(Home Projectionist is “regifting” this feature, which we ran in 2012. Happy Holidays!)
You know that sometimes annoying song about the “Twelve Days”? We’re using it to highlight 12 Christmas movies that fit the lyrics of the song, more or less…
HOLIDAY AFFAIR (1949; Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh; directed by Don Hartman)
Dave is a graphic designer (www.dhdd.net) and movie lover, and the caretaker of “The 3 Benny Theater” (also known as his living room). The moniker was inspired by an extinct movie house–The 3 Penny Theater–and by his black Manx cat, Benny. Favorite films: North By Northwest, The Third Man and The Dekalog.
(Home Projectionist is “regifting” this feature, which we ran in 2012. Happy Holidays!)
You know that sometimes annoying song about the “Twelve Days”? We’re using it to highlight 12 Christmas movies that fit the lyrics of the song, more or less…
It’s always one of the most poignant short films of the year: TCM’s Remembers, documenting the lives of film industry people who passed away. See it at TCM Remembers 2013.
Last year, the Academy Awards version of the same tribute was woefully lacking and failed to include a number of performers–like Andy Griffith, Ben Gazzarra, Phyllis Diller, and even more. Maybe this year the Academy will use the TCM piece as a reference.
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY weighs in at a staggering 828 pages. That is because its author, Theodore Dreiser, is in the words of a critic, “endlessly faithful to common experience” (emphasis on “endlessly”). To read a paragraph from the novel, scroll down to the bottom of this blog.*
I did not read the novel cover to cover. I read about one-quarter of it and used online chapter summaries for some of the gaps.
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY (1925)
An American Tragedy brought Theodore Dreiser both popularity and acclaim. It was based on a true story and follows the facts of the case closely, even down to the setting of upstate New York.
Dreiser’s prose style is a sea of sand. But in that sand lies psychological acuity. Dreiser knew people. He is the kind of person you would avoid at a party because a minute after he met you, he would have your number—and probably put you in his next novel.
There are three central characters—Clyde and the two women he is involved with, Sondra and Roberta.
Clyde’s parents are fundamentalist Christian street preachers. It is a poverty-stricken, itinerant existence. His sister runs off with the first man who gives her a line of smooth talk. Like his sister, Clyde is clueless about who he is or how to get anything worth having in life, but unlike her, he catches a lucky break. He ends up working at his wealthy uncle’s factory, the Griffiths Collar & Shirt Company, in Lycurgus, New York.
Clyde meets Roberta, who is hard-working, pretty, and poor. She has a tender heart. When she dreams of a better life, she does not dream of being rich. She dreams of being loved. He enjoys sleeping with Roberta (novel is fairly frank about this), but soon he meets Sondra, who is rich, beautiful, generous, and kind. She is the Other—the dream girl who embodies everything he thinks he wants.
When Roberta becomes pregnant, Clyde tries to arrange an abortion for her. Roberta agrees because she is terrified. But the remedy provided by a druggist only makes her sick. The doctor who performs abortions for his wealthy clients on the side refuses to help her. She then pleads with Clyde to marry her, accepting that he will leave after the baby is born. He puts her off.
Clyde takes her out in a canoe intending to murder her, but he has a last-minute change of heart and cannot go through with it. She stands up and walks toward him. He hits out at her (with a camera, for some reason), and the canoe tips over. Once they are in the water, he does nothing to save her.
Clyde is convicted of murder on partly manufactured evidence. After nine months on death row, he is executed by the state of New York. What happens to Sondra? She just sort of disappears. After Clyde’s arrest, she sends him a kind but bland letter to which she does not sign her name.
Okay, got the picture? Roberta loves Clyde. Clyde loves Sondra. Sondra thinks Clyde is interesting.
A PLACE IN THE SUNdoes not play the story quite that way.
A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)
This George Stevens movie was a critical and commercial success. It won six Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for best picture. It stars Elizabeth Taylor as rich society girl Angela Vickers and Montgomery Clift as the poor and enterprising George Eastman. They look very much as Dreiser describes Sondra and Clyde, by the way. Sondra is a dark-haired beauty; Clyde is darkly handsome.
Shelley Winters plays Alice Tripp, the girl who becomes pregnant by George. She does not sound or look like Dreiser’s Roberta. Alice is deliberately made unattractive so George’s rejection of her will not seem so bad.
With Clift and Taylor as the leads, the movie plays like Romeo and Juliet. To play it any other way with those two stars would have been crazy. They have spectacular chemistry; this is a story they can tell. Angela does not find George “interesting.” She is passionately in love with him, as he is with her. They reach across the walls of their respective classes.
