Sales on Film

Viv and Larry Blog-a-Thon: Odds and Ends

2011-07-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

This entry is part of the Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier Appreciation Blog-A-Thon hosted by Kendra of VivAndLarry.com

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is a pretty torpid film--bored and boring--and I considered, briefly, ripping it apart in a full-length blog entry but then became so disenchanted with re-visiting the film, I decided to gather Mrs. Stone & some of these lesser Viv and Larry triumphs in a catch-all "left-overs" post: Odds and Ends.

Yesterday, I covered a Larry film that was plagued with bad accents, so today I thought it would be only fair to review a Viv one: The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Mercifully, Leigh herself is not the one committing the sin. That dubious distinction falls to a very young Warren Beatty, attempting an Italian accent that is, truly, one of the worst I have ever heard in a film. Beatty plays a lazy Roman gigolo named Paolo who seduces and exploits Leigh's Mrs. Stone, a famous actress experiencing a midlife crisis. As far as midlife crises go, I suppose one could do worse than to fall into bed with Warren Beatty, circa 1961.

Seriously, good job there.

Vivien Leigh, to her credit, is still pretty smoking hot playing a woman who's a good deal older and more fragile than herself, still a fearsome talent and incredible beauty. Unlike Leigh's most famous roles playing feisty, kittenish heroines, Mrs. Stone is a shrinking violet, retreating to Rome in the wake of a disastrous theatrical performance and declining career.

Mrs. Stone retreats to Italy because, I suppose, the country was en vogue among Americans in the '50s & '60s and Warner Bros. thought it would sexy to set a film there. There is little motivation for Rome as a destination besides its fashionable status among filmgoers.

Karen Stone, indeed, seems to be experiencing the kind of existential malaise that would be better suited to an Antonioni film. Her wanderings around Rome, including encounters with a dirty young drifter who stalks her window, are exactly the kinds of mysterious/glamorous goings-on best exemplified by Antonioni's so-called Alienation Trilogy. Rich and drifting, she really has no ambitions in life. She was once a famous and talented actress and now she doesn't even have that. So, what?

When Monica Vitti meanders amidst Roman architecture--all blonde hair and blank expression--we buy it. But, here it's hard to care about any of the characters or what petty issues they're going through. Perhaps Leigh needed an Italian director--an Antonioni, Visconti, de Sica--to really capture how adrift and uncertain the her character feels. The Rome presented in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is more an Italian picture postcard for American audiences looking for a breezy, foreign vacation than a living, breathing evocation of a city; despite its on-location shooting, the film never achieves a sense of place or atmosphere.

The scenes that work best in communicating what I think it longs to convey--the sway the city has on Mrs. Stone, its subtle seduction and gradual corruption--are those that feature the drifter. These scenes are silent and stand in stark contrast to the scenes with Beatty's Paolo who, while damned attractive, just won't shut up.

Eventually, his horrible accent, deplorable behavior towards Leigh and utter lack of character motivation--all Paolo does is loaf around, for Pete's sake!--is too much for Mrs. Stone, and us, too. Paolo ditches Mrs. Stone and letting her curiosity get the better of her, she finally invites the drifter in for a drink (and presumably, more). If the preceding film had any of the dramatic impact of its final scene, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone might have been a worthwhile endeavor. As it is, its final moments amount to too little, too late.

***

While her husband was directing and starring in Hamlet, Vivien Leigh was starring in her own prestigious literary adaptation, Anna Karenina. Although not as successful as Olivier's definitive staging of Shakespeare's masterpiece, Karenina is a fitfully engaging adaptation, mostly due to some striking photography and good performances from Leigh as Anna and Ralph Richardson as her jilted husband. Besides these factors, the film is rather stiff and stuffy; only the scenes of Anna's premonitions of her own death, evoking a spooky 19th c. spiritualism, manage to suffuse the adaptation with real life.

The St. Petersburg's upper crust indulge in some chic spiritualism.

Director Julien Duvivier was certainly no hack, having been one of the foremost figures in the Poetic Realism movement in France along with more famous names like Rene Claire and Jean Renoir. After WWII, he was having trouble getting steady work in France, so he mostly worked as a director-for-hire in Hollywood and the UK. Ever-reliable Viv and Larry producer & patron Alexander Korda, not being an idiot, recognized in Duvivier and cinematographer Henri Alekan (also a Frenchman who had just shot La belle et le bete for Jean Cocteau and would later lens Wings of Desire for Wim Wenders) would lend some much needed visual flare to the potentially creaky costume drama. This, they did.

The scenes where Karenina's burgeoning madness comes to a head are visually thrilling and subtly eerie. The drawing room scenes of bourgeois social niceties are significantly less involving. Part of this stems from the poor casting of Irish actor Kieron Moore as Count Vronsky, the supposedly dashing and irrestitible young man who sweeps Anna off her feet. As cute as Moore is in the role, he comes across as something of a 3rd or 4th rate Robert Taylor/John Gilbert type. He is fine to look at, but lacks any screen magnetism and is totally unbeleivable as a man for whom Anna would sacrifice her family, her social position, and her life.

Handsome but vapid. Sorry, dude.

With little to work with, Vivien Leigh does well, but it's a part she had played more convincingly in better films before and the whole thing has a rather warmed-over feeling.

With the passing of time, the film hasn't faired very well, especially with the 1935 Garbo version having become, in the hearts and minds of most cineastes, the definitive adaptation of Tolstoy's epic romance. This is perhaps why the Leigh/Korda version is seldom discussed in film circles. Before doing research for this blogathon, I hadn't even heard of it. In light of the Garbo/Gilbert/Clarence Brown, another adaptation only 13 years later must have seemed unnecessary (decades later, even more so). Of course, Anna Karenina has been adapted steadily on stage, screen, and television in the years since and with yet another iteration in the works, it seems there is no stopping them.

All of this comes with a word of warning: the version I saw (the version available on DVD in the U.S. [my copy came from Netflix]) is the 111 minute version, cut down from a considerably longer 139 international version. Undoubtedly, that extra half an hour changes the tenure of the film considerably. Of course, I don't know what is in that other version. Personally, I would have liked to see more of Levin (my favorite character), and a greater emphasis on the Russian political climate (the U.S. version has none). For the sake of runtime, and perhaps to simplify the novel for audiences, the entire film is staked on Anna's romance with Vronsky. In theory, this works well in foregrounding Leigh's considerable star power, but in practice falters because of Moore's lack of screen presence and because there is very little to care about in Anna's stakes. We are meant to root for her, but from the first her marriage to Ralph Richardson is on the rocks (being obviously ill-matched), that it is as hard to get invested in their reconciliation as it is to cheer on the young lovers.

***

Bunny Lake is Missing is a film I like a whole lot and would love to delve into more deeply at another time. Unfortunately, due to time constraints and the fact that Olivier simply isn't in it very much, it's relegated here to truncated consideration.

Ostensibly a mystery concerning the disappearance of a young girl, Bunny Lake is a delightfully deranged film which lists among its many perversions: incest, child kidnapping, sadomasochism, and the most bizarre '60s Freudian psychology this side of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Ann (Carol Lynley) and Stephen Lake (Keir Dullea) are Americans living in London. They are brother and sister but behave like man and wife. When Ann's daughter Bunny (whom we don't ever see) goes missing after her first day at school, we're faced with an almost impenetrable mystery: what happened to Bunny Lake? The film sets about answering the question in a roundabout way. First we must determine if the girl ever existed at all.

There is much to say about this film's many interesting aspects, but for the sake of brevity and thematic adherence, this overview will focus on Olivier's role in the picture.

Laurence Olivier plays the pivotal role of Superintendent Newhouse, the police inspector investigating the disappearance. With the film's coterie of weirdos, eccentrics and kidnap suspects, it first appears that Olivier has been cast to provide some much needed gravity and stability that often threatens, with its Freudian neuroses and wide-angle lenses, to strain credulity and descend into hysteria. Calming interviewing the suspects and questioning Ann, Olivier's Supt. Newhouse seems a rational and professional sort of fellow, merely here to do the job and get on with it.

However, Oliver's choices in a few key scenes point to some subtle, almost imperceptible nuances in the characterization. Watching the film a second time, one might conclude that Newhouse is just as crazy as the rest of 'em! For example, during the early stages of the investigation, neither Newhouse nor the audience knows what has happened, and it seems the Police Superintendent are satisfied with investigating all possible and probable leads without committing to any.

In one scene, it seems that Newhouse suspects Ann and allows Stephen and his fellow detectives to interrogate her. Stephen keeps badgering Ann, pestering and confusing her (we still don't know at this point whether Stephen or Ann is telling the truth).

All three men seem to be accusing Ann. Preminger's framing of this scene (and many others) intimate guilt and accusation almost subconsciously, so that the viewer, who, again, does not know the kidnapper's identity or the fate of the child until the climax of the film, shifts their identification from character to character, often having to grapple with contradictory stories and questionable motives.

The viewer's natural inclination, I believe, would be to automatically latch onto Olivier's character as the go-to identification figure. In so many films, it is the investigator in whom we trust and follow to lead us through a mystery. Newhouse is never so outrageous that we suspect he has any nefarious motivations, but he is never quite the strong and upstanding presence we might expect. For example, while questioning the cook at the nursery school when Bunny disappeared, Newhouse becomes distracted by the junket she is preparing for the children's lunch. It turns out Newhouse is something of a foodie, fixating on junket, sipping the sherry offered by the the matron of the school, and meeting Ann at a bar for a drink.

It is this scene at the bar where perhaps it becomes clear that Olivier's Newhouse is something of a genius police detective, however distant or distracted he may seem. It comes later in the picture when Newhouse (and the audience) has come to suspect that perhaps Ann is full-bore nuts and her daughter never existed at all. Newhouse is charming, offering Ann sandwiches and brandy and conversing socially, subtly needling her for more and more information on Bunny, Stephen and her childhood.

Watch Olivier (and The Zombies) in action, starting around the 4 min. mark.

Adding to the weirdness of the entire picture, but especially this scene, the '60s rock band The Zombies are playing a performance on the bar television. A strange choice of product integration, but the jangly, Brit pop band lends a disquieting undercurrent of youthful jubilee to Ann's rather horrifying tales of childhood (that doll funeral--eek!)

The fact that the bartender changes the channel from a news report on the missing girl to the rock performance underlines the casual dismissal of almost all involved (and from Preminger himself) in actually ever finding the girl. When the mystery is finally concluded, Bunny Lake is treated with indifference. The last twenty minutes or so shifts entirely from Newhouse & the police investigating to Ann taking up the mantle herself and turning into something of an action heroine as she comes face to face with the kidnapper and takes back her child. In point of fact, Olivier's Inspector basically disappears and the "official" investigation into becomes an intensely personal quest for Ann--sort of a psychoanalytic therapy session in action. Bunny Lake is Missing is an interesting and slippery sort of film that always keeps you guessing, shifting allegiances and identification. The casting of Olivier--a gigantic figure in British film--is a stroke of brilliance as Supt. Newhouse is someone the audience instantly feels comfortable trusting. Olivier is charming and calmly paternal throughout, even when he investigatory methods may strike us as odd, indifferent, or even cruel.

"The play's the thing": Olivier's Shakespearean Trilogy

2011-07-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is part of the Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier Appreciation Blog-A-Thon hosted by Kendra of VivAndLarry.com

Before I started this blogathon, I knew very little about Laurence Olivier beyond what everyone knows about Laurence Olivier: that he was a great actor. Some say great Shakespearean actor. Some say great stage actor. Some say the greatest actor of all-time. The emphasis is, anyway, on acting.

But after watching Olivier's Shakespearean trilogy, Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III, I was astonished (well, maybe not astonished, but certainly impressed) with what a brilliant director he was. Maybe I'm overstating things because of my ignorance of Olivier's directorial output; after all, all three films were released by the Criterion Collection and it's not like Olivier is some unknown, obscure figure in international film. But in the online film community, there's very little chatter (that I've observed) over Olivier-as-director or his incredible Shakespearean films. Perhaps this is a reaction to the predictable critique against Shakespearean films as "non-cinematic" (rubbish) or the impulse to give William Shakespeare's words total authorship over any staging of his plays (tempting, but still rubbish). Perhaps it is the third charge, that Olivier's interpretations of Shakespeare, both on stage and in film, are so classically definitive that they're better left unmentioned for fear anyone else attempting to stage the works will inadvertently ape them. You see a little bit of this reactionary impulse in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Hamlet which, if you watch them back to back with Olivier's, seem to purposefully be ducking where Olivier dodged.

Whatever the reason, here's the truth: these are damned good films. Really good. Maybe an eighth-grader being forced to sit through 137 minutes of Technicolor Henry V in English class wouldn't think so, but they damned well are. And if you will allow me another dim-witted observation: that William Shakespeare was no slouch either. As brilliant as his works are, one must only watch a terrible rendering of Shakespearean verse to know how truly skilled Olivier was in making his own stagings so successful.

There is so much to say about these three films, all directed and produced by Olivier within the span of 11 years, but I must limit myself to a few targeted observations otherwise I would just ramble more than I already have.

Foregrounding authorship/Establishing narrative metaphor in Henry V (1944)

The first of these films is Henry V, produced in 1944. Olivier was hesitant to direct the picture himself, first approaching his Wuthering Heights director William Wyler, then Carol Reed who demurred and suggested Terrence Young. Eventually, Olivier had to take the reins himself. There was pressure to get the film done before the end of WWII. Like That Hamilton Woman, Henry V was to be an important propaganda piece in the war effort.

Henry V is indeed a spectacular production filmed in Technicolor which in 1944 was by no means a common occurrence, especially in a British film industry that had to ration as much as it could. Indeed, the film was so tightly budgeted that most of the soldiers' armor was cloth or cardboard painting to look like metal. The film's trailer advertises the color photography and boasts "a cast of thousands!", many of whom were servicemen borrowed from battle to playact combat as medieval French and English soldiers.

With its exciting battle scenes, spectacular color photography and distinguished literary pedigree, it's clear that Henry V was a hugely important production. There was a lot riding on this.

To ensure that 1944 audiences, especially American audiences, could attune themselves to the complicated diction, arcane political conflicts and historical background, Henry V has an embedded narrative structure. The film begins with a title that announces the title of the play, its author and where and when it will be performed (in the year 1600, at the Globe Theater in London). The flyer than pulls away from the screen, floating on the breeze as the camera pans across a huge model of Elizabethan-era London. We see the Thames, the little rolling hills, cathedrals and neighborhoods that made up that great metropolis 300 years prior, before settling on the Globe Theater.

In another long take, the camera descends into the Globe which is packed with theater-goers there to watch Henry V. The play is introduced with its own title on a board being held by a member of the theater troupe.

The Chorus (Leslie Banks) comes out onto the stage and addresses the gathered Elizabethan audience, and the 1944 film audience directly into the camera:

In the play, The Chorus entreats the theater audience/reader to use their imagination to go back in time to 1415 for the events of the Battle of Agincourt. Olivier gives us a rendering of this play-within-a-play, inviting the camera backstage where the actors playing actor gather before coming out on stage. The first appearance of Olivier himself is as the Elizabethan actor readying himself before appearing on stage to play Henry. (In a cute bit of business, Olivier-as-Elizabethan seems nervous, coughing before his grand entrance.)

Olivier's Henry V is as much of an Elizabethan movie as it is a medieval movie, as it is a WWII movie. He edited much of Shakespeare's play to tailor it to wartime sensibilities, making Henry a saintly king, much less blood-thirsty and warlike than he is in the play. With fully three time periods at work in the picture, it's a delicate balancing act to suss out where Olivier & co. have edited the text or accentuated set dressing and production design to privilege one element over another.

The bulk of the movie is in this medieval setting. Here, Olivier & co. have constructed a fully artificial world that takes its visual cues from medieval painting, notably "Les Tres Riches Heures," the only remaining illuminated manuscript of the period. The art style in these texts is flat, lacking dimension or depth of field; there are no shadows or voluptuousness in the architecture or design. The film reflects this style. The costumes were designed with period-appropriate fabrics and the dyed the bright colors reflective in medieval art.

