by ·Comments Off on Double Harness (1933, John Cromwell)

Joan’s sister Valerie is getting married, so Joan wonders how she might also get married. Marriage, you see, is a business, and emotion should not be involved, so Joan (Ann Harding of Holiday & Peter Ibbetson) makes a business decision to marry John (William Powell, the Thin Man and the Great Ziegfeld), with the scheming help of Valerie (Lucile Browne of Soup To Nuts) and the unwitting help of their father (strangely german-accented Henry Stephenson, who played the nice rich guy who adopts David Lean’s Oliver Twist).

John isn’t into the whole marriage thing and starts hanging out with his hottie ex Lilian Bond (apparently best known for Wyler’s 1940 The Westerner). Meanwhile Val has gone deep into debt buying fancy clothes and in her drunkenness she blows the secret of the scheming to John, who was gonna divorce Joan anyway, but he and Joan kinda love each other now so I think it’ll turn out alright.

George Meeker (ninety movies in the 1930’s! first one was preston sturges’ first big hit as a writer) is unexciting as the sister’s husband, but Reginald Owen (Stingaree, 1938 Christmas Carol, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Pirate, Red Garters and Mary Poppins) is delicious as John’s butler.

It’s a good movie, some funny and racy parts (sly references to all the sex everyone’s having offscreen), good direction, some long camera takes. Nice to see such an excellent new print of a film from 70+ years ago.

We were told by the Turner guys who introduced the film that a famous drag queen was hired as the couturier in the opening scene but upon seeing the rushes the studio flipped and made ’em reshoot it with a more low-key (but still semi-flaming) actor.

by ·Comments Off on Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (1933, Lewis Milestone)

Lewis Milestone, having just made “all quiet on the western front” and “the front page”, turns his attention to an anti-capitalist Al Jolson musical. Why not? It’s no more weird than going from “Frankenstein” to “Show Boat”.

IMDB reviewer puts it thusly: “The best way to appreciate this odd film is to put one’s self back in the early 30’s, the Depression era. The drama glamorizes life on the streets and parks, probably to make the ordinary hard-up person feel better about his own financially depressed plight. It also played into the prevailing poverty consciousness of the mass public.”

Written by Ben Hecht, one of the biggest screenwriters of the 20’s through 60’s. Music by Rodgers & Hart (pre-Hammerstein). Most of the musical scenes are pretty unexciting, people having halfheartedly-rhyming conversations, vaguely sung with background music not matching up… but there are a couple good songs including the title number.

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Al Jolson (above, right) is the “mayor of central park”, proud to be a bum. Money is a curse, you see, and the happy denizens of the park (where the weather is always fair) are better off without it. The actual mayor of New York (above, left, oscar-nom Frank Morgan of “wizard of oz” and “shop around the corner”) has love troubles, mistakenly thinking his girlfriend was cheating, he’s lost without her. When she jumps in the river, Jolson saves her. She has a convenient bout of amnesia and they fall for each other. Jolson cleans up, gets a job to support the girl… finally learns who she is, leads the mayor to her like a good friend, goes back to his happy-go-lucky ways.

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Funny that the mayor leaves June (Madge Evans of “pennies from heaven”) when he suspects she’s with another man, and desperately takes her back when she’s actually, provably with another man. Silent comic Harry Langdon plays Egghead, hardworking socialist trash collector, and Edgar Connor is Acorn, Jolson’s black friend/servant – they’re my two favorite parts of the movie. I must’ve missed the homoerotic tension between Acorn and Jolson that Rosenbaum mentions.

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Rosenbaum: “Rodgers and Hart scored this one too, and once again it’s closer to operetta than to the usual song-and-dance stuff. It’s hard to know whether the remarkable inventiveness comes from the story (Ben Hecht), screenplay (S.N. Behrman), preproduction director (Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast) or final director (Milestone). Who thought up the devastating montage parody of Eisenstein timed to the American anthem, or an illustration of economic deflation via throwaway dialogue during a tracking shot across a bank floor, or the notion of a Trotskyite trash collector played by Harry Langdon? And what about the rhyming dialogue, or the homoerotic relationship between a black and a white tramp? We know that a portion of the parable-like plot involving the mayor of New York (Frank Morgan), his amnesiac mistress (Madge Evans), and the mayor of New York’s homeless (Al Jolson) was lifted from Chaplin’s City Lights, but who put it all together with such bittersweet conviction? This was one of Jolson’s rare commercial flops, but it’s so sad and peculiar that one isn’t surprised. Even though it’s a fantasy, the Depression in all its grief comes alive here as in few other pictures.

