Monday 5 September 2011

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

It TICKLES and TANTALIZES! - The funniest comedy since laughter began!

What would any normal guy give to be one-to-one with Marilyn Monroe? What are the chances? Wouldn't even a happily married man with a kid get the "seven year itch"?

It's summertime in Manhattan, and like many men, publishing editor Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) sends his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) of seven years and young son Ricky (Butch Bernard) up north for a 2-week vacation in Maine, while he stays and works in the city. Back at his apartment that evening, awaiting a phone call from Helen, Richard determines to keep on the straight and narrow during this time: no cigarettes, no drinking, and settles down to work on the patio with a manuscript. But out of the blue, literally, he is almost killed by a falling flower pot accidentally dislodged by his new upstairs neighbour, a stunningly gorgeous blonde bombshell played by the wonderful Marilyn Monroe.

Against the dictates of his rational mind, Richard, mesmerised by his neighbour's beauty and overcome with desire, can't stop himself inviting her to his apartment, and Monroe's character is so ditzy (innocently silly and scatterbrained) that she seems to have no idea what objective Richard's instincts are driving him towards.

So, will Richard be able to withstand the range of temptations available to the married man left alone in the big city, and in particular, to any male neighbour of Monroe? How will Monroe's character respond?

This is pretty much a two-hander between Ewell and Monroe. Though creepy like a lizard at some points in the film in his lust for Monroe, overall, Ewell's performance is magnificent. A great deal of the script has Richard dialoguing with himself, which is quite an unnatural thing to do, highly stylized, and could have gone disastrously wrong. Ewell pulls it off pretty well though, so that it is mostly very acceptable. Richard is a bit of a Walter Mitty, highly imaginative, and a lot of the fun consists of his imaginings coming to life, and delighting or scaring him. Monroe plays her rather challenging ditzy role very well, simpering like a small excited girl in a grown woman's body, highly desirable in a sexual way, but not slutty, managing to stay pure and chaste in herself.

The lack of political correctness in this film goes well beyond current socially-sanctioned norms, with Wilder commenting on the audience's fascination with beauties like Monroe, for instance, in the way Richard's publishing house markets their books, pandering to our men's objectification of women as sex objects. It is this film that includes the justly famous scene where Monroe stands over the air vent in the white dress, innocently enjoying the cooling breeze that pushes the skirt of her dress up in such a revealing flutter. Talk about objectification: Monroe's character does not even merit a name, for pity's sake, being labelled "The Girl" in the credits.

The peeping Tom aspect of cinema audience's appetite to watch actresses like Monroe is clearly paralleled in Richard's relationship with Monroe. The fourth wall is even broken at one point, in the third reel, by Ewell referring explicitly by name to Marilyn Monroe. This makes the story quite a meta-experience, but also makes one feel quite queasy while watching, as you come to understand that this is the true subject or target of the film.

The element of psychology is included in the person of Dr. Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), the author of the manuscript that Richard is editing, and whose writing is used to introduce statistics about temptations for married men in the summer and the "seven year itch" in particular. Ewell externalises the conflicts within him in the form of an itch on his chest, near his heart (geddit?), and a nervous twitch in one of his thumbs (presumably with phallic connotation?).

Apparently, the film is based on a three-act play by George Axelrod. In Wikipedia's entry for this film (see link below), there is an interesting discussion of the restrictions put on the film, compared to the play, by the studio's adherence to the Hayes Code of the time.

Five years later, in "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, Wilder revisited the temptations-of-summer-affairs-in-Manhattan scenario introduced in "The Seven Year Itch" and created a human drama of great warmth and darkness and resonance. This film, while interesting, and a great showcase for Monroe's talents, does not approach those heights.

  • Director: Billy Wilder
  • Writers: George Axelrod, Billy Wilder
  • Starring: Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn Keyes, Marguerite Chapman, Robert Strauss, Oscar Homolka, Sonny Tufts, Donald MacBride

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Sunday 21 August 2011

Monkey Business (1952)

The quest for the recaptured vigour of youth, that holy grail for the middle-aged and elderly, is at the heart of this wonderfully fun light-hearted comedy that showcases the brilliance of Cary Grant's comedic skills, and reveals that Ginger Rogers too was not only nimble on her pins, but also a very gifted comedienne.

Grant's character, Dr Barnaby Fulton, a chemist, works at a laboratory where they are trying to develop an anti-ageing, vigour-restoring product, a kind of whole-body viagra-type drug. Grant's aged, overweight boss, Mr Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn), seems to have a personal stake in the speedy resolution of this product, connected to the person of his private secretary, Miss Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe), whose considerable personal charms outweigh her lack of secretarial skills.

But Barnaby's research has hit a roadblock. As the story begins, his mental preoccupation with "the formula" is showcased with some nice absent-minded professor style business, that also allows his relationship with wife Edwina (Rogers) to be shown as very solid and loving, with she being very understanding. It also allows Hank Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe) the family friend and old flame of Rogers' youth to make his appearance.

The next day, in the lab, there is some excitement as it seems one of the experimental subjects, an elderly chimpanzee, is exhibiting extremely uncharacteristic youthful behaviour, and Mr Oxley, with Miss Laurel in tow, gets quite excited, till it is revealed to be a false alarm. Barnaby goes back to the drawing board, re-mixing his formula, but a young chimp, who has been observing him, concocts its own formula, to taste, and pours it into the water cooler stand, where it becomes mixed with the only drinking water available in the laboratory.

So begins a series of joyously comic set pieces where first Barnaby, then wife Edwina, then Barnaby and Edwina together, drink increasingly greater amounts of the formula, washing it down with water from the cooler, and mistakenly ascribing the effects to Barnaby's formula. In each case, it is an excuse for the actors to indulge in progressively more juvenile behaviour, much to the delight of the audience. Grant and Rogers are both fit and agile, and are impressively up to the physical demands of their roles, where they have to act and speak as much younger people. One imagines that the actors must have really had fun playing these parts, and the transformations are a joy to watch.

The conceipt of this 1952 film, with adults acting as children, is reminiscent of Dennis Potter's horrific comic psycho-drama "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979, part of BBC TV's "Play for Today" series), where adults play themselves as children, and sometimes the children they are playing choose to play at being adults, resulting in multiple levels of interpretation.

Never work with children or animals, film-makers are told, but Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers worked with both here, and emerged unscathed. Grant has such a great way of looking nonplussed and exhibiting his mental processes in physicality, and acting the character straight, not tongue in cheek.

Saw this film on 12 May and again on 3 August, with equal pleasure. My hesitation about awarding the film a very high mark is that it is lightweight in theme. On the other hand, it is perfectly executed.

References

  • Director: Howard Hawks
  • Writers: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I.A.L. Diamond
  • Starring: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Hugh Marlowe, George Winslow

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My Life Without Me (2003)

On receipt of news of terminal illness, there are perhaps four key choices that any of us would have to make:

  1. On receipt of such news, in the short term, how would we choose to respond, say, by going to pieces or by remaining calm?
  2. Who, if anyone, would we choose to share the news with? Family? Friends?
  3. How would we choose to spend our remaining days? Would we spend our time putting our affairs in order or, exploiting a release from future consequences, throw caution to the wind and fill our time with wild debauchery?
  4. Where would we choose to die?

