)
Overview: The film was a bizarre mobius strip of a premise that somehow was woven together into an entertaining comedy but it also hit people by surprise since writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze were such unknowns (though Jonze had made a name for himself in commercials). It was as extraordinary debut for both talents.
Did it love up to the hype? Yeah, yeah and ye, which is to say I watched it two and a half times. The three central characters are wonderfully formed comic creations (Cameron Diaz has never been less sexy and Catherine Keener has never been more sexy, which is to say quite a bit of character work), the film's world building is so strong that its mythology (I.e. how did Merkin guide Malkovich's parents? what happens to the kid? etc) can be debated for pages and pages, and it packs a lot of humor and sentiment into one of the most avant-garde comedy premises ever seen in a mainstream ilm.

Credit: UWMBored.com

The Princess Bride (1987)
(Note: I did see when I was 11, still a very very long time ago)
Overview: The film is a classic because it is an archetypical fairy tale that was likely THE fairy tale for an entire generation of kids who grew up in the '80s. It likely wasn't just the kids who grew up remembering the film but the parents too as it is layered with an air of wit and irony that many people of all ages can appreciate. On top of that, many of its lines and scenes are iconic parts of movie history at this point.
Did it live up to the hype? I was quite pleased. Because I wasn't dying to check out 1984-1985 when SNL came out on Netflix (only to be later pulled) and I have never seen Soap, this is the only time I ever found Billy Crystal funny in an original way (most of his stuff seems to repeat the same shtick), but the cast is well-placed with every role. The mix of dry irony and humor became much more apparent. Westley wasn't so much a star-struck lover or a passionate warrior as he was a pragmatic and logical guy who seemed genuinely surprised by his fate (becoming the deadliest pirate on the high seas) which made him pretty amusing with a role that's hard to do much with. The swashbuckling scene, which the actors apparently rehearsed for several months--and used a fencing instructor who personally worked with Errol Flynn-- is pretty disappointing when you know all that.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Overview: One of the best-made films of the 1970s and one that best encapsulated the counter-culture spirit retold the tale of a headline-generating bank robbery with the robbers as the most sympathetic parts of the stories, it's a high-water mark of Al Pacino and Sidney Lumet's careers.
Did it live up to the hype: Definitely a good movie but the level of hype for this one is pretty high. For me, it felt like it was trying too hard to Citizen Kane the character by peeling back layers of his past (first the female wife, then the male spouse, then the mother) through various encounters but didn't give them enough time, and like Prince in the City, too many cops and FBI men were cast on the outside. It was a sensational acting performance, however, and there was a very strong sense of tension. It also was an interesting inverse in terms of audience loyalties (although I do believe more bank heist movies lead us to empahize with the robbers over the cops)

East of Eden (1955)
Overview: Elia Kazan's epic film attempts a biblical allegory with depression-era California. How much more ambitious can you get than that? It was made a year after Kazan's landmark film "On the Waterfront" and is possibly the best film of the year it was released (1955 was a somewhat weak year) so it represents quite a hot streak. It was also one of only three films James Dean made before dying at the age of 24 causing him to be a legend since all three films have survived the test of time (all three made AFI's top 100 movies list in 1997).
Did it live up to the hype? It was a little different than I expected but it also lives up to the hype. The film is rich with the kind of symbolism that English lit student can revel in and debate. It also has a wonderful sense of towns and the dichotomy between blue collar agricultural work and urban vice is not only thematically interesting but historically accurate of the settlement of American West where many a state line has been drawn to warden off more salt-of-the-earth laborers from the mining communities and bordellos). The characters lean towards archetypical/allegorical over realism but I'd be hard-pressed to dismiss anything here as melodramatic,


The Shining (1980)
Overview: Stanley Kubrick has had a cult loving every one of his films since I first started logging into the internet in the late 90s and all of his films were on the top 250 on IMDB. The Shining is a landmark horror film and the first use of steadycam work. It's also considered one of the most famous adaptations of legendary author Steven King.
Did it live up to the hype? I saw Ready Player One earlier this year so i saw some scenes of it, and there are all sorts of references to it everywhere (like this mock video of Lorde's Royals)
so I had a lot to work with.

I thought the idea of setting a horror film in a hotel was a great idea because hotels are such creepy places are already and the film plays off that idea pretty well. The film overdoes the musical score to the point of distraction. If you're not hooked, the film's slow moments can pile on as well. For me, it wasn't until second viewing that I really felt entranced enough by the deep well of symbolism. And who isn't a sucker for highly ambiguous endings? 

Bedazzled and Marathon Man Reviews

Bedazzled
This 1967 Stanley Donen comedy pulls off the feat of centering around a truly miserable character without ever feeling like a downer of a film. Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore) is a lonely short-order cook with a crush on a waitress at his diner who he's too shy to approach. The devil (or at least some vague devil incarnate) comes along, introduces himself (his name's George and he's played by Peter Cook) and grants him seven wishes in exchange for his soul.



Stanley promptly uses up one wish after another on Margaret and, because the devil is a trickster who can't be taken at face value, they all backfire. That's OK because Bedazzled isn't really a love story. Instead it's a meandering meditation of love, death, good and evil, and religious dogma that's imbued with an absurdist wry humor that only British comedy can do. In other words, the film feels a little aimless but that's part of the charm: Delving too deeply into romantic comedy territory would make the film feel hackneyed while delving entirely into religious politics would make the film feel preachy.



