tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-188144402024-03-16T11:50:06.421-07:00Krell Laboratories"The fool, the meddling idiot! As though her ape's brain <br>could contain the secrets of the Krell!"Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.comBlogger1060125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-22146004188602186862024-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:002024-02-20T14:22:15.924-08:00A Tangled Web<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHI4pkZAyNFfjV1rQ8pYmcLbvrUxX2iUUs7AtimGzcGRF-F_R3OAb_45b7XWh1pHPWGpAAufUE-CtoWrIjwIzOZncRDNSQ0BgSjCdye0D7mqi3cJ1f9d1Y5-r1gwkfyjjhmdETn4MuBicYm1V7j6jskiaS9aQaq8v02hjUBiZG3kk3BIl7HzMIvA/s1220/MadameWeb01.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="751" data-original-width="1220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHI4pkZAyNFfjV1rQ8pYmcLbvrUxX2iUUs7AtimGzcGRF-F_R3OAb_45b7XWh1pHPWGpAAufUE-CtoWrIjwIzOZncRDNSQ0BgSjCdye0D7mqi3cJ1f9d1Y5-r1gwkfyjjhmdETn4MuBicYm1V7j6jskiaS9aQaq8v02hjUBiZG3kk3BIl7HzMIvA/s400/MadameWeb01.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>It takes real effort to make a movie as breathtakingly awful as <b><i>Madame Web</i></b> (2024, directed by S. J. Clarkson), a film that can stand with the likes of <i>Catwoman</i>, <i>Batman and Robin</i>, and <i>Superman IV: The Quest for Peace</i> as the nadir of superhero cinema. Given the disjointed nature of its plot, I'm going to assume that what ended up on screen is the product of studio notes rather than any incompetence on the part of its main contributors. Certainly, the actors here are left hanging in the wind, actors being at the mercy of other departments. A bad performance isn't always the fault of the actor. Performances are created and sometimes undermined in the editing room. There's a failure to trust the audience in this film that is striking and conspicuous. You can't miss it. So probably the studio. I'm trying to be generous, here.</p>
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<p>The plot opens in the Peruvian Amazon in 1973, where pregnant scientist Constance Webb is researching a rare spider whose venom is reputed to have healing properties. The spider is connected to the myth of the Arañas, a fabled tribe of indigenous people who have the abilities to climb and leap through the treetops like spiders. Constance finds the spider, but when she returns to her encampment, her partner in research, Ezekial Sims, murders her guides, takes the spider himself, and accidentally shoots Constance. She is found by the Araña, who take her to a cave to have her baby. To keep her alive long enough, they permit one of their spiders to bite her. She gives birth and dies. Three decades later, Constance's daughter Cassandra is working as a paramedic in New York City. When the film meets her she is working on a bridge pile-up, attempting to rescue a man from a car that is teetering perilously above the river. The man is rescued. Cassie is not so lucky. She's trapped in the car as it falls. She drowns. As she drowns, she has visions of the web of her life, both past and future. When she awakes, she begins having feelings of <i>deja vu</i>, which become outright visions of the future as she recovers. At another rescue scene, she sees a vision of one of her co-workers dying under her hands as she performs CPR. The ambulance he is driving will be t-boned by a truck as it leaves the scene. This comes to pass exactly as she envisioned. Understandably freaked out, she retreats from work. At home she has a vision of a pigeon flying into her apartment's window and dying. When she opens the window and leaves it open, the pigeon flies into the room very much alive, then flies out. Not only can she see the future, it seems that she can change it. When she hops a train to the funeral of her co-worker, she has a vision of a man she doesn't know boarding the train and murdering three teenage girls who are on the train with her. Each of the girls are someone she has met in passing during the last couple of days. She manages to get the girls off the train, pursued by a man in a black outfit festooned with red webs. He crawls on the ceiling. She doesn't know why he wants to kill the girls, just that she's the only one who can save them...</p>
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<p>Director S. J. Clarkson is a twenty year veteran as a television director, significantly having worked on the Netflix Marvel shows, so it puzzles me why this film is as poorly directed as it is. Some elements of the film--everything having to do with the Araña, for example--seem of a piece with television superheroics a la <i>The Flash</i> or <i>Arrow</i>, where the production design seems at odds with the better production design of the rest of the film. These are probably reshoots mandated by the studio. Just a guess. This doesn't explain how certain shots seem to have no actual focus, though. The fundamental job of a director is to arrange the scene in such a way that the narrative is clear or to communicate ideas, and this film occasionally fails at this basic function. For example: After Cassie and the three girls flee the subway station, they steal a cab. A part of this sequence includes a shot where the three girls are in the back seat while Cassie drives, but Cassie is put so far over to the edge of the screen, that it takes a second to realize that she's the only thing in focus in the shot. Ideally, this kind of shallow focus is used to isolate a particular person or thing to emphasize its importance, but here, the eye loses track of Cassie because of how the shot is blocked. There are other instances of this, some of it owing to how the film is edited. When, for instance, Cassie and the girls are running around on top of a burning fireworks warehouse and Cassie is directing their path with her precognition, it's never clear what the perils they are avoiding actually are. This is a film that indulges in shaky camera shots and close-ups during its action scenes, which further obscure its narrative. This is especially true of any sequence in which Cassie is seeing the future. The film has this right during its early scenes with Cassie, in which her visions are unannounced by the way they are filmed. The audience has no trouble with this. They should have stayed with this method. But the filmmakers--probably from the level of producers on up--don't trust the audience to follow this without being led by the hand. This is the only explanation I can muster for the inclusion of the film's prologue, detailing what happened to Constance Webb, when practically the exact same footage is included in a later sequence when Cassie sees what happened to her mother. They could have left the first ten minutes of the film on the cutting room floor. Instead, the film allows its exposition to lead it to bloat. This could have been a lean film at, say, 90 minutes. Instead it's two full hours. Worse, it's a film that's devoid of mystery, devoid of a sense of discovery. That is a grievous fault.</p>
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<p>The same problem can be said to attach to all of the scenes featuring Ezekial Sims's pursuit of the three girls from Sims's point of view. These also have the hallmarks of studio meddling because they just explain too damned much. We don't need to know the reasons for Sims's actions. Indeed, he could be much more frightening if we don't. His scenes also set up the expectation that we will see all three of his potential victims turn into spider-women to take him out, a promise on which the film reneges. As a side note, Sims is a character who demonstrates the importance of the humanities, because if he had ever in his life bothered to actually read a Greek myth, he would know that acting on his foreknowledge of the future is liable to bring that very future about. See for instance the man with one shoe who turns out to be Jason and who will kill his father, Perseus and his mother set to sea in a great treasure chest, or even <i>The Terminator</i> if you want something less ancient. The basic conception of his character is risible, too. He's Spider-Man, but EEEEvil. Jesus tap dancing Christ, I wish I was kidding.</p>
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<p>I don't have any real issue with most of the casting in this film. This isn't a film that's kind to its actors, but it's not the actors who are at fault. Dakota Johnson is fine for the part she's given, even if it's not the character one finds in the comics--at least until she IS the character one finds in the comics. That part of the film makes everyone in it look ridiculous and it <i>had</i> to be mandated by the suits. Gotta give the fans their fan service, after all. It just reeks of filmmakers forced to make an ending they don't believe in, one where they've made it so tacky that they might as well be saying "don't blame us." Anyway, Johnson is competent at the very least. So are Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor, even if they are all too old for their parts. The problem is the parts that are written for them. None of these characters has any interiority. They don't get strong emotions to play, not even Johnson who has a man die in her hands. Without that interiority and emotional depth, they don't read as real people so much as they read as types. They don't express any emotions beyond "sass." And, god, they're dumb. There is a sequence where Cassie tells them to not do anything dumb and as soon as she's gone, they go and do the dumb thing. More than once. This is a film with an idiot plot, and such films have snared better actors than these. </p>
<p>Two of the supporting players bear mention: Adam Scott, who is a charming comic actor, is completely wasted as Cassie's paramedic partner. He's there specifically for franchise building. The character's name is Ben Parker, a name that is very spider-adjacent. Also wasted is Emma Roberts, also a considerable actor in her own right, as the pregnant Mary Parker, whose childbirth is part of the plot. Like Scott, she's there for franchise building. They never name her baby in the film, but it's not a mystery. The presence of both actors is suggestive of a better film. The real victim of the producers' distrust of the material and the audience is Tahar Rahim, who has been a staggeringly good actor in films like <i>A Prophet</i> and <i>The Mauritanian</i>. In many scenes in this film, he doesn't even get to speak in his own voice. Many of his lines have been dubbed after the fact.</p>
<p>In one regard, this isn't a film at all. It's a holding action. Sony has to make movies with the Spider-man characters every so often in order to keep the rights to the character from reverting to Marvel full stop. Given that Spidey has been a license to print money for Sony, they'll do anything they can to hold on to these characters. This movie doesn't even need to be good. It doesn't even need to be successful. It just needs to get released. Mission accomplished. Congratulations, Amy Pascal. You get to keep on doing this. On to <i>Kraven the Hunter</i>. You'll pardon my diminished expectations for that one.</p>
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<p></p><p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-70024270454024016382024-02-09T06:30:00.000-08:002024-02-09T06:34:11.433-08:00The Grant Mystique: Thirty-Day Princess (1934)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3XW8PEjVBOTgZL4DQFCZGXHghxIE4xTv0XiWj6A5o7rVXtH8xBBc_fU8KgR4wkAqqWiucYG-YKUjgLIl5oyEhES2ePKwZnJhUlCKs07zvfpLaKGHgx-AoFqyeZ09gOm1viHKZjlpGmp93-R8N0jShQe0mPFa7Ok0MJUG5z8x2NjHttY8GKGInig/s1200/ThirtyDayPrincess_01.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3XW8PEjVBOTgZL4DQFCZGXHghxIE4xTv0XiWj6A5o7rVXtH8xBBc_fU8KgR4wkAqqWiucYG-YKUjgLIl5oyEhES2ePKwZnJhUlCKs07zvfpLaKGHgx-AoFqyeZ09gOm1viHKZjlpGmp93-R8N0jShQe0mPFa7Ok0MJUG5z8x2NjHttY8GKGInig/s400/ThirtyDayPrincess_01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i><b>Thirty-Day Princess</b></i> (1934, directed by Marion Gering) finds Cary Grant fading into the scenery a bit. This isn't the only case of this in his early films, but it's one of the most conspicuous. Grant was wholly unsatisfied with his part in this film and complained about it, prompting Paramount to loan him out to United Artists as punishment. Grant never forgot this. When his contract with Paramount was finished in 1937, he went freelance rather than re-up or sign with another studio. He wouldn't make another film for Paramount for a couple of decades. He held a grudge. Grant wasn't the only contributor unsatisfied with his work, either. This film credits Preston Sturges as one of its writers and, like Grant, he was unhappy with how little of his work ended up on screen. This is the only film on which Sturges and Grant both worked, so it's a missed opportunity.</p>
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<p>The story finds a destitute central European nation, Taronia, arranging to borrow capital by issuing $50 million in bonds in the United States. This is to happen under the guiding hand of financier Richard Gresham, who has chanced to meet the king of Taronia at a spa. Gresham proposes to put a face on the campaign and nominates the princess, Catterina, to act as ambassador. Unfortunately, Catterina develops a case of the mumps upon arriving in New York and Gresham has to act fast to prevent the whole enterprise from falling to ruin. He conducts a search for a lookalike to stand in for the princess while she recovers, eventually hiring out of work actress Nancy Lane for the part. Nancy is a dead ringer for Catterina. Apart from her diplomatic duties, her main mission is to convince newspaper publisher Porter Madison to drop his paper's opposition to the scheme...</p>
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<p>Grant's character, Porter Madison the newspaper publisher, is the primary antagonist/romantic lead in this film and second-billed to boot. You could be forgiven for thinking that Grant's part would inevitably be more than just decorative. You would be wrong, alas. Grant isn't tasked with much comedy, nor is he given any particularly good dialogue (he sometimes overplays the dialogue he has, particularly in the last scene of the film in which Madison and Nancy Lane come to a reconciliation). He sometimes acts like a nitwitted foil for his hard-boiled editor or his medium-boiled leading lady. His character often seems like a plot complication rather than a person. A viewer weaned on <i>His Girl Friday</i> might choke on the complete lack of cynicism in his character here. He's easily gulled by his leading lady in the way Elmer Fudd is sometimes gulled by a crossdressing Bugs Bunny. It's a bad trait for a journalist, let alone a leading man. His character seems entirely gormless. Naive, even. This ill suits the Grant persona, though in fairness, Grant was still working out the bugs in his screen presence at the time. He wasn't a polished actor <i>or</i> a polished movie star just yet. You can occasionally catch him visibly waiting to deliver his lines in this film rather than letting them flow naturally; Grant didn't really learn improvisation until he worked with Leo McCarey on <i>The Awful Truth</i> and the process of becoming comfortable with improvisation goes hand in hand with Grant's ascendancy as a movie star. It would be many more films before Grant learned the trick of listening to his co-stars without having to concentrate on his cues and/or when to hit his marks. This wasn't the only film to cast Grant as a rube early in his career, either (see the two films he made with Mae West, for examples). The Grant Persona still needed a lot of work. This film mostly showcases Grant as a clothes horse. As a mannequin, even. He sure knew how to look good in suits and formal wear, a skill he kept from his early career throughout his major stardom. For all of this, I can't help but wonder if the film is just badly directed. He had already given a pretty good performance for Mitchell Leisen in <i>The Eagle and the Hawk</i> a year earlier, so it wasn't for lack of ability. This film squanders so much promise.<br /></p>