"My Life Without Me" is the story of Ann (Sarah Polley), a young Canadian mother of two living in straitened circumstances in a mobile trailer home in her mother's (Deborah Harry) back yard, who goes to the doctor with symptoms of early pregnancy (nausea, stomach cramps and so on) only to learn that she has an inoperable tumour and has at most two or three months left to live. If this sounds like the premise of a traditional weepy, a sentimental drama "based on a true story", well, certainly for Ann the stakes could not be any higher. There is strong emotional content in the film, but the emotions are true emotions, and muted more often than amplified, and the high quality of the acting and direction lifts the story above clichéd dramatics to a level of apparent realism and authenticity.

In response to the news of her imminent death, rather than going all to pieces, Ann responds in an admirably level-headed way. Seeking to maximise the time she has left, she makes out a list of things to do before she dies. It is the nature of this "To Do" list, and the other choices she makes in response to the news that make this story compelling, particularly given the particular circumstances of her life, which emerge during the course of the film.

The lynchpin of the film is the performance of Polley, and she is totally believable in the role, portraying a young woman of intelligence, courage, determination and heart. She is so good with the girls who play her daughters (Jessica Amlee, Kenya Jo Kennedy) that it's hard to believe she is not their mother in real life. The supporting cast is uniformly good: Julian Richings as the doctor, Scott Speedman and especially Mark Ruffalo, respectively, Ann's husband and Ann's admirer, Deborah Harry and Alfred Molina as Ann's parents, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, and Maria de Medeiros as Ann's friends, neighbours, co-workers, acquaintances.

The script is intelligent and the direction is unostentatious. The story is based on the book "Pretending the Bed Is a Raft" by Nanci Kincaid, and the scene where Anne acts out with the girls on the bed being on a raft, beset by dangers of different kinds, is a wonderful scene, one that as a parent I envy, like the scene in Crash (2004) where the admirably resourceful Daniel (Michael Peña) calms his daughter's fears of neighbourhood drive-by shootings with the invention of an invisible bullet-proof fairy cloak.

References

  • Director: Isabel Coixet
  • Writers: Isabel Coixet, Nanci Kincaid
  • Starring: Sarah Polley, Scott Speedman, Mark Ruffalo, Deborah Harry, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, Maria de Medeiros, Julian Richings, Alfred Molina

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Evolution Becomes Revolution

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a very well-realised and thrilling prequel to the stories of the well-known "Planet of the Apes" science fiction film series of the late 1960s / early 70s, featuring a compelling performance by the lead actor (Andy Serkis), through the magic of "motion-capture" digital replacement technology, as Caesar, a chimpanzee with increased intelligence.

Any film presents its makers with a number of challenges, most commonly, to develop a compelling story peopled with interesting credible characters played by actors of talent and skill. In this prequel to the first film in the original series, Planet of the Apes (1968), the filmmakers had a number of special challenges. One was to come up with a credible scenario laying the groundwork for the tale of a lost astronaut, George Taylor (Charlton Heston), who discovers an upside-down world dominated by intelligent, talking apes, where humanoids exist as low status low intelligence non-speaking animals. Another challenge was to find a suitable alternative to the hairy costumes, clumsy facial prosthetics, and stooped postures of the human actors playing the apes in the original series of films, which at the time were good enough to garner an honorary Oscar for special make-up, but which to modern eyes, used to hyper-realistic computer-generated effects, would be hopelessly inadequate at suspending disbelief. [On the issue of make-up, despite the ground-breaking portrayals of apemen by talented mime actors in Stanley Kubrik's superior "2001: A Space Odyssey", released the same year, their achievement got no Oscar nomination for make-up, possibly because, as writer Arthur C Clarke speculated, the Academy members didn't realise the performers were not real apes.] A final challenge was to develop a wider theme, subtext or moral, without which any story is only an locally significant event.

The first challenge is well met, with a scenario involving the use of apes as experimental subjects in a search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease, a brain disease that progressively strips away the memories and thinking abilities of its victims. Dr Will Rodman (James Franco), is a scientist at a commercial medical research laboratory in San Francisco, California, trialling a genetic therapy to cure Alzheimer's, delivered by modified viruses, with a personal interest in the results, as his father, Charles (John Lithgow), under nursing care at home, is in an advanced stage of the disease. When one of the test subjects, a female chimpanzee, apparently suffers violent side-effects from the treatment, Will's boss, Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) stops funding for that research line and orders all the test subjects destroyed. Will and his assistant, Franklin (Tyler Labine), cannot bring themselves to kill a baby chimpanzee, delivered covertly by the primary test subject. Will makes the fateful decision to rear the cute little infant in secret at home, despite warnings from his girlfriend, veterinarian Caroline (Freida Pinto), that after they grow up, chimpanzees are too dangerous to keep as pets.

The second challenge, of finding a way to portray the apes, is also very well met, using "motion capture" ("mo-cap") technology, where actors, wearing special suits and facial makeup, act the parts as normal, and then are digitally replaced by artificial substitutes, in this case, apes. Andy Serkis, notable for his performances as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series (2001-2003) and King Kong in the Peter Jackson remake (2005), plays Caesar, the chimpanzee Will takes home from the lab, both as a child and as an adult. This is in fact the lead role of the film and brilliantly played in an Oscar nomination-worthy performance (giving the Academy an opportunity to redeem itself for (controversially) previously omitting Serkis from acting nominations because of the total replacement of his body by a computer-generated animated character). To be honest, for the first half hour or so, I was not entirely convinced by the digital rendering of the apes shown, but subsequently, as I got to know the characters, either the computer graphics got better or I grew more accepting, because I lost that feeling and became totally caught up in the stories of the apes. The issue I think is primarily with regard to the rendering of faces. Our critical faculties are so strongly developed that the tiniest deviation from absolute authenticity in the rendering of a face is punished by causing our minds to "jump the shark". Apes are not human, but ape faces, particularly chimpanzee faces, are complex enough or human-like enough to betray slight inaccuracies or infidelities. James Cameron's Avatar (2009) did a little better, I think, in its portrayal of human-like faces, fooling my brain from the very first meeting with the Na'vi aliens. In any case, this "mo-cap" technology is astounding in potential. It looks like, in the near future, filmmakers will have sufficient resources to create computer-generated human beings that are absolutely indistinguishable from real human beings, though whether that will be a good or bad thing is another question. Will we see digitally cloned James Deans and Marilyn Monroes in multi-film franchised sequels, e.g. Rebel Without A Cause or Some Like It Hot, part 2?

The final challenge for the filmmakers was one of theme, subtext, moral. The original Planet of the Apes had a strong racial metaphor, reflecting conflicts within American society between different ethnic groups. It also had the concept of reversing roles between humans and (some) animals, showing people in cages, so allowing the audience to consider animal welfare from the point of view of the animals. Ape society was largely indifferent to human rights, and the "good apes" were two research scientists, who were especially kind and considerate towards humans. Science and scientists are the allies of the human protagonist, against the formalised ethnic stratifications, and the fossilised faith systems, of ape society.

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the moral is the more familiar trope of the dangers of science, the Frankenstein theme: science is a powerful but dangerous tool. Typically, scientists, attempting to improve our world by conquering death or extending life, accidentally create the conditions to unleash a disaster or produce life-threatening monsters. Terry Gilliam explored similar animal rights / medical research themes in "Twelve Monkeys" (1995) and Splice (2007) has scientists secretly raising an experimental subject at home.