Marathon Man
Marathon Man is a Dustin Hoffman vehicle that stands as one of the best-known thrillers of the 1970's. Fitting into 1970's conventions to minimize on back story and to emphasize action (Brad Pitt, Bennett Miller, Ben Affleck, and George Clooney were all attracted to this style when they made Moneyball, Argo and Good Night and Good Luck respectively), the film is centered around the evolution of a relatively complex character but is primarily action-driven.
 
That relatively complex character is graduate student Thomas "Babe" Levy (Hoffman) whose remains haunted by his father's persecution and subsequent suicide as a result of the Red Scare. Seeking to enter into the same field of study as his father, Levy hopes to exonerate his father's work. The title of the film derives from the fact that "Babe" is a long-distance runner but if you assume that this is the "Prefontaine" or "Chariots of Fire" of the 1970's, be warned that this is not a running movie at all and a suspiciously minor plot point. The running scenes are reminiscent of the way French New Wave films juxtapose motifs (I'm thinking specifically of Breathless where the guy is shown looking at a picture and smoking a cigarette like the matinee idol he's trying to emulate) as an avant-garde way of providing characterization.



In the film's first hour, there's a twin narrative occurring alongside a love story between Babe and a fellow grad student that turns out to be nothing more than a red herring. In the other story, Roy Scheider plays "Doc" who turns out to be Babe's brother (apparently, the Levy clan had terrible taste in nicknames) and he's tracking an ex-Nazi dentist played by Laurence Olivier. Olivier's role and the presence he brings to that role (it was the final of his 10 Oscar nominations) provide the film with its most memorable moments. People might not know the plot details of Marathon Man but many are familiar with the dentist's torture scene as well as his "is it safe?" monologue.



Similarly, that's how I felt about the film: I'll remember the film's overall tone (very dark for a Dustin Hoffman film) and a handful of moments such as Olivier's torture scene, the sewer scene, the drag race, and the reveal that Doc is Babe's brother (Scheider's character is a very enigmatic figure and his involvement in the story goes without an explanation for what I'm guessing is an hour). The plot is highly dense and takes a couple of viewings to really grasp and even then there's a feeling of discomfort of blanks left unfilled. You might call them plot holes (i.e. how exactly did a traffic hold-up turn into a drag race filled with murderous rage and what are the odds that a tanker would be there?) but it seems like a certain story convention that's seemingly being emulated by the biggest names in Hollywood today. I felt a similar disconnect from The French Connection which is another film of great praise that I seem to be in the minority on.



Rather than end this review with a conclusive statement on what was wrong or right about the film, I'll ask other people who have seen it to explain the film's appeal.

The Artist comes to Netflix!: Notes from my rewatch

-George Valentine/Jean DuJardin has quite a smile. He tells Peppy that she needs to have some physical feature that sets her apart, and where would DuJardin be without his smile? I still think he nailed the performance, but the smile is really an attention grabber. On second viewing, I wasn't sure if he was smiling at times or if he was just laughing. If it's the latter, then he's less of a charming man and more of a Tom Cruise-like a-hole who turned people off (after a couple decades of being the biggest star on Earth) with his smirk. For instance, in the first encounter with Peppy Miller, where she accidentally gets past the security rope, is he laughing at her or with her? The power of DuJardin's epic smile is also used to diffuse a couple tense situations that are really nicely orchestrated. If the film is thematically a celebration of the art, then the power of laughter (comedic art) to diffuse an otherwise tense moment fits in with that theme

-Speaking of the film's theme being a celebration of art, 4 of the past 6 Best Picture Oscar winners have had thematic elements that deal with art and performance to some degree. In addition to King's Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, King's Speech, and Argo, the protagonist's successfully rests on putting on a show. Some might say that Hollywood is narrow-minded and only likes saluting itself, but none of the best picture films from 2003-2007 or 1995-1999 along with 2001 had that theme and in the cases of Gladiator or Slumdog Millionaire (and even Kings Speech), the films aren't necessarily celebrating art, but more commenting on the nature of media to manipulate people and those are not really the primary themes of those films.

-Who exactly is George Valentine modeled after? His love of laughter might suggest a silent film star like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Chaplin successfully resisted sound movies for several years after 1927. Two of his three most famous films were made after the Sound era with City Lights coming out in 1931 and Modern Times in 1936. Modern Time had a little snippet of sound here and there and ended with Chaplin singing right at the end just like how we first hear Valentine's voice at the end. So there are those definite parallels. It looks like Valentine is a comic star based on how he makes the crowd laugh at his movie debut and performs dog tricks but it also doesn't look like he's completely slapstick like Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy. The film within the film "A German Affair" contains hints of a dramatic storyline. When he strikes out on his own, he does a swashbuckling adventure and a safari film which resembles Douglas Fairbanks who did make one of the most seminal Three Musketeers film adaptations. Like Valentine, Fairbanks got considerably more freedom and directed and produced his pictures after co-founding United Artists.
Then again, he's dancing at the end and he's a little bit stubborn with his artistic vision which parallels notorious workaholic and control freak Gene Kelley (or perhaps the Singing in the Rain version of Gene Kelly from 1952 which borrowed heavily from his persona). Lastly, since he's French, he could be modelled after Charles Boyer who got nominated for an astounding four Oscars (a pretty high number for a guy I've never heard of until ten minutes ago, not that I'm the expert)

-Isn't it funny that George's wife is played by Penelope Anne Miller and Bernice Bejo's character's name is Peppy Miller. What are the odds of that?