Pages from "Les Tres Riches Heures" next to stills from Olivier's Henry V

"This is a tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind": Hamlet (1948)

Hamlet is a film with so many superlative elements that I had a hard time deciding what I should single out in this entry. Olivier's definitive performance? The stellar supporting cast? Inevitably, one element stands out above the others, and this is the photography. Shot by cinematographer Desmond Dickinson, Hamlet is the single film in the trilogy in black and white. Although it's tempting to attribute its cinematically striking results to sheer genius on the part of Olivier & co., the truth of the matter is the production couldn't get its hands on any Technicolor stock. Filming took six months, and at that length, Technicolor would have proved financially prohibitive. Of course, it's unimaginable now to envision gloomy Elsinore rendered in vivid color.

And gloomy it is. Doom and gloom from the get-go. The obscure and suggestive production design reveals a castle enshrouded in fog, entombed and isolated. Of course there are ghosts here. The lighting is supernatural, the photography is straight out of James Whale; Hamlet's opening scenes are pure horror movie.

Complementing the black and white photography is Olivier's own pale visage, the white hair and pallid skin, perpetually clammy, accentuate the film's stark contrasts.

Unlike the direct address to the camera in Henry V and later in Richard III, Hamlet's asides and soliloquies often begin being spoken aloud but then become an internalized monologue, as if Hamlet, in his grief and later in his affected madness, had just trailed off, indifferent to the effect of his ramblings. The internalized voice-overs take on an air of psychological melodrama that would not be out of place in a film noir. Indeed, I think many aspects of of the film speak to a familiarity with the current (1948) film cycle; their is a noir-ish subjectivity to Olivier's interpretation, a stripped down revenge thriller with a hefty emphasis on madness and psychological manipulation. In this light, Hamlet himself can be seen as a noir-ish unreliable narrator.

In the film's best scene, the play-within-a-play, Olivier's camera makes several graceful camera moves that capture with ruthless efficiency the fiendish application of his trap. Watch each time camera tracks behind Gertrude and Claudius and how the entire mood and tenor of the scene changes between the first and second sweep:

"...the crown so foul misplac'd": Richard III (1955)

Olivier's Richard III is probably the most drastically edited of his three Shakespeare films. Its entire first scene is taken from Henry VI, the play's pre-cursor. Therein, essential information is conveyed to the viewer lest they be totally confused as to the royal line of succession. Richard III was already a prominent character in Shakespeare's historical plays and an Elizabethan audience would be familiar with what had transpired, which is why Richard III begins in medias res. Everything in Olivier's version is stripped down to its narrative base--the play is called Richard III and Richard is calling all the shots. The film works best when Olivier is delivering his character's asides and soliloquies straight down the barrel: he ingratiates us into his nefarious conspiracy and my goodness, is it delicious.

Olivier's charm as Richard the devious hunchback maybe works too well. I, for one, never cared how many friends he drowned, grieving wives he wooed, or children he murdered--as long as he kept us in the loop. The famous "winter of our discontent" speech is brilliant as written and spectacular as performed. Olivier's economical camera movement is as intuitive and graceful as it is quietly thrilling--forcefully punctuating key lines and moments--and brilliantly retreating from Richard where a less sure-footed director would track in for a close-up. Look at the way Olivier walks away from the camera to underlines Richard's deformity and how he invites the viewer to track his ramblings across the stage while the camera sits still. Just great. Well, just watch it for yourself:

In the latter part of the speech, Olivier nimbly sets up what will be the defining visual symbol of the film: the crown. The crown, both as abstract representation of power, and as literal, physical object of desire, is the central concern of everyone in the film, not just Richard. It is his ambitions we are privy to, but no one is inured against lusting for the crown; he just does it best. I imagine the crown kind of like the rugby ball and all the players are determined to smash against each other to get it.

The film even begins with a title card that announces

and then cuts to the coronation ceremony:

Richard III is perhaps the least subtle film of the three in clearly deliniating its protagonists' intensions (even more so than Hamlet's deceptive revenge). You can be sure that whenever a crown appears, some serious stuff is about to go down.

Which makes Richard wearing the crown into battle (a humorous image with his hooked nose and pageboy haircut, let's be serious), more pointedly tragic where its absence on top of the royally misshapen head signals sure defeat.

The film's final image echoes its first, the crown being raised to grace a new head. The sparseness of the framing underlines the futility of all Richard's scheming. In the timeline of the film, he was King for only a few minutes before receiving his comeuppance in battle.

"You better look in the frying pan!": Sidewalks of London (Tim Whelan, 1938)

2011-07-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is part of the Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier Appreciation Blog-A-Thon hosted by Kendra of VivAndLarry.com

Sidewalks of London, which came to me via Netflix under the UK title St. Martin's Lane, is a charming little gem of a movie and probably the single most delightful discovery of this blog-a-thon.

St. Martin's Lane is a bustling street on the edge of Convent Garden where all manner of street performers and panhandlers gather to entertain and hustle the crowds of shoppers, cinema, and theater-goers that line the streets every night. Charles (Charles Laughton) is one such busker whose claim to fame is a stirring recitation of Rudyard Kipling's "If." Vivien Leigh plays a charming, big-eyed street urchin of the Dickensian sort with dreams of becoming a legitimate dancer on the London stage. After stealing Laughton's tips and lifting the cigarette case of a wealthy lyricist named Prentiss (Rex Harrison), Laughton follows the little pickpocket back to the abandoned mansion she's squatting in. Believing she's alone, Leigh celebrates her newfound wealth by smoking Prentiss' fancy cigarettes, dancing around the dusty digs, a pie-eyed dreamer without a care in the world. Charles is taken with her immediately and sensing real talent in the girl, invites her back to his modest apartment promising to train her and hone her performing skills. The girl's youth and beauty and Charles' age, girth and childlike innocence assure the audience there won't be any funny stuff.

The film was conceived as a star vehicle for Charles Laughton who had already achieved Hollywood fame in films like Mutiny on the Bounty and Les Meserables and an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933 (produced by the ever-present Alexander Korda). Vivien Leigh was still on the up-and-up, splitting her time between the London stage and a few starring and supporting roles in British films, including her first with Olivier, Fire Over England (1937) the year before Sidewalks of London; she was still a year away from attaining international superstardom as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Parenthetically, the US release of Sidewalks of London was delayed until 1940 to capitalize on Leigh's post-Scarlett popularity.

The film also features a pre-fame Rex Harrison as Leigh's love interest. The two had been paired the year before in Storm in a Teacup. Considering the success Leigh and Harrison would later achieve, it's rather charming to see a title card like this, that lists them as supporting the big star Laughton (who also served as uncredited co-producer).

Sidewalks of London was directed by Tim Whelan, a veteran writer of Harold Lloyd's best comedies (Girl Shy, Safety Last!, The Freshman) who gained traction as a director while living in England in the '30s and '40s. A few years after this picture he would be called in to assist with Korda's epic production of The Thief of Baghdad. Whelan's silent comedy pedigree is evident in Sidewalks of London, which is slimly-scripted but rich in characterization, comedic business and pathos. The opening of the film features some very nice tracking shots running up and down the titular lane, showing us the crowds lined up in front of the theaters, indifferent to the street performers like Laughton who busy performing their hearts out. Shooting in real West London locations lends the film a detailed verisimilitude even as the story (and Laughton's performance) are steeped in nostalgic sentimentality.

Local flavor from location shooting.

The film works best in its first half which showcases the talents of the London buskers and immerses us in their charming, if shambolic, lifestyle. We're treated to plenty of street-performer humor, as in an early scene when Leigh gets a bite to eat at a snack shack, sitting next to a man in blackface having a cup of coffee. This is when she first meets Harrison's Prentiss and as the two make eyes at each other, the man in blackface just sits there, natural as anything, smoking a cigarette and drinking his coffee.

Charles and the girl, who he's dubbed Libby, join two other street performers to form a more organized singing and dancing revue. Charles figures there is strength in numbers and a cooperative group will give Libby a chance to shine. Among the manifold charms of Sidewalks of London is the scene in which Charles Laughton tries to dance:

He's a might more successful charming Libby (and the audience) with a show of ventriloquism:

While Charles is seemingly happy tutoring Libby (and Laughton is dominating the film, all disarming cockney bluster and charm), Leigh is quietly threatening to walk away with the entire thing. Flighty, charming and alluring as ever, Whelan, perhaps sensing his leading lady's imminent stardom, gives Leigh plenty of star-making, abover-the-title close-ups like this one:

Obviously, it's no startling revelation to say Vivien Leigh was one of the most beautiful actresses to ever grace the screen, but her performance in Sidewalks of London is one film in a career full of evidence to testify that effect. In fact, a word of warning to anyone attempting a Vivien Leigh movie marathon: steel yourself against her charms for fear of becoming consumed with violent jealousy that you will never, ever look even half as good as Leigh did on her worst day. Some things are just unfair.

The unattainability of Leigh's beauty, coupled with Libby's emerging talents (and Prentiss' unmistakable interest in her), create complications for Charles who has--surprise!--been harboring less than paternal feelings for her the whole movie. While Charles is content to remain a humble busker, Libby as greater aspirations, telling Prentiss she'd like to be billed on stage under her adopted moniker, Liberty. Liberty what, he asks? "Just 'Liberty.' Like Garbo. Looks better on a billboard." Lured by Prentiss' wealth (I don't think Harrison wears anything but a tuxedo the entire movie), Libby can no longer abide Charles' heretofore charming poverty (lacking a proper mirror, he shaves with a frying pan).

Charles finally confesses: "I want to marry you!" Libby/Liberty is horrified. "Have you gone out of your mind!" she says. "You better look in the frying pan!" Ouch.

Here, the film enters a more conventional and less satisfying stage. Libby leaves Charles for Prentiss, gaining stardom on the stage, in short order becoming a typically gauche prima donna. Heart-broken, Laughton gives up on busking all together, becomes an alcoholic and just generally skulks around, trying to get Liberty to notice him again.

Charles the alcoholic. No longer the funny man, Laughton's busker gets the kind of villainous/monstrous close-up that would later dominate his screen persona.

During the sequence of Libby's "fame" montage, Sidewalks of London shifts from working class comedy/melodrama to full-blown musical. The musical numbers themselves are well-staged although not entirely convincing, especially because at this point, the audience is less invested in Leigh's success than they are in pitying Laughton. Apparently, this is the result of Laughton's dislike for Leigh personally: he trimmed much of her love story with Harrison which resulted in the lopsided treatment of her character as a heartless bitch and Charles as a poor sap.

Charles tries to make one more go of it, performing "If" in front of Libby, Prentiss and some producers for a film she will be making (yes, Hollywood comes a-calling). Finally invited inside a theater, Charles' final bid for respectability is constantly interrupted by members of the audience, by the commotion backstage and from people generally being rude, ignorant to the importance of the audition to the bum onstage. At least when he was performing outside the theaters, the audience kept its indifference to itself. Libby, moved to tears by Charles' straining performance (addled by alcoholism and grief), urges him on. No use. Charles wasn't meant for stardom, he was meant for the streets. Libby comes around, apologies for her behavior and even gives Laughton a little kiss. She's redeemed in the mind of the audience and Charles is allowed to go back to what he does best, busking.

Sidewalks of London has a lot of elements of other pictures--it's sort of half Beauty and the Beast, half Pygmalion--but lack of uniqueness is not patch on the charm of its lead performances and Whelan's capable and adroit direction. Less maudlin than Limelight and considerably shorter than My Fair Lady (marginally less grating accents, too), it's something of an unrecognized gem that deserves more attention from cinephiles than it gets. Leigh is wonderful as the aspiring songstress, but it's Laughton especially who will break your heart.

"Ze right Hitlah for ze right futurah!": The Boys From Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978)

2011-07-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is part of the Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier Appreciation Blog-A-Thon hosted by Kendra of VivAndLarry.com.

Having played a sadistic Nazi doctor only two years earlier in Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier is once again on the Allied side in The Boys From Brazil. Larry plays Ezra Lieberman, famed Nazi hunter. Lieberman is a thinly veiled fictionalization of Simon Wiesenthal, the Austrian Jewish concentration camp survival who later dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals, most famously tracing Adolf Eichmann to Argentina, which lead to his eventual capture, trial and execution by the state of Israel in 1962.

Wiesenthal

The Boys From Brazil takes place in modern (1978) times when Lieberman is more or less the last man standing in the Nazi hunting game. He's no longer the headline-grabbing crusader he was in the '50s and '60s; thirty odd years after the Holocaust, the world wants to bury the past. Lieberman himself is something of a doddering old man, living in a creaky Vienna apartment with his sister and having more or less resigned himself to the fact that even though he may know where the Nazis are, he's past his prime in nabbing them.

The action hero role, then, is taken up by a new generation of Jewish-American avengers, among them an improbably young Steve Guttenberg in one of his first screen roles.

Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?

On the hunt in Paraguay, Guttenberg more or less stumbles upon the biggest fish of all: infamous "Angel of Death," Dr. Josef Mengele. The good doctor is assembling various former Nazis (among them James Mason, wrestling mightily with a German accent) for that one last Aryan hurrah. As the film unfolds, we learn what we more or less knew from the start: that Mengele, with his inhuman genetic experiments and cartoonish obsession with racial purity, is trying to create a race of blue-eyed, baby Hitlers (stop me if you've heard this one before). The premise is potentially awesome (in a comic book-ish kind of way), but never fully realized, partly because the film devolves into histrionics (as many films about Hitler tend to) and partly because the kid they got to play Baby Adolph is a pretty terrible actor (sorry, kid).

In an interesting bit of casting, one of the all-time greatest American good guys Gregory Peck plays Mengele. Dressed in white with a pitch-black mustache, Peck is totally demonic in the role. (The Boys From Brazil marks the second time Peck played the "father of the devil." Only a few years earlier, he'd been tortured by a similarly pale-skinned, dark-haired evil in the form of Damian, The Omen's Hitlerian spawn of Satan.) More than once, Pecks ridiculously affected Teutonic accent (one of many in the film) threatens to drag the film's high-strung theatrics into pure camp. Giving Peck a run for his marks in the "Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!" Bad Nazi Accents Memorial Hall of Fame is Olivier, whose high-pitched Viennese plays like some combination of "The Animaniacs"' Dr. Scratchansniff and Peter Sellers in What's New Pussycat (themselves both parodies of Freud).

"Ja, sat ist what you sink, eh?"

It's a testament to the level of actor Olivier was that, somehow--and I really don't know how--he manages to pull it off. The film itself is by no means good, but even in a bad film like The Boys From Brazil, and even in a role that requires so much arch overacting, Olivier comes away more or less unscathed, perhaps because, whatever he is doing, be it bad or good, is never indifferent. He's always an interesting actor, which is more than I could say for the picture as a whole.

The film fancies itself something of a mystery thriller, a plausible categorization, except it is neither thrilling nor mysterious. After Guttenberg kicks the bucket, Olivier gets back in the game, traveling down old South America way. There he learns that Mengele’s plan is to kill 94 seemingly random, seemingly innocent 65-year old civil servants. Why? Well, that’s the mystery, silly! Larry globe-trots around for a while investigating the newly assassinated, learning that they all have young sons, and these young sons all have pale skin, black hair, blue eyes and baaad attitudes. Hey, I recognize that M.O.! Baby Hitler! Yes, friends, Josef Mengele’s genius plan was to clone Hitler!

James Mason is in this movie.

In a hilariously dated scene, a young geneticist (played by Bruno Ganz of all people!) explains to the 1978 audience the most basic facets of cloning—the terrible reality (questionable) that with a pint of blood or a scraping of skin from the inside of a cheek, a talented (and mad) scientist could implant any number of famous gene sequences (Mozart! Picasso!) into any number of fertile, anonymous wombs and—voila!—a ready-made army of clones at your disposal. Why Mengele needed 94 little Hitlers running around is unclear. (Even given the scientist’s odds that 1 in 10 implanted cells survive to clone-hood, why would you need 9.4 Hitlers? Unless the key to world domination lies in an Adolf Hitler All-Stars baseball team.)

Suffice it to say, The Boys From Brazil is a rather silly film, rather shoddily directed by Franklin J. Schaffner who came to prominence directing The Planet of the Apes (1968) and actually won an Oscar for Patton (1970). The film remains more interesting for its collection of prestigious old veterans (Olivier, Peck, Mason, as well as great characters actors like Denholm Elliott and Rosemary Harris) engaged in ridiculous dialogue and outrageous situations. It is a film that strains credulity, even as it tries to be deadly serious in its pious, anti-Nazi, anti-cloning lecturing.