Alice tries to blackmail George into marrying her. George wants her dead, but does not kill her. That scene plays just as it does in the book.
In the novel, Clyde has a death row conversion. He accepts Christ as his personal savior and writes a farewell letter to the world that exhorts young men to lead good Christian lives. Dreiser plays this scene cynically: the conversion is a measure of how thoroughly Clyde has been destroyed.
It is impossible to imagine the movie ending that way, and a good thing it doesn’t. I like the movie’s ending better. It is simple and straightforward: George takes responsibility for what he did and accepts his fate.
A good story raises questions.
Is movie saying that you need to know your place in life and stay there?
If George and Angela had run off together, would it have worked?
What if George and Alice had married?
What kind of movie would A PLACE IN THE SUNhave been if Taylor and Winters had played each other’s roles?
There is an earlier film version from 1931 that seems to have vanished. Josef von Sternberg’s AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY stars Philips Holmes as Clyde, Frances Dee as Sondra, and Sylvia Sidney as Roberta. Dreiser did not like it.
About chemistry—here is the “Do I make you nervous?” clip from A PLACE IN THE SUN:
Here is the trailer:
________________________________________________
*From An American Tragedy:
So astonished was he that he could scarcely contain himself for joy, but on the instant must walk to and fro, looking at himself in the mirror, washing his hands and face, then deciding that his tie was not just right, perhaps, and changing to another—thinking forward to what he should wear and back upon how Sondra had looked at him on that last occasion. And how she had smiled. At the same time he could not help wondering even at this moment of what Roberta would think, if now, by some extra optical power of observation she could note his present joy in connection with this note. For plainly, and because he was no longer governed by the conventional notions of his parents, he had been allowing himself to drift into a position in regard to her which would certainly spell torture to her in case she should discover the nature of his present mood, a thought which puzzled him, not a little, but did not serve to modify his thoughts in regard to Sondra in the least.
___________
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
WHEN I WAS A KID, I remember watching the likes of Rebecca (1945), Mildred Pierce (1945), and The Asphalt Jungle (1950) on television. I didn’t know I was watching something called film noir, but these mysterious, riveting movies were standard broadcast fare on weekend afternoons. How lucky to grow up with movies like those to watch on rainy Saturdays. I pity the kids who have only the likes of Sponge Bob at their disposal to learn how very bad things can happen.
My top picks for Noirvember include movies that have left indelible images in my brain:
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang(1932) Technically pre-noir because of its 1932 date, this film is grueling. Just thinking of it exhausts me. Paul Muni is wrongfully committed of a crime and suffers the painful consequences of harsh prison life again and again and again. Director Mervyn LeRoy creates a film experience that is raw, violent, depressing, and bleak…and absolutely brilliant.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) One of my favorite of Hitchcock’s (and one of his own favorite’s as well), this film brings evil intent right into safe family life in a sleepy, small town. Someone you know and trust can hurt you. Teresa Wright is excited when her Uncle Charlie comes to visit but soon becomes suspicious of him. Joseph Cotten is chilling as Uncle Charlie.
Queen Bee(1955) She rules. Joan Crawford is a blast in this sinister portrayal of the perfectly evil bitch. This is a winner of a movie to watch with friends and howl at Joan’s over-the-top performance. And what a wardrobe she has!
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) Creepy and sleazy dynamics rage between Burt Lancaster, as a very powerful newspaper columnist, and Tony Curtis, the dirty public relations guy. Like so many noirs, location takes a meaningful role in the action. In this story, New York City and its bars and clubs also star.
Gun Crazy(1950) The original title was “Deadly Is the Female,” so guess who is the bad apple in this one? Annie Starr (played by Peggy Cummins) is a liar and maniuplator…and yes, she’s gun crazy in her Bonnie Parker outlaw beret. Her man, hapless Bart Tare (John Dall) is no angel, quite smitten with his guns himself, but he’s way too willing to get under her spell. You want to shake him most of the time as their crime story road trip unfolds.
Niagara (1953) This one of those Technicolor noirs, a story of a dysfunctional marriage, betrayal, and murder…with the rush of Niagara Falls as the relentless backdrop. Marilyn Monroe and her lover need to get rid of the disturbed husband, Joseph Cotten. Jean Peters is the innocent counterpart to Monroe’s juiciness. Such action and suspense!!
I Want to Live!(1958) I can’t help but love movie titles with exclamation points! Director Robert Wise takes on a true story of a murder trial gone bad. Susan Hayward gives the performance of a lifetime as Barbara Graham, a defiant party girl who, along with the rest of the world, can’t imagine that a woman would get the death penalty. Bring out the tissues.
Post Scripts:
1. Funniest Noir Title: Noir titles are not known for the humor, but the title The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) cracks me up.