-I've never been a humongous fan of George Cromwell as characters go but he's excellent in here and I wouldn't have minded seeing him getting nominated for the film. I was also reminded that Malcolm McDowell should get nominated one of these days.

-Was the film great because it was able to capture our attention and entertain us despite the limitation of having virtually no sound or was it a good film because it didn't have sound? I would argue a little for the latter. I think the lack of sound pointed us modern viewers toward elements that we're not used to paying attention to. From personal experience, my first film class focused a lot on mise-en-scene and pausing movies and looking closely at details. I used to try to read films that way but eventually veered away from focusing on the finer visual details of the film. This film was visually rich and subtle and the silent nature of the film bought me closer to appreciating those clues. I don't think that's a small achievement.


-The Artist Studio was filmed in the famous Bradbury building which was also the location for Blade Runner. 500 Days of Summer, Chinatown, and other movies.

-I like the fact that the relationship between Peppy and George was never technically romantic. It was a good change of pace from the usual relationship we see on screen between the leading man and lady. I thought that Peppy's gradual arc from devoted fan to star to savior was one of the strongest things about the movie and Bejo was wonderful at it. At the same time, you can kind of see Bejo's character in the movie's first couple acts as a less amoral version of Anne Baxter's Eve in All About Eve who turned on her idol. I think the most unnoticed, least discussed moment in the movie that I found creepy when she was embracing George's jacket and dancing with it.

Inherit the Wind and Kramer's preachiness

The two best courtroom dramas I've seen- Judgment at Nuremberg and Inherit the Wind- were directed by the same man, Stanley Kramer, and were released one year apart.

Having just seen Wind today, I've now seen six Stanley Kramer films: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Defiant Ones, Ship of Fools, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (the only one of his film to make it to  AFI's Top 100 at #99) in addition to the above-two mentioned films. 

With the exception of the decent-but-lackluster Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, I highly recommend all the other films, and think they have all held up well. Defiant Ones is better remembered than any other Sidney Poitier film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has been the template for all-star comedies, Inherit the Wind (along with the 1955 play) is the reason people still know about the Scopes trial today, and I've heard a Ship of Fools theory referenced in my film history courses.

All of his films are social message pictures. Even It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a comedy, can be easily read as a morality tale about the all-encompassing power of greed. For some reason I'm not too sure of, Kramer isn't a particularly well-respected director and I've even heard some backlash against him. Perhaps, his films are too preachy?

What's ironic about Inherit the Wind is that it's preachiest elements are taken from real life. The actual 1925 Scopes Trial was somewhat of a publicity stunt. The teacher, John Scopes (renamed Cates for legal purposes), was in cahoots with the prosecution the whole time, to boost publicity for the town by putting Scopes on trial:

According to this site from the University of Missouri Kansas City:

"The Scopes Trial had its origins in a conspiracy at Fred Robinson's drugstore in Dayton. George Rappalyea, a 31-year-old transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil Liberties Union announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Rappalyea, a modernist Methodist with contempt for the new law, argued to other town leaders that a trial would be a way of putting Dayton on the map....The conspirators summoned John Scopes, a twenty-four-year old general science teacher and part-time football coach, to the drugstore....Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute."

It was after all this that stalwarts William Jennings Bryan (renamed Matthew Harrison Brady) and Clarence Darrow (renamed Henry Drummond) offered their services to the trial and made it more and more outrageous. The most cringeworthy moment, for example, when Drummond tried to disprove the bible by putting Brady on the stand, actually happened. This changes my whole view of the film: What I originally viewed as a blatant attempt to make a school teacher's trial as an excuse to espouse on the absurdity of the bible, I now see a historical recreation of what became an absurdist spectacle in and of itself.  

Similarly, Bryan/Brady seems painted as a straw man, but he appears to have been just as extreme in real life and insisted on reading his speech despite the fact that the trial was over. 

If anything, I found the film morally more ambiguous once I knew the real-life story. The past friendship between the two adversaries (the movie added the fabrication that they used to be professional colleagues) and the positioning of Brady as less extreme than the Reverend Brown is somewhat complimentary to the legacy of William Jennings Bryan.

I still think, to some degree, Inherit the Wind has somewhat of a bias against the Bible Belt, but it also works as an effective framing device because history has also rendered its own verdict about the validity of evolution (although, there are some small pockets still holding that debate today) so we're watching two different trials as the audience and two different sources of anticipation: 1) who will win the actual trial at steak and 2) who will look less embarrassing to our 21st century sensibilities. 

Of course, the closing scene in which Gene Kelley's cynical reporter Hornbeck and Drummond go at each other's necks only confirms that Kramer didn't want us to relate to any one character as the author avatar. Hornbeck, a charming storyteller played by a debonair matinee idol cast against type, would seem to be the best fit until he's torn into pieces by Drummond. 

At the same time, the closing scene was the one that felt the most false to me, because I never thought that Hornbeck deserved to be made out as the soulless villain. It might just be the fact that I'm a reporter and idolize them, but I do think that uncovering the truth behind false facades is a truth worth standing for and he was championing the rights of Cates. It should also be noted that the person who Hornbeck was based on Baltimore Sun reporter H.L. Menken who was a very warm and beloved figure.