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<p>Cynical realism and all of that is reserved for the film's nominal star, Sylvia Sidney, and for should-have-been-second-billed Edward Arnold. Sylvia Sidney is the center of the film, with the double role of Catterina and Nancy Lane, and her character vacillates between naive royal and hardened working girl on the make. Edward Arnold is this film's version of Walter Burns, who points both the actual princess and the fake princess at problems in the way of his bond scheme. He offers Nancy an additional $5,000 if she can circumvent Madison's opposition, which was a mint in 1934. The backdrop of the Great Depression is a great motivator for all kinds of shenanigans in the films of the day, and this film leans into Nancy's status as a desperate woman needing a job to eat. When she forces a door at the automat, her motives are crystal clear. When she is cornered by Gresham's detectives, she reasonably fears that she's been nabbed by the cops. Cops were still the enemy of the worker in the film of 1934. The production code hadn't yet pursued a law and order agenda. By rights, Gresham should be the villain of the piece, an idea reinforced by Edward Arnold's entire career of playing corrupt bosses and capitalists. The time is right for him to be a villain, too. Bankers were none too popular in the early 1930s. Gresham is presented as essentially benevolent here, but one can't help but wonder if Madison's instincts are right about him in the first place. The politics here are murky.</p>
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<p><i>Thirty-Day Princess</i> is a variation on <i>The Prince and the Pauper</i> and <i>Cinderella</i> and a bunch of other fairy tales. It's a variation, too, on the plot of most Horatio Alger books, in which a resourceful young waif is plucked from penury by some wealthy benefactor. These kinds of plots were everywhere in the deepest parts of The Great Depression. Joan Crawford and Loretta Young feasted on them. So did Sylvia Sidney. In a time when the prosperity that was allegedly just around the corner seemed fickle and elusive, it was a powerful fantasy. This isn't a bad film, though I would balk at calling it a particularly good film. It's occasionally charming. It provides its leading lady with an acting showcase. As a Cary Grant film, though? It's not a film that is lit by his stardom, nor is it a film that led to better things for the actor. It's not a <i>Cary Grant </i>film, per se. It's just a film that Cary Grant happens to be in.</p>
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<p>My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
<br />
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-grant-mystique-this-is-night.html"><i>This is the Night</i> (1932)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-grant-mystique-enter-madame.html"><i>Enter: Madame</i> (1935) </a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2020/08/eagle-and-hawk-1933-review.html"><i>The Eagle and the Hawk</i> (1933)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/02/The-Last-Outpost-1935-Review.html"><i>The Last Outpost </i>(1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-grant-mystique-wings-in-dark.html"><i>Wings in the Dark</i> (1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2006/12/movies-for-week-of-117-12306.html"><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i> (1939)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/08/Penny-serenade-1941-review.html"><i>Penny Serenade</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/01/Suspicion-1941-Hitchcock-review.html"><i>Suspicion</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="https://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/12/ArsenicandOldLace1944Review.html"><i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> (1944)</a>
<br /><a href="https://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/06/To-Catch-A-Thief-1955-review.html"><i>To Catch a Thief</i> (1955)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/01/games-must-we.html"><i>North by Northwest</i> (1959)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/09/Operation-Petticoat-1963-review.html"><i>Operation: Petticoat</i> (1959)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/07/Charade-1963-review.html"><i>Charade</i> (1963)</a>
</p><p></p><p></p>
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<p></p><p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-44407921846026147862024-01-30T18:44:00.000-08:002024-01-30T19:49:36.044-08:00Godzilla Is Inside All of Us<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7JrdLbrveUU9a-DyTtlSMmHPhIy39gphMuYUkrMZYpYJK2atz3ciptDCKirw11rfEx3PRF2mJU63obof2VtSNZbKTiPNvwl9VayLd3LI1tnBYwGkdTQynXi8z_A5UBi3ALpg6hQzgBJ3zYwZrcaM8aMXHarOIwyVIJm9nofiqNLoMvD6lFo_B-w/s1280/GodzillaMinusOne_06.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Godzilla in Godzilla Minus One" border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7JrdLbrveUU9a-DyTtlSMmHPhIy39gphMuYUkrMZYpYJK2atz3ciptDCKirw11rfEx3PRF2mJU63obof2VtSNZbKTiPNvwl9VayLd3LI1tnBYwGkdTQynXi8z_A5UBi3ALpg6hQzgBJ3zYwZrcaM8aMXHarOIwyVIJm9nofiqNLoMvD6lFo_B-w/w400-h225/GodzillaMinusOne_06.jpg" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>It seems absurd at this late date to be rediscovering the depth of metaphor in Ishiro Honda's <i>Godzilla</i>. Godzilla has been an icon of world cinema for seventy years, an embassador for international moviemaking in spite of the derision his films have sometimes received. After years of interpretations have pulled Godzilla out of the realm of metaphor and into the world of monster versus monster wrestling fights, that original nightmare born of the hydrogen bomb has faded into memory, but it hasn't vanished completely. Godzilla's home studio, Toho Pictures, has been leasing Godzilla to American studios for years at this point, and Americans don't have that memory of atomic destruction. They see in Godzilla a franchise to exploit, like good little imperial capitalists. Art isn't even in the equation. When it happens at all, it's purely by accident. Every so often, Toho makes a film of their own to keep their hand in and remind the world who owns Godzilla. On the occasion of Godzilla's seventieth year, they've taken Godzilla back to his roots. The result, <i><b>Godzilla Minus One</b></i> (2023, directed by Takashi Yamazaki), is an astonishment, a film that can stand not only with the original film from 1954, but as one of the best fantasy films ever made, full stop. It's certainly one of the best films of 2023. It's the real thing. It's a film with something meaningful to say about history and nation and the human heart in conflict with itself. It's a film that the makers of the American "Monsterverse" films should look at with dismay and shame and envy.</p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSGoLWTW3jfDQOF-sT8IIRF-UQsI1M6p_vJXeyhMBcKGFTncy2LryDByMjxy5k3nByZqVVpemnwN1xom1T8JT7VwY-kVQACJsqV8a_snF8jlgeOrosyJ7f5DtfWihJfunqxNPTNo8c2M1P7w3NyNjSB6vUycbwOxaouO8zzJRtOx4-aYFT_z4rWQ/s1110/GodzillaMinusOne_02.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Godzilla admires his atomic cloud in Godzilla Minus One" border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="1110" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSGoLWTW3jfDQOF-sT8IIRF-UQsI1M6p_vJXeyhMBcKGFTncy2LryDByMjxy5k3nByZqVVpemnwN1xom1T8JT7VwY-kVQACJsqV8a_snF8jlgeOrosyJ7f5DtfWihJfunqxNPTNo8c2M1P7w3NyNjSB6vUycbwOxaouO8zzJRtOx4-aYFT_z4rWQ/w400-h266/GodzillaMinusOne_02.jpg" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The film opens near the end of World War II, as a pilot lands at the remote garrison on Odo Island. This is Kōichi Shikishima, a Kamikaze pilot who has fled his duty on the pretext that his plane is faulty, but really because he doesn't want to die. He thinks of himself as a coward. The head mechanic at the Odo airfield is Lt. Tachibana, who suspects Shikashima, and is initially understanding. The war is coming to an end. One more useless death won't change anything. As he stews in his shame at the water's edge, Shikishima sees strange fish washing ashore. Later, after the sun has set, something else comes ashore, a gigantic reptilian monster. Tachibana tells Shikishima that the locals have a legend about just such a creature. They call him "Godzilla." As the beast wrecks the garrison, Tachibana orders Shikishima to get in his plane and use his 20mm guns on the creature. Shikishima manages to get to his cockpit, but when the monster is in his sights, he freezes. His terror incapacitates him. Godzilla then wrecks the entire garrison, killing every man except Tachibana and Shikishima. On the troop ship home after Japan's surrender, Tachibana gives Shikishima a packet containing photographs of every man who died with their families and loved ones. It's a harsh rebuke, one Shikishima believes he entirely deserves. At home in the ruins of Tokyo, Shikishima finds his parents house destroyed. Like most of the neighborhood, his parents burned in the firebombing. Their neighbor, Sumiko, is similarly grieving. She spots Shikishima's cowardice right away and blames his failure for the deaths of her children. At the open air soup kitchen near his home, Shikishima encounters Noriko, a woman running from a mob who believes she is a thief. She shoves a baby in Shikishima's arms and vanishes in the crowd. Shikishima doesn't know what to do with the child. He considers abandoning it in the market square, but his guilt prevents him. As he leaves with the baby, Noriko rejoins him to take the child and then follows him home. She has nowhere to go. Her family is dead, too. The child is not hers, but a burden given to her by the baby's dying mother. They make a life together, though Shikishima keeps her at a distance. His war isn't over. Shikishima eventually finds work on a minesweeper, a wooden boat tasked with disarming the aquatic mines placed around Japan during the war. It's dangerous work, which suits Shikishima and his growing death wish. In the meantime, the Americans begin exploding nuclear bombs at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The creature from Odo Island is bathed in the radiation and mutates.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbqNW1uiM3uhtg6vr4swdZQL0WJnaWPyWbmfXVbW1pe_id0vlgas6pbORW97N0ZYpQWFqOQ8MS4yRTYNDdr8q1B-DEQ1Il-l8o4BckkFjsTuMJLkTqHlQUFc_zFnDNcDb3R33fNCD-5EDA9UdjNUc67xeg8DJqJNaAfe0vFYsSo8YQQwbyPuP95A/s2048/GodzillaMinusOne_07.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Mr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) aboard ship in Godzilla Minus One" border="0" data-original-height="1424" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbqNW1uiM3uhtg6vr4swdZQL0WJnaWPyWbmfXVbW1pe_id0vlgas6pbORW97N0ZYpQWFqOQ8MS4yRTYNDdr8q1B-DEQ1Il-l8o4BckkFjsTuMJLkTqHlQUFc_zFnDNcDb3R33fNCD-5EDA9UdjNUc67xeg8DJqJNaAfe0vFYsSo8YQQwbyPuP95A/w400-h278/GodzillaMinusOne_07.jpg" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>In Tokyo, Noriko takes a job with an office in the Ginza area of the city, intent on self-sufficiency if Shikishima refuses to marry her. The Japanese and American authorities track some force that is wrecking shipping and send Shikishima's minesweeper crew to investigate under the aegis of Mr. Nodo, a former weapons maker. When they find a wrecked American battleship, Mr. Nodo tells his crewmates that they are a delaying action to slow the creature's progress before the battleship Takao can intercept. Unfortunately, the creature--the same creature from Odo Island that has been haunting Shikashima's dreams--appears first, and the mine sweeper has to use all its resources and ingenuity to outrun Godzilla. They are rescued by the Takao, but the Takao is insufficient. Godzilla shrugs off its firepower and eventually destroys it with an eruption of atomic fire. The minesweeper escapes, though. Godzilla makes landfall in Tokyo and lays waste to the Ginza area where Noriko is on a train home. She survives Godzilla's destruction of the train and flees on foot, where Shikishima finds her. When Godzilla unleashes his atomic ray, Noriko pushes Shikishima to safety, but is caught in the shockwave and vanishes. As Shikishima is grieving yet another loss, Mr. Noda invites him to a citizen's committee to combat Godzilla in the absence of help from the government or the Americans. Mr. Noda, it seems, has a plan for killing Godzilla, and Shikishima has a central role to play...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22hlJcf8it6T9nkNYGHEOrnUsux9tLrpwdllJzU8Di7aK0m9m6G6x2lOiYLwIH2PIrcmthwQilSLc6tXrEuXbkoCdlSXSPaJPqkUf2ACRqv5B0W6mpy_Li6iaP6s8TsDXHC2M35H01pBIj658BSG1UwCmZMior4p6vbr9_AQybu7-NmnEJ8EBpg/s1200/GodzillaMinusOne_04.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Shikikshima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) screams in anguish in Godzilla Minus One" border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22hlJcf8it6T9nkNYGHEOrnUsux9tLrpwdllJzU8Di7aK0m9m6G6x2lOiYLwIH2PIrcmthwQilSLc6tXrEuXbkoCdlSXSPaJPqkUf2ACRqv5B0W6mpy_Li6iaP6s8TsDXHC2M35H01pBIj658BSG1UwCmZMior4p6vbr9_AQybu7-NmnEJ8EBpg/w400-h225/GodzillaMinusOne_04.jpg" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>In most Godzilla movies, the human stories are filler between monster rampages. Not so, this film. This has characters who are sharply delineated, with complex relationships and comprehensible motivations. The story of a shamed Kamikaze pilot wandering in the ruins of Tokyo after the war is the kind of story you might find in the art films of the early 1950s, perhaps directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. The heart of the film isn't Godzilla himself, but the trio of orphans trying to remake their lives. Shikashima and Noriko are both profoundly damaged at the outset--Shikashima more than Noriko--and the relationship between them, the family they form, pulls them both from the abyss. The theme of a found family coming together in the wreckage comes right out of a Hirokazu Kore'eda film, a link strengthened by the presence of Kore'eda regular Sakura Ando as Sumiko. Another influence: the finely detailed caricatures of the crew of the minesweeper might come from a Miyazaki movie--particularly Mr. Noda, a kindly genius, and Mr. Akitsu, the minesweeper's pacifist captain. The aerial sequences at the end of the film featuring an unusual aircraft also show the influence of Miyazaki. This film casts a wide net for its influences. It is a film that's ambitious in spite of its genre. The result is characters the audience identifies with and cares about, even in scenes where there is barely a whiff of fantasy. It roots these characters in a stark reality and lets their humanity carry the film. My partner asked me if all Japanese films were as emotional as this one is. I think rather that it is emotional without the cynical irony of American films. It's an unabashed melodrama and it works marvelously in that key.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgustVZ3FYrXi7HBfn7c5SffgHz6Co8s6VoZ0oeegdYtOSsVpKpJuOcO-pzR2Tt0YsBKJFGt94VwfJzzyeJv0eOhJttRI2PjX1-c4TNJGr3d4N8cF7Q9RiIvaWwMabU5EqD7BZZYtBvAjY-UHjPPVkt3-9Lz8W9KKfHfjEqnfe2DMIPZXbJqmqdpw/s1566/GodzillaMinusOne_05.