On reflection, I would say that the true underlying genre of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is that of the prison movie, though of course in this case the prison inmates are not people but apes. As in any prison movie, we see how and why our central character, Caesar, came to be imprisoned. Though a gifted individual with a loving family, he is an orphan from a very different ethnic background, and as he grew older, his home life became more troubled, and there were quarrels with the neighbours and episodes of rage and violent behaviour. During the incarceration phase of the movie, the audience's feelings of identification with the central character may be increased by injustice, such as sub-standard accommodation or food, maltreatment by authority figures, and difficulties with other inmates, including the issues of social hierarchy (pecking order) and cliques (gangs). If he is lucky, there will be a special supportive friend and visits by close family. Much free time is spent remembering past idylls, and holding on in expectation of future release from incarceration, though if that dream is dashed, other avenues may need to be explored. Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" (1975), for instance, has quite a similar story arc.

Amendments:

Changed the phrase 'the heroes were two research scientists' to 'the "good apes" were two research scientists'.

References

  • Director: Rupert Wyatt
  • Writers: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver (premise from La planète des singes by Pierre Boulle)
  • Starring: Andy Serkis, James Franco, John Lithgow, Freida Pinto, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, David Oyelowo, Tyler Labine, David Hewlett, Jamie Harris

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Saturday 13 August 2011

The Wrong Man (1956)

An innocent man has nothing to fear.

The Wrong Man (1956) is an interesting split-genre film, in which a procedural crime mystery morphs into a psychological drama, like a trial run for Psycho (1960).

This film, according to Wikipedia, based very closely on a true story, is a study how of an ordinary working family man in New York City, accused of being a hold-up robber, becomes deeply embroiled in the US legal system.

The title, The Wrong Man, suggests a case of mistaken identity, but the opening scenes, in which we meet the protagonist, Manny (Henry Fonda) introduce small fragments of doubt. Manny is shown to be a quiet sober man with a steady job as a musician in a nightclub, a loving husband and beloved father to two young boys. Manny's wife, Rose (Vera Miles), needing expensive dental treatment, despairs of their constant struggle to make ends meet, but Manny reminds her of all the good things in their life, and reassures her that, in the short term, they can borrow money on her life insurance policy, like they did before on his life insurance policy, and that, in the long term, things will somehow work out all right.

So far so good: Manny seems to be satisfied with his lot. But when he opens his evening paper, his eyes are drawn to advertisements for luxury products, well beyond his means, promoted aspirationally as improving the quality of family life, and he turns from these to the horse racing form pages where he starts making notes in the margins, in the way that nowadays in the UK many working people with dreams of sudden wealth turn to the lottery or scratch cards. Could Manny be less honest than he seems? Could he have a secret vice? Where is he going to get the money for Rose's operation?

That afternoon, at the insurance office, Manny, with his wife's insurance policy in his pocket, dressed like almost all the men in this film in dark suit and tie, overcoat and hat, enters and is "recognised" as the man who held up the office the previous month.

Most of the rest of the film is a Kafkaesque nightmare (Kafka's The Trial, 1925, is the ultimate fictional legal conundrum, where the protagonist, K, can't even determine what crime he is being charged with) in which Manny is led through a judicial process where the labyrinthine progress of the legal machinery is so inexorable and inflexible and inhuman that circumstantial evidence is sufficient to point the finger of guilt and protestations of innocence are routine, making a mockery of the film's tagline, "An innocent man has nothing to fear".

Arrested outside his house, Manny is interviewed by detectives, then subjected to a series of witness and other types of identity tests, each of which seems to be technically flawed in some way, then formally charged and inducted into the US legal system. The filmmakers take care to show in precise detail the steps in the process, and how clinically de-humanising the process is. With an array of witnesses and other evidence positioned against him, as the detectives point out, it all looks very bad for Manny. If he cannot find cast-iron alibis, it seems that he will be found guilty.

I imagine Hitchcock was attracted to this true story partly because of its Kafkaesque aspect, but mainly because of the other, more overtly psychological, aspect, which comes in the final reel, in which the prospect of a physical prison gives way to the horror of a metaphorical mental prison, a prison of ideas, a theme which will be explored more thrillingly in the film Psycho.

Fonda, with his back catalogue of likeable honest characters, e.g. Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), is brilliantly cast in a role calling for a person audiences of the time would have assumed was innocent. His performance is very understated, like a blank that the audience can project themselves into. Interesting to read in his Wikipedia entry that, unlike daughter Jane, schooled in the Stanislavski / Strasberg Method, he was an intuitive actor without conscious technique. As for age, as is so common in the old Hollywood contract system, he was a good deal older than his character, a 51-year old playing 38. Vera Miles handles her role very well, nicely underplaying the dramatic challenges.

References

  • Director: Alfred Hitchcock
  • Writers: Maxwell Anderson, Angus MacPhail
  • Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold Stone, Charles Cooper

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Thursday 4 August 2011

Creation (2009)

How he saw the world changed it forever

Creation (2009) may not have done very well at the box office, and had mixed reviews, but I found it extremely moving. The importance of the theory of evolution of species through natural selection is hugely important in our modern world, and the story of the man who travelled the world in his youth, and then spent 20 years developing the theory into a well-substantiated, carefully-articulated explanation of the story of life is of great interest.

According to Wikipedia, the story is factually based, being an adaptation of the book "Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution" by Darwin's great-great grandson, Randal Keynes. The title of the book gives the key to this film's interpretation, the story hinging on Darwin's relationship with his daughter, Annie, who died young.

The plot zig-zags between two key periods in Darwin's life: the course of the illness of Darwin's oldest and much beloved child, Annie, and a later period of time, when Darwin's work should have been reaching fruition, but finds him paralysed by a number of things, effectively stifling his scientific output. During this period Darwin's suffered chronic ill health, and was in conflict with his wife, Emma, a devout Christian, about the direction of his work. He was also wracked with guilt about the death of his child, Annie. Annie appears to him, as a kind of ghostly companion, with whom he converses. As Darwin listens to animal breeders, who speak knowledgeably about the frequent casualties incurred when mating closely related animals together in order to select desired inheritable characteristics, he comes to realise that Annie's illness may not have been random in origin, but may have its roots in the very nature of his and Emma's family closeness: being first cousins before marriage.

As the two story-lines develop, Darwin comes under increasing pressure from outside, and also, internally, shown partly through sleeping and waking dreams and visions, particularly of Annie, whose life-like presence becomes increasingly harder for Darwin to tolerate. Others may have disliked the device of Darwin interacting with Annie's ghost, but I thought it worked on many levels. For him to fully reject Christianity would mean necessarily losing the last vestige of her, her spirit. We also see the loving relationship Darwin enjoyed in former times with his wife, Emma, contrasted with the frosty alienation in the later period.

The performances by Bettany and Connelly (real life husband and wife) are superb, perfectly embodying the conflict and crisis in the Darwin family. Bettany brilliantly portrays the pain of conflict of a man whose intellectual discoveries bring him increasingly into conflict with local community life and his family's religious traditions and beliefs. Connelly personifies a devout woman bitterly at odds with her husband's beliefs. Nice performances too from Martha West (Annie), the talented Benedict Cumberbatch and Toby Jones (Darwin's scientific colleagues, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Huxley), Jeremy Northam (Reverend John Brodie-Innes, the local vicar).

Interesting how the content of the film is ostensibly about one key scientific domain, the theory of evolution, but how the real subject is one of psychology: how Darwin is being paralysed and made physically ill by his own subconscious (an entity he himself sneeringly dismisses) and the subconscious guilt he feels for the death of his daughter, Annie, and how the film's climax takes the form of a psychological release relating to the expiation of guilt, and voicing of subconscious or largely unspoken fears between he and his wife.

As a coda, in connection with the publication of Darwin's book (On the Origin of Species, 1859), one has to wonder at the casualness of the postal service of the day, and remark how, with a single catastrophic jolt from a stone under the wheel of a post cart, our understanding of the living world around us, and ourselves, might have been terribly impoverished.