Overall, I think pretty highly of the film. It's cluttered up with a number of characters and storylines, I wish the Reverend Brown-Rachel storyline got more attention, for example. The film clocks in at 2 hours and 7 minutes and ten minutes before the end, I was actually hoping that we'd see a whole second trial. In that sense, this is the mark of a good film: I can't complain about a 127-minute film if I wanted to watch another hour.

In the larger scheme of Kramer's filmography, Kramer's films don't conceal that they have a social slant but they're complex and thought-provoking. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner doesn't really have an easy answer and Judgment at Nuremberg isn't about defeating Naziism but rather the aftermath. The defense for the Nazi judges is portrayed in a respectful enough light that Maximilian Schell won an Oscar for Best Actor.

The Palm Beach Story

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The Palm Beach Story is one of the first classic films I saw that I wasn't so crazy about. I decided to give the film another chance today:



The gist of the film:

The film stars Claudette Colbert as Geraldine and Joel McCrea as husband Tom. Tom is struggling financially as an inventor. Thinking outside of the box, Geraldine decides that since she's a poor housewife anyways, the best way she can help her husband is to divorce him, date wealthy men, and get them to invest in his dream project. Like most of the audience, he thinks this is ridiculous, but she still runs away from him without any money. Being a good looking woman in despair, she seems to make her way. First, the members of the "ale and quail" club agree to sponsor her train ride out of a sense of camaraderie and charity.

"Ale and quail," as you can guess, means they're a group of guys who enjoy getting drunk and firing guns and aren't self-controlled enough to wait until they reach their destination. Segue to the funniest scene in the movie (although, it's somewhat of a weakness that it comes in the middle and has little to do with the actual plot).

Scared to death, Geraldine escapes to another part of the train where a man (Rudy Vallee) lets her sleep in the upper birth which sets up the second act. It turns out that he's super-wealthy, the perfect gentleman and highly single. In the meantime, the husband is given funding by a character known as the weenie king (he is one of the highlights of the movie) to track her down, and they all get embroiled in a love triangle further complicated by the arrival of the millionaire's aggressively single sister (Mary Astor).

Let's get the feminist commentary out of the way:
In any universe other than a screwball comedy from Hollywood's Golden Age, Geraldine would either be a dishonest whore who robs rich men of their money for her boyfriend, or simply a dissatisfied wife leaving her husband. Instead, the entire plot rests upon us accepting the premise that this woman is too naive to understand her plan fully. Nearly every advance Geraldine makes is through the efforts of some man who found her attractive.

While this all seems awful on paper, it's through Claudette Colbert's convincing portrayal of an independent and determined woman that this isn't as bad as it sounds.
She comes across as Mary Tyler Moore trapped in an era where woman had no rights. It certainly makes for intersting gender commentary.

Suffice it to say, there's a lot to discuss here. This film would give a women's studies major enough material for a semester's worth of term papers.

My take:
I still wouldn't consider this a great, classic film, although the whole look into gender politics was kind of interesting. The film is a bit short and some of the best scenes feel rushed or misplaced. It starts picking up as a great comedy of errors with misplaced identities in the third act but we don't see much of that at all. The moments where things are really firing on all cyllinders take up about 15 minutes of the film. Without saying how it ends, the ending is also kind of lazy and dissatisfying.

Another Old Film Review: Paper Chase (1973)

In keeping with my fascination of Oscar-winning performances, I just finished watching a screening of The Paper Chase (1973) for which John Houseman (the guy on the left, more on him below)* won a Supporting Actor Oscar.

I also feel like I'm hitting a good niche with my film reviews by covering films from before the 1990's that aren't classics but aren't exactly forgotten either. After all, what use is reviewing the Godfather or Apocalypse Now as if that hasn't been seen or reviewed already?

On to the review:
"The Paper Chase" stars Timothy Bottoms** as a first-year student entering the demanding world of Harvard School of Law who develops two primary relationships: The first is an off-again on-again romance. The second is a relationship of fear and reverence for a stodgy law professor whose rigidity and toughness are the stuff of legend. The twist is supposedly that the girlfriend turns out to be the professor's daughter and I was wary of how the film might devolve into some kind of triangular comedy (or melodrama, take your pick) of errors a la "Three's Company", but the romantic plot (or at least the tension) quickly dissipates into the main plot which is essentially the life of a student in an intensely competitive environment as he prepares for the challenge of his life.

In a sense, the professor also becomes secondary to the main plot as the protagonist slowly backs away from seeing the no-nonsense professor as his enemy and realizes the only person standing between him and success is himself (in no way, is that presented in as cliche a manner as I'm describing it here). Within the professor-student relationship, the film reminds me of other anti-establishment films from around the period like "The Graduate" or "Shampoo" where the protagonist must resist the influence of some towering figure from the older generation and decide where his own morals lie.

One thing I can definitely say about this film is that I've never seen a film that infuses academics with such adrenaline. The desparation to make a good impression on the professor or to not be called on and have the wrong answer in class, for example.

Nearly a third of the scenes involve the students in their study group. The politics of study groups have never seemed so interesting (And no, "Community" does not come close) as the students start questioning whether the others are pulling their weight or mutually panicking in the face of some new obstacle. The film's emotional resonance also comes from the bonds formed within the study group as the characters go through battle together. There's the equivalent of the fallen comrade in the form of a married study group member whose life starts to degrade as the semester wears down on him. There's another friend of the protagonist who embarks with him to a hotel for a do-or-die cram session in which the two are so focused on their studying that they draw the ire of the hotel staff and practically go mad in response.

