Some Came Running

Manny on "Earth"

The lovely folks at The Auteurs' Notebook are hosting a wonderful series of pieces commemorating the publication of the splendid volume of Manny Farber's film writings, Farber on Film. Regular followers of this blog know that I've been doing a retrospective series examining Farber's "best films" of 1951; this week, I move the series over to The Auteurs' to look at a pick that's become an immortal classic, Robert Wise's wonderful The Day The Earth Stood Still, theremin-laden score by Bernard Herrmann. The piece is here. And by all means do check out the other pieces in the Farber category, including David Phelps's wickedly brilliant "Outside-In" and appreciations of the critic by Library of America editor and spellbinding film writer Geoffrey O'Brien, and the all-time great Phillip Lopate. Very nice company to find myself in, I have to say. 

In moderately related news, I am compelled to report that whenever I do a Google Image search on The Day The Earth Stood Still, the image reproduced at right is invariably the fourth in the top row on the very first page. I had long thought that the 2008 remake of Earth was a completely unjustified travesty, but I understand now that it very well may have been of some moderate usefulness after all. Just goes to show, I suppose.

Department of inadvertent revelations, #1

"This is very setup," says [Jess] Weixler, comparing the style of The Lie to her work on [Joe] Swanberg's recent Alexander the Last while sharing a cigarette with Leonard. "It's not so much 'Let's just shoot and see what we get' but 'We have this scene here, and this needs to happen.' It's really broken down, so when we go in we are covering like a real movie."

—From the article "The Little Lie That Could Ad-Lib," Mark Olsen, The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 2009

Text and subtext in Eastwood's "Invictus"

So. Variety's Todd McCarthy and Newsweek's David Ansen have gone ahead and ignored a studio-imposed embargo and reviewed Clint Eastwood's Invictus, which opens in less than two weeks. This breach of etiquette—perpetrated by old-media types, who were supposed to be good for such courtesies, yet!—of course has much of the film blogosphere in a huff, and Jeffrey Wells has gone and posted something like four different sort-of considerations of Invictus in the wake of said breach. 

One of which is called "Leadership" and quotes the musings of some schmuck on The Huffington Post who has also said "feh" to the embargo and who "points out," as they say, some correspondences between the Nelson Mandela administration ins South Africa and that of...wait for it...Barack Obama in the United States. I will not linger long on this schmuck's magnificent two-handed grasp of both the spurious and the obvious. I only point this out to note that these musings move Wells to reproduce two bits of the Invictus script, by Anthony Peckham. One has a Mandela aide chiding him for "risking political capital," on account of rugby, yet. Mandela replies: "The day I am afraid to do that is the day I am no longer fit to lead." Another script swatch has Mandela declaring, "[I]n this instance the people are wrong. And it is my job as their elected reader to make them see that."

These little bites inspire a Wells commenter who dubs himself "Arturobandini2" to sputter: "Jesus, is that dialogue actually in the movie? That's a much worse indicator of quality than any review that's slipped out. Screenwriting 101 teaches you that subtext is NEVER EVER spelled out in the dialogue." 

Well, first, as it happens, yes, that dialogue is actually in the movie, and it plays fine, thank you. Just one more reason why you should never review a picture according to its script. Second, fuck "Screenwriting 101." It's one reason why so very many movies are so very bad. Thirdly, it ain't subtext. It's text. One of the reasons I admire Invictus so much is that it's really not a "sports movie." Indeed, up until the very final match, the rugby stuff here is treated largely as an afterthought; there's no will-they-make-it? fakery or pumping up of suspense. Invictus is a movie about political leadership, about the semiotics of sport and its relation to patriotism/national identity, and about the very canny benign manipulations of several men who understand how one step to some kind of real national unity can be achieved via a sports spectacle. It is absolutely correct for the character of Mandela to be an almost meticulously self-conscious leader, given his unprecedentedness as the head of South Africa's government, and the fact that he had grown into a figure of near-mythical stature well before he took that position. So the considerations that Peckham has his Mandela character overtly articulating are entirely apt. We understand what Mandela has in mind, and part of the joy of the film is watching it come together. The subtext, which is not explicitly spelled out deals with exactly why Mandela chooses to embrace this rugby team that dresses itself in the colors of the apartheid flag. And that's dealt with quite beautifully and movingly by Eastwood and lead actors Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, both of whom are outstanding. 

Okay, back to honoring that embargo. Although, as with last year's Gran Torino, part of me wants to save my further thoughts on this picture for after the opening, the better to hash it all out with you. 