2. Gasp-Worthy Trailers: I nominate the trailer for Roger Corman’s Teenage Doll (1957) as one of the creepiest and compelling.
3. Perfect Pairing: There is no other film genre that has its own grape: Pinot Noir. Such a perfectly dark wine when you’re ready for dark cinema.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
The definition of film noir for me is both stylistic and formulaic. Stylistically, the film should have a fluid movement to the filmmaking, cinematography, fashion. Story-wise, the thing that sets a noir apart from a regular mystery is the everyman who is put into an unusual situation. From the small boy in The Window who accidentally sees a murder, to the hapless hitchhiker in a film like Detour–suddenly an ordinary life is swept up into extraordinary circumstances by one moment, a moment that could be something like picking the wrong lover to something as mundane as having a flat tire.
My noir recommendation list is vast, but here are ten of my top picks:
Scarlet Street(1945) Like Detour, this is Noir 101. It’s a must-see film. And probably my favorite film of the genre. Edward G. Robinson plays a hen-pecked husband who picks the wrong woman to try to save one rainy night. Joan Bennett plays the woman who, with her grifter boyfriend (played by Dan Dureya), thinks that Robinson is a famous painter. From there, noir hilarity ensues. Lots of twists and turns and one of the darkest endings of any American film.
The Lineup (1958) I just recently saw a screening of this, and I was blown away by the violence of the film. The film follows the ruthless killer played brilliantly by Eli Wallach who is trying to track down heroin smuggled in an unsuspecting traveler’s suitcase. Some incredible location shots of San Francisco in the late ’50s. This is one of those movies they would call edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Fury (1936) Spencer Tracy plays a man traveling across country who stops in a small town and is mistaken for a killer. Based on a true story of vigilantism, the town takes the matter of justice in their own hands and burns down the jail where he is being held. Tracy’s character turns from an average Joe to a man of hard, bitter hatred. Sylvia Sidney plays his girlfriend who tries to show him that his hate is destroying him.
I Wake Up Screaming (1941) An unlikely noir with glamour girl Betty Grable and Victor Mature (who I usually hate) in a murder mystery told in flashbacks. The killer thing about this movie, which recurs in many noirs, is the use of a popular song that is played over and over throughout the movie. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is used in this movie, and it will wipe out of your mind all memories of Dorothy and the Tin Man. It was the breakthrough movie for Laird Cregar as the obsessive detective. He died young and it’s a tragedy. He was one of the best actors who ever was in movies.
Detour (1945) Much has been written about this low-budget film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. It’s the fastest 65 minutes of movie you’ll ever sit through. Not a minute of wasted film. Proof that you don’t need a big budget just a great story. Ann Savage is the spice that makes this movie pop!
The Scarf (1951) This movie is a cousin to Detour. This story, about an escaped inmate from an insane asylum who is trying to figure out if he really committed a murder, takes its time getting started, but once Mercedes McCambridge picks up the inmate (John Ireland) on the side of the road, the journey begins. Like Detour’s Ann Savage, McCambridge tears into every line of dialogue like a vicious cat. It also has a great nightclub scene.
Hangover Square(1945) Again with Laird Cregar. A musician suffers from a condition that has him go temporarily mad when he hears high-pitched sounds. Another ongoing theme of noir is “rooting for the criminal.” Cregar creates sympathy with his character so that the audience knows he is just a man who cannot help what he is doing.
Furies (1950) One of the queens of the genre, Barbara Stanwyck, gives a tour de force performance in this noir western. Stanwyck’s hate and revenge for her father drive the story of this Greek tragedy-like film. It’s got the look of a western, but the heart of pure darkness.
Fourteen Hours(1951) Richard Basehart plays a gay man whose life is no longer worth living, and he spends 14 hours on the ledge of a building. Not a typical noir, but the characters who are drawn into this unusual situation are the people on the street watching the drama unfold. Amazing moments with Agnes Moorehead as the dominating mother and Barbara Bel Geddes as the girlfriend who ‘understands’.
Female on the Beach(1955). Joan Crawford, Queen of the Noirs, stars in this camp classic. A great story about deception, but the thing that makes this film is the unforgettable lines per minute:
“I have a nasty imagination, and I’d like to be left alone with it.”
EVEN A BAD NOIR is good, when film noir is your favorite movie genre, as it is mine. So it’s really difficult for me to name nine as “the best,” particularly when some, like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, would be really obvious, unsurprising choices. What follows though are some that I could watch over and over. A few are well-known, a couple maybe not so much. But they’re all great–perfect for a chilly, dark and stormy November night.