In short, it's a very satisfying film that moves at its own pace.


*John Houseman is a ridiculously fascinating guy. Born in 1902, his acting career can best be described as his third greatest contribution to the arts. His greatest career was producing stage plays on Broadway beginning in 1929 as as means of surviving the Stock Market Crash. It was in 1934 that he became "obsessed" (wikipedia's words, not mine) with the idea that a 20-year old actor from a play at Cornell University (I believe that's what's meant by a Cornell production) would be the only person qualified to play the lead of his latest play. That 20-year old was Orson Welles and the two became collaborators. Houseman also produced the radio play "War of the Worlds" that scared the shit out of New Jersey when people thought it was real.

Ironically, whereas Citizen Kane marked the birth of many careers (Rob Wise, director of West Side Story and Sound of Music, edited the film; Agnes Moorehead went on to play Samantha's mom on Bewitched and earn 4 Oscar nominations; Greg Toland was the preeminent cinematographer of his day, etc.), it ended the collaboration of Welles and Houseman. It was mostly the controversy over who wrote the play with Houseman taking the side of Herman Mankewicz. Judging by a quote in his memoir, it seems Houseman wrote more of the script than Welles.

As for his second greatest contribution to the arts, Houseman was a professor at Julliard for acting where he taught Kevin Kline, Christopher Reeves and Robin Williams. He even formed a theater troupe out of his first class of graduates because he didn't want to see them be disbanded. He also advised Robin to follow comedy.

He wasn't really serious about acting himself until he filled in the role of the professor in this film after James Mason backed out. After winning the Academy Award, he got roles in a lot of other films and found a third act to life by taking on a lot of other roles. His last was a comic role in Naked Gun before dying in 1988.


Want to learn more about interesting Oscar winners?
Check out this article of mine on interesting supporting actress winners


**Don't fear if that name sounds unfamiliar. I've never heard of him either, although apparently he's had a long acting career and doesn't look like a character from the "70's Show" anymore

The "Pinky" Controversy and Race Theory

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I've read a couple books (Reel to Real by Bell Hooks and Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies and Bucks by Donald Bogle) that examine movies from an African-American perspective and they spend the book finding a reason to criticize every single movie and be critical of absolutely everything.

According to one book, Whoopi Goldberg did a lot for the image of black people by showing strong empowered characters on screen, but oh no, she was usually not romantically paired with anyone in films, which sends the message that empowered African-Americans can't find love. The other book doesn't take exception to whether Goldberg's characters were paired romantically, but said the opposite of the first: Whoopi Goldberg bowed to white expectations by infusing too much colloquial dialogue into her films. And I kid you not: another book says that the dance scene between Goldberg and Demi Moore being switched for Patrick Swayzee in "Ghost" was a crack at how uncomfortable whites are at depicting blacks in lesbian relationships.

I absolutely applaud looking at films from a racially critical perspective, but a lot of these African-American critics are so damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't with anything, that why even try to make a racially conscious film if you're not Spike Lee?

I look at this great Elia Kazan film I just recently watched from a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't perspective. The film features the trials and tribulations of a light-skinned half-black woman (known as Patricia in the North and Pinky back home) as she goes back to her only surviving relative (her black grandmother) after graduating from nursing school in the North.

Complaints about the movie center around the fact that Pinky is played by an entirely white woman and that the filmmakers were too cowardly to cast a woman of color.

I choose to applaud the fact that the film was more progressive than films of its era.
By Jeannie Crain playing the part of the white character, it helped make the film marketable to white audiences. White people would see the film because Jeannie Crain was starring in it and the message would be spread to them whether they liked it or not. There were plenty of films showing black people being abused and they never reached mainstream white America, and I think the subset of the population that would have been enlightened by seeing the film, is also the same subset of the population that wouldn't bother seeing the film if it just starred Ethel Walters and Lena Horne. Why go through all that expense to make a socially conscious film if you're just preaching to the choir?


I also think seeing Jeannie Crain as a black person really drives the point home about how inane racism is. As Julian Bond, NAACP president once said race is a political construct, you often have more in common with someone of a different race genetically than you do of someone in your own race. I've already seen movies of black people being abused, but I've never seen a film of a person of Jeannie Crain's color being abused like a black person.

I admit, I wish they put her in a tanning salon or made some effort to make her a little bit darker, but there are probably some half-black people of her level of pigmentation out there. Putting in an actual mulatto woman who wasn't as famous as Jeannie Crain and couldn't draw in as many people would have been counter-productive, don't you think?

Passage to India Review

David Lean’s films are epics, which I would define as at least a half hour longer than they need to be. The plot and storyline meanders but if it’s a good plot, you’re in for a grand adventure. It’s like National Geographic meets Shakespeare. The films tell dramatic stories while taking you on a journey to an exotic place, whether it’s the deserts of Arabia, the jungles of Southeast Asia, or the frigid winters of Russia on the eve of revolution.

In this case of “A Passage to India,” it’s a story about the grandeur of India (circa 1928) and the racial prejudice, national loyalty and sexual repression that lurks underneath. At the start of the film, the plot centers on the bonding between the fiancée and the mother (known only as Mrs. Moore) of a stuffy colonial magistrate as they form similar anti-establishment attitudes. They both want to “see the real India” and they don’t approve of the insular attitudes of the whites towards the natives. A college professor is sympathetic to their cause and arranges a luncheon with an Indian colleague (Alec Guinness in brown face) of his as well as a local doctor. The doctor proposes they go on a trip to the caves where trouble happens. The doctor and the betrothed Mrs. Quested get separated from the group where something happens in the cave (we’re not shown what) and the doctor is accused of rape.