According to Wikipedia, Darwin's theory of evolution is still so controversial in the USA, outside the intellectual strongholds of the West and East coasts, that it took months of lobbying to find a distributor. Quote from Wikipedia: "According to producer Jeremy Thomas, the United States was one of the last countries to find a distributor due to the prominence of the Creation-evolution controversy. Thomas said: "It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He [God] made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and Los Angeles, religion rules."

I think one stumbling block is that many people take the word "theory" to mean untested "hypothesis" or notion, something that still very much that needs to be verified. But in science, a theory is a much stronger entity. It is an explanation that has to fit in with verifiable facts, and has to be framed so that it can be shown to be false. But though many have argued against Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, nobody has been able to falsify it on genuine evidence-based scientific rational grounds, only on religious grounds. Of course, it is a work in progress, but subsequent evidence of carbon-dating and discoveries in genetics, including the role of DNA in the cells as biological blueprints, all support Darwin's great idea. To date, addressing the question of life on Earth, and taking into account huge mountains of evidence, it is the best explanation we have.

References

  • Director: Jon Amiel
  • Writers: John Collee (based on the book "Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution" by Darwin's great-great grandson, Randal Keynes)
  • Starring: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Paterson, Jim Carter

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Woman of the Year (1942)

The picture of the year!

Woman of the Year (1942) is the first pairing of the legendary on-screen romcom couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The film poses the question, still relevant today, of how the busy modern woman can manage to combine a career with a happy marriage and home life, and, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, it packs quite a punch.

The story wastes little time in throwing together Sam Craig (Tracy), a hard-headed sports reporter and all-round regular American, and Tess Hardy (Hepburn), a high society sophisticate and international charity worker, fluent in various languages, who writes a column for the same newspaper. Their little literary spat develops into a series of start-stop dates, driven by mutual attraction, but frequently delayed or interrupted by Tess's hectic schedule.

The gulf between their lifestyles is underlined. Sam takes Tess to a baseball game, something which she knows nothing of, but quite enjoys. Tess invites Sam to an evening party at her apartment, but has little time to talk to him. After failing to bond with groups of non-English speaking refugees and diplomats, he slips out early. He travels to sporting events, and hangs out in bars. She travels to conferences and holds open house in the evenings in her uptown apartment. Eventually, they kiss, confess their love for each other, he proposes, she accepts. Cue a happy ending...

But the story does not end there. It goes on, beyond the honeymoon period, itself not without its issues, to examine subsequent married life for such a loving but busy modern couple. It also, very cleverly, examines the issue of the quality of care for very young children in such a setup. So, the question remains till quite late in the story: can they make it work? And will they be able to meet in the middle, or will one have to make unequal compromises?

One has to appreciate the generally modern, progressive view of the sexes, evidenced by the script in the characters of Sam and Tess throughout most of the story. To my mind, the dilemma faced by Tess is never really satisfactorily resolved, but, along the way, Hepburn gets to do a revealingly inept extended comic kitchen routine.

There is real chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn. They both have impeccable comic timing. Tracy is very likeable, so that the male can identify with him, and Hepburn is a fine woman with stunning looks and personality, an aristocrat in the best sense of the word.

  • Director: George Stevens
  • Writers: Ring Lardner Jr., Michael Kanin, John Lee Mahin, Garson Kanin
  • Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, Minor Watson, William Bendix, Gladys Blake

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Tuesday 2 August 2011

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

A fascinating adventure into the unknown!

There is a simplicity and rigour to this story, from the novel by the great Richard Matheson, that makes it a classic of "What if?" science fiction, in this case, what if you found out your body was shrinking, that you were getting progressively smaller?

The script is very tight, swiftly introducing the young businessman at the centre of the tale, Scott Carey (Grant Williams) and his wife, Louise (April Kent), sunning themselves on the deck of a borrowed motorboat, apparently without a care in the world. No sooner does Louise go below decks than a strange metallic cloud envelopes Scott, at the time to no apparent ill effect. Later, however, Scott begins to physically shrink in size, maintaining all his relative proportions, but getting smaller.

The scripting for this is very nicely done, as the principals struggle with the symptoms of the phenomenon. At first, everyone tries to find natural explanations: Scott blames his clothes, Louise focusses on his reduced appetite, and their doctor suggests that previous records were wrong or that it's just an extreme case of the height reduction we all experience over the course of our day, as gravity compresses our vertebrae. When the change becomes so significant that acceptance becomes unavoidable, the medical experts are brought in and a battery of tests done, trying to find an explanation, and a cure.

Along the way, most of the key questions that come to mind in such a scenario are touched upon, if not always resolved. As a man got progressively smaller, would he be able do his job, and even if he could, would he be allowed to keep it? Without a job, how could he pay his bills? As he got smaller and smaller, what would he do for clothes? Would he be able to maintain independence in a world full of devices designed for full-sized people? Speaking of large people, what kind of relations would he be able to maintain with his normally-sized wife? Would he perhaps fit in better with the kind of people who never grew tall?

For a film made over half a century ago, the special effects are really pretty good. As Scott gets smaller, his size becomes determined relative to his surroundings. It's amazing how something as simple as using oversized furniture and household objects can provide sufficient visual cues. Likewise, his hold on existence becomes more precarious, and the dangers inherent in his surroundings become more apparent. Increasingly, his world becomes a battlefield, with disasters that to people of normal size are nothing more than minor nuisances, but to him are dangerous puzzles to solve, and life-or-death challenges to overcome, including duels to the death with ferocious household pests. My wife, who suffers from arachnophobia, had to leave the room during the final reel.

The two special effect giveaways are the rather obvious back projection during the duels with animals, and, despite good tonal matching, the tell-tale lack of a shadow for Scott.

The theme, like that of "I Am Legend", Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the last man on Earth battling alone against a world of zombies, is essentially one of alienation and loneliness, with Scott being removed progressively from normal human interaction, involving loss of relations with professional colleagues, loss of relations with all normal-sized people, loss of status as a civilised human being resulting through a series of accidents in him being thrown back into a primeval life-or-death survival mode, like a miniature caveman beset by privations, natural disasters and monstrous predators. Even with a group of social outsiders like circus midgets, he can find no lasting refuge. The story can be seen as a parable of alienation. The novel, according to Wikipedia, investigates his relations with other people with a much harsher, less forgiving view of society.

The performances are fine. In the title role, Williams is well up to the physical exertions of the part. He could be said to lack the charisma of a more major actor, but in a way his very anonymity helps to increase the credibility of the performance. The supporting actors are good. But all in all, the story and the script are the most important elements, and they are top notch.

  • Director: Jack Arnold
  • Writers: Richard Matheson, Richard Alan Simmons, based on the novel by Richard Matheson
  • Starring: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton, Billy Curtis

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Sunday 31 July 2011

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

A Tale of Murder, Lust, Greed, Revenge, and Seafood.

This is a very funny and generally entertaining film, the last great swan-song of brilliant creative humour (at least till now) of the legendary ex-Python, John Cleese, the writer, star and co-director. In the aftermath of a flawed jewel heist, compromised by witness identification of the gang leader, greed and distrust turn the four robbers against each other.