The Big Heat(1953) Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford, with terrific chemistry, and a very evil Lee Marvin. Grahame–Marvin’s abused girlfriend–delivers sympathy for Ford’s plight, and deep regret for her own choices. Ford’s utter despair and silent rage are a great contrast to Marvin’s nearly psychotic character.
Leave Her To Heaven (1945) “Technicolor Noir” and much admired by filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese. The complex and selfish character played by the beautiful Gene Tierney destroys everyone around her to one degree or another. Awe-inspiring cinematography and an unforgettable score by Alfred Newman.
Point Blank (1967) Lee Marvin, left for dead in an Alcatraz prison cell, is back in L.A. He doesn’t want his girl (Angie Dickinson), his life, or revenge. He wants his money. Is he really alive and kicking, or is the entire film a death bed dream? We’ll never know, but who cares? This is a wild ride, in more ways than one.
The Killing (1956) Stanley Kubrick’s riveting heist film, an early masterpiece. One of Sterling Hayden’s best roles, with a clockwork-like plot and intriguing time-shifts.
The Tall Target Dick Powell is a detective in 1861, aboard a train full of sinister characters, one of whom is allegedly the would-be assassin of president-elect Lincoln. Claustrophobic, suspenseful, and unpredictable, it also, because of what we know would eventually happen to the President, has an extra layer of poignancy and foreshadowing.
The Narrow Margin (1952) Like The Tall Target, this terrific film noir, shot over three weeks, is set within the small confines of a train. With great dialog, like Marie Windsor’s assertively snide, “There’s another train… The gravy train!”
They Live By Night (1948) Nicholas Ray’s early, sweet and tragic noir, starring Farley Granger, with a tone that later would be evident in Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause. Granger and Cathy O’Donnell are the tragic lovers who, as the opening credits say, “were never properly introduced to the world we live in.”
Fall Guy (1947) “Was that the sound of heels clicking, or my beating heart?”Fall Guy is a very low-budget noir from Monogram Studios, based on a Cornell Woolrich story. A young man who’d been implicated in a murder, has no recollection of what happened, and must clear his name.
Dark Passage (1947) My list isn’t complete without at least one Bogart picture, and this is the one. On the run from San Quentin, Vince Parry (Bogie) meets up with none other than Lauren Bacall. After some low-rent plastic surgery, Parry is out to prove his innocence against all odds. A great ending scene.
In honor of the movies and trick-or-treating, here’s a pairing of scary movies with their freaky candy counterparts. How about a NutRageous! candy bar while watching PSYCHO? Or a 3 Musketeers with TRILOGY OF TERROR? And you can guess what little tri-colored treat goes best with CHILDREN OF THE CORN.
FILM CRITIC Pauline Kael called THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTERone of the most terrifying movies ever made. A psychotic fundamentalist preacher hunts and tries to murder two orphaned children to get $10,000 they have hidden. The money was stolen from a bank by their father, who killed two men to get it. The setting is rural West Virginia during the Depression.
Surely this was not what moviegoers were expecting in 1955—or ever. Yet the film was adapted from a best-selling, critically acclaimed novel and is faithful to it.
THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER spent four months on the The New York Times bestseller list and was a contender for the 1955 National Book Award. (The movie trailer says that it “gripped millions.”) It was selected for the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series—a big deal in the 1950s. The novel had everything going for it when its film rights were sold. Those rights did not go cheap either: they were sold for $80,000 ($677,000 in 2012 dollars).
But audiences stayed away, and reviews were mixed. Its director, Charles Laughton, never directed another movie.
The movie has had its reputation justly rehabilitated. It has an 8.8 rating at Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.2 at IMDb . It is on the National Film Registry. In 2002, Cahiers du cinéma ranked it as the second most beautiful film ever made.
But the fine novel on whose back the movie stands is out of print. Its author, Davis Grubb (1919-1981), has been forgotten. He and his book deserve to have their reputations rehabilitated, too.
To read an excerpt from THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, scroll down to the bottom of the blog. If you know the movie, the scene will be familiar.*
Here are a few facts about Davis Grubb:
He was born in Moundsville, West Virginia.
His father was an architect; his mother, a social worker.
He wanted to be an artist, but had to give up the ambition because he was color blind.
The Night of the Hunter was his first published novel.
Two of his stories were adapted for THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR; one was adapted by Rod Serling for NIGHT GALLERY.
His novel Fools’ Parade was made into a movie starring James Stewart. It was Stewart’s last film appearance.
His definition of sin: to do nothing.
The Book (1953)
The Night of the Hunter is based on a true story. The fictional preacher Harry Powell had a real-life counterpart named Harry Powers, a West Virginia serial killer who murdered two widows and three children before he was caught and hanged in 1932. A lynch mob 3000 strong wanted him for themselves, but the police used tear gas to prevent this.