Happy Thanksgiving...

...a holiday that, despite whatever the meanies at Big Hollywood would have you believe, is frequently enjoyed by counter-culture/"progressive"/leftie types, as the above screen cap from Arthur Penn's 1969 Alice's Restaurant testifies.

It's been an...interesting year, and it ain't over yet. For today let me extend my very best wishes to you, my readers, old and new, and to your families. As you may have noticed by this point, this blog is in no way a commercial venture, which to me makes the give and take that much more meaningful. I'm also gratified at the way the regulars stick around regardless of the strange tangents I sometimes go on.

So thanks. I'm consistently grateful for your time, your loyalty, and for your always smart and impassioned and sometimes challenging feedback. Have a great Thanksgiving, wherever you are. 

My Seventy Greatest Films Of The Decade

So, you don't wanna talk about Spencer Tracy or James Brown? Okay, fine, be that way. I see now that the crew over at Time Out New York has posted its Top 50 Movies of the Aughts, so now's the time, as Charlie Parker would put it, when I might as well counter with my own list, and create what some call "added value" by citing 20 more than 50, because why the hell not. 

I will try to be more aphoristic and less portentous than the TONY crew in my film assessment. I don't mean that as a slam against the TONY crew's summings-up. Believe me, I know what a drag it can be to write those 50-to-120 word capsules, particularly if you're trying to get across why the films "mattered" or were "important." It was, quite frankly, really tiresome to have to strike those poses back in the Premiere days. Now that I'm my own boss, my own capsules will be...well, whatever they will be. Another liberty I take is  in not ranking—who am I tallying up ballots against, anyway?—but rather listing the films in possibly imperfect alphabetical order. Shine sweet freedom, etc...

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001): A heartbreakingly fractured fairy tale. If you think its final 20 minutes constitute a happy ending, watch, and think, again.

Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002): The Charlie Kaufman-scripted upending of Hollywood convention isn't quite the coup-de-grace it's meant to be, but it still delivers a potent viral load of satirical venom.

The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004): The maestro's sweeping Hughes biography is a much-misunderstood study in obsession, and how failure never stops haunting success. The color manipulation is brilliant too.

Burn After Reading (The Coen Brothers, 2008): A really superb live-action cartoon. Reviewed here.

Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008): Pace, Steven, this was not a mistake. Not at all. Some thoughts on it here.

A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008, pictured): A superbly multi-faceted film that genuinely suggests where cinema can, and should, go in the next century. 

 

The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000): Women's oppression in Iran. A beautiful new manifestation of the neo-realist ethos. 

Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006): It took me a while to come around to this extraordinary film...and I'm glad I did. I walked out on it first...now I feel I could watch it three times a year, at least. The first key to appreciating it is to stop seeing Costa as some sort of, shall we say, "liberal." It's deeper, way deeper, than that...

The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007): Well, yes, it is about the plaints of white people who are visiting India. And your point is? My initial thoughts here.

Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002, pictured): A perhaps alarmist portrait of capital in the cyber age. But a swift, effective kick in the balls in any event.

 

Éloge de l’amour (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001): Profoundly problematic Godard, yes. And no less great for that. 

Godfather and company

Twelve years after his groundbreaking Apollo performance, 10 years after the TAMI Show, the Godfather of Soul continues to do it to death in 1974, headlining the Zaire '74 Music Festival, conceived as an adjunct to the "Rumble In The Jungle" Ali-Foreman rematch in that country. The fight had to wait several weeks because Foreman got a cut above his eye while sparring, but the concert couldn't wait. Its story is told in a very cool documentary, Soul Power, out now on DVD and Blu-ray disc from Eureka!/Masters of Cinema. The excellent disc represents, among other things, a broadening of the MOC mission, and is the subject of today's Foreign DVD Report, at The Auteurs'.

Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #6: "The People Against O'Hara," directed by John Sturges

Last week's installment, #5, here. Follow the links at that post to access the other prior films in the series.

Farber: "An adroit, scholarly example of sound storytelling that every Message Boy should be made to study as an example of how good you can get when you neither slant nor oversimplify. Also highly enjoyable for its concern about a 'static" subject—the legal profession as such—and the complete authority with which it handles soft-pedaled insights into things like the structure and routine of law offices; the politics of conviviality between cops, DA's, judges, attorneys; the influence of bar associations; the solemn manner of memorializing the wrench caused by the death of a colleague; the painful 'homework' of committing to memory the endless ramifications of your case, as well as the words you are going to feed the jury in the morning."