The interesting thing about Lean’s films are that they’re too big for any one character. By the third act, the film isn’t even really about Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Quested, or the stuffy magistrate but rather the bonds of trust between the doctor and the college professor trying to see that justice is served to him.



The “what happened in the cave” mystery is one of those “Was the top spinning or not?” moments that makes the audience engage with the material and ask questions. It points the way to some complex symbolism (I’ve gotten a whole new appreciation for the film after seeing explanations from various message boards) and shows the film really has a lot to say and wonderfully subtle ways of expressing them.

If I can level one criticism, there were characters in the film who were boorish and apathetic to the British-Indian inequality and a very few liberal-minded people and almost nothing in between. If Mrs. Moore had the ability to look at the situation and see this is wrong, why was her own son (you'd think they'd share some of the same values) so distanced from that viewpoint that he couldn't even fathom it? If Fielding had a rational awareness of racism, he seemed to be the only one in the club. When society got progressive enough to realize slavery was wrong, even the ones who owned slaves could fathom the other side's argument. It felt like in this film, Fielding and his two friends were just living amongst zombies.

Shadow of a Doubt review

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Here's a review of a Hitchcock film "Shadow of a Doubt" and how it's a product of its era:
So many Hitchcock films are great in their own right, that a lot of the films beyond “Birds,” “Psycho,” “North by Northwest,” “Rear Window,” “Rebecca” (only because it won Best Picture) and “Vertigo” easily get lost in the shuffle.

Shadow of a Doubt is another uniquely great film of Hitchcock that is definitely worth watching. It made a strong impression on me as a child and I only recently rediscovered it. The film features Joseph Cotton (primarily known for appearing alongside Orson Welles in “Third Man” and “Citizen Kane”) and Teresa Wright.

Cotton plays a serial killer by the name of Charlie with a need to lay low, so he crashes with his sister and her family for a while. His sister’s oldest child (Wright) is also named Charlie and feels a special connection to her uncle because she’s named after him and she’s also just plain bored with her parents. Like those Disney heroines who sing about how they can’t fully blossom into adulthoods under the boring old status quo, she philosophically muses about how her parents just don’t get life in a somewhat meandering monologue that’s obviously designed solely to justify her later attachment to Charlie. He would be the Prince Charming if we go with the Disney analogy and if that sounds kind of creepy because he’s they’re related, it sort of is. Relative to the usual levels of Freudian undertones you find in Hitchkock, the pairing can safely be read as just an innocent relationship between a girl and her favorite uncle.

In fact, I’d call this Hitchkock’s most innocent film in some ways. The film was released in 1943. This was right around the time that American cinema was being heavily encouraged to produce homespun American films (i.e. Mrs. Miniver, Going My Way, Meet me in St. Louis) to encourage the nation why America was so special and worth fighting for. I really see similarities here. I think it was Judy Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft who said on one of the AFI specials that “Meet me in St Louis” is such a great film because you just want to live there. I felt the exact same way about this film. The Newton household (and the town of Santa Rosa, for that matter) is a very charming and attractive place even though there’s a serial killer living in it. It helps put you at ease that he’s not really actively killing people while staying there. The signs of malice in Charlie don’t really manifest themselves into anything dangerously until well over halfway through the film which gives Hitchcock plenty of time to spend in a dreamy Vincente-Minelli-like world where we witness young Charlie meet her young friends in the park or the family engaging in the kind of dinners together that might have even been rare back then.

It’s a great film because this makes it all the more jarring when Cotton’s Uncle Charlie finally unleashes some of his murderous proclivities at the sweet, innocent niece. The drama creeps up on you but it’s a doozy.

Film Review: Johnny Belinda

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Johnny Belinda (1948):

Thiz film is the tale of an ostracized deaf girl, Belinda (Jane Wyman), in a remote corner of the world who finds hope through a caring doctor. The good doctor (Lew Ayres) is new in town and despite the her father’s inability to pay (living with his sister, he’s one of the poorer residents of the town), he teaches her sign language.

It’s an uplifting and engaging story, but it does take some surprisingly dark turns for a movie from 1948. For instance, Belinda gets raped and impregnated. I would have expected slightly more repercussions over the rape thing. It’s the kind of non-derivative plot point I admire that after Belinda is raped, the doctor convinces the dad not to direct his energy towards anger at the mystery perpetrator but rather towards comforting the daughter and it shows how strong Belinda is that she’s never let herself get caught up in victimhood too much. Still, the film rushed things a little too fast when Belinda’s emotional trauma from the incident seems to be cured over the course of a single conversation and a suggestion by the doctor that they go into town. It also seemed like a very plausible and worthwhile idea to go after the rapist. Although he eventually got his, it was a little disconcerting that the villain
went unpunished for so long in the movie.