Mustache wars.

The climatic showdown between Mengele and Lieberman, which has Peck and Olivier, beaten and bloodied, wrestling around on the floor in a rather poorly choreographed and photographed display, perhaps best illustrates what is wrong with The Boys From Brazil. Watching the scene, which also features a gang of Doberman pinschers ripping Peck to shreds, you can’t help but wonder: what the hell did I just watch? Why are these great actors (and, let’s face it, old men) grunting and panting and bleeding on the floor—for what? Bad, bad, bad.

"Lie back and think of England": That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda, 1941)

2011-07-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is part of the Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier Appreciation Blog-A-Thon hosted by Kendra of VivAndLarry.com

That Hamilton Woman is a film, I'm slightly ashamed to say, I hadn't even heard of before I went searching for films to cover for the Viv and Larry Blogathon. While thinking of films to write about, I realized I hadn't actually seen many films by either Vivien Leigh or Laurence Olivier: Gone With the Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Rebecca, of course, but beyond the biggies, I was woefully ignorant. My loss.

On the Viv & Larry-o-Meter, That Hamilton Woman scores a perfect 10/10: Leigh was just coming off an Oscar win in Gone With the Wind and Olivier was experiencing the apex of Hollywood fame with Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. The couple was newly married and were, on a shallower note, probably two of the best looking people in the universe at the time.

The newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Olivier

Hungarian-born, British super-producer Alexander Korda, himself no slouch in the hot properties department (on the heels of The Thief of Baghdad) needed hot stuff to drum up support for the war effort in the country it really mattered: America. The Oliviers' newfound Hollywood superstardom made them the perfect British ambassadors for Korda's new historical romance/propaganda film, That Hamilton Woman.

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the film tells the story of British naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson (Olivier) and his infamous, passionate affair with courtesan Emma Hamilton (Leigh). That Hamilton Woman is rousing entertainment from the get-go, discarding with historical accuracy when it doesn't suit the adventuresome, romantic spirit of the screenplay. Rudolph Mate's gorgeous photography flatters the impossibly handsome leads to an almost absurd degree (the real Lord Nelson was short, frail, one-eyed, one-armed invalid and Lady Hamilton, though beautiful, was overweight for much of their relationship). By re-casting one of England's most notorious and scandalous affairs as one of the screen's most glamorous, sexy and patriotic love stories, That Hamilton Woman is a brilliant piece of myth-making. Korda's film functions as exquisitely crafted propaganda, as much for the English war effort as it is for Classical Hollywood filmmaking.

Re-casting history

Perhaps to strengthen the film's claim to historical accuracy, Alexander Korda made use of two famous pictorial representations of Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson. The first, George Romney's famous portrait of the Lady, is recreated as the first image we see of the young Emma (the story is narrated in flashback by Leigh in old-age makeup). Hamilton was, in reality, one of the era's most famous artist's models. In a bit of coincidental Viv & Larry trivia, one of Romney's portraits of Lady Hamilton would later appear on the cover of an edition of Wuthering Heights, the adaptation of that book being Laurence Olivier's first Hollywood role.

Certainly, the resemblance in the two women is uncanny and was justly exploited by Korda's publicity department.

"Emma Hart in a Straw Hat" by George Romney, 1782-84

Leigh as Emma, Lady Hamilton

While the first re-created artwork is obvious as a re-creation (a painting in a frame), the second is subtler and more effective, and requires a knowledge of the original painting to understand the homage.

The death of Lord Nelson is one of the most famous events in English lore and history and as such, has been re-staged many times by many artists.

The Death of Nelson, 21 October 1805" by Arthur William Devis, 1807

The death of Nelson, recreated

Although perhaps an instantly recognizable tableau to British audiences, I for one, didn't recognize the shot as a reference to Davies' painting, as I assume American audiences in 1941 didn't either. Of course the shot, which begins as a close-up on Nelson's maimed body and slowly tracks back to a wide shot of the officers and crew gathered at his deathbed, is still an emotionally effective climax to the picture, whether one recognizes the reference or not.

"There is no 'then.' There is no 'after.'"

That Hamilton Woman was reputedly Winston Churchill's favorite film--and no wonder given its stalwart mythologizing of Lord Nelson translates none too subtly to mythologizing of Churchill himself. In 1940, Winston seemed like a goddamned seer, having correctly predicted, and warned of, Hitler's being, you know, totally evil. If he hadn't been in the midst of the most dire political conflict of the 20th century, I image Churchill would have been damned smug.

The Nelson/Churchill myth-making is an interesting by-product of a film that gleans its uniqueness from telling the Nelson story from the point of view of his mistress. Regardless of how strong a character Emma is (very) or how great Leigh's performance is (very), this is still Lord Nelson's story. It is his acts of bravery and sacrifice that inspire a nation at war; Lady Hamilton, for all her refinements and for as much as Nelson loves her, remains a fallen woman.

From this...

The film opens several years after Nelson's death. Emma Hamilton is an old woman reduced to begging for spare change. In a drunken stupor, she's jailed and there, narrates the story of her former glory to another prostitute. When the former Lady finishes her story, her fellow inmate eagerly asks her what happened after Nelson died, what happened next. Emma's sullen reply: "There is no 'then.' There is no 'after.'" Because both Nelson and Hamilton were married--to other people--their relationship could never gain legitimacy: Emma and the couple's bastard child were left to rot in Parisian port cities, penniless.

...to this

The film's dim attitude towards the sacrifices Lady Hamilton made for England--once a whore, always a whore, that kind of thing--is a rather bleak view of things for a film called, after all, That Hamilton Woman. But the title is more a scandalized accusation that a heroic exaltation. And the film's less than happy ending is curious considering how glamorous and downright beautiful the rest of the picture is. It is, in the end, a wartime movie and filmed entirely pre-Pearl Harbor, an Allied victory in WWII was far from certain.

"Lie back and think of England"

The idea of self-sacrifice for King and Country was so strong in all aspects of this production, it translated in a very real sense to issues of national security. At the time of filming, Alexander Korda was being investigated by the United States government for meddling in our isolation affairs and trying to incite the country to war. By the time the film was released, however, the United States had finally entered the war and Korda was no longer being investigated. It has long been suspected that Korda was doing more than making propaganda films for good ol' Winston. Korda was knighted in 1942, ostensibly for his contributions to national morale making patriotic pictures during the war, but many still believe he was doing some spying for The Crown on the side.

All of this political intrigue backstory has little impact on the film as seen today. That Lady Hamilton is completely watchable and enjoyable as an historical romance, starring two very pretty people speaking very pretty lines in very pretty costumes and in very pretty sets. It represents a truly forgotten era of filmmaking. Korda's production was, if you can believe it, shot in five weeks on a wartime budget of strict rationing. The limitations don't show at all. That Hamilton Woman is as beautiful and thrilling as any film of its kind.

For the Love of Film (Noir): The Square

2011-02-16T11:37:00.000-08:00

This post is part of For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren. This year's worthy cause is to help restore Cy Endfield's 1950 film noir The Sound of Fury, starring Lloyd Bridges. Learn more about the cause at the Film Noir Foundation. Click here to donate directly.

"One man points his dick in the wrong direction and here we are."

--Billy (Joel Edgerton), The Square

The Square, the feature debut of short film director Nash Edgerton, is a tense and nervy, sprawling Australian neo-noir about guilt, fault and the bloody, unintentional consequences of lust and greed. In other words, classic film noir. The film debuted in Australia in 2008 but only received an American release last April. Although it's since been eclipsed by that other Australian crime epic Animal Kingdom, The Square deserves a look, especially from devotees of modern noir stories.

The film concerns Ray Yale (David Roberts), a man in the middle years of his life who's in the midst of a steamy affair with his much young neighbor Carla (Claire van der Bloom). They live in the small harbor town of Haven Cove which is split down the middle by a river where it's rumored sharks swim up from the ocean. No symbolism there. Despite the rumors of pet-eating sharks, Ray and Carla are doing pretty well, meeting for clandestine liaisons under the guise of walking their dogs and fooling their seemingly ignorant spouses Martha (Lucy Bell) and Greg (Anthony Hayes). But like any doomed philandering couple, Ray and Carla are looking for a way to run away together and that opportunity presents itself when Carla discovers a bag full of cash stashed by her husband in their attic.

Greg, tattooed, potbellied and sporting an unfortunate mullet, is some kind of crook, running a scheme with his drinking buddies. Despite Greg's general air of danger, Carla convinces Ray to hire a thug named Billy (Joel Edgerton of Animal Kingdom, this film's co-writer and the director's brother) to steal the money while Greg is away and burn down the house to hide the evidence. So far, so good. The complications arise (and there are many) because in the world of The Square, everyone is playing an angle--and a sinister one at that. In addition to the snatch and grab job devised by Carla, Ray is also working on a kickback at his job as a general contractor building a honeymoon resort. See, Ray was working on the down-low, promising the building rights to a specific contractor by a set time, earning $40,000 in escape money to surprise Carla. Of course, now he's got two fish on the line and all that's stopping him is some simple fraud, arson, and embezzlement. Cake. What's that line about "mo' money"?

The Square's labyrinthine, multi-character complications are chief among its pleasures, especially within a story that's ostensibly a twisted love triangle. But Edgerton's preoccupation is with that extra side of the triangle--the "innocent" victims of Ray and Carla's lecherous ambitions. Edgerton's camera metes out information about character motivations and desires with nimble ease. Fluid pans survey rooms, sweep past doors, revealing their openness and the connectivity between characters who are scheming against each other even as they occupy the same space.

An early scene reveals Carla and Greg's machinations. Greg is stashing the money when Carla come home. He quickly closes the door to the laundry room, collects himself and emerges deflecting Carla's questions, telling her he's going to hop in the shower. The scene then shifts as Carla investigates the attic (the square panel in the ceiling providing the film's title one of its many possible meanings). In the first shot above, Carla listens for Greg who, in the shower, is listening for Carla; although we don't see him, we know his thoughts. Carla hurriedly finishes investigating the attic just in time for Greg to finish his shower and casually return to the scene of his crime.

In a later scene at their apartment, Greg and his drinking buddies get together for a game of poker. Edgerton employs a mobile camera in a shot that spins around the room, encompassing all the characters in a single take. This an overused device in film, usually used when the director doesn't know how to capture a multi-character scene or in a misplaced attempt to create action and movement. In this case, however, it's a powerful move that speaks to the economy and thoughtfulness of the filmmaking. We start on Carla who is in the rear of the frame, in the kitchen preparing food for the boys (at her husband's insistence); we then pan to the boys, seating around the table; then to Leonard (Brendan Donoghue), a stringy, meth head-looking dude who's obviously part of Greg's criminal outfit but also works with Ray at the construction site. As the camera pans past Leonard, we take on his point of view as he focuses on Carla. Donoghue's hand (see above) forms a kind of "iris effect," further narrowing our focus and allying us with Leonard's lustful gaze. The camera then pans past Leonard and another cohort before landing on Greg, whose gaze is chillingly fixed on Leonard, memorizing every detail of his designs on his wife. Neither Leonard nor Carla notice Greg's noticing. The scene is simple but effective, ratcheting up the tension which will inevitable boil over in bloodshed and establishing character motivations that won't pay off till much later.

The film displays an adept balance between subjective POV for all its characters, not just Ray, and does more with pans through geographic space than a normal movie, or even a normal noir, would dare. He exploits familiar visual grammar to its maximum effect to thrilling and surprising ends. The result is a taunt, white-knuckle film that merges from suspense to mystery even as we're aware of the trajectory of the doomed noir hero. The Square is a subtly visual film but Edgerton is masterful in his use of the simplest camera moves--pans, long takes, point of view shots--to convey character desire. Every character moves like a shark, circling its prey, intent on the hunt but wary of competition for kill.

There's a lot more to parse in The Square, which although not a perfect film (it occasionally careens into melodrama as the plots and characters crash into each other with increasingly violent abandon), is an extremely engrossing example of classic noir tropes. Unfortunately, to do so would require revealing more of its twists than is probably proper, approaching spoiler territory that would diminish the enjoyment of the picture.

I will say, it reminded me a lot of two other neo-noirs: Bound (mostly in its fluid camera work and sex/power dynamics) and Blood Simple. It borrows rather shamelessly from the Coen brothers' debut both in its plot and in its relentlessly sadistic treatment of its main characters. Edgerton's film has its share of bleak humor, though it's more muted than the Coens' characteristic ridiculousness. Not even the Coens treat their hapless characters with this much cruelty, as the incompetence, bad luck, bad mojo, and cosmic vengeance crescendos to a bloody climax. Every one of Ray's mistakes and miscalculations are pursued to their most damaging ends--this man is put through the ringer. Every new complication etches itself in David Roberts' handsomely lined face; he's a drained and ragged man by the time he staggers out of the mess he made.

Noir-vember: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

2010-11-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

Noir-vember is a month-long film challenge devised by oldfilmsflicker, who in addition to running one of the best film Tumblrs around, also blogs here. The premise is simple but daunting: watch every one of IMDb's Top-Rated Film Noir Titles, fifty in all. The films I've already covered on the list are #12 White Heat and #11 The Killing, which you can read about here and here.

First things first: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (#17 on the IMDb list) is not a film noir. Not even close. It is a very good film, an exemplar of the 1930s social problem film, a ripped-from-the-headlines expose of abuses in the United States penal system--but not a film noir.

Based on the memoir of Robert Elliott Burns called I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang, the story recounts the true tale of Burns, a WWI veteran who was coerced into armed robbery by two men he barely knew. Burns was sentenced to 6 to 10 years hard labor in a chain gang for attempting to steal a little over five dollars from a lunch cart. Burns managed to escape from the gang to Chicago where he became a prominent businessman and a pillar of the community until he was exposed by his landlady who blackmailed him into marriage lest she divulge his secret. The governor refused to turn him over to Georgian police but Burns surprised everyone by volunteering to return to serve his prison time on the following conditions: 1) he would serve a reduced sentence of 90 days, 2) it wouldn't be on the chain gang, 2) he would pay the state restitution for legal costs, 4) and after 90 days he would be pardoned and never bothered again. Of course, Georgia reneged on that verbal agreement and jailed Burns for the remainder of his sentence. He escaped--again. He published his memoir while still a fugitive and did not gain his freedom until after the release of the film.

The Warner Bros. feature, helmed by in-house director Mervyn LeRoy, takes a few liberties with the source material but generally remains faithful to Burns' story. The major changes are to make the Burns character (renamed James Allen and played by Scarface star Paul Muni) more the uber-innocent wronged man and less the average Joe. Whereas Burns served without distinction, Allen is a decorated WWI veteran; in one of the film's most poignant scenes, he walks into a pawn shop, down on his luck and wandering the country in search of meaningful work. He asks the shopkeeper if he could use a Belgian Croix de guerre only to be shown a box full of metals pawned by other soldiers. Warner Bros. also adjusts the time period. Burns bummed around the U.S. during the prosperous 1920s, more of a lost soul than a victim of circumstance. Allen is obviously a Depression-era figure. Even his dream occupation of engineer (specifically, a bridge-builder), connotes a WPA-style Depression hero.

The film's greatest asset is Paul Muni, an actor whose legacy is kept alive by this film and another he made the same year, Howard Hawks' Scarface. Muni was primarily a stage actor, having performed with his parents in the Yiddish theater as a child, and found relief from a Hollywood system he found lacking in worthwhile projects by returning to the stage between screen work. Although he only made a handful of pictures, Muni was nominated for Best Actor Academy Awards five times, included for I Am a Fugitive, and won once in 1936 for The Story of Louis Pasteur.

Although handsome, Muni has an Everyman quality. His face is equally suited to a close shave, like during his Horatio Alger scenes in Chicago, or to a haunted look and a few days' dirty growth. We see everything through Allen's eyes, a wise decision that makes the film's early prison scenes fly by. Muni's acting style is heightened but naturalistic in a way that eases occasionally clumsy and overwrought dialogue. LeRoy lays out the basics of the chain gang (tropes familiar to anyone who's seen Cool Hand Luke) with deceptive ease, but never skimping on suspense or brutality, like when Allen is punched by a guard for failing to call out when he wants to wipe the sweat off his brow.