Harry Powers found his victims by answering and sometimes running ads in lonely hearts magazines. So does Harry Powell. This detail was omitted from the movie because it is backstory, but if you were wondering, that is how he found the other women he murdered,
The book is a true original—a quality it shares with the movie.
The Movie (1955)
Harry Powell using his tattooed hands to enact the fight between LOVE and HATE, Icey Spoon’s comment about thinking of her canning during sex, the horrifying sequence in the cellar—all are in the book, down to the last detail. Think of any iconic scene or memorable line of dialogue. Chances are it was taken almost verbatim from the novel.
The only scene not in the book is the first one, when Lillian Gish reads from the Bible, surrounded by children—all talking heads set in a night sky of stars. That scene gives the movie an otherworldly feeling right from the start. It floats in dreamtime. Roger Ebert called it a “stylized nightmare.”
The movie is a noir fairy tale. (Think of the Grimm fairy tales before they were cleaned up and declawed.) Robert Mitchum, who is phenomenal as the preacher Harry Powell, is a demon in human form. Lillian Gish, who plays the mountain woman Rachel Cooper, is his angelic opposite—just as tough and hard as he is, but on the side of good. The river, which sparkles with unearthly lights (night and day), takes on mystic significance.
One fairy tale-like element in the book that the movie had to omit because there was no way to translate it into black and white is the way the police are described as “the blue men.” As in, “John watched the blue men take his father away.”
Roger Ebert, who called it “one of the greatest of all American films,” thinks that what did it in with audiences was its lack of “proper trappings.” Charles Laughton was not known for directing, Robert Mitchum had a threatening onscreen presence, the children were not cute, and the movie—heavy on German expressionism—looked just plain strange.
If you like the movie, you owe it to yourself to read the novel. It is available from secondary sellers on Amazon and Abebooks.
You will learn things about the characters’ backstory, the world in which they live, and details of the hunt that the film version had to omit. For example, if you’ve seen the movie, you know what happens on Willa Harper’s second wedding night. But you don’t know what happens on her first, when she is with the father of her children.
*Leaning, leaning! Safe and secure from all alarms!
Leaning, leaning! Leaning on the everlasting arms!
In the distance John saw him on the road, emerging suddenly from behind a tall growth of redbud half a mile away: a man on a huge field horse, moving slowly and with a dreadful plodding deliberation up the feathery dust of the river road. The figure of the man and horse were as tiny as toys in that perspective and yet, even in those diminished proportions, John could make out each dreadful and evil line of those familiar shoulders. Now in a dozen farms on both sides of the river the hound dogs had come out to bark at the sound of the singing, and a tan beagle bitch emerged suddenly from beneath the porch of the farmhouse just below the barn and raced braying to the gate to herald the singer’s passing. But the singing did not stop and the figure, moving still in that infinitely sinister slowness, passed directly below the house and was obscured again by a tall growth of pawpaws and still the voice continued unabated while John huddled in the hay with thundering heart. And even long after he had passed, faded down the road, lost in the moonbeams of the lower farms, John could still hear the faint, sweet voice and he thought: Don’t he never sleep?
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
TCM will begin airing the 15-part documentary THE STORY OF FILMtonight. It’s a fascinating ride through the history of film by historian Mark Cousins, and you’ll end up with a long, long list of movies on your watch list.
I loved the first episodes the best. From my Home Projectionist blog posts about the series: “During the first two hours of THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY, I learned that the first real movie star, Florence Lawrence, committed suicide with ant poison, that the first close up in cinema featured a sick kitty, and there was some hot erotic dancing going on in the silent movies.”
One of my favorite experiences was discovering Asta Nielsen‘s dance from The Abyss (1910).
In the name of building HP-to-HP (Home Projectionist-to-Home Projectionist) connections, we’ve started an HP blog feature: Home Projectionist of the Month.
Meet LINDSAY EDMUNDS of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Author, MST3K and noir fan, who liked NORTHFORK and “came to movies sideways.”
We coined the term “Home Projectionist” as a way to identify film fans (like us!) with a broad range of tastes and sensibilities who are always on the lookout for the next interesting movie to watch.
Our goal is to create a community of like-minded Home Projectionists because we like recommendations and feedback from real live people. It’s more fun than algorithms.
HP: Was there a defining moment — or moments — that made you a film fan?
Lindsay: I came to movies sideways, not quite realizing until Stage 3 that I was hooked.
Stage 1. I used to read Pauline Kael’s movie reviews not because of the movies, but because she was such a terrific writer. As a result, I can do a pretty good imitation of her style. See my blog post I Channel Pauline Kael.