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by ·Comments Off on The Gay Divorcee (1934, Mark Sandrich)

A light and funny musical about trying to ruin a woman’s reputation, sort of the opposite of the end scene of Buster Keaton’s College.

Supposed to be “the first film that featured Astaire and Rogers in equal billing”. I kinda recognized Rogers from Monkey Business, and Astaire from those cartoon caricatures where he has a giant head and big hands. Hmm, now I’ve seen his first (Flying Down to Rio) and second movies, and none of the other 40+ he made through the years. Who else?

Alice Bracy as the almost-annoying Aunt Hortense was also in My Man Godfrey and Young Mr. Lincoln before dying of cancer in ’39.
Edward Evertt Horton, Fred’s posh-looking straight-man sidekick (the lawyer who arranges the divorce at a resort), appeared in other Astaire movies incl. Top Hat and Holiday
Erik Rhodes is Mr. Tonetti, the amorous fake-beau who pretends to cheat while his wife cheats on him for real, was in the Broadway version of this, and later appeared in Top Hat.
Eric Blore, the waiter, was also in Top Hat, jeez.
Betty Grable, the most famous pin-up girl of WWII and star of The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend, had a featured dance, but I didn’t recognize her.

Won best song at the Oscars for “The Continental” but lost out best picture to It Happened One Night and best art direction to The Merry Widow (also with edward e. horton). I’m not sure it should have been in strong contention for best art direction in the first place… not exactly a huge production with lights and mirrors, sort of small-scale simple dancing and singing. We liked it.

by ·Comments Off on Freaks (1932, Tod Browning)

I was gonna go on about similarities between Gordon/Mamet’s Edmond and Freaks, but I guess that doesn’t make much sense.

Katy is hung up on how the freaks turned the wicked trapeze artist into a chicken lady, but it is a “horror” movie, so we’ll just say the Human Torso has transformative magical powers.

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Wallace Ford (Phroso the clown) was in tons more movies, incl. Anthony Mann’s Man From Laramie and Hitchcock’s Spellbound.
Good-girl beauty Leila Hyams was in Buster Keaton’s Spite Marriage, Browning’s 13th Chair, Leo McCarey’s Ruggles of Red Gap, then she never acted after 1936.

Evil trapeze girl Olga Baclanova was in The Docks of New York and not many sound films because she moved to Broadway for a decade before retiring.
Hercules Henry Victor got huge in the 40’s playing evil nazis in every Hollywood movie that would take him before dying of a brain tumor in ’45.

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Short couple Hans and Frieda were actually siblings. He was in Browning’s Unholy Three and both of them were munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

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Those twins actually were conjoined.
The human torso was sixty-one when the film was made!

One of the greatest weird movies everywhere. Rob Zombie loves it.

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by ·Comments Off on Liliom (1934, Fritz Lang)

Not a musical. Why did I think it was a musical?

Katy: “Why would you watch a movie that you don’t want to see?” A good question. Here’s the answer:
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My third-to-last available Lang film. Now that I forgot to tape Human Desire off cable, I’ll just write that one off. Two years ago I set out to see ALL of the Lang films… most were very good, almost all were enjoyable, some are now among my favorite films ever, but there were bound to be a couple stinkers. I didn’t even know Liliom was a stinker (now I know) but it didn’t look too great from the cover art and plot description. But Lang was on a winning streak in Germany… M (1931) being one of the best films ever, then Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) completely excellent… then the whole Hitler thing forces Lang to leave Germany, so he makes Liliom in France then ends up in the U.S. making Fury in ’36, one of his best American movies. So everything surrounding Liliom was great, but I’ve hardly heard anything about Liliom. Can’t rent it, so I bought it to find out for myself.

Unfortunately what we’ve got here is a very bad movie. Liliom is a charming carnival barker who digs a young woman named Julie. The moment he steps off the carousel he reveals himself to be kinda a jerk, but later we learn the truth: that he’s a TOTAL jerk!

jerky Liliom (left) and his thug buddy:
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As the movie goes on he becomes more of a jerk. Then the movie takes a weird twist: Liliom dies in a heist and goes to heaven to be judged. They deem him a jerk and send him to purgatory for some years. He gets to come back to earth for a day, and he checks out his daughter who’s now 16 or 18 and he slaps her then gets sent back to purgatory. The judgement doesn’t look good for Liliom!

But then something even stupider happens. The daughter goes up to her mom and says “hey mom, you ever been slapped by someone but you didn’t even feel it?” The mom says “yes I have” and cries and her tears fall on her hand or the daughter’s hand and the judge SMILES ON LILIOM AND LETS HIM INTO HEAVEN, which is just an offensive ending to a dreary and pointless movie.