The prisoners are whipped, beaten, harangued, fed slop and worked like mules--all of it shown with unflinching realism. But thanks to LeRoy's deft hand and Muni's compulsively watchable screen presence, the experience is never a chore. I found myself really pulling for Muni to escape, rooting for him like I've seldom rooted for one character before. There are several scenes of tremendous suspense, and a thrilling car chase in the final act that's frankly spectacular for the time period. I Am a Fugitive also features wonderful use of diagetic sound, a near-constant barrage of clanging sledgehammers, prison guards yelling, prisoners singing spirituals to pass the day, and natural ambient noise, whether it's the croaking of frogs and hum of fireflies in the South or the din of streetcars, tinkling of piano keys and laughter from Chicago's bars and brothels. For an early sound film, the work is really impressive and adds a much needed layer of atmosphere and suspense to a time when a lot of films didn't have the means or inclination to include a sophisticated soundscape in their picture.

In their seminal treatise A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941-1953), French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton champion the social realist films of the 1930s as progenitors of noir, but the thing itself. They cite Mervyn LeRoy's work in that decade, especially I Am a Fugitive, as laying the groundwork for unflinching depictions of horrific violence and brutal themes that would later come to define the world of film noir. The social problem films produced chiefly by Warner Bros. in that decade are certainly an influence on later films noir.

I Am a Fugitive has been credited as the first in this cycle of film (for it cannot rightly be called a full-fledged genre) that actually precipitated social change. Warners had a reputation for the down-and-out forgotten man who either turned criminal (The Public Enemy, White Heat) or was falsely hunted as one (I Am a Fugitive) and a commitment to portraying lower and working class existences on the screen. As USC film professor Richard Jewell noted on his audio commentary on the DVD, in the 1930s even Warners' musicals were realistic compared to other studios, especially MGM's "dream factory." Warner Bros. was naturally the perfect studio to tell Robert Elliott Burns' true story of wrongful imprisonment and excessive punishment. In fact at the time of the film's release, Burns was still a fugitive. He was arrested shortly after the release of the film but the governor of his home state of New Jersey refused to extradite him to Georgia to return to the chain gang. Burns was now unimpeachable partly due to the popularity of the film. In 1937, five years after I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, chain gangs were abolished.** However, not everyone was overjoyed with Warners' crusading efforts. The studio was sued by two Georgian prison wardens for alleged slander, even though they had cut the name of the state in Burns' book from their film title and never referred to geography by name in the movie.

**Although they have never been entirely phased out as a form of punishment and gained a resurgence as late as the 1990s.

Although the film attempts to expose a social problem, it wisely doesn't claim to have the answers. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang ends on an abrupt down note. The film's chilling closing scene, where a hunted and clearly paranoid James Allen confronts his girlfriend one last time, came about as an accident. A light fuse blew during rehearsal and director Mervyn LeRoy thought it was such a haunting and fitting ending, he decided to end the film with a slow fade out instead of the more traditional blackout. The dialogue is decidedly bleak, even for Pre-Code Hollywood, denying the audience a glimmer of happy ending:

ALLEN: No friends, no rest, no peace... Keep moving, that's all that's left for me.

SHE: Can't you tell me where you're going? Do you need any money? How do you live?

ALLEN (in a whisper and already swallowed by the night): I steal!

Muni is then swallowed up the shadows, having become exactly what he was punished for being--a thief. LeRoy and Warner Bros. made the unusual but effective decision to make the film's ending even bleaker than the memoirs. They decided to really say something about social injustice and the need for reform, and it worked. Not only was it a shrew business decision (the film was a huge box office success), it paid off creatively (winning Best Picture from the National Board of Review and was nominated for three Oscars) and socially, shedding light on abuses in the criminal justice system and turning public opinion against such excesses.

Noir-vember: The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)

2010-11-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

Noir-vember is a month-long film challenge devised by oldfilmsflicker, who in addition to running one of the best film Tumblrs around, also blogs here. The premise is simple but daunting: watch every one of IMDb's Top-Rated Film Noir Titles, fifty in all. The first new-to-me film I watched was #12 White Heat, which you can read about here.

The Killing (#11 on IMDb's list) is a Stanley Kubrick film, so of course it has 25,000+ ratings on IMDb, which, like most of the cinema-based internet, is a hotbed of Kubrick fanboyism. Which isn't to say it's a bad film, just that I should point out this list is skewed by name recognition, be it of actor or director, and the little known films have only a fraction of the votes of the big boys.

The plot is a simple heist gone wrong. Sterling Hayden plays Johnny Clay, a con man fresh out of jail itching to execute the One Last Score that'll get him out of the game for good so he can settle down with his gal (Coleen Gray). Clay sets about gathering the guys for the job: a couple of inside men like the racetrack bartender (Joe Sawyer) and bookie (Elisha Cook, Jr.) and a couple of outside talent including a crooked cop (Ted de Corsia), an ex-wrestler (Kola Kwariani) and a twitchy marksman (Timothy Carey). So Clay and the gang set out to steal $2 million from the Lansdowne race track, an audacious sum ten times the budget of The Killing. But, of course, nothing goes exactly as planned.

The Killing is a satisfying genre picture with all the gritty fatalism you'd expect from a hard-boiled heist picture. I tend to view film noir through the prism of genre studies, which has its pitfalls but I find to be generally the most helpful in trying to analyze what elements of a given film can be called noir. Below, I've listed some of these elements and if they're evident in The Killing.

Film Noir Checklist

Femme fatale: Yes! Sherry Peatty (played with icy seduction by Mary Windsor) is the classic conniving blonde. Married to ineffectual George (Cook, Jr.), she manipulates him into telling her the details of the heist and then convinces her lover Val (Vince Edwards) to stick up the gang after they've done all the work. Despite her machinations, Sherry Peatty is a sympathetic character, much to the credit of Ms. Windsor. She's a woman who married a man below her station, possibly for love, but certainly with an expectation of a certain kind of lifestyle. She hasn't gotten it. They live in a small apartment, bare furniture, no excess--and no children. In the world of film noir, everyone gets a bum deal, but it's often the women who suffer the most grievous hardships. Sherry Peatty did all she could to get ahead in life; unfortunately, it cost hers.

Doomed male protagonist: In spades. Johnny, played by Sterling Hayden with his trademark gruff resignation, is a man careening towards a singular goal (reunion with his gal is a distant second), with no time to consider the ramifications of failure. Clay's methodical single-mindedness is clearly his downfall. (Incidentally, has there ever been an actor of Hayden's size with such a lack of energy? He seems always to be dragged everywhere unwillingly; every line of Clay's dialogue is delivered with a bitter aftertaste.) Although Johnny is the protagonist, George Peatty gives him a run for his money in the sad sack category. Cook, Jr. made a career of playing weak men in the hard men world of noir (see below), but Peatty has to be one of the most pathetic creatures to ever grace the screen. The first time the camera captures Cook's big, anxious eyes you know he and his crew are doomed to failure.

Homosocial/homosexual: Like most heist films, The Killing is high on homosocial bonding. Johnny Clay's girlfriend is incidental at best and forgettable at worst. Sherry Peatty is a man-killer--castration personified--the preferred gender role for women in most films noir. Due to the Production Code, overt references to homosexuality were strictly forbidden, but that didn't stop films noir from subtle implication. In one scene, Johnny checks in on Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen), an older member of the gang and a recovering alcoholic, before departing on the day of the heist. Both men are full of repressed energy; Clay is anxious to set the wheels in motion for a robbery and Marvin because he wants to thank Clay for including him. Marvin starts out tentatively, telling Clay he always thought of him as a son. Then, a shock: Marvin asks Johnny to go away with him. They could live in Marvin's ranch. You don't want to get tied up in a marriage commitment, do ya, Johnny? It's clear Clay knows exactly what's being asked but Hayden's face remains stony. Not wanting to offend the old man, Johnny politely overlooks the proposition. See ya at the track, Marvin.

Psycho-sexual deviancy: Besides the above mentioned Freudian castration (typical femme fatale stuff) and the moment of homosexuality, there is no emphasis on "deviant" behavior as a catalyst for criminal behavior. Clay and his gang are desperate men looking for a way out of their meek and flavorless existences. Why do they do it? No reason, and every reason.

Familiar faces: One of my favorite character actors, Elisha Cook Jr., has an impressive film noir resume (The Maltese Falcon, Phantom Lady, The Big Sleep) in addition to The Killing. A small man with a haunted, faraway look, Cook proved the perfect archetypal cuckold to the wily femme fatale.

Urban milieu: Yes, San Francisco. And interiors--grungy apartments, depressing boarding houses for single men that reek of desperation, a racetrack shot like a prison--convey a gritty and unflattering view of city life.

Hard-boiled pedigree: The Killing is a fairly standard heist film but what sets it apart is the dialogue. Kubrick adapted the screenplay from the novel "Clean Break" by Lionel White but brought in pulp author Jim Thompson to punch up the dialogue. Thompson, whose own work has been adapted numerous times into such films as The Getaway, The Grifters and recently The Killer Inside Me, brings a much needed stylistic gut punch to the material. The scenes between George and Sherry Peatty--verbal barbs of unparalleled venom--are, for me, the highlight of the picture.

Non-linear narrative: Quentin Tarantino cribbed much of The Killing for his debut feature Reservoir Dogs, including the non-linear sequencing. Kubick starts things pretty much at the beginning but as the heist begins to take shape, gives each character his own vignette of their specific job. We see the bartender at home caring for his sick wife, then traveling to the track. We see the crooked cop calling in a phony broken radio to HQ to set up an alibi. We see the marksmen pull into the parking lot, setting up his rifle to pick off the race horse at the exact moment the gang needs panic to set in at the park. We see the burly ex-wrestler meet Johnny at a chess club, come on board, go to the track, clue the bartender in on his presence and then incite a giant bar fight which allows Johnny Clay to slip into the track offices undetected. These narrative threads help reinforce the intricacies of the robbery itself; as planned, it's executed by only one man (Johnny), with no trace of any involvement by any of the inside or outside players.

Voice over narration: Kubrick was forced to include an omniscent narrator to guide a 1956 audience through the then-complicated non-linear storytelling technique. Usually, film noir voice over is subjective, the protagonist telling us his own story, typically regretfully. Here though, the V.O. functions more as the "Voice of God," albeit one who more often then not gets the details wrong.

Gangsters vs. coppers: The Killing focuses solely on a gang of robbers and no law enforcement arrives until the very end. They're nameless, faceless men of the law, uninterested in Clay's story and uninteresting to us, the viewers.

Heist: This is a pure heist picture.

Low key lighting: Oh, you bet. This shot of Vince Edwards and Mary Windsor as lovers scheming to rip off the gang could have come from a film noir textbook. The circular, open shade lamp is a staple of film noir decor. It's both a practical choice and an aesthetic one. The lamp provides an idea in-scene light source and a foreground object around which to stage a two-shot, especially one in which two characters are scheming or behaving otherwise unsavorily (as they always are).

Criss-cross: Almost every major character is caught in the crosshairs at some point in the film. First three stills: Kubrick shoots the race track like a prison, the teller's box standing in for cell bars, the high windows casting slanted shadows on the men who dream of escaping its confines but never truly do. Last still: Vince Edwards' Val is marked for execution, framed in the doorway and shot from a low angle.

Noir-vember: White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)

2010-11-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Noir-vember is a month-long film challenge devised by oldfilmsflicker, who in addition to running one of the best film Tumblrs around, also blogs here. The premise is simple but daunting: watch every one of IMDb's Top-Rated Film Noir Titles, fifty in all. Luckily for me, I've seen several of these films already and won't be covering them during the month.

Here I've listed what I have seen versus what I haven't. Pretty much split down the middle. It's a shame because many of the top noirs are some of my favorite films (The Killers, Gun Crazy, Sunset Boulevard, Night of the Hunter), but if I have time at the end of the month, I'll write up something about my favorites because those are terrific, terrific films. Furthermore, there are many great films noir that aren't even on this list, the most grievous error probably being the lack of Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich's blistering nuclear hysteria parable wrapped in a private detective film. But I digress.

Because of Netflix availability and my own fickle whims, films will appear generally out of order of the IMDb list.

The first film up is #12, White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949).

Raoul Walsh was a wonderful journeyman director who, like his compatriots William Wellman and Howard Hawks, filmed just about every genre during Hollywood's Golden Age and helped defined the American style of movie-making. White Heat is arguably his greatest film, but it isn't, in my estimation, particularly noir-ish. What White Heat is, is a tried and true, genuine gritty gangster picture that lands somewhere between that genre's heyday in the 1930s and the rise of the no-nonsense police procedural that would captivate the country's attention in the 1950s through film and television shows like "Dragnet".

Academics and critics have been arguing about what constitutes a noir since two French guys decided there was such a thing as film noir (a claim some people still doubt). Believe me, consensus is few and far between when it comes to this genre that some claim isn't even a genre. The only thing I know for sure about film noir is that every film nerd loves it. Like dogs love bones, fat kids love cake, etc. It's cinephiliac catnip. Dark shadows, amoral characters, perverted psychology, Freudian symbols, post-WWII anxiety, gangsters, private dicks, femme fatales and some of the most gorgeously expressionistic black and white cinematography this side of Weimar Germany--what's not to love?

So, far be it from me to deem White Heat not "noir" enough, although I'm here to do just that, in what I hope will be a case study that justifies such a claim (though given the shaky history of defining film noir, even as I'm confident in my evidence, I'm equally wary to do so).

The first claim against White Heat's noir status is Jimmy Cagney, the greatest gangster to ever grace the screen (sorry, Bogie). The film marked Cagney's return to his "home studio" of Warner Bros. after a foray into creating star vehicles with his own production company. After two successful pictures and a flop, Warners offered to distribute Cagney Production's pictures if he'd return "home" and restore to the studio some badly needed clout. And boy, did they have just the property to put Jimmy back on top. White Heat's Cody Jarrett is every bit the kind fast-talking, brutal spitfire of a gangster Cagney defined in Warner's pictures like The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) and Angels With Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938). Warner's publicity blared, "Pick up the pieces, folks! Jimmy's back in action again!"

Studio publicity provides all kinds of clues about what kind of film White Heat is and how the filmmakers capitalized on Cagney's star persona as the ultimate tough guy. In this poster, Cageney's posed in his famous pistol-whipping stance, but the placement above Virginia Mayo's credit and the smaller vingiette of Mayo (playing Cagney's vulgar wife) recalls the infamous grapefruit scene in The Public Enemy.

The differences between Cagney's Cody Jarrett and Tom Powers of The Public Enemy or Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces are twofold: 1) the shift from gangsters of socio-economic circumstance to an emphasis on irredeemably bad psychopaths with psychological perversions, and 2) an increase in the violence and cruelty allowable on screen. Both changes are due to changes in social and filmic conventions. In the '30s, even pre-Code films were vulnerable to censorship (local, as opposed to the nationally unified censorship of the Hays Code). Warner Bros. gained a reputation of social realist gangster pictures which they were allowed to get away with because the bad guy always came from economically depressed circumstances and got it in the end, ostensibly serving as a positive deterrent for miscreant youth contemplating a life of crime. Of course, this didn't work at all because all anyone can remember of these picture is Cagney and Bogart being total badasses--who cares if they died.

With every passing year, the Production Code seemed to lessen its vice grip on film censorship. Especially after the horrors of WWII, restrictions on the depictions of violence relaxed. But bad guys still had to be punished; White Heat features one of the most memorial demises in film history. Heck, you're probably quoting the line right now in your head. (If not, see here.) But we know next to nothing about Cody Jarrett; we're left to infer his character's history from Cagney's. Like other Cagney gangsters, Jarrett has a mother fixation. The story is loosely based on the exploits of Ma Barker, a woman who in real life was something of an imbecile, but in popular culture has achieved a Lady Macbeth-like level of conniving criminal genius. But Oedipal fixations are nothing new to the gangster picture; Cagney had them in The Public Enemy too. But whereas Tom Powers' main tragedy was economic, Jarrett's is a sickness in the blood. His father died in a mental hospital and he seems to have inherited his madness (and, erm, love for his mother/wife). Freudian fascination is nothing new to American cinema but increased alarmingly after in the postwar era, consequently becoming one of the chief thematic elements of film noir.