Stage 2. In the mid 1990s, I found Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was about riffing bad movies. Because of MST3K, I associate movies with laughter and good times.
Stage 3. I discovered Turner Classic Movies. TCM was a revelation: nonstop movies with intelligent commentary and no commercials. Last April I attended my first TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood and liked it a lot. That shows how far I have come, or fallen, if you prefer.
HP: What have you been seen lately?
Lindsay: I saw Charlie Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTSat a little movie house in Chautauqua, New York. It was on the same bill with CLOUD ATLAS for some reason.
Thanks to TCM, I just saw my first-ever Francois Truffaut movie: STOLEN KISSES. Liked it.
HP: Are there any films (current or older) that you recently rediscovered and would recommend?
Lindsay: I haven’t rediscovered any movies lately, but I do wonder about some I remember liking. Would I like NASHVILLEif I met it again? ROBIN AND MARIAN? THE ROSE? MY BROTHER TALKS TO HORSES?
Actually, I am pretty sure I would like MY BROTHER TALKS TO HORSES. But that one is hard to find.
HP: What are the top movies that you’re happy to watch again and again?
Lindsay: LOCAL HERO, I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING, THE HAUNTING, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, LOVE ACTUALLY, CASABLANCA, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, CAT PEOPLE, THE MALTESE FALCON, SHE DONE HIM WRONG, IT’S A GIFT, SOME LIKE IT HOT.
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, THE DEAD, HARD DAY’S NIGHT, MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, HARVEY, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.
The first half of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. The first half of THE COLOR OF MONEY. The first half of THE BIG SLEEP(before plot goes off rails).
All these movies tell stories that stick with me, but why they stick with me is a question I can’t answer. This list shows a modest taste for film noir and a more marked one for comedy, and a definite vulnerability to romance.
I am a sucker for dream movies. I give them all kinds of slack as they drift around.
NORTHFORK is an example. It has washy color, a plot that gets stuck in the mud midway through, a soundtrack that muffles key passages of dialogue, and four angels named Cod, Cup of Tea, Flower Hercules, and Happy. I like it anyway.
HP: Anything about the film industry that particularly intrigues you?
Lindsay: I love it that movies with no hope of being hits still get made. CLOUD ATLAS, the most expensive indie movie in history, never had a prayer in theaters.
Maybe the film makers dream of a freak hit like BLAIR WITCH STORY or NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. But this does not seem to happen outside of the horror genre.
HP: Any favorite directors and actors?
Lindsay: Directors are Bill Forsyth, Richard Lester, Val Lewton, Woody Allen, Michael Powell, John Huston.
Actors include Sean Connery, William Powell, James Mason, Myrna Loy, Lillian Gish, Paul Newman, Diane Keaton, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck.
Also W.C. Fields. Women don’t usually like Fields, but I love way he spun the English language for laughs.
HP: Do you have a favorite film era or genre?
Lindsay: I like post-Code movies from the 1940s, because those movies get around the censors in sophisticated ways. These are true movies for grownups, because only grownups can understand the meanings under the meanings.
Also, I have a thing for black and white movies that I do not completely understand.
HP: Do you have any favorite go-to movie sites or blogs to recommend?
My own blog is Writer’s Rest. It is only sometimes about movies/TV though. The last entertainment-related posts I wrote are about the late and lamented TV series SMASH.
HP: Any other comments about being a Home Projectionist and choosing what you watch?
Lindsay: I like chick flicks. I refuse to call this a guilty pleasure.
Go to our Home Projectionist “What Are You Watching?” group on Facebook to join in on the conversation and meet the other Home Projectionists who love movies as much as you do.
(1958, France) starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie, Alain Bercourt; directed by Jacques Tati; music by Franck Barcellini and Alain Romans. Seen on TCM, July 21, 2013. Available from these sources.
The story:Five years after his first appearance, Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot returns with MON ONCLE, a film set along the dividing line between Paris’ past and its future. Aligned (as is the film) with the former, Hulot lives in a colorful, overpopulated Parisian neighborhood and, lacking employment, spends his days waiting to pick up his adoring nephew from school, and subsequently escorting him to his parents’ ultra-modern house. Filled with gadgets, some turned on only to impress the neighbors, the house seems designed specifically to frustrate Hulot, who unwittingly disrupts its operations at every opportunity. Concerned about his future, Hulot’s relatives attempt to find him gainful employment and pair him off with a neighbor, with little success on either front.
– – –
Lindsay:
IN MON ONCLE, there is a silver fountain shaped like a fish that has so much screen time that it is practically a co-star. It belongs to the Arpels—Monsieur Hulot’s sister, brother-in-law, and young nephew. They live in a house so obsessively modern that it has turned them into clowns.