The film starts very succinctly by introducing the gang members, two American and two British, each with a passion, an idiosyncrasy, an Achilles' heel. Wanda, the glamorous and quick-thinking American girlfriend of the gang leader, George, is strongly aroused by the sound of foreign languages, a foible used to good comic effect. Otto, a dim-witted weapons expert, also American, and Wanda's secret lover, believing himself to be an intellectual, has a passion for the works of the philosopher, Nietzsche, though only limited comprehension. Ken, the getaway driver, a British man with a severe speech impediment, a stutter, and a tank full of tropical fish, ironically, given later developments, is a keen animal-lover. Only the leader, George, has no real identifiable passion, unless it be for diamonds. The only chinks in his armour are his trust in Wanda, shown from the outset to be double-timing him with Otto, and his identification by an elderly pedestrian at or near the scene of the robbery.

The plot develops briskly, alternating between the story-lines of defence barrister, Archie Leach (Cleese), and the robbers, and then showing how these initially parallel story-lines converge, in satisfyingly unexpected ways.

The use of American actors is brilliant casting, as it allowed the filmmakers to market the film in the USA as an American film starring American actors (Kline and Curtis) in a story set in England, and to market the film in the UK as a British film starring the much-loved ex-Python comedians, Cleese and Palin, with the bonus of glamorous American guest stars. (Kline was awarded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.)

The character and portrayal of Archie's wife, Wendy, by Maria Aitken, is superb. She absolutely nails the kind of highly educated, sharp-tongued, sharp-minded, upper-middle class English woman who can deflate a fool with words in less than a minute, and who will fearlessly attack those who wrong her.

The sub-text is perhaps that of hidebound British cultural norms contrasted with the apparent freedoms of the American way of life and the desirability of the exoticism of overseas cultures. This is explicitly bemoaned both by John Cleese's character, George's barrister (lawyer), Archie Leech, who is delighted by the refreshing directness of the American style of social interaction, and also by Otto, who despises English stereotypical reserve and diffidence as unmasculine. A lovely example is the contrast between the dull, middle-class bedtime ritual of Archie and his wife, Wendy, and the extravagant passionate foreplay of Otto and Wanda.

Another strand is that of the use of language. There is Ken, with his communication-impeding stutter, Otto, with his cod-Italian and his catch-phrases ("Asshole!" "What was the middle thing?" "Don't ever call me stupid."), Wanda, with her apparent ability to be sexually aroused by the sound of a foreign language, George, with his creative use of bad language, and Archie, whose job it is to speak in defence of criminals.

The only bum note, to my mind, is a moment, near the end, where Archie, the very English barrister, talking to Otto, impersonates in voice and mannerisms a larger-than-life character from the southern USA, thereby stretching audience credulity and surreptitiously breaking the fourth wall, allowing Cleese himself to break through with a little advertisement for the versatility of his own acting skills.

Apparently, according to Wikipedia, there is a reported case of somebody in a cinema actually dying of laughter while watching A Fish Called Wanda.

References

  • Director: Charles Crichton, John Cleese
  • Writers: John Cleese, Charles Crichton
  • Starring: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Tom Georgeson, Maria Aitken, Patricia Hayes, Geoffrey Palmer

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Saturday 9 July 2011

The Apartment (1960)

Movie-wise, there has never been anything like it - laugh-wise, love-wise, or otherwise-wise!

The Apartment (1960) would make an interesting double bill with The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder only five years earlier. Both films share the theme of affairs between married men and single women in New York City, including that crucial month or two in the summer when it seems many wives and children escaped the heat of the city on extended summer vacations, leaving married men to their own devices.

The themes are similar, but the story-telling is at a different level of expertise. The Seven Year Itch was a leery cartoonish comedy that winked at the temptations confronting married men, mixed with a meta-discussion of the impact of sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe, and the somewhat disturbing excesses of male fandom. In The Apartment, Wilder has progressed to a dramatic comedy grounded in believable characters, with life-changing outcomes at stake, a film with real emotional heft.

Ambitious young company employee, C.C. Baxter, is one face among many in the serried ranks of wage slaves in the cavernous financial department of Consolidated Life. an insurance company on the nineteenth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, and a long way back in the normal line of seniority for promotion to an office of his own, or even ultimately, a key to the executive washroom. But he has found a possible short-cut. As well as frequently working late as unpaid overtime, he finds that he can curry favour with a small stable of middle managers of less than impeccable morals, by loaning out his apartment to them for their clandestine trysts.

Trouble is, the popularity of this venue amongst the managers creates scheduling problems for Baxter, the late nights waiting for the all-clear take a toll on his health, and there is little time left for him to develop a private life. What's more, ironically, given his apparent monk-like existence, the loud carousing coming almost nightly, in his absence, from his apartment, and physical evidence of excessive alcohol consumption, has given Baxter the reputation with his neighbours, a stolid medical doctor and his wife, of being a philandering libertine. When he does manage to get time in the apartment himself, there is little for him to do but eat a solitary TV dinner and read himself to sleep.

The one ray of light in the desolation of Baxter's personal life is a sweet lovely young elevator operator, Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). On the day that Baxter's extended deprivations seem to be having the desired outcome, he asks her out on a date. But she already has an appointment to meet someone, a high ranking executive at the company, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), a middle-aged family man, with whom she had an extended summer romance, and for whom she is nursing a broken heart.

The real theme of The Apartment is that of loneliness, primarily the loneliness of young single people in a big city. Baxter's loneliness manifests itself in his misguided desire for acceptance in the workplace, and the mistaken perception that his stable of managers like him because of the favours he does for them. On the contrary, the indications are that they dislike being beholden to him: they call him "buddy boy" in a way that suggests he is far from their buddy; they pressure him to give them time in his apartment even when it is clearly very inconvenient for him; they even give his home address out to someone who wishes him harm. Miss Kubelik's loneliness manifests itself in the affair she has had with a married man. But perhaps this affair is not surprising: if young single eligible men like Baxter are busy climbing corporate ladders, where else can she find affection?

Fran Kubelik has aspects in common with the other women in the story, and aspects that differentiate her from them. Like them, she has had an affair with a married man, but unlike them, although heart-broken, her nature is still unspoilt. By comparison, the other women appear coarse, that is to say, coarsened by experience, by repeated disappointment and loss of hope. From the blowsy switchboard operator to the ditzy Monroe lookalike/soundalike in the bar, these women seem to given up looking for lasting love and happiness, and are settling for temporary kicks. Then there's the lonely wife of the jailed jockey, actively seeking out male company on New Year's Eve, like a forlorn reflection of the plight of married men in the summer. She seems to still love her husband, but just needs someone to hold for the night. Maybe these married men had flings with their secretaries, switchboard operators, etc, not because they were cynical thrill seekers, but because they too in their way were lonely.

As for Baxter's middle-aged middle managers, they are a disappointing lot: "happily" married men cynically using the apartment for assignations with long-term mistresses and one-night stands. When they mistakenly get the idea that Baxter has bedded Miss Kubelik, they respond as if it were a challenging sporting achievement. Jeff Sheldrake, Miss Kubelik's ex-lover, however, seems to be a different kind of person, ready to do the right thing for the love of his life. His character is the key to the question of whether a single woman like Fran Kubelik is likely to find happiness with a married man.

Jack Lemmon's performance as Baxter is exemplary. Technically, he is magnificent. Which actor was it who said the best advice he ever got was to do (physical) things quickly, lighting up a cigarette, packing something away, whatever. These sequences of actions may be unavoidable, but dramatically, they are dead time, and it's vital to move on as fast as possible to other more dramatic events. Lemmon exemplifies this skills in various bits of business in the apartment: getting a TV dinner ready, cooking spaghetti, etc. Fortunately, briskness of action fits in well with Baxter's rather frenetic character. This nervousness combines with his characteristic optimistic cheeriness, like a mask, which counterpoints nicely with his essential loneliness. Just the sound of him in the kitchen, humming operatic snatches in a kind of desperately cheery way (according to Wikipedia improvised by Lemmon), are very poignant. The business with the tennis racket too is very good. It makes the otherwise mundane cooking process unusual and interesting to watch. It adds a slightly creative, kooky angle to Baxter's character. It's a good illustration of the kind of makeshift rough-and-ready domesticity of the single male in the kitchen.