James Cagney's career criminal Cody Jarrett and Edmond O'Brien's undercover cop

in the prison yard in White Heat

However, the "dark psychological underpinnings," as USC film critic and historian Drew Casper calls them in the DVD commentary, are not the exclusive providence of film noir. Most critics can agree that the deciding factor in noir or not-noir is the visual style. White Heat features exactly one sequence that resembles the dense and cross-hatched chiaroscuro that marks the best work of the genre. This sequence takes place inside a prison. Jarrett has confessed to a lesser crime to take the heat off the murders that occurred during the film's opening scene--a train robbery. There, an undercover Treasury man played by Edmond O'Brien befriends Jarrett and ingratiates himself into his inner circle. The pair, along with other men, plan a brazen jail break.

A jail is naturally oppressive and claustrophobic by its very architecture: guard towers provide vantage points for canted angles, surveillance and paranoia are inscribed in the balance of power between inmates and guards, the opportunity for angular dissection of the frame is everywhere--bars, gates and bisecting lines galore!

However, I would argue that Walsh does not linger on stylistic flourishes and his camera remains steady for the most part, resisting expressionistic camera moves and odd angles. Walsh is a director focused on action and the jail break sequence has all the punch and brio as any classic gangster picture. The picture is linear and neatly divided into segments. It's bookended by two heists, one successful and one not. Jarrett and the gang move from rural scenes (where they're in hiding), to jail, to the urban chemical plant for the final showdown.

But unlike classic gangster pictures, White Heat spends an inordinate amount of time as a police procedural, chronicling in exacting detail the methods of the T-Men tasked to bringing down Jarrett. The procedural plodding of the T-Men scenes juxtaposed with Cagney's signature staccato energy lends the picture its thematic tension. One the one hand, O'Brien and his partner (played by John Archer), are typically faceless, plain vanilla bureaucrats. They wear suits, speak in definitive, no-nonsense declaratives: singular crime fighters committed to bringing down the bad guys by the book. Visually, the film takes a docu-realist approach to telling the story of investigation, documentation and apprehension of criminals.

One the other hand, it's clear the film imbues the Treasury Department with a measure of cool tech cred that tries to make up for its otherwise boring agents. Walsh fills his picture with a host of insert shots that detail the (at the time) cutting-edge devices employed against Jarrett. The gangsters, on the other hand, are totally old school. Jarrett uses his gun and his mitts. His strategy cribs a page from the Trojan's, with an oil truck acting like a horse, to gain entry into the chemical plant. The cops, however, deploy multiple squad cars rigged with radar to triangulate the truck's position. They communicate with each other via gigantic short wave radios, technology clearly indebted to postwar military technology.

Ultimately, though, both cops and robbers have to duke it out in an old fashioned fire fight. Jarrett, our twisted hero, is the last man standing until he isn't. Importantly, Cagney's "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" isn't the final line of the film. That honor goes to the T-Men Archer and O'Brien:

Philip Evans: Cody Jarrett...

Hank Fallon: He finally got to the top of the world... and it blew right up in his face.

Thus marked the nail in the coffin in the classic gangster cycle. White Heat is a gangster picture with noir elements, although its prison scenes pale in comparison to Jules Dassin's masterful prison noir Brute Force (1947), number 46 on IMDb's list. Walsh is a consummate action director and having worked with Cagney previously, got one of the actor's best performances. The film is an interesting case study--closing out the war-ravaged '40s and on the brink of a new era where law enforcement takes precedence over the glamorization of criminality--in changing values in the gangster film. Other films noir, if they feature a cop at all, focus on a rogue agent (more in the vein of the private detective) against organized crime. White Heat presents the case of an individual, Cody Jarrett, the last hold-out of a dying breed of loner gangster, against the encroaching technology of a mass organized governmental force. The film is something of an elegy for the classic '30s gangster who simply cannot function in light of postwar cultural and criminal development.

Unearthing a Lost Cinema Treasure: John Fords' "Upstream"

2010-09-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Photo credits: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the National Film Preservation Foundation

Film Preservation

I've always had a rather romantic conception of film preservation: guardians of film history long thought lost hacking through the thickets of exotic foreign locales to unearth cinematic treasures--Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Film Archives. Romanticized, yes, but not without some basis; two years ago, twenty minutes of lost footage from Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis (1927) was discovered in Argentina. Three months ago, another major find: seventy five American films previously thought lost in time forever were unearthed in a bunker of the New Zealand Film Archive. The jewel of the collection is a silent film from John Ford's days at Fox, 1927's Upstream. Now, as a joint effort of the NZ Film Archive and the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), these films have been restored and repatriated back to the United States for their first public exhibitions in more than eighty years.

Like any adventure story, the retrieval and recovery of these films spins a great yarn. It all started a year ago with a Kiwi vacation. Brian Meacham, an archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, was vacationing in New Zealand when he decided to drop in on his colleagues at the Film Archive. Taking a tour of the collection, he inquired about any American films they might have. As luck (and savvy archive detective work) would have it, they did. A lot of them. Turns out in the days of silent cinema, international distribution was costly and dangerous. (All features were printed on nitrate filmstock, which, as explained to modern audience by Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds, is extremely flammable.) Besides, many studios didn't want their prints back. Instead of shipping the films back to America at the conclusion of their theatrical run, it was cheaper to stash them in-country. In fact, the problem persists to this day: all the discovered films were restored in New Zealand where many copies were made (to ensure longevity) and then shipped back home in special crates for hazardous materials.

Film archivists may not be Indy-style pulp heroes, but they are heroes. It's estimated nearly 80% of all films produced in the silent era (before 1927) are lost, incomplete, or irreparably damaged. Of John Ford's silent work, which comprises nearly half the master's filmography, it is estimated 15% is missing. Some of his silent westerns at Fox have been collected in the spectacular Ford at Fox boxset, but Upstream, a comedy, represents a major find for Ford connoisseurs and cinephiles. It is due to the pioneering work of the international film community that these films are available to view at all.

In the era of movies On Demand, Netflix Streaming, Hulu, and YouTube, the filmgoing experience is increasingly disposable. These innovations are invaluable to the spread of film culture, but it is important to remember that film has a physical manifestation--it doesn't just magically appear on your computer screen. It is an exciting time to be a film fan, with the proliferation of media outlets and multifarious viewing experiences, and film preservation is an important component of that experience. New discovers like this one remind us that film history is not archaic, but immediate, a dynamic facet of media culture that forces us to reassess our relationship to conceptions of production history, exhibition practices and canonical classics. To learn more about preservation or to donate to the cause, please check out the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Film Review

Earle Foxe as Eric Brashingham, a brash/dashing ham of a Shakespearean actor

Upstream is set in and around a theatrical boarding house stocked with a large cast of colorful characters. The main romantic entanglement is between Eric Brashingham, a thinly-veined John Gilbert/John Barrymore character, and Gertie Ryan, one half of a knife-throwing act, which the other half of the act, Gertie's boyfriend Jack (Grant Withers), is none too pleased with. Everyone in the troupe is down on their luck, regularly skipping out on rent by tricking the landlady (played by vaudeville veteran Lydia Yeamans Titus) into believing their checks had been lost in the mail. While waiting for work, the troupe amuse themselves; whether it's the hammy monologuing of veteran Campbell-Mandare (a quietly powerful Emile Chautard) or the mischievous antics of Callahan and Callahan (Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen), a pair of hoofers.

Campbell-Mandare rhapsodizes Hamlet to a skull-shaped toothpick holder to the embarrassment of fellow actor Eric Brashingham

One day, a cigar-chomping theatrical agent comes to the boarders, who flock around him eagerly like pigeons around the last picnic french fry. Alas, the agent only has one role: Hamlet. He calls for Brashingham. The actor, who had not even bothered to get up to greet the agent, is instantly transformed into a preening prima donna. The theatrical agent explains it's not because he's a good actor, they just need a famous name--any Brashingham will do. Campbell-Mandare immediately volunteers to tutor Eric in the nuances of the Bard and they begin preparation.

Gertie, meanwhile, believes Eric will take her with him to England. She breaks it off with Jack the knife-throwers (a delicate business) and prepares herself for Brashingham's marriage proposal.

In the film's funniest scene, Brashingham approaches Gertie: "I have something very important to ask you." She blushes and on the verge of saying yes, Eric asks, "Can you loan me fifty dollars?" The landlady ascends the stairs just to time to see Gertie hand Eric a wad of money, her hilarious misconception a definite no-no in the boarding house business. Campbell-Mandare bids Brashingham goodbye, "Go upstream to success!", giving the film its title.

Eric arrives in London, debuting to spectacular reviews. His performance as Hamlet is shot by Ford with extraordinary beauty. The production design of the sets and costumes is exquisite. The lighting of the theater footlights and spotlights complements Brashingham's glittering jewelry, bathing him in the overwhelming radiance of a star.

The earlier moment at the dinner table is recalled when Brashingham has attained fame by playing The Great Dane, the self-involved actor not acknowledging Campbell-Mandare's assistance or his initial reticence to be tutored by a washed-up old ham. This shot also shows the tremendous quality of the film's sets and Ford's deep focus on figures in the background and foreground.

On the homefront, dejected from receiving no letters from Eric, Gertie consents to marry Jack. At the same time, Brashingham is sent back to the boarding house as a publicity stunt. Stadnding in all his well-tailored glory in the doorway of the boarding house, Eric Brashingham emerges dramatically from the flash and smoke of a photographer's bulb. He looks around (and down his nose) at the parlor decorated with flowers and ribbons. Brashingham assumes the photographer, the decorations and the boarders' fancy dress is for his benefit; he doesn't seem to realize he's stepped into the middle of Gertie and Jack's wedding.

Ah, but those who forget their roots will always get their comeuppance. Jack, already a dangerous man, advances on Brashingham. Campbell-Mandare, hurt that he's never acknowledged his tutelage, gives the egomaniac the chewing out of a lifetime. The Callahans, noticing the newsreel cameras outside poised to capture Brashingham's return from the slums, seize Eric and chuck him out the door and into the street. Brashingham's pride is hurt but seeing the cameras, he gets up, dusts himself off, and in a wonderful piece of acting by Earle Foxe, attempts to regain his dignity by turning sideways to they can capture his magnificent profile. The film ends happily, with the villain displaced, the couple united and the theatrical unit intact.

At a lean 60 minutes, Upstream is a quick-moving, photographically interesting film. Excluding the work of the great silent clowns (Chaplin, Keaton), Upstream is much funnier than most silent comedies I have seen; I laughed out loud several times. The performances were universally good and Earle Foxe and Emile Chautard were especially excellent as Brashingham and Campbell-Mandare. A few scenes were noticeably damaged, but not so far gone that the images were obstructed. The restoration is beautiful; the film has a crisp clarity that complements its handsome lighting and multi-color tinted scenes. I wouldn't call Upstream an instant classic on par with the restored Metropolis or The General, but it is a very, very good film and a fine example of an A-class production from the late silent era.

Ford, Fox, and Murnau

Upstream is an especially exciting discovery because of its uniqueness in the John Ford filmography. Like most people, when I hear the name "John Ford," I think Westerns--Stagecoach, The Searchers--those painted landscape epics with John Wayne. Previous to Upstream, Ford had filmed two very well regarded Westerns, The Iron Horse (1924) and Three Bad Men (1926). But this film represents an evolution in Ford's style stemming from studio head William Fox's recent hiring of German director F.W. Murnau. Murnau was a legend in Europe for the German expressionist classic Nosferatu (1924) and The Last Laugh (1924). These films featured innovation use of forced perspective and fluid, mobile camera work. In 1927, Fox commissioned Murnau to produce Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, which many critics (including myself) consider one of the greatest silent pictures ever made. Murnau and Ford were working on the Fox backlot at the same time and Upstream features several stylistic cues from the German master.

One of the most noticeable similarities in is Ford's use of camera movement. John Ford's signature style is in immobile framing, allowing the action to unfold like a stage play (see: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), and the way in which he choreographs many actors in a single scene, often around the dinner table (see: Stagecoach, How Green Was My Valley). Upstream features both these signatures in prominence but also represents an experimentation with more fluid camera movement. Two moment in particular struck me. The first occurred early in the picture when Gertie and Brashingham are caught canoodling by Jack the knife-thrower.

As Jack approaches the couple, Gertie and Brashingham break their embrace and the camera tracks back from their close-up to a long shot that shows Jack intrude into the frame. It struck me as an unusual moment for a tracking shot. Although effective, it seems sudden and slightly out of place. The romantic plot in Upstream is not of any great import or melodrama, unlike Sunrise, which centers on the deeply painful and emotional break-up and reconciliation of a marriage. The shot almost seems like an experiment, something John Ford might have seen on a Murnau set and decided to lift for his own film.

The second moment comes when the boarding house is assembled for dinner. Ford shoots each theatrical act descending the stairs and being seated for dinner separately; the knife-throwers walk in, the Callahans skip, hop, and dance, the Soubrette (Jane Winton) sashays. Once they're all seated, he cuts back and forth between Campbell-Mandare, who's captivated by a toothpick holder shaped like Yorick's skull, Brashingham's amused disdain, and the other boarders. Then, a theatrical agent arrives and the action stops. Ford shoots all the boarders' reactions in one continuous tracking shot, moving horizontally across the top of the dining room table to catch each of their reactions in close-up. It's a wonderful, thrilling shot, recalling the earliest photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge. Here is where I think Ford is best able to combine his own strengths of capturing character moments and Murnau's prowess with kinetic camera movement.

Brashingham and Campbell-Mandare rehearse in Upstream (John Ford, 1927)

In a crucial scene, Brashingham rehearses before his big debut as Hamlet. His mentor Campbell-Mandare appears as a ghostly image to assuage the young actor's stage fright. This effect is achieved with double exposure, a technique Murnau perfected in Sunrise.

Double exposure in Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, 1927)

Here, The Man (George O'Brien) imagines the vampish Women from the City (Margaret Livingston) enticing him to leave his wife. Double exposure was often employed to convey a ghostly or otherworldly feeling. In Ford's film, the apparition is inspirational, spurring on the actor to greatness; in Murnau's, the effect is one of sexual fervor, possession and psychological distress.

Although Ford may have borrows visual cues from Murnau, thematically, Upstream does not resemble Murnau's horror-twinged films. Whereas Murnau was renowned for using intertitles sparingly, Upstream features frequent intertitles, both dialogue and story. In fact, many of these are sources of great humor and generally Upstream is a very strongly written, both in gags and character. However, the connection between two great directors is certainly there. It would be worth investigating how much of the film was the result of Murnau directly influencing Ford or if the stylistic similarities were more a result of the in-house Fox style. William Fox wanted to create a studio for high-quality artistic productions, which he got from Murnau and John Ford, along with Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven, also from 1927). Upstream offers an interesting nexus in film history; one that deepens understanding of an auteur's oeuvre, enriches the silent era, and sheds light on a fascinating period of studio production when the studio head actually encouraged uniqueness and individual artistry in filmmaking.

Film Screening

John Ford's Upstream screens for the first time in decades on Wednesday, Sept. 1 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the AMPAS in Beverly Hills. The screening is open to the public and tickets are five dollars. The film will be screened with live three piece orchestral accompaniment, lead by Michael Mortilla, composer for the restoration. Also being shown: a trailer for another lost Ford film Strong Boy (1929) and a Vitaphone short that showcases Santa Monica beaches and mountains, circa nineteen-twelve. More info and tickets available here.

Buster & College

2010-08-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

Gag picture for College, the Buster de Milo.

College (James W. Horne, 1927)

I'll just come clean: if it wasn't for the eye candy, College wouldn't be much of a picture. As an egghead turned wannabe athlete nerdily named Ronald, Buster spends most of the movie running, jumping, and flexing in short shorts and a tank top. And even though Buster is convincing as the doofus in a bow tie who can't tell Babe Ruth from Jack Demsey, as soon as he changes into his track outfit, it's like, c'mon. Keaton in his prime was one of most ridiculously physically fit performers of all time. Of course, it's always the case that physically adept performers play clumsy because they're the only ones who can perform those stunts safely. But still, as soon as you see Keaton in College, all the nerd cred goes out the window.

You're not fooling anyone, Buster. We saw Battling Butler. We know you could take that dude.