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Godzilla chases the minesweeper in Godzilla Minus One" border="0" data-original-height="881" data-original-width="1566" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgustVZ3FYrXi7HBfn7c5SffgHz6Co8s6VoZ0oeegdYtOSsVpKpJuOcO-pzR2Tt0YsBKJFGt94VwfJzzyeJv0eOhJttRI2PjX1-c4TNJGr3d4N8cF7Q9RiIvaWwMabU5EqD7BZZYtBvAjY-UHjPPVkt3-9Lz8W9KKfHfjEqnfe2DMIPZXbJqmqdpw/w400-h225/GodzillaMinusOne_05.jpg" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i>Godzilla Minus One</i> is a film that is conscious of and careful about the politics it's playing with. Given the disaster of World War II, it could adopt a more nationalistic tone about military honor and the lost cause of Japanese imperialism. It teeters that way from time to time with its emphasis on the duty of the Kamikaze pilots to the nation. The film's initial set piece is a reframing of part of <i>Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah</i> from the 1990s, which also has a World War II island garrison encounter a proto-Godzilla. That film embraces a reconstructed glorious Japanese empire and Godzilla defends Japan from American forces. It's a disastrous sequence in a wrong-headed film. Throughout <i>this</i> film, however, there is an emphasis on survival. The Americans never make an appearance in this film. Its gaze is inward at Japan's own faults. All of its characters are dealing with survivor's guilt, none more than Shikishima. When Shikishima is given his chance to fulfill the mission of the kamikaze, he chooses an alternate option, in the hopes of living for the future. The film accepts the culpability of the Japanese state for wasting an entire generation, and the resentment that instills in its survivors. When the film ultimately abandons the idea of a state solution to Godzilla in favor of a volunteer force of veterans, it chooses this direction. An American film in the contemporary climate might choose this as a libertarian rebuke to the inertia of big government*, but this film's disillusion with government has been earned by a different kind of firestorm kindled in fascism and empire. The upside of its ending is a nation by and for the people. It sows the seeds of democracy. This theme, presented at a time of rising authoritarianism and nationalism worldwide, is why the film is relevant even as a period piece. It's talking about the past, sure. Japan's past. But it's also talking about the present. It's talking to the countries of the world that haven't been through the nuclear holocaust and utter destruction that Japan endured in the name of authoritarianism.<br /></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVQUWKJULlrpgBBkfqT_WkVoMKCrRrgOeb4b5h6E-3TZmwPvCr4Yn0YiuUmxwaxzhRdfwh6wcRjDseGbnnOlaZkfq9efBKZNYul1NnvB0B7C-sD-QH3P5iDOqvrDQ33HHx4v5xZ6aScfmAGtWlClYKShdx_7DZJLGCX2hbmoT0u4OwgVYowp9uFg/s1200/GodzillaMinusOne_01.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Noriko (Minami Hamabe) looks in horror as Godzilla approaches her train. Godzilla is reflected in the window." border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVQUWKJULlrpgBBkfqT_WkVoMKCrRrgOeb4b5h6E-3TZmwPvCr4Yn0YiuUmxwaxzhRdfwh6wcRjDseGbnnOlaZkfq9efBKZNYul1NnvB0B7C-sD-QH3P5iDOqvrDQ33HHx4v5xZ6aScfmAGtWlClYKShdx_7DZJLGCX2hbmoT0u4OwgVYowp9uFg/w400-h225/GodzillaMinusOne_01.jpeg" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i>Godzilla Minus One</i> is the most terrifying of all Godzilla movies, not excluding the original item. Godzilla's first appearance here is a nightmare of claws and teeth coming out of the night to murder exhausted soldiers. When Godzilla wades ashore in Ginza, all of the elements of a traditional Godzilla rampage through Tokyo are there, but the filmmakers have shifted the point of view a bit. Almost all Godzilla movies film such scenes from a god's eye-view. This one puts the point of view on the ground level, among the terrified victims of the rampage. This is a film that shows people being trampled by Godzilla. We see the attack on the commuter train from the point of view of Noriko, a character we've gotten to know, then see Godzilla and the mushroom cloud that comes from his atomic breath from Shikishima's point of view. Even the requisite destruction of buildings is intensified by placing a news crew on top of one of them, and we watch in horror as they keep their posts to the last. Because an audience actually empathizes with the human characters--they are not cardboard stand-ups included to give the special effects scale--there is an extra investment in their fates in the face of a cosmic horror. One of my favorite shots in the film is the dismay Mr. Noda feels when it's clear to him that his plan hasn't worked, that Godzilla is still alive and is going to destroy them all. The other element that ramps up panic in an audience is the score by Naoki Satō, which blends a mournful chorale with Akira Ifukube's original Godzilla music to merciless effect.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7CIw9DnKxS2vZtl4z7B-6nEiveK6IfShfrlRVE46Us2cS0DIT-GRJqr3MHkOCCiWrtfTSoQaTNH7B-5dcT8tWPOEboYcly_fIep7k0A4rbBkHZKDoEkPnWAV9R4HncdviLYwcJuq6mYM69qP0Nx6O1rzEodRAWtDnmJOlnqFmPu5d1m6VYm3kdg/s1146/GodzillaMinusOne_03.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Godzilla tramples fleeing civilians in Godzilla Minus One" border="0" data-original-height="764" data-original-width="1146" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7CIw9DnKxS2vZtl4z7B-6nEiveK6IfShfrlRVE46Us2cS0DIT-GRJqr3MHkOCCiWrtfTSoQaTNH7B-5dcT8tWPOEboYcly_fIep7k0A4rbBkHZKDoEkPnWAV9R4HncdviLYwcJuq6mYM69qP0Nx6O1rzEodRAWtDnmJOlnqFmPu5d1m6VYm3kdg/w400-h266/GodzillaMinusOne_03.png" title="Godzilla Minus One" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>I've heard some grumbling among some of my movie friends that very end of the movie bumps the film down a notch because it's shamelessly tear-jerky. I'm sympathetic to this complaint and may have felt similarly after my first viewing. After my second--I saw the black and white "Minus Color" edition a few days before writing this--I no longer have any qualms about it. It's of a piece with the themes of the film. Necessary for them, even. Let's be honest here: misery and despair aren't inherently more realistic than hope and happiness. This is something other cinematic traditions haven't forgotten. Their melodramas are unashamed. I hope our own American cinema relearns it one day.</p>
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<p>*By focusing on a corporate bureaucracy dealing with a contemporary encounter with Godzilla, <i>Godzilla Minus One's</i> immediate predecessor, <i>Shin Godzilla</i>, makes exactly this point.</p>
<p>Note: the title of this post comes from the closing scene of <i>Godzilla 2000: Millennium</i>. It's my second favorite Godzilla quote. That movie isn't nearly as good as <i>Godzilla Minus One</i>, but it's the first instance of Toho getting irritated with the American versions of Godzilla and taking their ball back home.</p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-49138309773112906842023-12-30T12:28:00.000-08:002024-01-22T18:18:54.906-08:00The Grant Mystique: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2vx8vRzoXll4DHFDtXU97Pgc0Yo27dIK4o489l9xKMwL7gxpbN7Xk3JWD-rmZK1yA63-AbHrroxenY_eF5PUtVvG-HIFEpOywJ7dG0M4ltOs0bWBZ_vQhXN09a5eh-UGFDDQZ0_VEz0FYt9rPnFoUnqQtkNmGXOyPx9mVO2IUa39J8UrCUWmhSg/s1046/VLCScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="1046" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2vx8vRzoXll4DHFDtXU97Pgc0Yo27dIK4o489l9xKMwL7gxpbN7Xk3JWD-rmZK1yA63-AbHrroxenY_eF5PUtVvG-HIFEpOywJ7dG0M4ltOs0bWBZ_vQhXN09a5eh-UGFDDQZ0_VEz0FYt9rPnFoUnqQtkNmGXOyPx9mVO2IUa39J8UrCUWmhSg/s400/VLCScreenSnapz002.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i><b>Arsenic and Old Lace</b> </i>(1944, directed by Frank Capra) is probably the most divisive film in Cary Grant's filmography. It is perennially popular among fans of old movies, among fans of Cary Grant, and among fans of what I can only describe as "cozy horror." Many other viewers, including the actor himself, don't much like it. Grant thought his performance was among his worst. Some viewers don't care for Frank Capra's brand of corny, though I would argue that this is a different kind of corn than the director usually served up. There is a category of viewer who dislikes the film not for what it contains, but for what it left out. Let me explain: <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> was a huge success on Broadway. Most of the Broadway cast reprised their roles in the movie version, with the conspicuous exception of Boris Karloff. Karloff played the criminal, Jonathan Brewster, the film's villain. The script mentions Karloff by name in describing Jonathan Brewster. That the role was played by Karloff himself is one of the play's best jokes. Karloff had a financial stake in the play, so rather than abandon the production for a piecework paycheck in the film version, he remained in New York for a more lucrative and extended paycheck. His part in the film was filled with Raymond Massey, but the Boris Karloff joke remains, with Karloff's blessing. The film was shot in 1941 with the stipulation that it couldn't be released until the play closed. The play ran for three years, much to the consternation of Warner Brothers. Karloff backed the right horse.*</p>
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<p><i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> follows Mortimer Brewster on the eve of his marriage to the minister's daughter who lives across the cemetery. Mortimer is notorious for writing books deriding the institution of marriage, so for him to get married is news. Mortimer lives with his two aunts and his uncle. His uncle, Teddy, is under the delusion that he's actually Theodore Roosevelt. His two aunts are the salt of the Earth as far as the neighbors are concerned. They serve cookies to guests and give to charity and are pillars of the community. They also have a habit of murdering their boarders. They've hidden one such victim in the bench under the window, where Mortimer finds him. He is confronted with the fact that his entire family is mad. "Insanity doesn't run in my family, it practically gallops," he tells his bride at one point. Further complicating things is the return of Mortimer's brother, Jonathan, who has escaped from prison and had surgery on his face to hide his identity. The result has left him resembling Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. Where Mortimer's aunts are kindly murderers who see themselves as performing acts of mercy, Jonathan is a cold-blooded killer...</p>
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<p><i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> was made at the tail end of Grant's golden period right before the war--production on the film wrapped on December 12, 1941, five days after the attacks on American bases in the Pacific roped the United States into the war. It probably was the wrong film for its intended release date in late 1942. The war went badly in America's early going, with defeats in North Africa and the Philippines and the Coral Sea. Moreover, the film has a coded criticism of America's propensity for violence. The Brewsters live in the nicest house on the block in a neighborhood that's in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, but it's a house built on the graves of murder victims. You can see the critique without having to squint too much. The presence of a character who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt--he of the big stick--puts a fine point on things if you miss it. By the time the film was actually released in 1944, Grant was in something of a slump. None of the films he made during the war have the same kind of sparkle as the ones he made from 1937 through 1941, so <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> stands out in this period as an outlier. It's a broad entertainment from a period when the actor was making more serious films like <i>None but the Lonely Heart</i> and <i>Destination: Tokyo</i>. Like the stage play, it was a huge hit.</p>
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<p>The closest analogue to Mortimer Brewster in Grant's portfolio is David Huxley from <i>Bringing Up Baby</i>. Like Huxley, all Brewster wants to do is get married and like Huxley, he is increasingly frantic as one screwball situation snowballs into another. The difference is one of degree. Brewster more or less starts frantic at the city recorder, chased by reporters who smell his hypocrisy like blood in the water. Huxley was more restrained at the outset, which set the scale of Grant's performance. Huxley had room to let his panic grow. Brewster starts at a high pitch and has nowhere to go but over the top. And so he does. Also like Huxley, Mortimer Brewster is the straight man in a film full of lunatics. Grant hated his performance in this film, but there are plenty of examples of technical acting here that demonstrate Grant's absolute mastery of comic timing. In this shot, for instance, he's just realized that his family are all serial killers. He's mostly acting with the back of his head, which is something most actors can't manage and rarely even try. Grant uses his body language--specifically the tilt of his head--to communicate exactly what he's feeling here while also listening to his co-stars, Jean Adair and Josephine Hull. He's not the center of the shot until his costars exit, but you can see him thinking about what's happening: </p>
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<p>In other scenes, Capra encouraged Grant to play his panic broadly, though it stops short of the sight of Grant in a chiffon negligee, a la <i>Bringing Up Baby</i>. Grant complained about the occasional whinnying in his performance here, but truthfully, Capra had a point. The other characters in the film are so outre that if Grant underplayed or even just played everything at a normal level, his performance would be swamped. This is what happens to his leading lady, Priscilla Lane, who is fine I guess, but nobody remembers <i>her</i> from this film even though she's second billed. This is a film in which the grotesques run roughshod over the normies.</p>
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<p>First among the grotesques are Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the elder Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha. Indeed, the whole film is centered on the idea that these two kindly old biddies poison their lodgers like it was a hobby, like it was knitting or baking or whatever else kindly old ladies do in their spare time. The film is at pains to demonstrate that they are pillars of the community. When the two cops visit at the beginning of the film, the veteran tells the new guy that he won't hear a bad word about the Brewsters. It's the incongruity that provides the film's high concept. "What if?" right? What if the whole clan was mad. What if they all had particular insanities? Hull and Adair understand the assignment perfectly, having perfected the roles on the stage. John Alexander's Teddy Brewster, who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt and continually charges up the stairs like it's San Juan Hill, is less ideal. Capra has encouraged him to overplay, too, which is maybe too much. The film gets a sinister jolt from Raymond Massey as Jonathan Brewster, who oozes menace. He's aided in this by how Capra shoots him, all upward angles and expressionist shadows when he's on screen. He may not be Karloff, but he's more than equal to the role. Beyond the Brewsters, this film has a bevy of familiar faces including Jack Carson, Peter Lorre, and Edward Everett Horton (who was one of Grant's frequent co-stars). Capra was still coasting on his laurels from the 1930s, a decade that included directing two best picture Oscar winners. He could pretty much pick and choose among actors. </p>