Yes; this picture works quite nicely as what you might call a "process film," a kind of sub-genre that achieved its apex with 2007's Zodiac (and I wonder, did Farber see that picture, and if so, what did he and his wife and critical partner Patricia Patterson think of it?). Beyond that, it's also a first-rate character study. Spencer Tracy plays James Curtayne, a veteran lawyer who's kicked both booze and criminal cases in the hopes of setting up a cozy dotage with civil work. His daughter Virginia (Diana Lynn) is living with him and keeping him in line, putting off a promising marriage to look after the patriarch. Curtayne's plans for a placid life get scrambled when clients from the old hardscrabble days appeal for help. The old O'Hara's (Arthur Shields and Louise Lorimer), a working-class couple of a particular Manhattan vintage, practically beg Curtayne to defend their son Johnny (James Arness, who appears in another Farber 1951 fave, The Thing From Another World, here playing an all-too-human dumb lug rather than a hulking interplanetary vegetable), who's been in and out of trouble all his life, from a charge that could well end his life: murder.

Curtayne doesn't want to do it, because, among other things, he tends to get too invested in such cases. They wear him down. They put him in a place of self-doubt that makes the bottle look like a mighty good fortifier. And sure enough, at a crucial point in the case, he opens up the liquor cabinet. It's a pretty staggering moment that I suppose carries extra resonance with those who know about Tracy's own real-life struggles with alcoholism.

 

Tracy plays the moment beautifully, neither soft-soaping nor overdoing it. Eventually Curtayne re-embraces the bottle fully, and the picture presents a very pithy example of how booze can be the father of all bad ideas, as when Curtayne gets the bright notion to try to bribe a venal witness (the usually reliable Jay C. Flippen, here forced to put on a rather ridiculous "Scandanavian" accent). After this—and after he blows the case as a result—the death of a colleague forces Curtayne to rediscover his purpose and his skill. But the picture doesn't turn into a sappy redemption tale as a result. Rather, it digs in its heels and becomes an ace detective story, filled with ever-more convincing detail. Here's Curtayne eying a bit of evidence he's gonna need a court order to get his hands on.

 

Later, Curtayne confronts a mobster who once expressed a particular interest in the case; although he's straightened out his act by this point, Curtayne has a drink with "Knuckles" Lanzetta (Eduardo Cianelli) to give the hood the impression that Curtayne is, yup, just a washed-up sot mouthpiece. There's a frankness in their washroom banter that's pretty raw and honest by studio standards of the time. (The picture was an MGM production.)

 

Screenwriter John Monks, Jr. adapted the picture from a novel by Eleazer Lipsky, who also wrote the source material for the 1947 classic Kiss of Death. It's no accident that what goes on in this picture feels almost as authentic as what you'd get in a George V. Higgins novel; like Higgins, Lipsky was a longtime practitioner of the law, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan in the 1940s. Director Sturges was one of the most reliable journeymen of the day. Cinematographer John Alton doesn't walk on the same high-wire here that he did for his noirs with Anthony Mann, but he gives the picture a look of deceptively plain realism. And Tracy delivers one of his very best performances. The combination of these talents yields a film of remarkable solidity and briskness, and the ending is one of the most compellingly bleak of any film from any era. The People Against O'Hara isn't yet available on DVD, but it does tend to turn up on TCM with some regularity. Catch it when you can; it's a really special piece of work.

"The heavenly electricity:" Douglas Sirk's "Summer Storm" (1944)

This, recently released on DVD, really is a must-see, a terrific piece of cinematic storytelling and a key early Hollywood work from the great Sirk. Dave Kehr gave it a nice write-up in the Times last Sunday, but I was so thoroughly impressed when I sat down to watch it that I began thinking that Dave's praise was curiously faint. I don't think it actually was, mind you, merely describing my own strong response to the movie. As Dave says on his website, the DVD transfer, from VCI, is merely passable—the screen caps here show its softness—but passable is good enough for the film to put itself over, and what the picture has to put over is very special.

One of those things is, I think, what could be George Sanders' very best performance, as Petroff, a respected judge in pre-revolutionary Russia who falls very hard—and he's hardly the only one—for grasping peasant beauty Olga. He's at once the embodiment of civilized ideals and a kind of species of rot—exactly the sort of contradictory character that Anton Chekhov excelled at creating. Of course, Chekhov's The Shooting Party, on which this picture was based, was written and set further back in Russia's history than when this film is set; the adaptation, by Rowland Leigh, is a smart one and the time shift is hardly inapt. In any event, Sanders' Petroff is pitched at perfect levels of both self-regard and self-loathing, but never approaches the arch; it's a thoroughly considered piece of work. As is that of Edward Everett Horton, playing a rather buffoonish Count Volsky, aka "Piggy" (see Gentleman Prefer Blondes, almost ten years later), and reaching emotional depths that his bountiful comic performances never even glanced at. (According to the book Sirk on Sirk, Horton proclaimed the part as the best he ever had, and Sirk the best director he ever worked with.)