When Hulot’s sister switches on the fountain, which she is forever doing for visitors, it gives a strangled gurgle and spouts straight up like a geyser. You see that fountain far away, in close up, and from every conceivable angle. Is is as if Tati can’t get over how funny it is, and neither will you after about an hour.
M Hulot lives a dreamy, impractical life in a city neighborhood full of color. He tries to do what his modern relatives want—the problem being that even they cannot do what they want. They cannot be colorless for the life of them. They own a red bicycle, green plants, blue pillars, a vivid yellow rocking chair. We first see Hulot’s sister wearing a pea-green caftan and matching turban.
She buys a silver garage door with an electronic eye that terrifies the maid. But her husband buys a green, pink, and lavender car with fat white sidewalls. These are anniversary presents.
This movie hasn’t got one mean-spirited moment, because Tati never invites you to look down on these people. It’s the human comedy, he says. Look at the colors of that.
– – –
Dave:
A CHIRPY, CATCHY FRENCH TUNE is playing. Stray dogs scurry, enjoying boundless freedom on these cobblestoned streets of a town somewhere in France. Precisely where, I don’t know, but I loved the two hours I spent there.
Mr. Hulot (director/star Jacques Tati) is like those dogs. He’s a happy, harmless fellow, taking pleasure in the little things. Such as manipulating a window reflection just enough to cause a nearby canary to warble. As with the carefree pooches who delight in finding morsels in the garbage, it doesn’t much to make Monsieur Hulot cheery.
Like the seaside resort in Tati’s previous film, MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, this is a very real-seeming place. I was immersed in the setting and its quirky, flawed inhabitants with all their very human characteristics.
There’s a street sweeper who’d rather do anything but sweep. A sweet, pretty young girl who seeks out the older Hulot’s approval. There’s a ridiculously fussy fussbudget whose prized possession is a horrid, metal fountain she activates only for worthy, impressionable guests.
There are the boys who pass the time by either making pedestrians have head-on collisions with street lamps, or causing drivers to think they’ve had collisions when they actually haven’t.
Then there’s Hulot. He lives on the very top floor of an impossibly intricate building that resembles a Joseph Cornell box. He tries, but modern gadgets and appliances make life too complicated. So what job does he take on? Well of course in a factory filled with nothing but dials, switches and complex machinery. Falling asleep at his desk on his first day, he throws the entire operation into minor chaos. But the side effect is that Hulot brightens the up-till-now dull and monotonous life of his co-workers.
At the movie’s end, the dogs are romping through the streets again. Life goes on. As with HOLIDAY, I’m sad to leave. I miss it already.
*Also recommended: Tati’s PLAYTIME and MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, as well as the recent, animated adaptation of a Tati screenplay, THE ILLUSIONIST.
– – –
Gloria:
WHEN I WATCH a Jacques Tati film, I feel as if I’ve been invited to be part of a clever, conspiratorial event.
“Come watch,” his work seems to say. “Let’s have some fun.”
So I’m drawn in, expectant, and hunkered down with an incessant grin on my face, periodically surprised by the laugh-out-loud moments. I can’t wait to see — and hear — what happens next. Visual treat after visual treat appears, accompanied by perfectly calibrated silence and perfectly hilarious sound effects. Who knew that the bzzzz of an entry buzzer or an on-again/off-again fountain gurgle could humor me for two hours? I’m still whistling the theme song.
What I love about MON ONCLE is the sense of intimacy. I’m totally in for the ride, peeking over fences, down halls, and into windows. I see what and how Tati sees, mesmerized by his sight gags and clever points of view, those long, extended shots that give me time to look around, and each masterfully composed frame that can stand alone as a piece of art.
When the characters bring their über-contemporary chairs out of doors to look into their house to watch television, I feel as if I am pulling up my own chair to sit quite happily and watch them while they watch tv.
The contemporary world that Hulot’s sister and brother-in-law inhabit is monochromatic steel gray and full of new fangled complexity. Regardless of its symmetry, it’s a world consistently off-kilter, dysfunctional, and just plain kooky. Hulot’s counterpoint neighborhood is in stark contrast, lived-in and richly toned, as comfortable as his moccasins and overcoat. It’s not a perfect world either, but people have gotten used to how things work (and don’t work) there. Hulot replaces a brick in a pile of rubble because that’s where it goes. Humans are amusing that way.
I could watch over and over again when the neighbors try to follow the curved path of the sidewalk and teeter across the paving stones in the yard, but I bet that one day they’ll start cutting straight across and make their own path, the same way Hulot’s brother-in-law veers from the standard gray option and buys a car that’s painted pink, lavender, and green.