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<p>Hidden amongst the shenanigans is the fact that <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> is a marriage comedy, which is familiar ground for Cary Grant. Most of his best comedies are marriage comedies (or re-marriage comedies as the case may be). The engine of the plot, laid out at the outset, is how Mortimer Brewster is to navigate through his family's various revelations in order to leave town with his new bride. This places a clock on the action and a moral dilemma: Can Mortimer prevent Elaine Harper (Lane) from discovering the murders in his house? Can he in good conscience enter into marriage when his family might be congenitally insane? What will the children be like? The body in the bench is only the first obstacle he must overcome. The film opens with an apt visual metaphor for Mortimer's character arc: there's a graveyard between his house and his bride's. Even when they are playing cute at the beginning of the film, there is often a spooky old tree between them. The first obstacle the film provides is mundane, perhaps to ease the viewers in, when Mortimer and Elaine are chased from the license office at city hall by a couple of reporters. This is a regular scene from classic studio films. Audiences were used to pestering reporters in films like <i>The Thin Man</i> and <i>His Girl Friday</i> and <i>It Happened One Night.</i> Next we see Mortimer's aunts gathering goods for charity and delivering them to the local cops on the beat, which is totally normal and sets them up as essentially good people. Salt of the earth, even. Then Mortimer discovers the body in the bench. From there, the film indulges a one damned thing after another plot, particularly once Jonathan and his entourage arrive and Mortimer feels an actual threat to his own life. In truth, the film loses sight of the underlying engine of the plot sometimes as it explores the various impediments it puts in Mortimer's way. The side stories are all uniformly more compelling than the marriage plot. Only the presence of Cary Grant, the biggest star in Hollywood, anchors the film to its through line, and then only just barely. <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> tests the allure of the Grant persona like few other films. Grant probably could not have made a horror movie that was fully a horror movie unless it was something in the mode of <i>Suspicion</i>. This is as close to a gothic horror movie as he ever came. It's the comedy underpinnings of this story that let the Grant persona work its magic. In truth, Mortimer Brewster could have been played by Jack Benny or Bob Hope or even this film's co-star, Jack Carson, and the film would have been none the worse for wear, but Grant certainly adds a glamour to the production that was well beyond other "might have worked" actors.</p>
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<p>Ultimately, Grant cedes the stage to his costars. Hull and Adair as the Brewster sisters are the heart of the movie and Grant wisely gives them the space they deserve. Although Grant is known to have bristled at directors who gave more of the spotlight to other actors early in his career, I think here he learns how to be generous. I think, too, that he's aware that he's only borrowing <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> for the few weeks it took to make, while Hull and Adair (and Karloff, in absentia) owned it. Of course, by the time he made <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i>, the Cary Grant Persona was firmly fixed in the legend of classic Hollywood and inseparable from it, so what did it matter to him if he shared the screen? His legacy was secure regardless.</p>
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<p>For myself? I like <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> well enough. It's as well-made as any Capra film, which is well-made indeed (your mileage may vary on the content Capra preferred, but he was definitely a master craftsman as a filmmaker). Also for myself, it reminds me of certain registers of screwball comedy where the screwball elements seem like they're trying too hard. World War II would put a number of film genres into a tailspin, and they either retooled or vanished after the war. This included the screwball comedy. Grant, whose stardom rose with the screwball comedy, would have to reinvent himself, too. He'd done it once or twice already, so he would do it again.</p>
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<p>*There is a large gap in Karloff's filmography during <i>Arsenic and Old Lace's</i> initial theatrical run. The only film in which he appeared was <i>The Boogie Man Will Get You</i> in 1942, which was his last contracted film with Columbia. When Karloff returned to Hollywood after <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> closed, it was for an unsatisfying return to the Universal monsters in <i>House of Frankenstein</i> (which he called a "monster clambake"), followed by three films with Val Lewton. That collaboration only burnished his legacy. Karloff had another great stage success a few years later playing Captain Hook in <i>Peter Pan</i>. My mother once told me that she had seen Karloff as Captain Hook when she was a little girl, and I say this truly: this is the only thing for which I ever envied her.</p>
<p>Karloff reprised the role twice for television. His 1962 performance is available online if you look for it, but the video quality isn't great. <i>Caveat emptor</i>.</p>
<p>The stage role of Jonathan Brewster has always been horror adjacent. Some of the first touring productions of the play cast Bela Lugosi as Jonathan who drew big audiences, while other actors who have played the role over time include Fred Gwynn, Jonathan Frid, and Karloff lookalike Abe Vigoda. </p><br />
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<p>My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
<br />
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-grant-mystique-this-is-night.html"><i>This is the Night</i> (1932)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-grant-mystique-enter-madame.html"><i>Enter: Madame</i> (1935) </a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2020/08/eagle-and-hawk-1933-review.html"><i>The Eagle and the Hawk</i> (1933)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/02/The-Last-Outpost-1935-Review.html"><i>The Last Outpost </i>(1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-grant-mystique-wings-in-dark.html"><i>Wings in the Dark</i> (1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2006/12/movies-for-week-of-117-12306.html"><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i> (1939)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/08/Penny-serenade-1941-review.html"><i>Penny Serenade</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/01/Suspicion-1941-Hitchcock-review.html"><i>Suspicion</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="https://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/06/To-Catch-A-Thief-1955-review.html"><i>To Catch a Thief</i> (1955)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/01/games-must-we.html"><i>North by Northwest</i> (1959)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/09/Operation-Petticoat-1963-review.html"><i>Operation: Petticoat</i> (1959)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/07/Charade-1963-review.html"><i>Charade</i> (1963)</a>
</p><p></p><p></p>
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<p></p><p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-17120028661046733152023-11-25T18:19:00.000-08:002023-11-26T20:55:20.549-08:00A Remarkable Collection of Dopes<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI1g8-N6YN3NRPKZUaZUlS3WN0NtusZu2bR8BakhvUYcHCz089gRpbUVQd470jvyWyDhEZfzLAUvTWWSIzNOOMuuPnty1uloDYMUBmn_j2EYnTpnkyyAZW2jX129HbslBl9Kn6S0RzteXVMN7v7oiAJD1GRBJl2sHY4dmmnm-hZE_Okk3_08VoCw/s900/laura1.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI1g8-N6YN3NRPKZUaZUlS3WN0NtusZu2bR8BakhvUYcHCz089gRpbUVQd470jvyWyDhEZfzLAUvTWWSIzNOOMuuPnty1uloDYMUBmn_j2EYnTpnkyyAZW2jX129HbslBl9Kn6S0RzteXVMN7v7oiAJD1GRBJl2sHY4dmmnm-hZE_Okk3_08VoCw/s400/laura1.png"/></a></div>
<p>It's a shame that they're killers, because cigarettes used to be the most valuable prop in movies. There are whole films from the 1940s and 1950s--the heart of the cigarette century--that consist of people aggressively smoking at each other. Film noir was rife with such films. It's a miracle anyone can see the players in <i><b>Laura</b></i> (1944, directed by Otto Preminger) through the haze of cigarette smoke. I'm exaggerating, I suppose, but only a little. The last time I wrote about <i>Laura</i>, I was taken in with its doomed romanticism and with its old Hollywood elegance. This time through, I was struck by the hard-boiled wit and the queerness of it all. It's a film that repays repeat viewings, because it's one of those films that changes with the viewer.</p>
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<p>The plot of <i>Laura</i> follows the investigation into the murder of Laura Hunt, an advertising executive and socialite. The investigator is Lieutenant McPherson, who begins the movie by interrogating columnist Waldo Lydecker while Lydecker throws barbs at him from the bath. Waldo is a poison pen, modeled perhaps on Walter Winchell. His position gives him a vantage from which to destroy or elevate those who he pleases. Laura was a woman he elevated. As the film opens, Laura is off-stage, having been shot in the face with a shotgun. Waldo introduces McPherson and the audience both to Laura in a flashback narrative of their meeting and of Waldo's pursuit of her after she shames him on their first encounter. In Waldo's telling, Laura was his protege. He accompanies McPherson on his rounds to interview the suspects, providing bon mots as they go. The other principal suspect is Shelby Carpenter, a gigolo who intended to marry Laura. Shelby has a sugar momma in Ann Treadwell, who understands Shelby's lack of moral conviction. McPherson finds himself falling for Laura, particularly in the shadow of her portrait hanging in her apartment. Her portrait haunts him, and when Laura returns to her apartment unharmed and very much alive, it throws McPherson for a loop. Who was killed? Was Laura complicit? And who knew she was still alive?</p>
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<p><i>Laura</i> is one of the queeniest of classic noir films, with queer actors in the most prominent supporting roles. The bitchiness of the exchanges between Clifton Webb's Waldo Lydecker and Vincent Price's Shelby Carpenter and Judith Anderson's Ann Treadwell is hardly the model of Hollywood heterosexuality one expects in a classic film noir. Indeed, Darryl Zanuck resisted casting Clifton Webb in the film because he was known to be gay even outside the insular community of Hollywood (Zanuck preferred Laird Cregar, which would have drastically changed the film). Viewed through this lens, Dana Andrews as McPherson is literally and figuratively the "straight" man. In a film full of venomous dialogue, McPherson cuts through it all. When Lydecker asks if he's ever been in love, he deadpans "A dame once got a fox fur out of me." Practical to a fault. Whenever the other characters are throwing barbs at each other, McPherson is busy playing a baseball puzzle game.</p>
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<p>Vincent Price often said that <i>Laura</i> was his favorite of all his movies, though I would disagree that it's the best of his performances. Don't get me wrong. Shelby Carpenter is a role that's well within Price's range and he's good in the part, but Roderick Usher and Matthew Hopkins were in his future rather than more film noir layabouts and cads. Everyone else in the film was firing on all cylinders, too, perhaps because they were all terrified of Otto Preminger. Preminger replaced Rouben Mamoullian on the film two weeks into production and scrapped all of Mamoullian's footage, all of the sets, and even the painting that's central to the plot. The actors were all sure that they were next, and they were not reassured by their initial work with Preminger, who hated everything they were doing. Preminger was a stern taskmaster, and it's a credit to him that several of his actors worked with him again. Gene Tierney in particular felt that this was her best work. Tierney and Dana Andrews both made multiple movies with Preminger after <i>Laura</i>, which speaks well of their working relationships. </p>
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<p>The Vera Casparay novel on which the film is based offers the reader five points of view, but the film offers only one. Waldo is our guide through the story. He's the character through which we view Laura's world and circle of friends. He's the voice over the flashbacks. Clifton Webb had been away from filmmaking for decades when he was offered Laura, and he was horrified by his screen presence when he saw the dailies, but most of the film's acid wit comes from him. Webb was one of the film's five Oscar nominees and to tell you true, I prefer him to winner Barry Fitzgerald in <i>Going My Way</i>. I'd have to think about whether I prefer him to Claude Rains in <i>Mr. Skeffington</i>. Not that it matters much. Art isn't a competition. Posterity has made its choice, though. Webb's performance endures in part because film noir endures while other classic Hollywood genres like the melodrama and the musical have faded. Waldo Lydecker himself is a bit of an anachronism eighty years later. The power of a newspaper columnist is non-existant in today's era, though I suppose Waldo has podcasting equivalents in the social media era like Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan. Waldo's advantage over such figures is his wit and his romanticism. His self-delusion is likely of a piece. To my mind, the character Waldo most resembles when you consider what he actually does rather than his erudition and his turn of a phrase is Norman Bates. He's a queer man who is fixated on a woman that challenges his masculinity, one who he would rather destroy than let out from under his thumb. Laura Hunt, as Marion Crane is to Norman Bates, is arousing and repellent to his sexuality at the same time. Of course he's the murderer. No other character in the film could be otherwise, although Webb's relatively unfamiliarity to the audience of the day might have hidden this fact. That the film puts us inside his head to the exclusion of every other character is a bold choice.</p>
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<p>Otto Preminger became known as a director of prestige films later in his career, but in the early 1940s his career was sputtering. He had made a string of flops and had alienated the powers that be at Fox. Darryl Zanuck gave <i>Laura</i> to Preminger only reluctantly, because he was so unsatisfied with the work Mamoullian had done on the film (with some heckling from Preminger himself). Preminger's career was resurrected by <i>Laura</i> and by a string of films noir following its success. I think as a body of work, those films play better than the director's more pedigreed films of the late 1950s/early 1960s. They are certainly more streamlined. <i>Laura</i> doesn't sag at all even with its complicated web of flashbacks, less because of the way it's edited than because of Preminger's facility with actors. An actor himself, he knew what he wanted in a performance and generally got what he wanted. He left the technical elements to cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, who, contrary to the film's reputation as film noir, only occasionally films it in the noir style. <i>Laura</i> has a lush palette of graytones and only goes in for high key lighting at very specific points of the film. <i>Laura</i> was an expensive A-picture, and the use of heavily shadowed sets wasn't necessary to hide the cheapness of its production. The noir style in 1944 was not yet an affectation so much as it was a necessity for the b-movies that form the backbone of the idiom. <i>Laura</i> is a gorgeous movie, too, with lavish upscale sets and star in the making Gene Tierney. Preminger has littered the film with significant props, some just for styling, some as clues to the mystery. The way the film is shot makes a point of highlighting them. LaShelle won the Oscar for his work on <i>Laura</i>, possibly because he had an eye for beauty. The other major element of the film--which wasn't nominated for an Oscar--is David Raksin's score. "Laura's Theme" became a jazz standard, and the soundtrack has remained in print long after its contemporaries. Preminger was reluctant to use Raksin--he wanted Duke Ellington, who would score <i>Anatomy of a Murder</i> years later--but he was so taken with Raksin's work that he worked with him repeatedly after <i>Laura</i>. All of this contributes to the doomed romanticism of the story.</p>