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by ·Comments Off on Movies I Watched In Kenya (Jan. 2007)

Black Book (2006, Paul Verhoeven)
Nice, twisty little nazi suspense drama. Watched on the plane, a little drowsy, so IMDB will help remember the plot details: “When the hiding place of the beautiful Jewish singer Rachel Steinn is destroyed by a stray bomb, she decides with a group of other Jews to cross the Biesbosch to the already liberated south of the Netherlands. However, their boat is intercepted by a German patrol and all the refugees are massacred. Only Rachel survives. She joins the resistance, and under the alias Ellis de Vries manages to get friendly with the German SS officer Müntze. He is very taken with her and offers her a job. Meanwhile, the resistance devise a plan to free a group of imprisoned resistance fighters with Ellis’ help. The plan is betrayed and fails miserably. Both the Resistance and the Germans blame her. She goes into hiding once more, with Müntze in tow. Together they wait for the war to end. Liberation does not bring Ellis freedom; not even when she manages to expose the real traitor. ‘Every survivor is guilty in some way.'” Edit April ’07: saw again in theaters – a real interesting movie. I definitely like it, glad Verhoeven is directing his talents away from stuff like The Hollow Man these days. Awesome final shot, with Rachel living in Israel, having moved from one besieged state to another. I don’t think Jimmy or George liked it much.

Jackass Number Two (2006, Jeff Tremaine)
Watched in the plane right after Black Book, when everyone around us was going to sleep. KLM didn’t censor it as far as I know. Completely awesome, hilarious movie. A masterpiece in its own way. Katy says I laughed too much/loud and annoyed my fellow passengers. Most other people watched that Kevin Costner movie with Ashton Kutcher for some reason.

Badlands (1973, Terrence Malick)
After a few days at the World Social Forum, finally one evening Katy and I were both awake enough to sit through a movie. I suggested Badlands, which we both ended up enjoying. Sheen kills Spacek’s father (Warren Oates) and they go on a little shooting spree before getting captured. Another quiet and beautiful movie by Terrence Malick. EDIT: JUNE 2007: after reading a great Adrian Martin article in Rouge, I realized that Malick is the only director I’ve seen whose EVERY film I would consider great… Charles Laughton excepted.

My Migrant Soul (2004, Yasmine Kabir)
On the last day at the Forum, I found the movie tent. Watched this half hour doc about a guy from Bangladesh who got a job in Malaysia in order to send money home to his family. But the guy who sends him gives him a forged passport, and he gets hard work for short periods of time, then sits idle the rest of his weeks, unable to find other work or complain to anyone without a legitimate ID, finally gets sick and dies. Sad.

Words on Water (2003, Sanjay Kak)
They’re building dams in India that destroy small towns, I guess. I fell asleep in the first ten minutes, then left the movie to wander the Forum and listen to the drumming, so I can’t tell you much more than that. Got back just before the credits when some protestors from the village are being arrested. Sad.

7 Islands and a Metro (2006, Madhusree Dutta)
I was drowsy and it didn’t make a strong impression. Some overlong shots (because the longer you hold a shot, the artsier it becomes) and some disconnected stories about Mumbai/Bombay. The director came out and said the movie reflects how people from all over got together to form this big city, and now the city is splintering into smaller communities again, without a firm focus or center (which of course reminded me of Atlanta), and told many stories of displacement, of trying to make a home in an overcrowded metropolis. I was disappointed that so many of the stories were made-up, and some of the actors were really overdoing it, as if in a soap opera. Decent enough movie I guess. Sad.

Early in the Morning (2006, Gahité Fofana)
The next day we went to the Alliance Francaise, checked out an excellent photo exhibit and saw some free movies. This one retells the true story about two kids from Mali who froze to death in the landing gear of a plane to Europe, having written a letter to Europe’s heads of state explaining that they’ve got it bad in Guinea and need some help. A well done movie, underplayed, not sensationalistic, quietly calling attention to the country’s problems without setting up some overbearing horror of war. The kids don’t even experience the war firsthand, so we don’t see it either, just hear about it in a single scene. Sad.

Bamako (2006, Abderrahmane Sissako)
Next up at the French Alliance was this awesome movie, which we wanted to see all week and surprisingly made it out to. Good thing the Alliance was walking distance from our hotel. A (mock?) trial is being held in the center of town and broadcast on the radio, with the people of Africa (Mali in particular) versus the European powers (the IMF and World Bank). A plea for debt forgiveness, for Africa to maintain its identity and stop to think how it wants to deal with foreign countries without getting exploited. Meanwhile small-town life carries on around the trial, the central story being about a family with a husband who can’t work, a wife who sings at a nightclub and their sick child. Wonderfully and humorously shot, with strange collisions of culture and a much talked-about bit where a TV movie starring Danny Glover suddenly takes over the screen. Must see again.