Shirley MacLaine is wonderful in the role of Miss Kubelik, combining the unthreatening approachability of the girl-next-door with an adorable sunny sweetness, cuteness and specialness, so that the women in the audience will identify with her and want the best for her, and the men, identifying with Baxter, will want to be with her. MacMurray is fine as Sheldrake. There are some excellent supporting actors, including Dr Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) and Mrs Dreyfuss (Naomi Stevens), the switchboard operator, and especially, the jockey's wife.

In short, The Apartment is an exceptional dramatic comedy with great story, script, characters, and performances.

  • Director: Billy Wilder
  • Writers: Billy Wilder, IAL Diamond
  • Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday

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Tuesday 5 July 2011

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France...

A terrific film in almost every aspect: story, characters, script, direction and acting. After the doldrums of Kill Bill 1 (2003) (so disappointing that I couldn't bring myself to see Kill Bill 2, 2004) and the IQ-lowering Death Proof (2007), this is a welcome return by Quentin Tarantino to the kind of brilliance displayed in the earlier work, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), that inspired a generation of young film-makers. According to Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglourious_Basterds], the first draft of the script was written in 1998, before Kill Bill and Death Proof. It seems the script went through some significant changes along the way, so hopefully this current return to form is not limited to projects from his back catalogue but is a pointer to the future.

The story is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, in a kind of alternate universe where the fixed historical realities of our world do not apply. The plot essentially centres around an Allied mission to assassinate a number of prominent Nazi government officials at a film premiere. The Basterds of the title are a volunteer group of Nazi-hating American soldiers, headed by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), working clandestinely behind enemy lines to instill fear into the hearts and minds of Nazi soldiers through acts of ruthless savagery, consciously creating a word-of-mouth reputation of mythical terror that can strike with impunity, anywhere, anytime. The other characters include French Jews, notably Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), either in hiding or striving to maintain a false public identity; a magnificently skillful Jew-hunting "national security" SD officer, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz); an equally perceptive Gestapo officer, Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl); a British secret agent with fluent German, Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender); and German film star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

As well as these principal characters, there are a good number of ordinary German soldiers and civilians. With the premise of the Basterds' mission being that it is fine to kill Nazis, interestingly, these "ordinary" Germans are written and played not as cartoonish caricatures, but as fully realised, rounded, sometimes likeable, even in some cases admirable human beings. I found myself wondering what part if any these people would have played in the atrocities committed by their government. Did they all deserve a grisly fate, or were some just soldiers at war, patriotic as any people at war might be about their country? The mission of the Basterds, to kill all Nazis, seemed harsh to my modern eyes, if the term "Nazi" includes normal German people caught up in a war not of their own making.

The film is a showcase for and a discussion of Hitchcock's famous formula for suspense (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1985, by François Truffaut, Simon and Schuster, see also Themes and plot devices in the films of Alfred Hitchcock) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_and_plot_devices_in_the_films_of_Alfred_Hitchcock], in which, as I understand it, explaining how to create suspense, Hitchcock describes a scenario where two people are talking in a room with a bomb under the table. In order to create suspense, Hitchcock explained, the audience needs to know about the bomb. If the audience doesn't know about the bomb, and the bomb goes off, it will be a surprise but nothing more. It is with the knowledge of the existence of bomb, that in the minds of the audience, over time, suspense can be built. In fact, the longer the bomb does not go off, the greater the suspense. In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino puts metaphorical bombs under a lot of tables, and tells the audience about many of them. As the audience spend time with the participants, the metaphorical bomb under the table raises the level of the stakes (the perceived value of the outcome) for each participant, and correspondingly, ratchets up feelings of suspense.

Amusingly, in one key scene, Tarantino reverses the formula, so that for most of the scene, while the participants know, or suspect, that there's a non-literal bomb under the table, the audience is only later told of its existence, though, from the demeanour of the characters, the audience will rightly suspect that something is amiss but not quite know what. This is more like the Hemingway edict, if memory serves, consciously trialled in the short story "A Clean Well-lighted Place" (1926), where a tragic event is never explicitly stated, that you don't need to explicitly include the main event driving the plot, e.g. the climactic suicide, as its occurrence will be active in more or less subtle ways in other parts of the story, like the invisible parts of the iceberg that hit the Titanic. (For interesting discussion of alternatives to Hitchcock's classic formula for suspense, see "Building a Better Bomb: The Alternatives to Suspense" Peet Gelderblom, 19 October 2008, [http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/?p=2030])

The other edict Tarantino seems to follow (one for which I can't find a reference online, and would welcome one) is that, films being essentially a sequence of scenes, if a filmmaker aims to make a great film, it must include half a dozen or so really great scenes, which Basterds does. Where Tarantino excels, in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds, is in setting up (physically) fairly static scenarios marked by really kick-ass dialogue. The dialogue, in itself, is often concerned with apparently mundane topics, such as pop culture, food and drink, but nevertheless, because of clear conflict of interests and high stakes (such as a figurative bomb under a table which the audience is well aware of), Tarantino's scenarios are full of suspense. One scene in particular in Inglourious Basterds, full of pleasantries about a family's health and the quality of drink on offer, parallels the technique used by Hemingway in the superb short story "The Killers" (1927), where the menace of two gangsters waiting in a restaurant to murder another character is mainly conveyed through the most banal exchanges, largely relating to the availability - or rather lack of availability - of food, but covering a potential for great violence.

The script includes some nice interplay between art and life, where one character, interacting with another character in person and also able to see that character in a fictive role on screen, is undone when the response to the fictive role supersedes that of the real person, fatally attributing the fictive character's motivation to the real person. While watching this film-within-a-film, which seems to be little more than a series of back-to-back killings, appreciated hugely, for the wrong reasons, by the kind of people most of us would not wish to be associated with, I thought it a neat commentary (inadvertent or not) on the poverty of interest of pure action films such as Kill Bill 1, to my mind is more like a test run of action sequences than a fully-fledged storied film. My brother, Rob, however, suggested that this partially glimpsed film sounded more like a Nazi version of the biopic, Sergeant York (1941) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_York], for which Gary Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar in the title role, which follows a similar plot-line, or alternatively, To Hell and Back (1955) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Hell_and_Back_(film)], starring Audie Murphie as himself, another film about a WWII expert marksman who single-handedly takes on a large number of enemy soldiers.

As for the performances, as a director, Tarantino must be doing something very right, as he has assembled a brilliant cast and got fantastic performances by almost everyone. Of particular note are:

  • Christoph Waltz, superb as the character of the charming "national security" officer and rightly received various prestigious awards, including "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe, as well as (confusingly), Best Leading Actor at Cannes
  • August Diehl as the Gestapo officer in the beer cellar
  • Michael Fassbinder as a British secret agent
  • Diane Kruger as a German film star
  • Mélanie Laurent as a French Jew
  • Daniel Brühl as a German hero

The only slight question mark in my mind hangs over Brad Pitt's portrayal of First Lieutenant Raine, leader of the Basterds. It's a difficult role, with little shading to it, and he plays it with a good deal of swagger, like an old-fashioned swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks or (American) Errol Flynn, mixed with the ruthlessness of a military Clark Gable or a mercenary Lee Marvin. My reservation is that his portrayal, or at least the camera's representation of his portrayal, does not take us into his thought processes, resulting in a person without depth of feeling beyond the actions required, so it's tricky to judge whether or not he is a trustworthy guide to the rights and wrongs of dealing with Nazis. Is he a good man who has embraced a distasteful but essential duty, or a cheerfully heartless executioner? Trying to think of another actor for the role, Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983), comes to mind as having the requisite phlegmatic unflappability and toughness and machismo. There's a quiet intelligence behind the eyes there that Pitt doesn't seem to attempt.