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<p>It's the doomed romanticism that makes <i>Laura</i> film noir. The conceit of a detective falling in love with the portrait of a dead woman is noir all over with a dusting of necrophilia. The narration of the story from the first-person point of view of a maniac is the kind of thing noir novelists like Horace McCoy and Jim Thompson would return to again and again. Laura Hunt herself is not technically a noir femme fatale, so much as she's a disruptive force of nature. She reminds me a bit of Lulu in <i>Pandora's Box</i>, a woman who attracts damaged men (and women) in spite of herself. McPherson has her number in the end when he tells her "For a charming intelligent woman you certainly have surrounded yourself with a remarkable collection of dopes." McPherson doesn't include himself in that description. Maybe he should.</p>
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<p><i>Laura</i> doesn't really have the downward spiral of a noir hero if you accept that Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney are the stars of the film. Don't get me wrong: they probably are the stars that Fox intended. But Waldo Lydecker is the central character in Laura however they want to frame it and Lydecker is definitely trapped in that downward spiral. That he was nominated as a supporting actor is arguably category fraud on the part of the Oscars, but maybe not. Andrews IS in more scenes than any of the other actors. But, as I say, he's the straight man to the flamboyant characters around him. Maybe I'm not appreciating him as much as I should. While Waldo gets the lions share of the venomous dialogue, it's McPherson who gets the film's best lines. He has to get them in sideways, sure, but he <i>does</i> get them in.</p>
<p>As a personal note, <i>Laura</i> is an old favorite. I first saw it at a college film society showing when I was 19 and it's stayed with me ever since. It remains among my favorite films of the 1940s. As I once wrote about it long ago, it lingers like a whiff of perfume in an empty room, or the echo of a gunshot.</p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-60035363192117465152023-11-21T17:30:00.000-08:002023-11-22T06:35:31.405-08:00Ants in the Pants<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihCSnEme9X9WAWODwFwg-Xz9u8IOuIsN-PAwChd_hWMGyzcIT6ykiNcwDxGbRt9yxOxKTSWr99pU7_EyFV9CWaiDw0UN5X2RSGBtnpYIO25SEJzz4nJYhcok43giXJdJmyZjyFEMGyLJ7QUMjQCmCSbbo_eVTAgSYC79hfjWDqf1wQzVdqD2eIGQ/s1564/FinderScreenSnapz003.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="877" data-original-width="1564" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihCSnEme9X9WAWODwFwg-Xz9u8IOuIsN-PAwChd_hWMGyzcIT6ykiNcwDxGbRt9yxOxKTSWr99pU7_EyFV9CWaiDw0UN5X2RSGBtnpYIO25SEJzz4nJYhcok43giXJdJmyZjyFEMGyLJ7QUMjQCmCSbbo_eVTAgSYC79hfjWDqf1wQzVdqD2eIGQ/s400/FinderScreenSnapz003.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i>"I got ants in my pants and I need to dance!" -- James Brown</i></p>
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<p>It's been a while since I've seen <i><b>Them!</b></i> (1954, directed by Gordon Douglas). I didn't remember how hard it goes when generating its scares. I maybe never knew that it was intended to be framed in a moderate widescreen. I don't ever remember seeing the red and blue title card. The last time I saw the film was in the 1990s, maybe? I don't honestly recall. There's a lot of water under the bridge. The two things I did remember about the film are the sound of the giant ants and the blank expression on the little girl at the beginning of the film. That blank expression is terrifying.</p>
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<p>The story finds two New Mexico state policemen finding a little girl wandering in the desert, just off the highway. She is catatonic and does not respond to the officers. A circling airplane spots what might be her family's vehicle a little farther up the road, a car with a camping trailer that has been demolished and no sign of the girl's family. There are odd footprints around the scene, however. Footprints that don't resemble any animal that the two cops have ever seen. Once the medics and forensic people arrive, Peterson and Blackburn, the cops, drive on further up the road, arriving at the local general store after sundown. They hope the store's owner can shed some light on what happened to the girl's family, but instead, they discover another mystery. The store has been demolished in like manner to the trailer. Peterson and Blackburn find gramps in the cellar, dead. Peterson leaves Blackburn to mind the store and await forensics while he drives back to headquarters to report his findings. Unfortunately for Blackburn, the entities that destroyed the store return. He doesn't survive the encounter. Peterson blames himself for Blackburn's death, but there's no time to fall to pieces. Moore, an FBI agent, arrives on the scene and he takes Peterson on as an investigative partner as they look for answers. Also arriving on the scene are the Medfords, a kindly old scientist and his scientist daughter. They have ideas of their own, given that the victims have been found injected with large quantities of formic acid. When the little girl is presented with a vial of formic acid, the smell of it shocks her aware and she screams "Them! Them!" Graham, Peterson, and the Medfords strike out for the desert looking for the culprits, whose coming is presaged by a strange tingling sound on the wind. It's Patricia Medford who first encounters the threat: an ant the size of a truck. Other gargantuan ants are spied roaming the desert. An aerial search locates their nest, around which is a pile of the bones of their victims. The Medfords and the military formulate a plan to gas the nest with cyanide after which our heroes brave the nest to burn out any survivors. They find the queen's egg chamber, which contains two empty eggs that Pat recognizes as having contained queen ants. There are more giant ants in the wind, and it becomes a race to find them. The military puts out a bulletin for information about strange encounters with flying anomalies. One of the queens, they find, has landed on a ship at port and hatched its eggs while the ship was at sea. The other queen is more elusive, until a report from a skid row derelict and a huge robbery of sugar points to Los Angeles, where the ants could be anywhere in the miles and miles of storm sewers...</p>
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<p>Giant insects have been around the science fiction/horror myth pools for a while, predating the 1950s that were their heyday. H. G. Wells arguably founded the genre with "The Empire of the Ants," in which the ants are large, but not giant. The horror in that story was the idea that ants might become intelligent and found empires of their own with which human beings could not compete. Key to the idea behind the story is the notion that apart from human beings, ants are the only organism to wage war amongst themselves. Indeed, ants have warrior castes among them whose only purpose is to wage war on behalf of the nest. Such an idea must have been a nightmare to the colonial mind. Giant insects also figure in <i>King Kong</i>, in the fabled spider pit sequence that was cut from the film. Spiders aren't technically insects, as any reader of Spider-man will tell you, but they generate an atavistic horror in a similar vein. There's also "Leningen vs. The Ants," a short story by Carl Stephenson from 1938. In that story, the ants don't have to be giant (as with Wells) to pose an existential threat to its Brazilian plantation owner. More than the Wells story, it's the classic of the subgenre. It's was a minor subgenre, though. Or <i>was</i> a minor subgenre until the atom bomb sprinkled radioactive pixie dust on it.</p>
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<p>The big bug movies of the 1950s represent a peculiar kind of societal anxiety in which the concerns of human beings are reduced in scale by the horrors of the atomic age. We are as less than ants, in this framing, which is not a new idea. It was key to Lovecraft's horror stories, in which vast entities are indifferent to humanity even as they destroy us. What the big bug movies did was make this literal, either by creating monsters of ordinary creatures by scaling them up to gargantuan size or by scaling human beings down, like Scott Carey in <i>The Incredible Shrinking Man</i>. <i>Them!</i> was not the first such film. <i>The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms</i> was similar, as was <i>King Kong</i>. The weird fiction writer, Caitlin R. Kiernan once described <i>King Kong</i> as a Lovecraftian narrative in which the big ape was the elder god of some long fallen and degenerate civilization. The wall on Skull Island could even be described as "cyclopean" in this framing. What was new in <i>Them!</i> was the way it puts its finger directly on the atomic bomb. The landscape is the desert near Los Alamos, and the elder Dr. Medford identifies radiation as the likely mutagen that produced the film's giant ants. The desert is where the horrors of the atomic age were born, and the desert is the landscape of 1950s science fiction. As existential threats go, giant ants are pretty effective even if they <i>are</i> a fantasy creature.(1)</p>
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<p>The narrative structure of <i>Them!</i> acts as a template for the films that came after it: The first evidence of the monsters, the first encounter with the monsters, the expanding threat of the monster, the search for the monster, the final conflict of the monster, all in orderly succession. This formula strangles some of the films that follow <i>Them!</i>, but <i>Them!</i> gets a pass because it got there first. And <i>Them!</i> has an instinct for the jugular. That shot before they gas the first nest in which a rib cage comes tumbling down from the top of the mound only to come to rest in a pile of human skulls is strong stuff for a film from the 1950s. And the depiction of the little girl's trauma reaction is genuinely frightening. The ultimate fate of Sgt. Peterson when he's rescuing the two boys in the LA sewers is unusual, too, because he's arguably the film's protagonist (Graham seems a johnny come lately as a central hero). <i>Them!</i> is a film that takes the gloves off and goes to work with body blows. Them! also has superior special effects. Rather than use tricky opticals like <i>Tarantula </i>or <i>The Incredible Shrinking Man</i>, <i>Them!</i> builds full-sized monsters, which have a physicality that would elude even Ray Harryhausen. The characters and the monsters are in the frame together rather than composited in the lab, which sells the film's reality more than any other film of its type. The sound design helps. That weird buzzing that indicates the ants is a relative of the ticking of George Pal's Martian war machines and it lingers in the memory even decades later.</p>
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<p>This has a relatively strong cast and well-defined characters, even if they occupy archetypes (or stereotypes, as the case may be). James Whitmore and James Arness are the lead heroes, Arness having been promoted from the monster role in <i>The Thing</i>. Edmund Gwenn has a touch of the fey as the elder Dr. Medford, not at all like the usual technocrats of the era. The image of Santa Claus lingers on him. Joan Weldon gets the thankless role of the younger Dr. Weldon, but unlike many such characters, she has knowledge and action to contribute. Her willingness to enter the nest after it's been gassed is bold for the era, and it's her knowledge that identifies the threat of the two fugitive queens. There are a couple of shots in this sequence that resemble Ripley in the egg chamber in <i>Aliens</i>, so it's an image that echoes down the years. For fans of mid-century film and TV, this is a parade of familiar faces, including William Schallert as an EMT (he would later appear in Joe Dante's <i>MANT!</i>, the film within a film in Matinee), Fess Parker as a witness who swears he isn't crazy because he really DID see a giant flying ant, Dub Taylor as another witness, and so on. This all provides the film with a texture that is unique, if only because the film's imitators usually didn't have the money for this kind of extended cast (Clint Eastwood's cameo role as the pilot who takes down the giant spider in <i>Tarantula</i> notwithstanding).</p>
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<p>In all, <i>Them!</i> holds up better than I ever imagined after all this time. I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed revisiting it, even though I probably should have known better. It's a classic for a reason, even if its imitators have taken some of the shine off. That's not the film's fault; it's a victim of its own success.</p>
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<p>(1) I'm describing ants this size as fantasy creatures even though I'm aware that insects much larger than we know today once existed. The Earth has less oxygen in its atmosphere today than it did millions of years ago. Because of the way insects breathe, an ant the size of the ones in <i>Them!</i> would suffocate, even a million years ago. There's not enough oxygen to get into the insect's spiracles at that size (insects don't have lungs; they rely on air pressure and oxygen density to oxygenate their bodies). The only giant ant story I ever read that includes and obeys the scientific facts of giant insects is "giANTS!" by Edward Bryant.</p>
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<p>This year's October Horror Movie Challenge has run it's course, but I have a long way to go in writing about it. I participated in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron chose the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>I haven't kept up with blogging the challenge for various real-world reasons. I finished the challenge with 32 films total and 17 new to me films. If you want to see the total shake out, I posted a <a href="https://letterboxd.com/christianne/list/october-horror-movie-challenge-2023-edition/" target="_blank">list at Letterboxd</a>. I'll be posting reviews for a while in any event...</p>
<p>My total progress:<br />
New to me films: 17<br />