As for the plot, it's probably the thinnest of any Keaton feature, with the possible exception of Three Ages. Keaton plays Ronald, a bookworm on his way to his high school graduation ceremony where he gives a speech decrying the evils of athletics because, "What have Ty Ruth or Babe Dempsey done for Science?" Also in his graduating class are sweet Mary Haynes (Ann Cornwall) and meathead Jeff Brown (Harold Goodwin) whose introductory intertitle describes him as a "Star athlete, who believed so much in exercise that he made many a girl walk home." Mary and Jeff are going to Clayton College in the fall; they're also going steady. Buster (I refuse to call him Ronald) is, of course, in love with Mary and after convincing his mother he'll work his way through college, enrolls too. In the fall, Buster has one goal: becoming an athlete to win Mary's heart. And of course you already know where this is going and probably did three sentences back.

The basis premise of College (nerd becomes jock to win girl) seems as old as time but it was hot stuff in 1927. In fact, this picture treads pretty hard on the ground covered by Harold Lloyd's The Freshman two year earlier. Featuring bespectacled Lloyd in a spectacular football finale, The Freshman was one of the biggest box office hits of 1925. Keaton's previous picture, The General, now regarded as his undisputed masterpiece and one of the finest films ever made, was, depressingly, a big-budget commercial flop. Although all of Buster's features were ostensibly produced by Buster Keaton Productions, he was never much of a business man and the money side was handled by Keaton's longtime friend and producer Joe Schenck and a new studio manager, Harry Brand. Brand was a budget-slasher and figured Buster needed a shot in the arm. Keaton was third in popularity and box office behind Chaplin and Lloyd and had a habit of spending a lot of dough per film; he was reigned in, budgetarily and creatively. College wasn't scripted by Keaton regulars and directing duties were handed over to James Horne, another suggestion of Brand's. Buster's lack of business sense never did him any favors. He didn't much care about screen credits, having always composed most of his films' plots, gags, and directions. But already in 1927, a year before his move to MGM, Keaton's pictures were becoming less and less Keaton-esque.

In spite of these barriers, College is not completely charmless. Even though the plot is thinner than paper, it does offer a spectacular display of just how skilled a physical comedian Keaton was. While this is evident in all his films, it's perhaps most plainly visible in College precisely because there is nothing else to look at: Keaton's stunts are the entire picture. Buster tries out for every sport on the campus, failing miserably at each. He runs like a man with two broken legs. In real life, Buster Keaton was a prodigious baseball player and in one of the best sequences in the film, he has to pretend he doesn't even know not to stand on the third base bag. He commits an escalating series of errors that cause his teams manifold embarrassments, the best being when Buster finally manages to hit a pitch, a high fly-ball, with two men on base and the little fellow is so excited, he runs all the way home before the ball is caught, causing a triple play.

However, the bulk of the film takes place in the track and field stadium, where Buster tries each and every sport from long jump to hurdles, javelin and pole vault. Buster manages to spear the Dean's (Snitz Edwards) top hat with his javelin, land head first in the high jump's sand trap, and terrorize a group of athletes on the field with an unwieldy hammer throw. During the hurdles, he really tries hard but knocks every gates down, except the last. Proud of his performance, he turns around to see all the knocked-down hurdles and dejected, knocks down the last one too.

Fail.

But Buster is our hero and although he may lose on the field, he's got to win the girl, right? Right. It seems Jeff really is a villain, having locked Mary in her room until she agrees to marry him (because that's a stellar engagement strategy). Hearing the news, Buster races across campus, leaping gracefully over hedges and across ponds, grabs a pole and launches himself into Mary's second story window. Inside, he pummels Jeff with the force of a true champion (reminiscent of Buster's fury in the climax of Battling Butler). Taking a fraternity paddle from the wall, he bats objects at Jeff and tackles him until he escapes out the window, exposing himself as the coward he is. Mary is awed and immediately attracted to Buster (he's an athlete now!!). They leave the dorm and immediately get married. I mean, actually immediately (Buster's still in his track uniform). The film ends on a weird, but awesomely pessimistic note, as the wedding fades into a shot of Buster and Mary contented in married life with three children, which then fades into the couple in side by side rocking chairs, in old age, and then fades into a shot of two headstones. THE END.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

2010-08-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: I am an unabashed, rabid, mega-fan of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. I read them, I quote them, I live them. As for the film adaptation, I was cautiously optimistic. I knew the history (the movie and last five books were written concurrently) and I knew the talent involved (Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall adapting and Wright directing). It seemed solid. So, when a friend of mine offered to take me to a preview screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World two weeks ago, I was what you might call overjoyed. I imagine my eyes welled up with big, fat manga tears and my face resembled something like this :DDD. I leveled up. Like a dutiful little film fan, I took my notebook to the screening, hoping to jot down some insightful comments. No dice. My notebook page is blank save for a silly doodle I drew after the fact that looks something like this :DDD. My mouth was agape the entire time, eyes widened like a dopey kid on a sugar high. The first fifteen minutes whooshed by me at breakneck pace as I tried desperately to take in every visual detail. On some level, I couldn't believe I was actually watching Scott Pilgrim. Heretofore, I had only read it and, as a result of the natural cadence and humor of the dialogue and the relatability of the characters, in some ways, I had lived it.

I realize I'm sounding pretty hyperbolic here, so let me explain. To me, Scott Pilgrim is deeply personal. On the surface, the stories are trite; cutesy stuff like a cross between all the video games you played as a kid plus Judd Apatow's "Undeclared" in the style of Captain Underpants. But after you get over (read: learn to love) the ridiculous conceit at the heart of the narrative (that in order to woo her, titular hero Scott has to fight and defeat love of his life Ramona Flowers' seven evil exes Tekken-style in a universe with video game physics), O'Malley's epic, six-book narrative reveals its deeper shades. Never before had I encountered anything, in any media, that so perfectly captured the way I experienced the world; my harsh-but-jokey-but-loving interactions with friends from high school and college, the way in which the independence of having your own apartment trumps the hilarious poverty that results from that independence (Scott and his gay roommate Wallace Wells are so poor they have to share a bed). Most of all, the series captures that push-and-pull bittersweetness of being 23, unemployed and not knowing what in the hell you're supposed to do with your life. I can relate.

So, when I watched that pre-screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, I was trying to balance my enthusiasm and emotions with a critical eye. I didn't quite succeed. All my perceptions were skewed. I knew I liked the film, and maybe even loved it, but I was too caught up in recognizing moments from the comics and which character said what line (and all the great lines that were left out). Fast forward to yesterday, the day of the Scott Pilgrim midnight show, and I haven't written down any of my review, although I'd been composing it in my head since the moment I walked out of the theater. Smash cut to right now: It's 4am, I just got back from my second viewing of the film. Verdict? I am in love. Totally. Completely. Undeniably. This is a movie of passions, for passions. This movie wants you to fall in love with it. It's 112 minutes of absolute, uninhibited Day-Glo joy. I laughed more during both screenings of this film than anything I've seen this year (or in many, many years). I've said elsewhere, and I really believe, that Scott Pilgrim is the epic of my generation. There's such a sense of wonder, awe and sweetly naive optimism in this film, I'd be proud if it did end up defining my age group.

THE STORY

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) lives in Toronto with his gay roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin) in a one-room hole of an apartment in, as the narrator states, "the faraway land of Toronto." He plays bass in a band called Sex Bob-omb with sardonic drummer Kim Pine (Alison Pill), a friend and former flame from high school, high-strung guitarist Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), "the talent" and groupie/roadie/roommate Young Neil (Johnny Simmons). Scott is currently dating 17-year old Chinese Catholic school girl Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), an ill-advised situation prompted by his break-up, over a year ago, from college girlfriend Envy Adams (Brie Larson). Scott, at 22, is looking to revert to something simpler and more innocent and Knives is just that. Until...Scott meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), rollerblading American ninja delivery girl for Amazon.ca who's just moved to Toronto. It's kismet. Scott sees her in a dream one night (actually a convenient subspace highway Ramona uses for faster deliveries) and then meets her again at his bitchy, disapproving friend Julie Powers' (Aubrey Plaza) party. While still technically dating Knives, Scott strikes up a relationship with Ramona and realizing he's head over heels for her, breaks it off with Knives. This greatly pleases his sister little Stacey (Anna Kendrick) who's sole role in the film is to badger Scott about his pathetic life choices. Then the twist: to successfully date Ramona, Scott needs to battle and defeat (read: kill) her seven evil exes. At the beginning of their courtship, Scott is all gung-ho about it. He has a beautiful, mysteriously sexy American girl to hang out with, who cares about some measly battles? To add to the optimism, Sex Bob-omb has entered the Toronto International Battle of the Bands for a chance to sign with indie record producing superstar G-Man Graves. Could Scott's romantic and musical trajectories be intertwined? Why, yes they are! Which brings us to....

THE MUSIC

As exposition is to the world of Inception, music is to the world of Scott Pilgrim. It's constant. Drawing from the suggestions of author Bryan Lee O'Malley, the soundtrack features tracks from the '90s indie rock bands that inspired the book's characters (Scott Pilgrim, I Heard Ramona Sing) as well as the music of Sex Bob-omb composed, with generous fuzz guitar, by Beck. Nigel Goodrich's pop-synth score is a wonderful mix of traditional thematic motifs interwoven with video game cues (Legend of Zelda, Sonic) and bouncy chiptune-inspired audio. In short, it rocks. The film establishes a simple parallel structure between Sex Bob-omb's rise and Scott's fights; five of the six battles occur in nightclubs, during or after a set. Scott's first encounter with Ramona is set to Frank Black's "I Heard Ramona Sing," a song about falling in love, not with a girl, but with a band--The Ramones. It's a sly nod to the audience that Scott's loves are duel and interchangeable: every thought of Ramona is cued to a song in his head. Music is how he deals with the world around him and how he expresses his emotions (when he's not fighting). Edgar Wright has said the film has the structure of a musical but instead of song-and-dance numbers, people break into fights. This is true, but there are also strong elements of a traditional musical (Sex Bob-omb's performances, Scott serenading Ramona on a date) at work in the film as well.

THE ACTION

I know the big action movie opening this weekend is supposed to be The Expendables, but Scott Pilgrim is giving Stallone and co. a run for their money. As a result of condensing six books into less than two hours, screenwriters Wright and Bacall have stripped away a lot of extraneous dialogue and character moments in favor of streamlined plot: action. Lots of it. The action universe is less Expendables-style "muscles in the jungle" and more Street Fighter/samurai/boss battle. But there is variety. Ramona's first evil ex Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) uses mystical powers to lead a hoard of demon hipster chicks in a choreographed Bollywood song-and-dance number while gaming lingo like "+64 combo," "reversal" and "K.O." appear in floating, opaque lettering onscreen. The second battle against pro skater turned sellout Hollywood action star Lucas Lee (Chris Evans) satirizes the overblown persona of that familiar type of actor. Shot at Casa Loma in Toronto, a real-life location for film crews that often subs for New York, the battle has an insider's in-jokiness. When Lee unleashes his lookalike stunt team on Scott, it's a conscious send-up of the inauthenticity of the filmmaking process heightened by the knowledge that both Evans and Cera were doubled during the battle.

I won't spoil any more of the fights or the opponents, but I can't conclude the section without some mention of what some may consider the alien (or alienating) nature of these battles. If you can't get over the conceit of live-action video game-inspired battles, go see something else. As pop arty as some of these fights are, there are still plenty of satisfying face punches and rib cracks even though, as a PG-13 film, there's no blood. (In arcade game style, defeated opponents burst into coins, rendering experience points and bonus items.) Each set piece is expertly choreographed by two veterans of the Jackie Chan stunt team and the action is uniformly excellent, fun, inventive and believable. It's all set against a sumptuous backdrop of cotton candy colors and shiny surfaces that seem to morph instantly back into grubby bars and back alleys the moment the fight is over. But, about the colors...

THE VISUALS

A declarative: Scott Pilgrim is the most visually inventive film of the year. Edgar Wright, who's always been a style over substance guy, manages to riff on almost every element of pop culture without being confined to the visual grammar of any one genre (horror/zombie films in Shaun of the Dead or buddy-cop action/horror films in Hot Fuzz). If anything, Scott Pilgrim is closest to his work on "Spaced" with its cartoony camera moves and impossible visual spaces. (Throughout the film, time is compressed and characters enter and leave the frame without any regard with physical or temporal limitations.) Wright and cinematographer Bill Pope are to be applauded for the scope of their audacity and ambition. In adapting a black and white manga-style comic book, they've managed to keep the whooshing air lines, jagged, diagonal framing and "Whump!", "Krak!" sound effects while infusing the entire picture with more brightly colored sets, costumes and backdrops than I've seen all year. Seventh evil ex Gideon Graves' nightclub, the Chaos Theater, is the scene of a dazzling final battle scene. Without giving too much away, Scott and Gideon clash samurai swords glowing blue and red, leap and fly through the black and white background and collide behind a dazzling red and sliver backdrop that I could swear was actually shimmering. It's the most beautiful action set piece in an American movie since Tarantino staged his Kill Bill vol. 1 showdown at The House of Blue Leaves.

Aside from the fight sequences, the visual trickery in Scott Pilgrim is downright impish. The first fifteen minutes of the picture move at lightning speed, shuttling Scott from environment to environment, often cutting off characters in the middle of a scene. The disjointed discontinuity editing is purposeful: it reflects Scott's love-struck haze after meeting Ramona. Images are stacked on top of images, often with introductory text labeling the environment like in Scott and Wallace's apartment. These flourishes are straight out of the comic book. There are also animated flashback sequences (another Kill Bill connection) drawn in the style of the comics, which at once serve to connect the two media as well as establish the boundaries of what is "real" and what is cartoon. As much as Scott's live action adventures are physically impossible, they're importantly not animated and therefore real. One of my favorite visual gimmicks is Wright's penchant for changing the aspect ratio during Scott's dream sequences/subspace adventures. This also happens a couple times during fight scenes, combined usually with a zooming in or out. The combined effect is something like a dolly zoom (the famous "Jaws shot"). Although not entirely jarring, it does produce a sense of almost indefinable anxiety. Scott's enemies are lurking around every corner ready to strike and playing with the visual medium as Wright does (in addition to manipulations of the audio track) establishes a shifting, uncertain environment on top of an already unrealistic landscape.

There is one other sequence I have to single out: Scott and Ramona's date through a snowy Toronto park. This sequence in the comic book has a stark, minimalistic beauty--deep blacks, thick line work and dark shadows set off the stark whiteness of page-full snow drifts. These scenes achieve an almost black and white film look. Once in a while in the background, you'll spot a blurry light of a faraway traffic signal. Otherwise, Scott and Ramona are alone in the wilderness. It's an understated romantic scene which gets repeated at the end of the film. Scenes like this are proof that even a kinetic display like Scott Pilgrim has its quiet moments.

THE CAST

As soon as I saw Allison Jones was one of the casting directors on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, I knew it was going to be perfect. Jones, the crazy genius responsible for assembling the casts of "Arrested Development" and "The Office," accomplished what was probably the most daunting task of adapting from page to screen: getting the right actors for their characters. The trouble with any graphic novel adaptation is getting actors who cannot only act like their characters, but look like them. Unlike literary adaptations where the physical requirements are present but lax, a graphic novel of this sort, which consists mostly of the faces and bodies of its main characters, demands visual fidelity. The challenges are even higher in a film where most of the cast has to have comedic chops but also has to engage in grueling fight sequences and/or play their own music. Luckily, miraculously, every character, from the leads to the exes to the supporting cast, has been perfectly chosen. This is Scott's tale, but as any fan of the series will tell you, it's the supporting players that really "make" the Scott Pilgrim experience. This section is mostly just for book-to-screen comparison purposes, so feel free to skip ahead...

-Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim: By far the biggest question mark in the group, the announcement of Cera's casting sent waves of panic through geekdom. His hair wasn't long enough. He was too skinny. He always plays the same characters! (How dare he.) Well friends, I'm here to tell you that Michael Cera is Scott Pilgrim. A sweet and adorably frail young man, I've never disliked Cera with the animosity he seems to garner from the collective Internet (who, I'm pretty sure, are just pissed at him for saying an Arrested Development movie maybe wasn't the best idea--the horror!). As Scott, he brings just the right amount of likability, pitiableness and jerkiness (yes, Scott is a jerk, I won't hear any arguments to the contrary). Cera's comic timing has never been sharper and his tendency to underplay Scott's inborn hysteria is a welcome change from page to screen. (Scott's overblown breakdowns and sulk sessions are hilarious in the books but would have tanked a live action film.) To the actor's credit, he's also a credible bassists and surprisingly agile fighter. Although he certainly had lots of stunt help, it must be said that George Michael Bluth kind of kicks a lot of ass in this movie.

-Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers: Physically, she's the perfect Ramona. Standing next to Scott, you really notice their physical difference, something that was implied in the books but not always visible due to the art style. Ramona is a complex character and stripped as she is in the film of an extended courtship with Scott or many interactions with other characters, the filmmakers run the risk of creating a one-sided "dream girl" for Scott to run away with; Winstead makes her a full-fledged character. The subtlety of her performance is something of a wonder, balancing Ramona's inherent (and attractive) mystery. Through much of the series her "unknowability" is Ramona's main characteristic but Winstead manages to convey volumes with those big, cartoony eyes. She's obviously damaged and it's apparent that as much as Scott uses Knives to get over Envy, Ramona is using Scott, too. By the end of the film, we're giving a glimpse into a hope for their future, but it's a credit to both Winstead and Cera that they're able to convince us their relationship might go either way.

-Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells: Wallace is kind of everyone's favorite so Culkin had a lot of pressure to deliver on this character, which he does. I was slightly disappointed that Scott and Wallace's interactions were cut down so much from the books and two of my favorite lines were axed as a result, but what's there is still hilarious. Wallce is part of Scott's support group, which includes his sister Stacey and Kim Pine. They're the people in his life who'll always tell him what's wrong and what's right and love him regardless of how stupid he gets.

-Ellen Wong as Knives Chau: For me, this is the performance of the film. Wong, a Toronto native, came out of nowhere and absolutely kills it as Knives Chau. She seems to relish Knives' descent into total stalker ex-girlfriend insanity and Edgar Wright milks those moments for all they're worth, giving Knives some terrific horror movie music and lighting cues. Wong is equally good at meek and innocent Knives. That she can believably play a sheltered 17-year old, a psycho groupy, a mellowed and wiser 17-year old, and a sai-wielding, ass-kicking heroine is quite an accomplishment.

-Alison Pill as Kim Pine: I am biased here because Kim Pine is my absolute favorite character. With most of her backstory and lines cut out, movie-Kim needed to get a lot across with very little, which is exactly with Alison Pill did. Every line delivery is a caustic punch in the gut, sarcastically underscoring the obvious failings of her band and her stupid, stupid friend Scott.

-Mark Webber as Stephen Stills: This is an example of perfect physical casting. Put this actor in costume next to a drawing of Stephen Stills and your mind will be blown. Stills has more of an impact in the film because Sex Bob-omb's career trajectory is more central to the plot. He is a nervous wreck, always paranoid about the band's quality and their future prospects. Webber has a wonderful moment back stage where he gets to unleash in full panic mode but because of the music coming from on stage, no one can hear him. A really nice supporting performance and a strong presence in the film.

-Johnny Simmons as Young Neil: Another really good physical match, Simmons unfortunately doesn't get the character arc Young Neil does in the books. In the film he's more a groupie/roadie than a roommate, friend or fan. There's one wonderful moment where Young Neil is singing along to Sex Bob-omb and messes up a lyric. It's a perfect moment of awkward truth--we've all been there.

-Anna Kendrick as Stacey Pilgrim: Anna Kendrick has an Oscar nomination. Then again, she's also in the Twilight series, so at least Scott Pilgrim won't be her most embarrassing credit. As Stacey, Kendrick is BFFs with Wallace, which makes Scott's life a living hell, as they both pretty much disapprove (lovingly) of Scott's relationship with Knives. Almost all of Kendrick's scenes are on the phone at Stacey's job as a Second Cup (the Canadian Starbucks) barista. The actress' clipped and snippy delivery is perfect for the character and she brings a lot of weight to a very minor role.

-Aubrey Plaza as Julie Powers: Aubrey Plaza kills it every week on "Parks and Recreation," and her role as bitchy Julie continues the funny. She actively hates Scott, yearns for the attentions of pretty, popular Envy and can't decide whether she hates or loves Stephen Stills. In one of the film's funniest scenes, she's imbued with the power of censure over an expletive-laden tirade. Two words: "Fuck Pilgrim."

-Brie Larson as Envy Adams: Like a lot of characters, Envy's role is cut way down. As it stands, she has about two good scenes. The first of which, a phone conversation with Scott in which she is a terrifying combination of glamorous allure and evil incarnate, is the best and a breath of fresh air in the middle of the movie, right when things are beginning to slow down. Larson has the unattainable glamor queen aura down pat and although she's not really humanized as she is in the books, there is one moment where for a second you understand she actually used to be a compassionate human being.

-Satya Bhabha as Matthew Patel: Nobody goes for it like Satya Bhabha in this movie. He's the first evil ex, so he sets the tone. He's also probably the most ridiculous evil ex. He has to sing and dance. He dresses like a pirate and he goes for it with gusto. It's a small role and over too quickly but Bhabha does a good job of setting the tone of the battles and the tone overall.

-Chris Evans as Lucas Lee: The former Human Torch and future Captain America paused briefly between those roles to play a very evil dude. Skater turned actor Lucas Lee is a boorish, self-centered ham and Evans plays him to perfection. With a husky bravado and imposing physique, you might think Scott couldn't defeat him. But as everyone knows, movie stars have one weakness: vanity. Advantage: Pilgrim.

-Brandon Routh as Todd Ingram: Routh may have made for a boring Superman but as he showed in Zack and Miri Make A Porno, and now Scott Pilgrim, his real talent is for comedy. Todd Ingram is the bass player for the super attractive, super evil The Clash at Demonhead, Envy Adam's new, popular, awesome (but evil) band. Todd is also a vegan which is where he gets his psychic powers (he had to go to Vegan Academy for that stuff). His monologue about the cleaning lady is some of the funniest stuff in the film.

-Mae Whitman as Roxie Richter: Her? The only evil ex who isn't a boy, Mae Whitman is another perfectly cast foe. Although not my favorite ex battle in the books, her fight with Scott (she also fights Ramona because Scott is a wimp and can't hit a girl) is my favorite in the film. Roxie whips off her studded belt and fights Ramona and her large hammer (+2 against girls). Everyone loves a girl fight; Scott Pilgrim gives the people what they want.

-Shota & Keita Saito as Kyle & Ken Katayanagi: The Katayanagi twins have a much different story in the books. For one thing, they talk. The Saito twins, however, don't really speak English, so in the film, they're silent. They play keyboardists pitted against Sex Bob-omb at the last stop of the Battle of the Bands. The Katayanagis, of course, are working for Gideon Graves. The fight manifests as an avatar battle, "Yu-Gi-Oh!" style. The twins activate a two-headed dragon avatar against Sex Bob-omb's conjured giant silverback gorilla. It's the most video-gamey of the ex battles and it might turn some viewers off. If you're not completely into the film by then, seeing giant CG-rendered animals fight each other to the tune of a garage rock/electro-keyboard mash-up might not be your thing.

-Jason Schwartzman as Gideon Gordon Graves: In the same way that Cera plays Scott as Cera with a twist, Schwartzman plays Gideon with a twist, but it's still recognizably him. Depending on whether or not you like the actor, this is a good or bad thing. Gideon is an undeniable dickhead: pompous, passive aggressive, condescending, manipulative and oh yeah, evil. Schwartzman can play dickishness well and delivers in the role. He's also a pretty skillful fighter. He duels Scott with the flair of a classically trained fencer which contrasts nicely with Scott's unpolished swordplay. As the final boss, Gideon is suitably evil and at the same time, a sniveling creep. We're happy to see him finished.

IMPACT & ANALYSIS

Edgar Wright's previous two films, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, although both very, very good, were essentially parodies that attempted to tell a story (the survival epic in Shaun, the buddy cop/conspiracy thriller in Hot Fuzz) within a given film genre. Through these films, Wright gained the attention and respect of genre-drenched auteurs like Quentin Tarantino whose postmodern, deconstructionist work is still anomalous in Hollywood (many more directors and films follow the Michael Bay and/or Tony Scott style of action cinema than Tarantino's) but has attained total pop culture saturation. If Tarantino (and let's take Pulp Fiction as the example) attempted to adopt cinematic and cultural images for the purposes of deconstruction and rearranging, Wright essentially did the same thing (with comedic flair) in Shaun and Hot Fuzz. What separates Scott Pilgrim from those films, and what makes it a better, richer film, is that it does not have a singular specific referent (e.g., horror films), instead opting to draw, as if by cultural osmosis, from all corners of modern media culture and build from there. Scott Pilgrim is not a superhero movie as we've come to understand them in the past decade. Neither is it a video game movie a la Lara Croft : Tomb Raider or an action movie or a romance or a teen/young adult comedy. If anything it is a comic book movie in the purest sense (almost more of a comic strip movie) where the images seem to come to life (as corny as that sounds) in full color and sound.

I’ve been thinking lately that this movie seems to carry a lot of synergistic heat, not only because the source material is basically the popcult bible of my generation, but because by bringing that material to the fore visually (via film), you’ve managed to combine every media outlet that matters right now—comics, film, video games, and (in marketing) the Internet—into one miraculous, geeky package. With its whip-fast juxtaposition of kaleidoscopic imagery and melange of meme-worthy jokes and references, Scott Pilgrim is the quintessential pop document for the Tumblr set. Internet culture is never brought to the fore in the film but the experience of browsing, Tumblring, Facebooking, etc. is reflected in the multifaceted layering of music, images, text, dialogue, sound effects, and editing in the film. In any given scene, there may be three or five layers of humor: 1) a line of dialogue, 2) a sound effect, 3) a text, 4) a cut or camera move, etc., etc. Scott Pilgrim doubles and triples up on jokes which fly so fast sometimes you can't even remember why you're laughing and by the time you have remembered, the scene has changed to something completely different. This style of filmmaking is already being dubbed 'ADD' and by extension the people who watch and enjoy Scott Pilgrim must have something wrong with them. But there is an important distinction between filmmakers who layer on visual and audio distractions without rooting their choices contextually in the story (Tony Scott and Oliver Stone, I'm looking at you) and a director like Edgar Wright who understands that when Scott imagines living in a sitcom, it's not a grasp as empty pop culture referents--it's actually how he experiences and relates to his environment. Anyone who's grown up watching television, watching movies, playing video games, reading comics and surfing the web will recognize themselves in these moments. They're cultural touchstones, for good or ill, for a whole generation of us.

That being said, there is no doubt that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a niche movie. It will not appeal to everyone. There are already plenty of grumbly, old man reviews about the shallowness of the story, the incoherence of its images and the fact that it's all flash and no substance. I disagree on all counts. Scott Pilgrim is a movie but it's also a cultural archive, a snapshot in history of what it was like to live, as someone between the ages of let's say, 15 and 30, in a media culture and still try to find meaning as an adult. Perhaps even more than Harry Potter, this is a movie for the Harry Potter generation. The hero's quest is scored by a Zelda soundtrack ingrained in sense memory. Edgar Wright called these video game sounds the lullabies of a generation. Close your eyes. You can hear them, can't you? Like Harry Potter, Scott Pilgrim is all about love. Unlike Harry Potter, romantic love is not idealized or simplified. Scott lives in a universe where he is the hero because everything he has experienced has programmed him to believe he deserves hero status. Naive stupidity or hopeful optimism? None of the characters in the film use Facebook or any self-based media outlet (only Envy Adams, paragon of self-interest, has a blog), and yet Scott behaves in the insular manner to which we've all grown accustomed. What are our interests, which bands to we like? (Recall Scott's line: "Yeah, okay. So, back to me.")

Scott's casual disregard for the feeling's of others is almost assuredly due to the perception of himself as the hero at the center of his narrative. All others are there to assist him. (Knives paying for the video game, Wallace cooking, cleaning and advising him, Ramona paying for the bus and literally fighting Scott's battles for him.) Scott's self-centeredness is almost incidental, although crucial to his identity. In the book, Scott doesn't gain the Power of Self-Respect and I think the change in the movie is a positive addition. If Scott only had the Power of Love, his relationship with Ramona would continue to be one-sided but with the Power of Self-Respect, he's able to repair his relationship with Knives, Ramona, and even Kim because he's truly matured. The end of the movie is hopeful, but ambiguous. Scott has defeated the exes, but that was predictable. That is the hero narrative, the traditional character arc. What's next? The future is uncertain and the film is smart in the way it establishes the ambiguity of both Scott's relationship to Ramona after battling so many to be with her, and Ramona's attitude towards Scott--does she need to be grateful for what's he done or can she still choose to be by herself? For now, both characters are enjoying the moony bliss of a fledgling courtship. After weathering the storm of seven evil exes, what can't they handle?

CONTINUE? 8...7...6...5...

Shunned Cinema: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

2010-07-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

Shunned Cinema is a semi-regular (meaning whenever I come around to it) series where I liveblog a film that for some reason or another has been critically derided and generally has an aura of shame about it. These are the kids on the playground with lice. There's a whispered sense of banishment--stay away from them. I wanted to know why. Why the bad reps? So I watch the movies, update on Twitter, and post the sweded versions transcripts here. Shunned Cinema.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington, 2003) is the prototypical blockbuster bomb, the superhero movie that failed. It got shit on in part because it is legitimately pretty bad, and in part because the graphic novel on which it's based is so obviously a work of genius. There was a tidal wave of anger for squandering the world's coolest premise: characters from Victorian literature exist in a steampunk-ish alternate universe and form the world's first superhero team to defeat other characters from Victorian literature. Awesome, right? The tragedy of the film is that it could have been SO GOOD, but it's bungled so completely, so ineptly, it's dumbfounding. A small example to illustrate--

This is the kind of film where characters can makes half a dozen cracks about Her Majesty's Empire, British summers and "Rule, Britannia!," but when presented with a landscape that's obviously the bleak, grey London skies, we're treated to a title, "London, July 1899." Well, we bloody already know it's bloomin' London, don't we! All the characters are English, and not just English--stuffed shirt, fucking obviously British. Super Brits. Except for Sean Connery as adventurer Allan Quatermain, who is so obviously Schcottish in every damn role, his Englishness is asserted only by the other characters. But, really. We know the year, too because we got a title scroll for that in the beginning. We don't need to be told it's July either because thirty seconds ago, an Englishman told another Englishman to pack for an English summer. Egads, what a waste of time.

This is the kind of situation where it's no one's fault and everyone's fault. Norrington and Connery didn't get along. It's a 20th Century Fox film, which is pretty much all you need to know right there. Additionally, they shot almost the entire picture in Prague wherein they experienced some of the worst flooding in European history. Dozens of sets were destroyed, including the entire interior of Captain Nemo's submarine, The Nautilus. Given such dire circumstances, it's a miracle the movie was ever finished at all.

Ultimately, I don't feel anger at this movie so much as pity. Everything went wrong and that's a shame. There are glimpses of what could have been an entertaining film. The DVD features tons of deleted and extended scenes that flesh out the characters, and give insight into James Robinson's witty and snappy dialogue (none of which is present in the theatrical version). For one thing, the creature design for Mr. Hyde is terrific. The hulk-like monster is composed of foam pieces and prosthetic makeup effects which transform actor Jason Flemyng from the shy, nerdy Dr. Jekyll into a rabid beast.

But any good intentions aren't enough to forgive a crap film. Unlike my previous viewing of Supergirl, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen certainly lived up to the bad hype. Too bad. Onto the blogging...