The world keeps changing, and we figure out how to live in our particular place in time.
“C’est la vie,” Hulot says. He’s absolutely right.
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
Dave is a graphic designer, and proprietor of movieLuv.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor, and author of the novel, Human Slices. Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
The older I get, the more nostalgic I am about coming-of-age movies, especially ones like THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT (1964).
Adolescent girls rule in this World of Henry, so it’s a pity that the title is so misleading. I fear far too many young females (and their parents) of both the past and present have missed this gem, which was directed by George Roy Hill of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, THE STING, and many, many more.
Peter Sellers and his annoying Henry Orient character may have top billing, but this film is all about Val (Tippy Walker) and Gil (Merrie Spaeth) — two private school girls growing their friendship, exploring their world, and learning how to trust each other. They’ve learned that adults don’t always provide the best example in that department.
Val and Gil are sunny versions of Sally Draper from television’s Mad Men. In spite of, or because of, their family challenges and emotional armor, these girls are wiser than their years, independent, courageous, and growing up fast. They wear glamorous vintage fur while struggling with the rubber bands for the braces on their teeth.
Gil lives with her divorced mom in an apartment they share with fellow-divorcée gal pal Boothy. A non-traditional family, to be sure, grounded by love…and a strong reality check that “happily ever after” isn’t quite the promise that it’s made out to be.
Val’s parents, on the other hand, have basically farmed out their daughter to be raised by someone else. The school of hard knocks shows up alive and well with lines like, “Don’t worry, dear, unwanted children soon learn how to take care of themselves.” In fact, Val’s mother (Angela Lansbury) disdains and rejects her maternal role. In the end, Val’s estranged father (Tom Bosley) is the parent who finds redemption.
As disheartening as their backstories are, the girls remain optimistic and ready for adventure. One of the great scenes captures Gil and Val in a joyful city romp à la the field scene in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, which is from the same year. New York looks lovely in this movie, and for a little bit of realism, the streets are littered with just the right amount of trash.
As the girls’ relationship evolves, so does their journey toward adulthood. Val turns out to be a budding groupie. She develops a celebrity crush on Sellers — concert pianist, womanizer, and con man — and the fantasizing and stalking begin. Gil, in the role of a true friend, becomes her partner in stalking. Sellers is such an unlikely object of affection for a young girl that it’s comically weird and safe at the same time. When Sellers is on screen (far more often than he needs to be), the movie deflates, except when he’s trying to seduce a hilarious Paula Prentiss.
The girls disappear on Christmas night, and the parents don’t even fret. In fact, Val’s mother (Lansbury) takes the time to have an affair with the object of her daughter’s desire before she even thinks — or any of the parents think, for that matter — that it might be wise to report that their children are missing and roaming around alone in New York City.
I recently saw this summer’s coming-of-age feature, THE WAY, WAY BACK, which showcases a collection of the same kind of inept, checked-out adults that we see in ORIENT. Because of today’s parenting rules of conduct, I found it completely improbable that the moms and dads in THE WAY, WAY BACK don’t freak out, frantically dial their cell phones, call the cops, or file an alert when their kids totally disappear one night, especially when one of their sons has been seen hanging out with an older man. In ORIENT, the parents’ behavior seems feasible — reckless, of course, but feasible.
Nonetheless, in both movies, the kids are resilient. They survive, learn their lessons, and move on, ready to forge their own better paths…in spite of the disappointments, dishonesty, and discontent they see going on in Adult World.
Long live the true spirit of adolescence.
If only we could hold on to it.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
No, it’s a not a rock band. They’re the nine surviving masterpieces from Alfred Hitchcock’s silent years, and they’re coming to a theater near you.
The Herculean restoration project by the British Film Institute required a series of daunting tasks — from reintegrating lost footage to tinting restoration. Hitchcock once said, “The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema.” The release of these films offers audiences a remarkable opportunity to experience his force of genius in full glory, instead of on old, damaged prints.
The Hitchcock 9 includes:
THE LODGER (1926)
THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1926)
DOWNHILL (1927)
EASY VIRTUE (1927)
THE RING(1927)
THE FARMER’S WIFE (1928)
CHAMPAGNE (1928)
THE MANXMAN (1929)
BLACKMAIL(1929)
To add to the drama, live accompaniment, including some new scores, will be part of the screenings.
The Hitchcock 9 opened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival last week, goes bi-coastal this week in L.A. and New York, and then moves on to Seattle, D.C., and points beyond.
I know where I will be in August when The 9 shows up at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre.
"The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth." Leo Tolstoy
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