Total films: 31</p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-31885527363414840462023-11-12T07:45:00.000-08:002023-11-12T08:43:14.237-08:00You Reap What You Sow<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaFwYFPryDyIK2UybwN18IRadaDeFlvoIEF5O9OZO9cJa9EW-m09UpQx_Ve1hyx7lDsRPMjxElAYysYnTmib5V-VlhZuFMN1huwnUo454sAkD0fdgKugcJ2cd2MD6Xd-pYqd9NU2JIuqvqGO__XGV4JQjvtUxq7tD7vHsHMrBhd5kwW1kiQH9Mdw/s1529/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="631" data-original-width="1529" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaFwYFPryDyIK2UybwN18IRadaDeFlvoIEF5O9OZO9cJa9EW-m09UpQx_Ve1hyx7lDsRPMjxElAYysYnTmib5V-VlhZuFMN1huwnUo454sAkD0fdgKugcJ2cd2MD6Xd-pYqd9NU2JIuqvqGO__XGV4JQjvtUxq7tD7vHsHMrBhd5kwW1kiQH9Mdw/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png"/></a></div>
<p><i>Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.</i><br>--William Shakespeare, Hamlet</p>
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<p>The word "pagan" derives from the latin word, "paganus/pagani," which means, literally, "peasant." Its original usage also connoted "bumpkin" or "hick," though significantly not "farmer" ("agricola"). At its most benign, it meant countryman or civilian. Its modern usage reminds us that Christianity was originally an urban religion. Wander out into the sticks if you're a good Christian, and you'll run into a bunch of bumpkins who still practice the old religions. That's the root of folk horror right there. When you combine this with an America that still occasionally dreams of itself as an agrarian society, you can see how paganism and Americana get inextricably woven together. The people out in the country may think of themselves as god-fearing Christians, but the old ways still linger. Particularly around Halloween. In <i><b>Dark Harvest</b></i> (2023, directed by David Slade), a Halloween-y movie if ever there was one, this gets a treatment that's equal parts nostalgia and deconstruction. Like the inhabitants of Summerisle in <i>The Wicker Man</i>, the farmers make a sacrifice to their crop, but they stage it as an all American tradition, like football and fast cars. It's a film that inhabits an archetype, one that would be familiar to Stephen King or Shirley Jackson or (pointedly) Ray Bradbury. It's part "Children of the Corn", part "The Lottery," part <i>Dark Carnival</i>. Certainly, novelist Norman Partridge knew the signposts on the back country roads he was traveling when he wrote the novel on which this is based. And so does Director David Slade.</p>
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<p>Every year on Halloween, the young men of Bradbury, a farming community in an unnamed state, send their boys out into the fields to hunt for Sawtooth Jack, the October Boy. If they catch him and kill him before he gets to the old church downtown, their crops will flourish. If they fail, then disaster will strike. The boy who manages to defeat Sawtooth Jack is rewarded with $20,000 and a new Corvette. The winners invariably leave town for the wider world with their windfall. The winner in 1962 was Jim Shepard, who dutifully took his reward and headed out, leaving behind his parents and his younger brother, Richie. Because his brother won the previous year, Richie is exempt from participating in the 1963 hunt. This galls him, because he has always dwelt in the shadow of his more popular, more successful brother. Jim was a football hero and well liked by everyone. Richie is a delinquent, who hangs around his leather-jacketed friends smoking cigarettes. Richie doesn't want to skip his turn to hunt Sawtooth Jack. He wants to show the world that he's as good as his brother. Better, even. This rouses the ire of his peers and draws the eye of the brutal town sheriff, Ricks, who enforces the norms of the hunt. But Richie isn't the only person who wants into the hunt even though they're not allowed. The new girl at the movie theater wants in, too. Girls aren't allowed to hunt, which galls her, and she's black, which draws ire all on its own. Richie's parents have their own reasons for wanting Richie to stay home on Halloween. Soon enough, Richie and Kelly begin to piece together what really happens at the end of the hunt. They learn, to their sorrow, who Sawtooth Jack really is...</p>
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<p>There's a scene in this film during the main hunt that made me sit up and take notice of what it was doing. This is a film that knows exactly the audience to whom it is speaking, and duly provides that audience with red meat. In the scene in question, Sawtooth Jack catches one of the kids trying to take shelter from him in a tornado shelter. A dozen or so of his friends are already inside and they're closing the door. Jack grabs the boy from behind with a hand draped over his head gripping the top of his face and pulls his head above his jaw clean off. And then he wades into the shelter and the audience is treated to a veritable geyser of blood. There's another couple of set-pieces that are about as grisly even if they're not nearly so baroque. Whatever its other flaws might be, <i>Dark Harvest</i> knows deep in its bones that it has to throw some Christians to the lions to satisfy its audience. Once it does this, it can do whatever it wants with theme and meaning for the rest of the film. It's got a money shot. It rewards its paying audience. Everything else is gravy. And yet, this seems self-defeating. The premise of the film requires us to believe that one or more of the teen characters on the hunt can kill Sawtooth Jack on their own, while this scene demonstrates that Sawtooth Jack is not a straw monster (or just an ambulatory pinata, given that his heart is stuffed with Halloween treats). It's one of the film's most vexing contradictions. </p>
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<p>There's a patina of nostalgia layered over this film. It has a color grade to suggest that it takes place in the past, while its social structures and norms clearly come from another age. It's not a slave to this, however. It casts a gimlet eye at racism and classism, while suggesting--strongly--that some traditions are worth discarding by new generations. In this regard, this film is aligned with the radical horror movies of the early 1970s, even if it doesn't have the grit of those films. This film's construction of America is fundamentally paranoid, in which the American dream is paid for with the blood of the young. This film takes place in 1963, on Halloween. Two days afterward, South Vietnamese dictator Ngô Đình Diệm would be assassinated. There was a plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in Chicago the same week, though that plot was thwarted. Three weeks later, Kennedy was shot in Dallas instead. This started the chain of events that led to America's entry into the Vietnam War. The notion that America is preserved by the blood of the young is a key part of this film's specific time. But not only that. America has not learned this lesson. Nevermind the subsequent wars since 1963, we currently live in a world where daily mass shootings are tolerated by the power structures of America in the name of preserving the American Dream. How many children does it take to water the crops? That's the central horror of <i>Dark Harvest</i> and it's not subtle about it.</p>
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<p>The main storyline for our young heroes is structured as an archetype, too, and you could be forgiven for viewing Richie and Kelly as variants of Bonnie and Clyde or Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate. They are certainly avatars of disobedience, though neither of them is as violently deviant as those other deviant couples. Their trespasses against the social order are more nuanced. They're interracial, which in 1963 was as bad as serial murder to the enforcers of American civilization, and they refute the authority of the representatives of law and order. Like Bonnie and Clyde, however, they come to a bad end, with Richie truly taking his brother's place and with Kelly driving off into an unknown great wide open beyond the town limits. This isn't a film with a happy ending, but how could it be? America is still eating its children sixty years later.</p>
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<p>This has a pretty good monster, but if I'm honest, it's not my favorite pumpkin-headed monster in cinema (that would be Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead in the film of the same name). Director David Slade knows how to film him, though, and Sawtooth Jack is convincing enough to be scary. There's an atavistic sense of religious allegory in Sawtooth Jack's creation, too, given that he's hung from a cross like a crucified man until he rises from the dead. The end of Jack's hunt finds the boys of Bradbury literally feasting from his flesh. In spite of this, the ritual still seems to come from older traditions than Christianity, perhaps because Christianity is a thieving magpie when it comes to its mythological imagery. The pumpkin head is suggestive of the festival of Samhain, the precursor of Halloween. Because this is a radical horror movie rather than a reactionary one, Sawtooth Jack isn't the real monster, though. It's us. We're the monsters. Richie's parents know this. Richie's mother cannot stand the idea that another of her sons will be offered up to the old gods for sacrifice and kills herself. Officer Ricks is the archetype of a petty tyrant who uses superstition as the bulwark of his power. The unnamed farmer who tends to Sawtooth Jack at the end of the film--more than the pastor at the town's Christian church--is the town's shaman. These characters hold more danger for Richie and Kelly than Sawtooth Jack ever does. And when Sawtooth Jack's secret is revealed to them, it's clear that the film is speaking through Richie's father when it demands that it all burn down. Bradbury--and by extension, America--deserves its curse and the just deserts it entails.</p>
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<p>This year's October Horror Movie Challenge has run it's course, but I have a long way to go in writing about it. I participated in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron chose the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>I haven't kept up with blogging the challenge for various real-world reasons. These numbers are out of date. I finished the challenge with 32 films total and 17 new to me films. If you want to see the total shake out, I posted a <a href="https://letterboxd.com/christianne/list/october-horror-movie-challenge-2023-edition/" target="_blank">list at Letterboxd</a>. I'll be posting reviews for a while in any event...</p>
<p>My total progress:<br />
New to me films: 17<br />
Total films: 31</p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-45782374281621768012023-10-31T08:41:00.002-07:002023-11-03T20:26:26.985-07:00Flesh of My Flesh<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBxTKlbpiDH1O5yy_frn3jAqS9xEbRM8CAhVQzjPgWhen4lHB6_pN2iqPCq8f8taVzprGWLyDGdQctdG73_8WbX3J4nQBGV3XxrbBBqlQDHyqwfBmEEc0wR6nRWo1rWiv8caJpx-JoSANBDfUbCWaEXAaBQNjwSlTq2YIEobQsMlutrpEjMpMD-w/s1507/FirefoxScreenSnapz005.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="1507" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBxTKlbpiDH1O5yy_frn3jAqS9xEbRM8CAhVQzjPgWhen4lHB6_pN2iqPCq8f8taVzprGWLyDGdQctdG73_8WbX3J4nQBGV3XxrbBBqlQDHyqwfBmEEc0wR6nRWo1rWiv8caJpx-JoSANBDfUbCWaEXAaBQNjwSlTq2YIEobQsMlutrpEjMpMD-w/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz005.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>My first impression of <i><b>Suitable Flesh</b></i> (2023, directed by Joe Lynch) during its first act was that it didn't feel like a horror movie at all. It felt like one of those direct to video "erotic thrillers" of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Do you know the ones? They often starred former centerfold Shannon Tweed (who in her defense was a pretty good actress in a limited range) or Andrew Stevens. Suitable Flesh has the same shot on video look to it and the same baffling erotic impulses. I mean, sure. The film starts with an autopsy about to begin, and a psychiatrist visiting her friend and colleague after that colleague has been locked in a padded cell. And this all happens at "Miskatonic Medical School." But once that mental patient begins her story, you can queue up the candles for a night of soft-core. Or maybe not. Because this film doesn't get very naked, even if it does include oral pleasures. And once the film gets to the horror parts of the program, it goes at it full bore. It goes so over the top that I found myself giggling at two of its more outre` set-pieces. The second impression I had in its early going was that this was a film with a serious case of gender. The source material is Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep" which has as protagonists Lovecraft's usual neurasthenic male academics. This film gender swaps the leads and then mixes the novelty of female sexuality into the story's body-hopping shenanigans. Old Howard would run screaming from this, I'm sure.</p>
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<p>The plot is related by Dr. Elizabeth Derby, a therapist in private practice, to her friend, Dr. Daniella Upton, who is a psychiatrist at Miskatonic Medical Center. Derby has been brought in because she's showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia and because there's a dead body involved. According to her, it all began when a young man named Asa Waite came to her office complaining that his father, Ephraim, was switching bodies with him and that if it continued, the switch would become permanent. In the middle of his story, Asa receives a phone call from his father, then has what appears to be a seizure, after which, his personality is much changed. Asa comes on to Derby, but she brushes him off and ushers him out of her office. Later that night, she imagines having sex with Asa while having sex with her husband, Edward. When Edward is asleep afterward, she goes to Asa's address and is confronted by his father, who is ill. He seems to be hanging on to life out of spite. Ephraim has an old book with strange drawings and unfamiliar letters in it, and when Elizabeth notices it, he threatens her with a knife. She leaves. The following evening, she's summoned to Asa's house again, where Ephraim appears to be dying. When she tries to administer his pills, Asa tries to prevent her. He claims that they must destroy Ephraim's body before he can invoke the spell that will transfer his mind into Asa's body a third and final time. But they are too late. Ephraim speaks the words, and Asa has another seizure, after which he is again much different. He seduces Elizabeth, and speaks his father's incantation into her ear while they are in the middle of intercourse, briefly transferring her out of her body and into his. Ephraim, however, isn't dead yet, and claims to be Asa in his father's body. Asa--or Ephraim in Asa's body--murders his father and cuts off his head. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, whatever is inside of Asa now covets <i>her</i> body. Things get messy from there...</p>
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<p>This is a loving forgery of the films Barbara Crampton made with Stuart Gordon in the 1980s. It's more <i>From Beyond</i> than <i>Re-Animator</i>, but has elements of both of them. Crampton, who stars as Dr. Upton and who produced the film, has gotten as much of the band back together as she could manage for this film and dedicates the whole thing to Gordon's loving memory. The screenplay is by Dennis Paoli. Brian Yuzna is among the executive producers. The film lacks only Jeffrey Combs, perhaps as old Ephraim Waite; the part is played by Bruce Davison. Crampton herself is a secondary heroine as Dr. Upton. Her career renaissance continues apace and this might be the best film she's made since <i>You're Next</i>. If the whole thing can't match Gordon at his own game, there's no shame in that. He was a singular talent. The end result is still pretty good, and manages the not inconsiderable feat of capturing the spirit of Lovecraft even when the letter of the story is drastically different. This was one of Gordon's main gifts.</p>