The whole cast is so superb that after a few minutes or so no one cares that everybody in the picture, down to Sig Ruman and Hugo Haas, is speaking in a different accent; Sirk locks down the tone so deftly that Hollywood convention becomes its own law here and you just go with it. It seems particularly right that Linda Darnell plays Olga pretty much as a vulgar young American would-be starlet, pouting and saying things like "Huh?" and such. But make no mistake, the film does not disdain her; it rather sees her as a kid who's just trying to get somewhere, and using what she's got to make it happen. She's rather moving in several scenes, especially one when she talks about her fear of lightning and her belief that everyone who dies as a result of "the heavenly electricity" is automatically sent to paradise. I should not forget Anna Lee, as a spurned fianceé, who is nicely understated in her decency and sports a distinct resemblance to Diane Keaton in her final scenes in the film.

Dave Kehr rightly notes that the film, a relatively low-budget production for the time, "does not display the baroque stylistics of the Technicolor melodramas Sirk later made for Universal," and that's true. What it does display is Sirk's storytelling economy and his highly developed sense of emotional nuance. This is not a picture with a lot of camera movements, but as Spencer Tracy said in Pat and Mike, what's there is "cherce." Particularly in the scene of the wedding banquet, after Olga willfully marries the overseer of Volsky's estate, in which a couple of deft sweeps over and around the table limn the very pronounced class distinctions of the various guests.

Oh, and did I mention Linda Darnell is in it? I did? Okay. Still. 

 

As they say...what the fuck is up?

Also, the film's punchline is absolutely devastating and quite elegantly phrased. Do not miss this. 

Oscarbate

Greil Marcus on Frank Zappa: "Is there any facet of American culture Frank Zappa hasn't pissed on? If so, write and tell him what it is, and he'll get a beer out of the refrigerator and unzip." Forgive Marcus the present tense, as he made the observation, which I'm not entirely sympathetic to, when Zappa still lived. It's probably not a good sign that Marcus' aperçu sprang to mind as I contemplated this week's Topics/Questions/Exercises column at The Auteurs'. The topics are the awards season and its discontents, and Why Film Critics Hate America. Could be fun.

Above, Patrick Bauchau and honorary Oscar winner Roger Corman, in Wim Wenders' The State Of Things (1982).

Return of the sepia

Note: above image not representative. Well, not wholly representative, anyway. I'll get to that in a moment. 

One of the many salutory features of Warners' new Blu-ray disc of Gone With The Wind is the specific quality of its restoration, which I believe brings it closer to the version David O. Selznick signed off on and moviegoers swooned over in 1939. As Richard W. Haines notes in his extremely useful book Technicolor Movies: The History of Dye Transfer Printing, "Selznick attempted a sepiatone look for two of his productions of the '30s. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, released in 1937, the entire feature was printed with a saturated sepia hue that utilized few primary colors...For Gone With The Wind, a similar sepia look was used in the early sequences of the prewar South. After the Civil War broke out, the yellows and reds were emphasized during the burning of Atlanta scenes. Fleshtones were richly tanned and saturated throughout."

The various re-releases of GWTW make a mini-history of how not to preserve/restore a film. Haines cites a 1988 Eastmancolor so-called-restoration as "completely inaccurate...printed with 'cold' desaturated fleshtones, distorting Selznick's look." He also tells of the film being reissued in something of a "widescreen" version: "A 1.66 X 1 masking was used by MGM for their 'flat" films (including reissues of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind)...apparent grain was increased and sharpness decreased when films were cropped and enlarged in this manner." Now imagine the disaster potential when going into the next step of transferring to video...

We live in more enlightened times today, and this new version of GWTW has more of that sepia feel in the first half than any version I've seen. The above snapshot from my plasma screen, while absolutely less than ideal, conveys, I think, some of that; as does the below rip from DVD Beaver's review of the disc.

 

Selznick's strategy of changing the film's color scheme after the war, and the concurrent fall of the South, seems almost...meta, doesn't it? I imagine it certainly informed Martin Scorsese's "Technicolor" mutations over narrative time in The Aviator.