The strength of the film is in the relationships between Belinda, her aunt, her dad and the doctor. Although the young woman develops closer bonds with her father (Charles Bickford) and Aunt (Agnes Moorehead) through her maturation, it’s really about the relationship between the young woman and the doctor (Lew Ayres) if we’re going by who gets top billing in the opening credits. Their relationship definitely straddles the line between platonic and romantic love. In the middle of the film, the doctor suggests to the dad he marry the daughter to save her the shame of being a single mother, but the dad says that it’s no use if he doesn’t love her. It doesn’t seem that particularly evident that he’s later willing to marry her except for economic necessity (there’s one sort of half-kiss between them) and, ironically, that doesn’t take anything away from the film’s storybook ending.

Jane Wyman won a well-deserved Oscar for the film as Belinda even though she didn’t speak a word on screen. She’s the first husband of Ronald Regan and their marriage was being strained at the time because both of their acting careers had plateaued. Wyman’s marriage was already through by the time she won the Oscar, but winning did give her plenty of consolation after a reportedly rough year. Also, Agnes Moorehead slept with JFK (and famously spilt the beans that he wasn’t a good lover) which means two actresses in this film had sex with presidents. Bit of trivia for you.

One other thing that strikes me about this film is that it’s set in Nova Scotia, Canada, but it seems like some of the actors and actresses weren’t informed of this, because they’re talking in Irish accents.

Being familiar with old music vs. old movies

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Also, great articles can be found here so please click (which gives me my revenue):
[url]http://www.examiner.com/x-3877-dc-film-industry-examiner[/url]

The article is by Paul Shirley. If no one knows who he is, he spent the last 6 or 7 years on 15 different professional basketball temas ranging from defunct minor league basketball teams in Bismark, North Dakota and Idaho to Siberia, Greece, and 3 or 4 s...tints on professional basketball teams as the 12th man where he's scored a total of 37 pointsin his entire career. he started blogging from the bench out of boredom about 4 years ago and became an instant internet sensation and has his own best-selling book about being on the fringes of fame. anyway, that's a long intro and he's not talking about basketball, but check out paul shirley sometime for some interesting reading.

In the above-mentioned article he talks about music (he's been writing about that a lot lately) and makes the case that the Beatles can't possibly be experienced by today's generation the same way as it was for people who grew up during that time, simply because we didn't experience it historically. He says that therefore: "I understand that The Beatles are culturally significant and important in the historical progression of rock music. And I understand that they're talented. But unless you were locked in a time capsule like Brendan Fraser in "Blast From the Past," they cannot be your favorite band. If you're younger than 50 and you do make such a claim, you're either (A) trying to impress someone with what you think will be received as good taste, or (B) woefully behind in your consumption of music. If it's A, I'm disappointed in you. If it's B, there's hope -- we only have to help you find the good stuff"

I think this is absolutely true. One example that comes to mind is that a lot of people in the 7th grade went through a sudden Beatles phase because the "cool kids" liked the Beatles and 7th grade is a most contagious time for peer pressure. I think with music, it is culturally unacceptable to be unfamiliar with a number of bands that have been around since before we were born. I didn't know who Niel Young was once when I was about 20 and people found that very strange. A couple years later I got blank stares from my friends when I expressed to them as we came across the Val Kilmer biobic "The Doors" on TV, that I had no idea who that band was. In the meantime, I am moderately sure I have never listened to anything by the Rolling Stones, if only by accident and I know only a handful of songs by Bob Dylan, mostly through the TV or music soundtracks they have appeared on. In the meantime, my head is full with bands that are currently on the radio.

At the same time, I think with movies it's the exact opposite. There's absolutely no shame in not seeing any film before 1970 and most people are very loosely familiar with films before 1960. I wonder why that is.

Melvin and Howard (1980) Review

The actual story the film is based on: In 1968, four years before reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died, he was reported to have had an encounter with a good-natured blue collar worker, Howard Dummar. Dummar picked up Hughes when he was stranded on the side of a Las Vegas road and gave him a ride to Las Vegas. When Hughes died,he bequeathed money to Dummar as a reward for his good deed. Unfortunately, Hughes' estate and the Nevada courts found Hughes' story too unbelievable to be true and Dummar never got the money.

The movie itself is well-intentioned and it truly has interesting characters. An actor I've never heard of before in my life, Paul Le Mat, plays Dumar with an innocent "aw shucks" attitude that endears him to the audience and strengthens our opinion of him as the rightful heir. He lets himself get easily seduced by an older female customer when he's delivering milk and when the woman who turns out to be his second wife makes suggestive innuendo at him, he says in a flabbergasted tone "Bonnie, aren't you a Mormon girl?"

His first wife Linda, who was the focus of my attention on this film based on the fact that the only thing I knew about the film was that it was Mary Steenburgen's Academy-award winning role, was also an interesting character: underneath the guise of her provocative clothing and desire to be a dancer (be it exotic or tap), she's equally innocent and oblivious to the world around her.

Except for the one scene in which Bonnie seduces Howard, she's woefully underdeveloped and there's very little reason to be happy to see her and Howard at the end of the film together. The film wants us to feel that the tragedy that is hitting Howard is hitting Bonnie' as well, since she's his wife. Because of the way marriages were coming and going in Howard's life and the initial chemistry between Linda and Howard, I was kind of hoping that Bonnie was just a temporary road stop en route back to Linda. Never mind that in REAL LIFE, Howard and Linda didn't get back together, the story never made me see Bonnie as anything more than some impulsive farmgirl in need of a man. The chemistry or story arc between the two needed to be strengthened up front.