1AM: time to start liveblogging the crap film of the day: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Let's do this!about 22 hours ago via web
Oh, my. Even the DVD menu is atrocious. Bad omen. #loeg or#LXGabout 22 hours ago via web
These are the most intrusive titles. Why are they glowing and giganic. You're distracting me! #loeg or #LXGabout 22 hours ago via web

Ugh, fuck this. They made Connery the leader and didn't even give Mina her maiden name back. Did you even read the comic, assholes? #loegabout 21 hours ago via web
The sad part about this is that the character posters are actually kind of rad: http://bit.ly/9U5Z7P #LXGabout 21 hours ago via web
OK, we don't need an 'East London docks' title There are docks. We obviously haven't left London. This is infuriating!#LXGabout 21 hours ago via web
Nemo: "Next stop, Paris." Cut to title: "Paris." Okay, now they're just doing it to piss me off. #LXG #whydoesthismoviesucksohardabout 21 hours ago via web
Shane West is such a terrible actor. I'm glad he seems to have disappeared. #LXGabout 21 hours ago via web
Father/son dynamic between Tom Sawyer and Quatermain is so cheesy and studio note-ish. We have to appeal to young men AND families! #LXGabout 21 hours ago via web
"What is it?"/"The sound of treachery!" Actual lines from an actual movie. #LXGabout 21 hours ago via web
Snow turban! http://bit.ly/cqJVfQ #LXGabout 20 hours ago via web

Casting Stuart Townsend as Dorian Gray was the only smart thing the filmmakers did. He's such a smarmy, foppish bastard. Perfect. #LXGabout 20 hours ago via web

Wow, they killed Quatermain. Guess that's what happens when you cut out the sex & replace him with Tom Sawyer. Let's finish this already.about 20 hours ago via web
What the...what is this ending? Quatermain dead & buried and resurrected by some African shaman? I just, I can't. What the balls. #LXGabout 20 hours ago via web

I almost wish there had been a sequel, if only for zombie Connery.
Glad that's over. This movie killed the careers of director Stephen Norrington & James Bond himself, Sean Connery. That's power. #LXGabout 20 hours ago via web

Fuck yeah, lens flares!

Buster & Three Ages

2010-07-20T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today we tackle Buster Keaton's first feature film, Three Ages. Ostensibly a take-off on D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, an epic which chronicled the theme of human intolerance through four epochs, Three Ages does much the same with love across three time periods, the Stone Age, the Roman Age, and the Modern (1920s) Age. Presented via the ever-popular but rather lazy framing device of a storybook, the film begins with Father Time lecturing us on the unchanging motivations of love across the ages. The intro is purposefully comically ponderous, and the flowery tone is continued in the intertitles where Buster is introduced as "the faithful worshipper at beauty's shrine." Decked out in fur boots and a bramble of thatched hair, caveman Buster is as ill-equipped a conquering Neanderthal as he is Jazz Age lothario. In every era Buster is as under-qualified a lover, whether in size, skill, or wealth.

Three Ages is non-linear, bouncing back and forth between time periods with an occasional title card to cue us to the scene. The through-line is simple enough: our hero Buster has to fight for the hand of his one true love (played by Margaret Leahy) against the rival (Wallace Beery); the girl's parents (Joe Roberts and Lillian Lawrence) also appear in each age.

The film is full of jokey anachronisms, such as when Buster shows his "I.D.", a pictograph of a man on a slice of stone, or in the Roman Age, when he spots a sundial wristwatch. Although clever in concept, these jokes seem overly writerly. Keaton soars on fluid, visual gags stringed in a breathless sequence whereas some of these jokes are more akin to the puns he'd loathe later in his MGM days. Upon execution they grow weary, especially when the novelty of Buster having accidentally "invented" something, as a he does the game of baseball, is repeated over and over.

A few gags are exceptions, like when Keaton can utilize an object for multiple uses, as he does with his Roman helmet. He unlocks the chinstrap and then clamps the helmet around the wheel of his chariot, "inventing" the car boot.

Buster's masculinity is challenged and undermined at every turn, in every age. Clearly not cut out for the brawny Stone Age, he's thwarted by a giantess (played by 6 foot 3 inch Blanche Payson, New York City's first policewoman). In the Roman Age, he's thoroughly walloped in Greco-Roman wrestling (though at the time, I assume they just called it wrestling) by a girl he's trying to court to make Leahy jealous. No dice. She flips and pins him handly.

In the Depression-era '20s, Buster unwittingly drinks a carafe full of illicit booze dumped there by the couple at a neighboring table. As he is there to spy on Leahy and Beery, the alcohol becomes a welcome distraction from his heartache. But Buster's had enough of pain and slides into the neighbors table, while the man (the one with the booze) is away. Even as a drunk, Buster Keaton is subtle. Look at his face in this scene and there's none of the over-exaggerated winks and ticks you get when say, Chaplin plays drunk. Not that Keaton's version is superior, but it's simply well-done. Buster's done what everyone does while inebriated: become a heightened version of one's self. Sober, he is the Great Stone Face. With a drink in him, his Stone Face is the same, only a bit more wobbly, his heavy-lidded eyes are droopier than ever. Chaplin would become querrelous, would weave his way to the girl's heart via a mischevious grin and to the rival, a well-aimed bop on the nose. Keaton just sits there, pining. He is a born loser, in this age and any other. In fact, Buster is the unwitting loser. Beery has sent a note over to the neighboring table, pretending to be Buster, courting the young lady. The young gentleman will have none of this and wakes the snoozing Buster, socks him in the puss, and returns to his table. Exit Buster.

Each timeframe has its own dual for affections: a battle with clubs, a chariot race, and a football game. In the first test, Buster cheats and is banished. He wins the chariot race with ingenuity, replacing the wheels with skis and the horses with huskies. (It had recently, and improbably, snowed.) On the football field Buster is tossed about like a ragdoll and pummeled by Beery before some acrobatic feats allow him to flip and tumble his way to a touchdown. Buster, a baseball fanatic and uber-talented acrobat, excels in these sequences, the most thrilling in the film.

In the Roman Age, Beery devises a trap for Buster, who ends up like Daniel (in the lion's den). In the Modern Age, Beery plants some illegal alcohol on Buster and gets him arrested. The Stone Age, however, is where the chase begins. Buster steals Leahy away from her impending marriage and the cavemen follow. In the film's best bit, the townspeople begin lobbing rocks at the couple by bending back saplings--an early catepault. Not to be outdone, Buster launches himself onto the unsuspecting Beery, a human projectile. Also in this sequence, Buster invents baseball by batting away a rock thrown at his head. According to legend, Buster's writers urged him to shoot the sequence in bits, a close-up of Beery throwing the rock, a close-up of it traveling, a close-up of Buster hitting it and a close-up of the rock hitting Beery. Buster didn't like that, explaining the audience wouldn't laugh if it didn't look real, and for it to look real, it had to be done real. According to gagman Clyde Bruckman the simple five second gag took sixty-seven takes.

Buster's troubles continue in Rome, where he has to make friends with a lion in the form of a ludicrously fake man-in-lion costume. Buster remember that old fable about a thorn and a lion's paw and decides to give ol' Aslan a pedicure. Farcical but funny stuff. Now escaped, Buster rushes to thwart Beery's lecherous advantages. In a sequence prefiguring the athletic climax of College, Keaton sprints, jumps, rides a horse and pole-vaults to Leahy's rescue.

Back in the twenties, thrown in the clink, Buster discovers a police file for Beery. Turns out the groom-to-be is a forger and a bigamist. Armed with the proof to prevent the wedding, Buster accidentally bumbles his way out of the police station by hiding in a telephone booth just as the police are getting a new booth installed. Now accidentally, although happily, on the run from the cops, the cross-century chase continues and we come to the most interesting and most dangerous story of production on Three Ages. To escape the cops, Buster's climbed to the top of a building. He peers over the ledge and we're treated to a vertiginous point of view shot of the pedestrians below. It's do or die time. Buster pulls out a plank of wood and steadies it over the lip of the building. He readies himself and jumps. He hits the lip of the building, grasping the ledge for a fraction of a second before bouncing down the building's face and out of frame. Cut to a medium shot of the two buildings standing side by side. From out of frame above, Buster plummets, crashing through two awnings before getting entangled in a third and grasping onto a drainpipe which bends backwards and sends Buster careening into an open window, sliding across a floor and through a hole. Buster slides down a fireman's pole, crashing to the ground and scrambling up, bewildered, to sit on the bumper of a fire engine which is just leaving the station.

Whew! Okay, let's back up. Yes, Buster jumped for real and really fell thirty-five feet to a net below. Keaton's hard and fast command to his cameraman, "Keep filming till I yell cut or are killed," almost came true this time. Buster was in bed recovering for three days. When the team regrouped, Buster and crew looked at the footage--it was too good to scrap. Instead, they built the gag around the injurious mistake. Thus, a jump that was supposed to span two buildings and presumably, continue across rooftops, was transformed into the spectacular gag sequence it is now. Like a pinball machine with Buster as ball, Keaton is batted from awning to pipe to window and slides the long fire pole. The sequence is a tour-de-force cherry on top a so-so movie sundae. The capper of the gag, however, is priceless. Buster, still dazed from the fall, sits on the bumper as the fire engine races to put out a blaze--at the police station. Buster grabs a hose and stumbles towards the building before realizing where he is and, dropping the hose, again runs for his miserable life.

The chase continues. Buster dashes to the church to break up the nupituals, dragging the bride down the aisle and out into a waiting vehicle. Out of a sense of gratitude, Leahy gives him a peck of a kiss. Keaton tosses his hat in the air, grabs her on the wrist, climbs back into the car and shouts, "Back to the church!"

In the film's coda, the theme of love triumphant through the ages is reiterated. As the old rhyme goes, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...Cut to three little vignettes: In the Stone Age, Buster and Leahy emerge from their cave trailing eleven little bear-skinned kids. In the Roman Age, the couple trots out five togaed youngsters. In this modern age of "speed, need, and greed," Buster and Leahy walk down the sidewalk in front of their house, a tiny Pekingese in tow.

Three Ages is a good film, but not a great one, mostly because Keaton and co. were playing it safe. After the fact, Buster admitted the tripartite structure was to hedge their bets during distribution: if the film didn't work as a sixty minute feature, each segment could be re-edited into a twenty minute comedy short. The film was thankfully a success, as I don't know how viable that option was given the absolutely identical plot structure of each age. While not a classic, Three Ages does offer up some interesting bits. One at the beginning has Buster being introduced in the Stone Age riding on the back of a dinosaur. Wallace Beery was introduced on the back of an elephant and Keaton wanted to top this. But, how? Recalling a technique he'd seen in a film as a child, Buster hired animator Max Fleischer (later to become famous for inventing rotoscope) to create a stop-motion dinosaur for use in long shots, with a model figurine of Buster riding on top. In addition to this technical wizardry, the Roman sets and costumes are extremely high-quality. There were a lot of pillars and togas lying around in the silent era, but Keaton's Rome is most noticeable for its expansive sets, which were achieved through complex glass effects, where only a portion of the set is constructed and the rest of the effect is achieved through reflections and matte painting. Technically, it's an accomplished film. It would take Keaton's next feature, Our Hospitality, to showcase his genius for storytelling.

A trip back to 1924 and rivalries in the rural South, next time!

The Keaton Shorts: 1923--The Love Nest & Conclusion

2010-07-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Love Nest

Onto greener pastures. Keaton's final silent two-reeler has the distinction of being the only one he's credited with writing and directing alone. Previously, he had been credited with a co-director (Eddie Cline, usually) and the writing credits were generally ignored. His collaborators have admitted almost all the work was Buster's but Keaton wasn't interested in self-promoting title cards, satirizing the practice in The Playhouse. The reasoning for this credit change is unknown (at least, to me--anyone with enlightening info, please share!). I suspect it was an attempt by Joe Schenck and Lou Anger to buff up the Keaton rep in anticipation of the release of his first full-length feature, Three Ages, which Buster was shooting concurrently with his last two short films. Perhaps The Powers That Be sensed the public's playful contempt for the egomaniac auteur (a la Ince) shifting to admiration; the success of Chaplin's The Kid in 1921 and The Pilgrim a month before The Love Nest surely helped the writer-director-comedian distinction gain prominence. Whatever the reason, The Love Nest remains the only silent short in which Buster Keaton receives written and directed by credits.

The story is classic Buster Keaton. Opening with typically understated dour wit, the title card reads: "The story of a man who lost his interest in women and everything else." Rebuffed by his fiance, Buster decides to sail around the world on his boat, the Cupid. He informs his fiance in a letter, the envelope for which is moistened by his own tears. Buster grows a mopey, post-romance beard (generous greasepaint) and stares listlessly at nothingness, pondering no doubt the mysteries of the universe, like how stars are created and why women are such bitches. The Keaton deadpan is utilized to its utmost here: sullen nihilism in a flat hat.

Drifting languorously, Cupid encounters The Love Boat, a whaler helmed by Joe Roberts as a homicidal sea captain with a penchant for tossing his crew members into the deep for the slightest provocations. You've gotta love these seethingly ironic ship's names. Having just tossed away another sailor, Joe makes Buster his new steward. Buster, however, isn't much of a cabin boy. (He takes the call for all hands on deck literally and soaks the captain with dirty water.) When caught admiring Roberts' rifle, he turns around, walks straight down a gangplank and into the ocean. We see a puff of smoke emerge from the waterline. Buster walks back up, fish in hand! He's parlayed certain death into dinner for the crew. Not much of a sailor, but one hell of an improvisor.

When Capt. Joe gets tossed overboard (Buster's fault), Buster takes the opportunity to anoint himself the new captain. Big mistake. Roberts promptly climbs back aboard and in his ensuing rage, the rest of the crew jumps ship. Buster is left alone on the vessel with the angriest mariner on the high seas.

Night falls. Buster sneaks back onto the ship (having slept on the gangplank) and plans his revenge. He picks up an ax and hacks a gaping hole in the ship's hull. Buster waits for the sink to ship so that the water is level with the deck and the life boat, the Little Love Nest, floats to sea easily. Having effectively drowned Joe Roberts, Buster rows into the silent ocean night a free man.

The final sequence in the film is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking, cementing Keaton's status as a premier director as well as star. Buster moors himself to a large buoy, which, unbeknownst to him, is a naval target board. In trying to kill a fish, Buster shoots a hole in his boat (something his little fellow seems to be doing constantly), and must now take up residence on top of the target board. Facing away from the camera, Buster doesn't know the navy is just off screen, testing their powerful new gunships. In spyglass point of view, we get the practice montage. Fire...one! Another spyglass POV. Fire...two! Buster is on target number three. The way Keaton divvies out information, delaying the audience's expectations, taking the time to cut back from the naval commander to the target to the ships and back to the target, speaks to his maturity as a legitimate filmmaker. A frequent Keaton motto was to make every scene so true, it hurt. Kill 'em with accuracy, and it makes the humor truer, funnier. Such is the case here.

The naval commander calls out, 'Fire...three!' Cut to Buster, fishing innocently. A thundering splash to his left. They missed! Seeing only the resultant ripples, Buster casts his line over yonder (must be a big fish). Climbing on top of the target, again we get the spyglass POV, this time with a Buster-shaped figure on top. Fire--explosion! The Buster-shaped body goes flying.

Cut to Buster, singed and battered, flying through the clouds, ascending to Heaven. Well, he's dead but at least it's a happy ending. Ah, but no. Buster's trajectory reverses and he begins to descend back to...well, erm, Hell. Or so it seemed. The film fades in to Buster, re-bearded, frantically flapping his arms, back on the Cupid. It appears it's all been a dream!

But even so, it's hardly good news. Buster's out of water and hard tack. Hopelessly lost. Adrift. Alone. Clutching a photo of his dearly beloved ex-fiance, he crawls out to the prow to die. Just then, from off screen left, a woman swims by. In wide shot, we see that Buster's still tied to the dock. He's never even left! Grief-stricken, delirious, and more than a little daft, Buster has imagined the entire adventure--except the part about being ditched by his fiance. That part is still painfully real.

The way the film ends, in a quick succession of reversals, is something Buster Keaton loved to do, to make the audience think one thing would happen and then go in a completely diametrical direction. The entire nautical section of the film is composed with such authenticity with footage of the whale, the naval carrier, the harpoon sequence and some very convincing looking sailor extras, so as to hoodwink the viewer into believability. In the entire film, land is nowhere to be seen. Although cast and crew were most probably anchored in a harbor somewhere, the effect is of total oceanic isolation. Coupled with Buster's convincing despair, we're never in doubt of the events unfolding before us. Although I wouldn't put The Love Nest in the most esteemed level of Keaton shorts, it's certainly an admirable second-tier entry, displaying Buster's interest in maritime mischief and his ability as a filmmaker to capture action in a docu-realist style.

In our next installment, we finally (finally!) reach the features. Buster the caveman, the Roman, and the Jazz Age hero--Three Ages, next time!