  • Director: Quention Tarantino
  • Writer: Quention Tarantino
  • Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth

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Friday 20 May 2011

Mother (Madeo) (2009)

She'll stop at nothing.

"Mother" is an unusual character-based murder mystery set in modern day South Korea and featuring a superb performance by Kim Hye-ja, the actress playing the title character, a single mother of a mentally backward, memory-impaired, young man of 28 years of age accused of killing a local school girl. Finding precious little support from the law, Hye-ja, desperate to identify the real perpetrator, is herself forced to turn amateur detective.

The story begins with the son, Do-joon (Won Bin), being led into a needlessly violent confrontation with a group of elderly people by his best friend, Jin-tae (Ku Jin). Later, at the police station, facing a sizeable fine for criminal damage, Jin-tae exploits Do-joon's foggy recollection of the event to trick him into taking the rap. Of course, it is Do-joon's mother, Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja), who will have to try to find the money to pay the fine from her meagre income as a herb seller and unlicensed acupuncturist. Later, when the body of the school girl is found, and the finger of suspicion points to Do-joon, based on circumstantial evidence (possibly planted by Jin-tae), Hye-ja begins a solitary struggle on behalf of her son.

Stripped to its essence, and in the hands of lesser filmmakers, perhaps, this would be just another stock genre murder mystery with an amateur sleuth. But the sly way the story is set up by director, Bong Joon-ho, and screenplay writer, Park Eun-kyo, edging the mother unexpectedly into the role of investigator, is so fresh and clever in its execution that it seems quite novel.

The script is brilliant, with the plot taking various surprising turns. People are not always what they seem at first, and there are some unsettling reveals. Along the way, a harsh light is shone on the investigative powers of the police and the moral fibre of the legal representatives, not to mention the cruel world of Korean schoolchildren, and there are episodes of strong suspense and violence. An intriguing secondary mystery clouds the nature of the relationship between two important characters. Is the one still a small child in the eyes of the other, or is something less savoury involved? Perhaps I missed some vital clues, but in my mind this puzzle was only satisfactorily resolved days after watching the film.

The script is great, but best of all is the outstanding performance by Kim Hye-Ja as the mother, a master class in method acting, her incredibly expressive face able to communicate a range of conflicting emotions within a matter of seconds. The enigmatic temporal bookends in which she features linger in the memory. Very good performances as well by Jin Goo and Won Bin as the two young men.

  • Director: Bong Joon-ho
  • Writers: Bong Joon-ho, Park Eun-kyo
  • Starring: Kim Hye-ja, Bin Won, Ku Jin, Yoon Jae-Moon, Mi-sun Jun, Young-Suck Lee, Sae-Beauk Song, Mun-hee Na, Woo-hee Chun, Byoung-Soon Kim

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Sunday 8 May 2011

Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

Audrey Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, the craziest heroine who ever crept between the pages of a best-selling novel!

Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on the novella (1958) by Truman Capote, is a romantic comedy drama with a very dark heart about identity, self-delusion and ambition in New York City, featuring a mesmerising central performance by Audrey Hepburn.

Holly Golightly (Hepburn) is a bubbly kooky glamorous fun-loving girl whose life seems to be constant swirl of nightclubs, late night parties and men. A handsome young author, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), moves into an apartment above, and is willingly drawn into the carousel of Holly's chaotic existence.

The stage is set for romance, or would be but for one small hurdle. Varjak has long-term writer's block and seems to subsist on handouts from a wealthy patroness, Emily Eustace Failenson (Patricia Neal), while Holly has set her sights on marrying a man rich enough to validate her current life-style, a millionaire, and puts a kind of magic ring-fence around Varjak, nicknaming him "Fred" after her older brother.

The two leads are likeable characters, and we wish them well. Will the fixedness of Holly's ambitions prevent her from finding true happiness? Will Varjak ever find sufficient lead for his pencil (actually ribbon for his typewriter)? As the story unfolds, the happy-go-lucky world of Holly Golightly begins to develop serious fault-lines, as the world-conquering self-image that she has created for herself becomes increasingly difficult to maintain against the intrusion of inconvenient prosaic realities from her present and past lives.

There are strong parallels between the two lead characters, relating to their sources of income, indicated early on in the story. In the small hours in the apartment building one night, escaping from an insistent drunken date, angry that the $50 "restroom attendant tip" he gave her has got him nothing in return, Holly slips up the fire escape to Varjak's window and sees Failenson inside, adjusting her clothes and leaving a $300 gift on the bedside table before exiting. Holly's main income, it can be inferred, is in the form of "gifts", money or otherwise, from men at clubs, where she presumably serves as some sort of escort or companion. Wikipedia's entry for Capote's novella states: "Holly Golightly (age 18-19) is a country girl turned New York café society girl, who makes her living as a companion to society's most prominent men." Varjak has had a book of short stories published, but nothing else recently, so it seems very doubtful that he could be getting sufficient royalties to pay for an apartment in Manhattan. Judging by the decor, it seems more likely that the apartment is provided for him by Failenson.

While watching, I suspected that Holly Golightly was a stand-in for Truman Capote himself, casting himself, metaphorically as an aspirational "media whore". Wikipedia, however, draws parallels between Golightly and Capote's mother, who carved out a new life for herself in New York City in a similar way to Golightly: "both left the husbands they married as teenagers and abandoned relatives they loved and were responsible for in order to make their way to New York City, and both achieved Cafe Society status through relationships with wealthier men".

The best thing about the film is the character of Holly Golightly, the glamorous tart rejecting her heart, and Hepburn's wonderful portrayal of her. Wikipedia says that Hepburn herself "regarded it as one of her most challenging roles, since she was an introvert required to play an extrovert", and also that Marilyn Monroe was first choice for the role, which would have been different, but also probably very effective. The great song "Moon River" by Henry Mancini was apparently written specially for the "limited vocal range" of Audrey Hepburn, whose singing of it, according to Wikipedia "helped composer Henry Mancini and lyricist Johnny Mercer win an Oscar for Best Song."

Peppard, by contrast, 33 years old at the time, was surely too old for the role. (Hepburn was 42 32, but always looked young for her age.) Admittedly, he does have the intelligence and sensitivity for the role, but to attract a rich sugar mummy, surely his character would need to be a slimmer, more handsome, more waifish younger man, a young Warren Beatty or Anthony Perkins, for instance, not this stolid buttoned-up suit-wearing type.

Sources:

  • Director: Blake Edwards
  • Writers: George Axelrod (screenplay), Truman Capote (novella)
  • Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Martin Balsam, Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Mickey Rooney, John McGiver, José Luis de Villalonga

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Amendments: Following good comment from @anonymous, deleted "more waifish" from description of the young Warren Beatty. Added ranking image. Following comment by Wanderer, struck through the whole of last paragraph, which has been pretty much blown out of the water.



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True Grit (1969)

The strangest trio ever to track a killer.