Garden State (2004, Zach Braff)
Katy watched on our last night in Nairobi, after the safari. I was just listening to the dialogue and music, and finally watched the second half with her. It’s an easy movie to make fun of after the fact, but while it’s playing, it’s very convincing.

Fighting Elegy (1966, Seijun Suzuki)
An action/comedy from Suzuki! Extreeeeme sexual tension leads Kiroku (lead actor from Tattooed Life) to join a fight club, and finally form his own gang and have huge fights with other groups of kids. IMDB guy says “a satire of the militaristic attitude that eventually lead Japan into WWII”. Wonderful. Watched this and 39 Steps on the portable DVD player on the flight home.

The 39 Steps (1935, Alfred Hitchcock)
Watched twice in a row, the second time with commentary. Robert Donat, a very capable leading man, gets caught up in a plot to smuggle government defense secrets out of the country when a woman he meets at a show is murdered in his apartment. He runs all over, never believed or trusted, Hitchcock’s original “wrong man”, predicting North By Northwest in structure and the final theater scene of the Man Who Knew Too Much remake during the great ending when, about to be captured again, he shouts to Mr. Memory onstage “what are the 39 steps”, revealing the plot to everyone. Very easy to watch… one of the better Hitchcocks I’ve seen, even if completely unbelievable.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)
For some reason, I thought about this one during the whole safari. Is it the boar’s head that Royal rehangs on the wall? I don’t know, but I was itching to see this again, and watched it as soon as we got home. One of my favorite movies ever.

The Lion King (1994, Allers & Minkoff)
Of course we thought about this one too, and watched it the next night. Didn’t finish it, though. Best not to.

by ·Comments Off on The Lower Depths (1936, Jean Renoir)

Jean Gabin is Pepel, lifelong thief, lives in a shifty boarding house, likes his girlfriend’s sister. Girlfriend’s dad owns the place but doesn’t enjoy it one bit. Along comes Louis Jouvet as The Baron, or ex-Baron, as he’s fired from his post for unpaid gambling debts as soon as he’s introduced. Pepel met the Baron after breaking into his house, and they become good friends at the boarding house. But life is hard: the resident poet kills himself and Pepel gets into trouble when the old man dies in a fight. But in the end, Pepel gets off easily, wanders into the sunset with his new girlfriend, and the Baron stays behind.

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Leave it to Renoir to turn a bitter, harsh reality-check on the “lower depths” of humanity into actually a pretty upbeat and hopeful movie, if you look at it a certain way. Enjoyed it pretty well… more than La Bete Humanine for the most part. Will wait for further comment till I see the Kurosawa version. Katy did not watch it, but I’m sure she wanted to.

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by ·Comments Off on Modern Times (1936, Charles Chaplin)

Yay, a public screening, but boo, a DVD projection. The roller skating scene and the singing scene and the opening factory scenes will never cease to be funny and amazing. Charlie gets fired from his factory job after going completely mental from being treated like a machine, ends up in jail. Foils jailbreak high on coke that fellow inmate slips into salt shaker. Gets letter of commendation from the mayor, which gets him night watchman gig at department store. Meanwhile, orphan girl (dad died in workers’ protest) is stealing to eat and dreaming of a nice home and a nice husband, meets Charlie and they play at the store after hours. The store is robbed and Charlie and the girl are caught up in the plot. Then I forget a few things, but she ends up dancing at a restaurant and Charlie gets to be a singing waiter, then The Song…

edit 7/31/07: Katy finally watched last night. Liked it!

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by ·Comments Off on Gone with the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming)

Gone with the Wind! Currently sits at #170 in the IMDB Top 250. Strangelove is #19.

Agreed it’s a damn good movie, with lots and lots and lots of nice scenery and nice costumes and quotable lines and expensive-looking business all over. I found the first half (Scarlett O’Hara’s family plantation is slow to adjust to the losing Civil War) much more interesting and easier to sit through than the second (her relationship to Rhett Butler, reclaiming her Tara estate and worrying about her crush Ashley and his pregnant wife Melanie).

Lotta talk about Atlanta and Georgia. Mammy was fun, always talking to herself. I liked the fiddle-dee-dees.

IMDB trivia quotes a memo written by producer David Selznick about the firing of George Cukor as director of Gone With The Wind: “I think the biggest black mark against our management to date is the Cukor situation and we can no longer be sentimental about it… We are a business concern and not patrons of the arts.”