Another woefully underdeveloped relationship was that between Melvin and Howard which is what someone might get the impression the film is about, considering it's the title of the film. The story, or the most interesting part of it, was all about Melvin's inheritance of Howard's money, and that only came back in the last 20 minutes of the film as a sort of epilogue to the story of Melvin's unsuccessful marriage to Linda. Some reviews said that the story was about the myth American dream of the American dream unearthed as Melvin's story was a backwards version of Howard's story. To me, however, it seemed like there needed to be at least some allusion to Howard Hughes- a reminder that he was in the story in any capacity at all - between the first ten minutes and the last twenty.

While I understand the film is a classic, to me, the film never really knew what it was about: A man's failed on-again off-again marriage, an almost complete portrait of a man who would go on to become a footnote in history, or the story of a man's controversial claim to inheritance.

Critical Temperature of films and The Dark Knight....

It's amusing to watch how the response and enthusiasm Dark Knight has shaped since the film's release. Part of these proclamations that this film suddenly deserves a place next to the best films of all time and can even rival Citizen Kane might have to do with where we are in terms of Web 2.0 and the state of film criticism.

Many moviegoers have long been aware of the massive expanse of film history. Ten years ago, the thought that for approximately 100 years, masterpieces have been coming out and the average moviegoer hasn't even seen or heard of a great number of them, prevented the moviegoer from thinking that that amazing picture he just saw must have been the greatest film of all time or close to it. When a film comes out that people think is great, they are generally aware that as great as this film was, the odds are that a number of films they haven't seen were better, simply because there are so many.

The increase of film retrospectives (the AFI 100, for example) and distinguished film historians, successfully solidified that amorphous category of "great films from the old days that i haven't seen" into a concrete, slightly flexible block of films with names and faces like Rebel Without a Cause, On the Waterfront, Graduate, Citizen Kane, All About Eve, etc. which continue to be solidified by subsequent "Greatest Films Ever" lists produced by every major publication (Entertainment Weekly, Time Out, Guinness, Premiere, Rolling Stone) that deals remotely with films that echoes the original choices.

At the same time, this community of people doing the film retrospectives and putting in the thought about what the great films are has become far more interactive. In the past five years there has been a major growth of people with film blogs, registrations on websites like imdb.com and flicker. This might be why there is some sort of shift and enthusiasm to challenging the notion that a recent film is better than all the classics, because as one of the people proclaiming its praises, you are taking some small degree of ownership over that film. I think the Dark Knight's brief appearance on top of the imdb.com's 250 and it's potential chances to knock off Titanic (the last time this sort of phenomenon happened) at the box office, alerted the film community that they could seize this film and proclaim their own "Citizen Kane."

The truth, however, aside from whether the film is Citizen Kane is not (it is not because it doesn't really revolutionize the way filming is done unless you count shooting it in IMAX or the marketing, which is coincidentally what all the people who are proclaiming it so great are slightly influenced by) is it's, by definition, impossible to tell if a film is worthy of being a classic until years down the road. That's why The Searchers, Hitchkock's best work, Citizen Kane, Nashville, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Raging Bull all failed at the Oscars: because their historical value wasn't apparent at the time, and why would it have been?

To people watching Citizen Kane at the time, the way it's cinematography and story telling methods would be used later by so many other film makers would not have been known in 1941.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

From 1963, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes place over the course of a particularly eventful day along the highways of Southern California, where a group of strangers comes across a man's dying confession that a large sum of money is hidden in Santa Rosita, California. The group of four or five different cars and about a dozen people can't agree as to how they're going to split this money so it becomes every man for himself.

The film is also the loose inspiration for the 2001 film Rat Race except it was a far more solid film that doesn't compromise its audience with overly crude or pandering humor. It's based around a timeless concept: the humor of the chase, and that has been used by every great comic Buster Keaton's The General, to Harold Lloyd's vertical version of the chase in Safety Last. And it never gets old.

The film is also directed by Stanley Kramer who primarily made message movies (i.e. Inherit the Wind, Ship of Fools, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and while it's tempting to think that Kramer was just taking a break from heavier themes and just having fun, the movie isn't entirely morally devoid of any theme. There is a certain undertone amid all the comedy of how money corrupts absolutely. Watching the film a second or third time with that theme in mind might make for a different viewing experience.Stanley Kramer made the film with the aim of casting as many comedians in the film as he possibly could, and he succeeds quite well, so the film ends up being a who's who of the '60's.

It is interesting to note that a great number of the stars of this film are completely unrecognizable to my generation today. They are unrecognizable to myself and I'd like to think I've seen my fair share of TV and movies from the old days. Here is who I knew and didn't know:-I had heard of Sid Cesar because he gave Mel Brooks and Woody Allen their starts, Carl Reiner I knew as the director of some films and I've seen him on Whose Line is it Anyway?
-I had heard of Phil Silvers because I knew he was the inspiration for Sargent Bilko, but I had never seen him in person
-I knew Buddy Hackett, Spencer Tracy and Ethel Merman
-The cameos of the Three Stooges and Don Knotts I recognized fairly instantly
-I had heard the name Milton Berle but couldn't recognize him
-I had not ever heard of Edie Adams or Dick Shawn. Dick Shawn, may I say, is quite funny.
-I knew Mickey Rooney but couldn't recognize him on sight
-I've heard references to Jimmy Durante in TV shows like the Golden Girls, Dick Van Dyke Show and I believe I Love Lucy, etc., but still wouldn't recognize him