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<p>The film's heavy lifting is done by Heather Graham as Elizabeth Derby (the character in the story is "Edward Derby," a name given to her husband). The film requires her to assume multiple personalities over the course of the film and she mostly convinces the audience that those personalities are the body swapped characters played by the other actors. I imagine that there was some workshopping among the four principle actors where they decided on specific character cues that would unify their performances, though the filmmakers have used props for this, too. In truth, I wouldn't have thought Heather Graham a capable enough actor to pull this off, but she surprised me in this film. You pretty much always know who is in charge behind her eyes, which is a neat trick. The other actors are similarly able to convey who's driving--Bruce Davison is an underrated actor while Judah Lewis and Barbara Crampton are both genre vets who know what the material demands of them. None of the other actors--except maybe for Crampton--shoulders the burden of the film like Graham does, though. I should probably reevaluate my opinion of her abilities.</p>
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<p>The body swapping shenanigans here are extrapolated into gender-swapping shenanigans by casting women in the two main roles while leaving Ephraim the way you find him in Lovecraft. As a result, you get a certain amount of lascivious interest in female sexuality from a male perspective here. When Ephraim first jumps into Elizabeth, it's during sex and he treats it as a novel experience. The second time, he pauses to feel her up before having sex with her husband. At some point he tells Upton that he "thinks" he was born male, but having now experienced sex as a woman, he's no longer sure. There's a strong thread of transgender wish fulfillment in this movie and the body swapping trope is common in transgender fan fiction. But whatever wish fulfillment might be present here, there's an abject horror of identity death in this film that comes along with it. And an even larger horror of being "trapped in the wrong body." For a film that isn't really interested in transgender themes, it gets tangled up in them in spite of itself. This is a trans movie without any trans people, unless one takes Ephraim at his word. I don't know whether to credit the film for not finding horror in transness specifically--it's main horror is the death of identity--or to shrug it off because the filmmakers maybe didn't notice what they were doing. I can't imagine such a thing in 2023, but you never know with cis people.</p>
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<p>If you're going to be trying to do a Stuart Gordon horror movie, there's a certain obligation to provide the audience with one or two scenes of outrageous violence. Gordon was in the one-upmanship business, and you had better be ready to play if you come near his cinema. In this, <i>Suitable Flesh</i> doesn't disappoint. The murder of Asa when he's in Ephraim's body is as stomach-turning as anyone could want, and it's placed relatively early in the film. The film then does that scene one better when Elizabeth must defend herself against Ephraim in Asa's body, and winds up running him over repeatedly with her car. I won't give it away, but the shot in which this is done is really clever. If none of the gags in this film are the equal of Dr. Hill peeling a skull like an orange in Re-Animator while Herbert West snaps his pencils, well, some senses of grotesque humor are unique.</p>
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<p>Director Joe Lynch isn't totally a slave to Stuart Gordon or Charles Band for his effects. He knows how to place the camera, and he knows when to move it a little or a lot. When the plot of the film flies off the handle, so too does the camera. When the film reaches its nasty ending, he lets the world spin off its axis both metaphorically and literally. This is a radical horror movie in the end, in which the audience is not assured that all is right with the world. The form of the film sees no reason to even suggest such a thing.</p>
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<p>Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>This is posting on Halloween, and I haven't kept up with blogging the challenge. These numbers are out of date. I'll finish the challenge at 31 films late tonight, but I don't know how the balance will shake out of new to me films. We'll see how it goes. I'll be posting reviews through the next month, in any event...</p>
<p>My current progress:<br />
New to me films: 4<br />
Total films: 6</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-63873384100655462482023-10-25T19:34:00.002-07:002023-10-25T19:35:13.103-07:00Bats in the Belfry<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYeReZLDxv0YsPA9rEfSywAxN7rC75le1UGJjDOxMGXQwnIj1H90QJrkJiZawtGK9HxUSrY8TBVJnkBdMa0hDxkSwzoKBL1_Lt5o9LogrkNDbvcWucx4DfAZ1Yu1mEXpsD1tw_zwCVC0Eand3CyTub0YlzCEDwXUrwl0PnQvjYrPMA63VVYkGU6g/s3500/thevampirebat_01.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Lionel Atwill staring down a frightened Fay Wray in The Vampire Bat (1933)" border="0" data-original-height="2280" data-original-width="3500" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYeReZLDxv0YsPA9rEfSywAxN7rC75le1UGJjDOxMGXQwnIj1H90QJrkJiZawtGK9HxUSrY8TBVJnkBdMa0hDxkSwzoKBL1_Lt5o9LogrkNDbvcWucx4DfAZ1Yu1mEXpsD1tw_zwCVC0Eand3CyTub0YlzCEDwXUrwl0PnQvjYrPMA63VVYkGU6g/w400-h260/thevampirebat_01.png" title="The Vampire Bat (1933)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><b><i>The Vampire Bat</i></b> (1933, directed by Frank R. Strayer) is filmmaking opportunism at its finest. Its studio, Majestic Pictures, had a reputation for turning out higher quality product than its poverty row brethren, in part because the studio had a habit of renting out the facilities of bigger studios when those facilities were idle. That's what happened here. The producers filmed great whacks of the film on the sets Universal built for <i>Frankenstein</i> and <i>The Old Dark House</i>, and borrowed a number of character actors from Universal to give it the appearance of being a new Universal production. Lionel Belmore, who played the Burgomaster in <i>Frankenstein</i>, plays the Bürgermeister here as if this film was set in the same universe. Dwight Frye appears here, too, and you could be forgiven for mistaking him for Renfield's imbecile cousin. It's practically the same performance. The real impetus for this film was making use of the two stars of Warner Brothers' <i>Doctor X</i> and <i>The Mystery of the Wax Museum</i>. <i>Doctor X</i> had been a substantial hit, and <i>The Mystery of the Wax Museum</i> had every indication of surpassing it. But the latter film's production took longer than expected and both Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill were idle at the time. Wray already had experience with waiting out complicated productions, having already starred in <i>The Most Dangerous Game</i> while the special effects for King Kong were being completed, using Kong's sets and technicians. In stepped Majestic, with a production ready to go for the two actors. Melvyn Douglas, fresh off James Whale's <i>The Old Dark House</i>, completed the cast. The film beat <i>The Mystery of the Wax Museum</i> into theaters by a little over a month, letting Warners' publicity department do the heavy lifting. Given the improvisational nature of its production, it's a miracle that the film is watchable at all. Seriously, there's no reason at all for this to have turned out to be a good movie. It's a rip off at its core. And yet...this is surprisingly entertaining. Personally, I think the secret ingredient is Melvyn Douglas. He was a talent much too large to stay confined in the horror movie. Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill (and to a lesser extent Dwight Frye) are talents too big for poverty row, too, though perhaps not too big for horror films. Fay Wray made five of them in quick succession in 1932, and they are the films for which she is best remembered. This is a film where the cast provides the alchemy that makes the movie work, which is a good thing because the script has serious deficiencies. To quote The Bard, it's a tale told by an idiot...</p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZFrOW7fz-WwG4ixYTa3NjdRGlcR2GbFIWoqNIs9fseA7F-DOTu44rlR8Jy6tfCqd7lsf6-su-uv_TNGgGHNjq7xcmG6RbF9OnYXi0rnjekqoEQU18D7UY7DDlOPY9IcHojCLh8bYyUrzVOthLbv69YJ0r6Wcoziq59DBJ1mRQGj8DHezy6U6vfw/s728/thevampirebat_03.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="The cast of The Vampire Bat (1933) standing around some scientific equipment" border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="728" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZFrOW7fz-WwG4ixYTa3NjdRGlcR2GbFIWoqNIs9fseA7F-DOTu44rlR8Jy6tfCqd7lsf6-su-uv_TNGgGHNjq7xcmG6RbF9OnYXi0rnjekqoEQU18D7UY7DDlOPY9IcHojCLh8bYyUrzVOthLbv69YJ0r6Wcoziq59DBJ1mRQGj8DHezy6U6vfw/w400-h225/thevampirebat_03.jpg" title="The Vampire Bat (1933)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The story involves a series of murders in the village of Kleinschloss, presumably somewhere in central Europe. The victims have been exsanguinated and there are two puncture wounds on their bodies, leading the superstitious people of the village to blame a vampire. The sensible police inspector, Karl Brettschneider, is more skeptical. He's convinced it's a human murderer hiding behind the superstition. As the film opens, the latest victim is one Martha Mueller, who has been cared for by the mentally disabled Hermann, who likes bats. "Nice and soft like cat" he says. Unfortunately, his affinity for bats draws the eye of the townsfolk, particularly after one of them claims to have been attacked by a vampire bat. "Poppycock," Brettschneider says. The vampire bat is real, but is native to South America. The medical consultant in the case is Dr. Otto von Niemann, a scientist. He has two assistants: Emil and Ruth. Brettschneider is sweet on Ruth. Ruth lives with her hypochondriac Aunt, who has a run in with Hermann just after another murder, sending the townsfolk into a rage. They hound Hermann to ground, ending in tragedy, but Hermann's death provides him with an alibi when the killer strikes within Dr. von Niemann's own household. Von Niemann has secrets, not least of which is his experiment with the creation of life, and the strange hold he has over his servants...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOkfrq6GMgod17_4JKHycWy74M5h4k6Ly7dMkJYMhwf6okn_z0c8xntLko_vPHH1OWWMuYstd5NDMHvQtoAobdDUwI6tSm9IFBrJ_HbJpvMRhFgpLirWJvyYm0_MsRnkX_Bm97QLgANh8J-NJAlSAputrw9Rr3FXWdKd6gZf0R_hn3yQQyWHCG6Q/s1053/thevampirebat_04.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Lionel Atwill in The Vampire Bat (1933). He's wearing a lab coat and standing behind glass scientific equipment." border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1053" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOkfrq6GMgod17_4JKHycWy74M5h4k6Ly7dMkJYMhwf6okn_z0c8xntLko_vPHH1OWWMuYstd5NDMHvQtoAobdDUwI6tSm9IFBrJ_HbJpvMRhFgpLirWJvyYm0_MsRnkX_Bm97QLgANh8J-NJAlSAputrw9Rr3FXWdKd6gZf0R_hn3yQQyWHCG6Q/w400-h291/thevampirebat_04.jpg" title="The Vampire Bat (1933)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>One doesn't need to squint very hard to see the lineage of this film's plot. There's a bit of <i>Dracula</i> here, and a bit of <i>Frankenstein</i>, and the strong influence of <i>Svengali</i>. Given the mash-up nature of its script, it's not a surprise that screenwriter Edward T. Lowe would go on to write Universal's <i>House of Dracula</i> and <i>House of Frankenstein</i>. Lowe understood the assignment here. Make this film as familiar to a horror audience as possible. Logic does not matter, and was consequently thrown to the wind. The film has two supernatural premises, and neither of them involves actual vampires. The first is that Von Niemann is able to control weak willed people with telepathy. The second is that he's growing an artificial organism in his lab, which is why he needs the blood. This is where the film loses the plot, because Von Neimann has a profound lack of imagination when it comes to using his gifts. There's a passage in one of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's vampire stories that suggests that if actual vampires went around acting like Christopher Lee in the <i>Horror of Dracula</i>, they would never live to a hundred years, let alone four hundred, because the monster hunters will come out of the woodwork. I thought of that here, because everything about Von Neimann screams "mad scientist!" and he bloody well ought to be smart enough to avoid this. If, indeed, he has the power to cloud men's minds, he could credibly convince people to just donate blood. No murder involved. No police investigation. He can grow his chicken heart or his Audrey II to his heart's content. But no. The film paints Hermann as an imbecile, but y'know? I can get behind his love of bats. I like bats. And in this, and other things, Hermann is a lot smarter than the supposed genius scientist. Plus, Hermann has empathy. When Von Niemann goes on a rant about how his victims should be happy that they're contributing to his great work, it's hard to block the film's time period from one's mind because this is the kind of dude who would be working in a concentration camp torturing twins or something ten years later. The ideology is definitely there. It's not lost on me that Hermann is exactly the kind of victim who was first to the ovens.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_iuoLoF9Kz4IJqP_sBpcO-Cbuyqs5DyDap86JzA3-HETC0p-q1DluywvtWTjDyvcWUnScWYoBCMbOnamFPMozVGEv01q1COqjzFCm6kzJg7kMQAK3ifVceplxkZnvlnuFaozjLymutXzAqs48_rx2w_c1z43dRmMAwkMKiG8gM4eAyYS4NRQOHw/s1170/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Dwight Frye in The Vampire Bat (1933) standing back to a cave wall, looking backward toward his pursuers." border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="1170" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_iuoLoF9Kz4IJqP_sBpcO-Cbuyqs5DyDap86JzA3-HETC0p-q1DluywvtWTjDyvcWUnScWYoBCMbOnamFPMozVGEv01q1COqjzFCm6kzJg7kMQAK3ifVceplxkZnvlnuFaozjLymutXzAqs48_rx2w_c1z43dRmMAwkMKiG8gM4eAyYS4NRQOHw/w400-h299/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" title="The Vampire Bat (1933)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Which brings me to my next point:</p>