A very enjoyable character-based western, directed by Henry Hathaway, and notable for the remarkable strength of will and general audaciousness of its female protagonist, teenager Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), who propels herself into a brutal male-dominated world of violence and death. As in the Coen brothers' 2010 remake, Mattie embarks on a quest to bring her father's murderer to justice with the help of two very different law enforcers, a grizzled hard-drinking US Marshall, Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), and a charismatic young Texas ranger, La Boeuf (Glen Campbell).

This 1969 film has more back story than the Coen brothers' remake, introducing Mattie and her father, Frank Ross (John Pickard), at home, and showing the context of the murder and the murder itself. From then on the plot follows fairly similar paths, driven by Mattie and her mission. Finding that the local sheriff has no jurisdiction in the Indian Territory to which the murderer, Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), has fled, Mattie, on her own initiative, hires the meanest licensed federal law officer she can find, Cogburn. La Boeuf also turns out also to be in pursuit of Chaney, for an earlier crime, and in fairly short order, Mattie, Cogburn and La Boeuf enter Indian Territory all bent on the same goal.

As in the Coen brothers' version, the main delight of the film is Mattie Ross herself: the way she interacts with the range of people she encounters and the character of her responses to events. She is an amazing person, only 14 years old but clever and audacious, whose personal courage and readiness to engage in violent action, as the story develops, is tested to the extreme. Perhaps in those days (1880 according to Wikipedia, not that long ago really, around the time my father's grandfather was running around in short trousers), children were less sheltered. Near the start of the film, the filmmakers deliberately show how public executions were treated by many townspeople as a fun day out, with snacks for sale, and small children apparently free to mingle with the watching crowds, and even, from their playground swings opposite the town square, getting the best views.

Hathaway permits his young protagonist more emotion than the Coen brothers do. He shows, from the outset, how Mattie is taken with La Boeuf and briefly shows her crying (privately) over her late father's possessions. Possibly related to this, but less satisfactorily, is the use of the musical score, which to modern ears seems rather unsubtle at times.

Another delight, of course, is the debauched but doughty character of Cogburn and the great performance of Wayne (despite being 20 years or so older than the character in the book, he received an Academy Award for Best Actor), contrasting strongly with the characters of the strictly brought up Mattie and straight-arrow La Boeuf. According to Wikipedia, Wayne did his own stunts, including the final jump.

There's so much fun to be had, especially, in the first reel, in Mattie's interactions with other characters. When she comes into conflict with La Boeuf, their brief flirting turns to verbal sparring, and she stands up to him just fine, as she does with everyone else. Her dealings with the horse dealer, Col. G. Stonehill (an outstanding performance by Strother Martin), show her to be a wonderfully feisty resourceful person.

Speaking of supporting characters, others of note include Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper, who play their roles relatively sympathetically, showing that criminals are more than simple monsters.

My only criticism is that Glen Campbell, hand-picked by Wayne, according to Wikipedia, seemed too old for the role (he was 33), or not quite vulnerable and good-looking enough for Mattie to take a shine to him, or maybe just not an expressive enough actor. I never felt there was any chemistry between the two of them.

Sources:

  • Director: Henry Hathaway
  • Writers: Marguerite Roberts (screenplay), Charles Portis (novel)
  • Starring: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Jeff Corey, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, John Fiedler

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Amendments: corrected some links. Added ranking image.



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Friday 6 May 2011

Funny Face (1957)

'S Wonderful! 'S Marvelous!

Here's a romantic musical comedy with the most promising ingredients:

  • featuring winsome Audrey Hepburn in her first musical outing and legendary dancer Fred Astaire
  • directed by Stanley Donen, uncrowned king of Hollywood musicals and director of the glorious classic "Singing in the Rain"
  • music by George and Ira Gershwin
  • choreography by Eugene Loring
  • set in New York City and Paris

Sadly, what should be a light and airy soufflé turns out to be a bit of a pudding.

The film starts well enough with a sprightly musical dance title sequence in a modernistic Mondrian-like style, apparently designed by photographer Richard Avedon, in which Maggie Prescott (the fabulously talented Kay Thompson), editor of Quality fashion magazine, throws out the design for next month's edition, and demands a bold new look, all in pink. Lead photographer, Dick Avery (Astaire), a character apparently based on Richard Avedon himself, seeking inspiration in a Greenwich book shop, happens upon fashion-eschewing philosophy-loving sales assistant, Jo Stockton (Hepburn), and convinces Prescott that Stockton has the fresh new look the magazine needs. Stockton, though somewhat smitten with Avery following an impromptu kiss on the lips, is at first reluctant to be involved. But, on the strength of a free trip to Paris, where at last, in her free time, she can attend lectures by her idol, Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair), professor of empathicalism, she finally agrees to work as Quality magazine's featured model, and they all fly to Paris.

The setup is a bit like a fifties' version of The Devil Wears Prada (2006), with Hepburn pre-figuring Anne Hathaway's fashion-ambivalent journalist Andrea Sacks, and Thompson trailblazing the tyrannical reign of Meryl Streep's ruthless Runway magazine editor, Miranda Priestly. It is a setup with fantastic potential for subtly exploring issues relating to the role of women in the modern world via the conflicting external and internal forces acting on the character of Stockton, a woman who, rejecting conventional gender stereotyping and espousing the world of ideas, nevertheless, has temporarily agreed to compromise her ideals by working in the fashion industry.

A great setup, yes, but a very unsatisfying payoff, where the issues posed in the setup, even the relatively minor issue of the questionable value of fashion (which The Devil Wears Prada addresses very smartly), are pretty much left by the wayside. Instead (without dropping specific plot spoilers), Stockton's behaviour becomes irrationally, even selfishly capricious, leading to peculiar plot developments, all apparently serving to maintain the conventions of the genre. Could this lack of bite in the script have resulted from a failure of nerve when facing up to the popular modern monsters of feminism, intellectualism and anti-materialism?

Forgetting the film's questionable morals and character development, taking it purely in terms of entertainment, the film is simply rather dull. Despite being awarded a Golden Laurel nomination for "Top Male Musical Performance" at Cannes Film Festival (1957), to my unschooled eyes, Astaire seems rather subdued and does not really do anything very impressive in dance, except when pretending to be a French beatnik, and his singing isn't that great, either. My teenage daughter, who has had a good deal of dance training, commented that his dancing was boring. The songs by Gershwin are quite unmemorable. The view provided on the bohemian Left Bank culture looks stereotyped and unconvincing. That said, the Paris-based Bohemian dance numbers by Hepburn, Thompson and Astaire are pretty funny. The best performers are Hepburn who does a funny modern dance routine to express herself in a French dive, and her boss, the head of Quality magazine, who is a hugely entertaining dancer.

Astaire was terribly miscast. (According to Wikipedia, Hepburn insisted that he be cast. He had starred with his sister Adele in the stage version years before.) Hepburn was 28 but looked younger. Astaire was 58 and looked it, especially in his frequent cardigans, a 30-year age gap, too wide. There seemed to be no reason why she should fall for him, except that he took the liberty of kissing her on the lips a couple of times, and also that he was the one that saw her potential as a model and chose her for the magazine feature.

According to Wikipedia, only a year or so after the release of this film, the bottom fell out of the musical film genre, and Donen had to change to other kinds of work. On the evidence of this film, I'm not really surprised.

Sources:

  • Director: Stanley Donen
  • Writer: Leonard Gershe
  • Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Michel Auclair, Robert Flemyng, Suzy Parker

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Amendment: Added ranking image.



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