<p>The angry mob just flat out murders Hermann and their penance for this is to "give him a decent burial?" I mean, it's bad enough that they hounded him to death in one of Hollywood's more familiar caves, but to ad insult to injury they drive a fucking stake through his heart. And Brettschneider just lets that go? Jesus. All cops really ARE bastards. But what the hell, this isn't <i>The Ox-Bow Incident</i> I guess, and more's the pity. Brettschneider is otherwise a big step up on Universal's usual hero characters. He has a forceful personality and his skepticism is close to my heart. Plus, he has actual movie star charisma, something David Manners and John Boles absolutely did not.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTKUoS4tl8PXoGKowRpHZgpLfIQrpwkJsHkmq2U1jT6JWDXHoDFuAq9hkNsnq6XQD2vuVQJSkyEkcTNZtIJw_HN9XBC4TWYDOCAXLrNOgIPzDSJ2T_xCx5fBcX9Os3CwXckWA9mzkemhbTJYSpBIWXV4uk6zHWCIyOany67vClCNksDAgvz9UyRw/s951/thevampirebat_02.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Fay Wray tied up and gagged in The Vampire Bat. The shadow of the murderer is on the wall behind her, along with some scientific equipment." border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="951" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTKUoS4tl8PXoGKowRpHZgpLfIQrpwkJsHkmq2U1jT6JWDXHoDFuAq9hkNsnq6XQD2vuVQJSkyEkcTNZtIJw_HN9XBC4TWYDOCAXLrNOgIPzDSJ2T_xCx5fBcX9Os3CwXckWA9mzkemhbTJYSpBIWXV4uk6zHWCIyOany67vClCNksDAgvz9UyRw/w400-h302/thevampirebat_02.jpg" title="The Vampire Bat (1933)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Fay Wray made three horror movies with Lionel Atwill and their characters have different relationships in all three films. And yet in all three films, she winds up as the designated victim who the hero must save at the last minute. There's a ritual quality to this, a repeating archetype even. In truth, none of her horror movies, not even the film with which she is synonymous, makes good use of her talents. Maybe that's why she stopped making them after 1932. Atwill, by contrast, remained in the genre. He was precisely the kind of ham that horror movies of the 1930s required and he made a lot of them. In a fair universe, he's remembered as fondly as Karloff or Lugosi, but you can never tell what the culture will remember. Atwill has the showiest part in this film and he devours it once the mask is off (metaphorically in this film, rather than literally in one of his other films with Fay Wray). He's well directed, too, which is unusual in some of the horror films he made (or, at least, the ones not directed by Michael Curtiz).</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN45PEJKT6IzTDwrW-OouDMYN1s7nmxyzVvVfC8zXOKhU5w7JY8ayJRFBdubxSk8_CmEWzgTFCKEubx1GHC2tVS03Yuw2jKNWZCkJdYCd3KcXR1zVq8xTmJUIs_45XkLLfIETKxVnwG4_VXj8gDgnlF9fTUtHNjHHm5wSgoMH95Br_ghgmYYPMgg/s1170/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Lionel Atwill staring at the camera in The Vampire Bat (1933) as if in a trance or as if trying to mesmerize the audience." border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="1170" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN45PEJKT6IzTDwrW-OouDMYN1s7nmxyzVvVfC8zXOKhU5w7JY8ayJRFBdubxSk8_CmEWzgTFCKEubx1GHC2tVS03Yuw2jKNWZCkJdYCd3KcXR1zVq8xTmJUIs_45XkLLfIETKxVnwG4_VXj8gDgnlF9fTUtHNjHHm5wSgoMH95Br_ghgmYYPMgg/w400-h299/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" title="The Vampire Bat (1933)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Frank R. Strayer directed a ton of films, including most of the <i>Blondie</i> films in the 1930s. I've seen a couple of those, but I couldn't tell you which ones off the top of my head. They tend to blur together. The only other film of his that I've seen is <i>Condemned to Live</i>, which is suggestive of a director who could have made a living in horror movies had he so desired. He never seems to have graduated from poverty row, though, so who knows? This is the film for which he's best remembered and he did more than competent work here. He keeps things moving at a good clip and even has a sense of blocking in depth at a time when many directors on similar productions just kept to the proscenium or used the medium two-shot as a crutch. The scene near the end of this film when the murderer comes in through Brettschneider's window when he's sleeping is particularly effective and is particularly cinematic. Strayer is good with the actors, too. He knows he has a good cast and he gives them their heads. Mostly, Strayer doesn't dawdle, and by not dawdling, he keeps the audience from dwelling on the deficiencies of the screenplay. This is the kind of job that suggests why film is generally a director's medium, because a bad job of directing this material would have torpedoed the whole thing. The Vampire Bat isn't a bad film on which to stake one's reputation. It's maybe not a silk purse from a sow's ear, but it's the same kind of legerdemain.</p>
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<p>Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>As usual with the challenge, I'll be prioritizing films that are new to me, so I'm off to a good start there. I'll also be prioritizing pre-Code and silent horror this year, because during the last few decades, the genre has gotten too big to really track and I feel a need to go back to the basics. We'll see how it goes.</p>
<p>My current progress:<br />
New to me films: 3<br />
Total films: 5</p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-13855457454305308052023-10-24T16:40:00.003-07:002023-10-24T16:40:27.317-07:00Scare-a-Thon 2023: We Have Always Lived In the Castle<p>Here's another edition of my friend, Aaron's, Scare-a-thon. I'm on the panel here. It's for a good cause. </p>
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<p>There are a couple of these on the horizon, so stay tuned.</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-62328336052112114032023-10-13T21:39:00.000-07:002023-10-13T21:39:08.461-07:00A Murderer's Dozen<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYLoEg8n6HkhWNxmBfT8x84vPl1_Gs3QwmuOaynQhX_sX-6ehyphenhyphenSkrMTRv3usckjFBpLmwcAeFP8KNuMzyoUw-Or4bUbhU71VyB6jSCeg8aNqlM64sh_Dsl2ZApYPnT-O4BZmV-O_pr-ZgCcBIVYHaznURpOKonOSWS0YmXVeoZxtXxe2ino8ZeDg/s707/thirteenthchairStudioStillLugosi.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="707" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYLoEg8n6HkhWNxmBfT8x84vPl1_Gs3QwmuOaynQhX_sX-6ehyphenhyphenSkrMTRv3usckjFBpLmwcAeFP8KNuMzyoUw-Or4bUbhU71VyB6jSCeg8aNqlM64sh_Dsl2ZApYPnT-O4BZmV-O_pr-ZgCcBIVYHaznURpOKonOSWS0YmXVeoZxtXxe2ino8ZeDg/s400/thirteenthchairStudioStillLugosi.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>"Stiff." That's the word for most films from the dawn of talkies. "Stilted" is a good one, too. <i><b>The Thirteenth Chair</b></i> (1929, directed by Tod Browning) fits both descriptions. It's a bit of an evolutionary missing link, given that it was filmed in both a silent and sound version while Hollywood was still in the process of learning how to make talkies. Many theaters at the time were still unable to even show them. The silent version is lost, alas, and I can't help but think that it's a much better film. The silents of the late 1920s were some of the glories of cinema, attaining heights of artistry it took sound pictures almost a decade to equal. This assumes you believe they ever did. I'm dubious of that very last point. This particular film is notable for two reasons. First, the lead role was offered to Lon Chaney. Had he accepted it, it would have been his last collaboration with Browning, and their only talkie before Chaney died of cancer. Chaney did not accept the part. Second, it teams Browning with Bela Lugosi for the first time and prefigures Lugosi's screen image in the films that followed <i>Dracula</i>. Browning ultimately made three films with Lugosi. Beyond the trivia, <i>The Thirteenth Chair</i> is a slog for a contemporary audience, but it's not without interest.</p>
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<p>Spencer Lee has been murdered. No one is too broken up about this because he was a bounder and a cad, but justice must be served. The police are following their only clue, that a veiled woman was seen fleeing the crime. Lee's friend Edward Wales would like to see justice done if only to satisfy his own curiosity, and he enlists a medium to name the killer during a seance at his manor. The medium is a fraud, and her supposed powers are of no consequence to Wales, who wants to flush the murderer with the seance. Instead, Wales is himself murdered, prompting the medium to become a detective. Complicating matters is the presence of the medium's daughter, whom she would like no shade to fall upon, and the local police inspector, Delzante. Secrets are revealed, and lives are ruined in the climax...</p>
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<p><i>The Thirteenth Chair</i> started as a stage play written by Bayard Viellier in 1916. It was filmed three years later and again in 1937. The original stage play starred Viellier's wife, Margaret Wycherly, who shows up in the 1929 Browning film(s). It was apparently a popular success in all phases of its commercial life. This is an old-dark house mystery, but Browning stages it very much in the mode of a stage play, with only a few cinematic touches to bring it alive away from the boards. Most of the action takes place on a single set, and most of the actors--especially Lugosi--are projecting their lines as if to be heard in the rear of a theater. And herein is where you can spot the difference between Browning's talking pictures and his silents. His silents relied almost exclusively on expression, both facial and postural, to convey his scenes. This film doesn't have the patience with this, unfortunately. Browning himself said of his later talkies (presumably from <i>Freaks</i> onward) that he labored to eliminate as much dialogue as he could. <i>The Thirteenth Chair</i> is a good example of why he might have wanted to do that, because it's all talking with precious little action. Not all of the dialogue is awful. The affected diction of Conrad Nagel character, though, and Margaret Wycherly's Oirish accent might play pretty well on stage, but they tend to stylize the film in ways that aren't complimentary to the material.</p>
<p>The main thrust of great whacks of Browning's cinema is the humbug. Browning was a carny at heart and he had a soft spot for frauds who could flim-flam the marks. This film seems pretty far away from the carnival, but the character of Madame Rosalie, the fake medium played by Margaret Wycherly, is a character type that shows up in other Browning films besides this one. The key to Browning's cinematic anima is that he views the straights in the cast as suckers and the audience itself as rubes, and that's certainly a key component of this film's plot. His interests are stronger than niceties like cinematic technique. Madame Rosalie isn't a character another filmmaker would promote to lead detective, but Browning does it without a backward glance. She's his kind of people.</p><p>
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<p>And then there's Lugosi. Some historians view this film as a dry run for <i>Dracula</i>. An audition, even. And that's certainly defensible. Lugosi's character isn't a villain here--he's the law, after all--but he still manages a sinister presence. Whether that's a retroactive projection of his later screen anima or not is certainly debatable. I don't know if Lugosi was still learning his lines phonetically for this film--he probably was--but the delivery that works in <i>Dracula</i> doesn't work nearly as well here without the Gothic trappings. I wonder what convinced Browning that Lugosi could transcend this performance as the king vampire. For all that, Lugosi is hardly the stiffest actor in the cast, so there was a learning curve for all involved.</p>
<p>One last thing of note: the original stage play was set in New York, as was the previous film version. This film, cashing in on the vogue for exotic locales kicked off by Valentino's <i>The Sheik</i>, moves the action to Calcutta during the British Raj (which was still extant the year this film was made). The colonialism is baked in, given that its high society isn't much different from what one would find in a film set in England or New York, but for the Indian servants. There's a casual racism to this and a contemporary audience sensitive to such things should consider themselves warned.</p>
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<p>Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>As usual with the challenge, I'll be prioritizing films that are new to me, so I'm off to a good start there. I'll also be prioritizing pre-Code and silent horror this year, because during the last few decades, the genre has gotten too big to really track and I feel a need to go back to the basics. We'll see how it goes.</p>
<p>My current progress:<br />
New to me films: 2<br />
Total films: 4</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-38885887085290452132023-10-08T09:29:00.001-07:002023-10-08T11:47:49.320-07:00The Blood is the Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijKIO7cARiXUdLg0rhBfO8tRWaa76swTchU0ovo42zXx_dTfYFErBYYxPkwA4ypAPIs7ZWhnIwS4G2Mrg-9cHYw84WAeTEqtun8iDYH2xTECjMRq67QElzTBHnOOylmPp4108yzG3RUWcWMg7oGnyqbqx2-sKRxynVFaQsdGuZ_h4svpkxPVxmEw/s818/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="818" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijKIO7cARiXUdLg0rhBfO8tRWaa76swTchU0ovo42zXx_dTfYFErBYYxPkwA4ypAPIs7ZWhnIwS4G2Mrg-9cHYw84WAeTEqtun8iDYH2xTECjMRq67QElzTBHnOOylmPp4108yzG3RUWcWMg7oGnyqbqx2-sKRxynVFaQsdGuZ_h4svpkxPVxmEw/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Tod Browning's <i><b>Dracula</b></i> (1931) is a pivotal movie in the history of horror movies. It is the first major horror film of the sound era. Without its success, the explosion of horror movies during the pre-Code era possibly doesn't happen, or, maybe, happens on a smaller scale or just <i>differently</i>. The movie studios of the day, big and small, were increasingly desperate for hits in 1931 as the Great Depression deepened and paying audiences evaporated. Anything that drew a crowd was all right by the heads of the studios. What drew crowds in those days was sin, salaciousness, violence, licentiousness, and sensation. Horror movies could provide all of that. The genre itself is built on transgression, after all. Moreover, the elements of what came to be defined as the Universal horror movie were already in place. Universal made big money on horror movies during the silent era. Two of Lon Chaney's biggest hits--<i>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</i> (1923) and <i>The Phantom of the Opera</i> (1926)--were made at Universal, as was the John Barrymore version of <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> (1920). Universal was also the landing spot for Paul Leni, the German director who had huge success for Universal with <i>The Cat and the Canary</i> (1927) and <i>The Man Who Laughs</i> (1928). So Universal, at least, was already in the horror movie business before <i>Dracula</i>.</p>
<p>Carl Laemmle, Sr., the company's founder, did not want to make <i>Dracula</i>. He thought it was essentially demonic, unlike the studio's previous horror films, which he viewed as essentially humanist. Carl Laemmle, Jr., however was keen on the property and only convinced his father to buy the rights to the play because MGM was ready to step in if Universal passed on it. It is likely that an MGM production would not have been very different from what Universal eventually made. Tod Browning was under contract to MGM, after all. Universal had to borrow him for their film. Browning for his part wanted <i>Dracula</i> long before Universal took an interest. He had already discussed the possibility with Lon Chaney. Chaney had already worked up a make-up look for The Count. He wanted it as much as Browning. Other filmmakers at Universal wanted <i>Dracula</i>, too. Paul Leni was keen to make <i>Dracula</i> with HIS frequent collaborator, Conrad Veidt, in the role. In some alternate universe, such a picture is one of the masterpieces of the genre. Veidt might even have made the film had he not gone back to Europe at the time, afraid that his thick accent would be a hindrance to his American movie career. If he only knew... Two things conspired to shape the film that was ultimately made: Leni died of blood poisoning in September of 1929. Chaney died of lung cancer in August of 1930. Without Chaney, MGM lost interest in the property. Browning, without a star for the project, decided to cast the relatively unknown Hungarian actor, Bela Lugosi, in the part. He had worked with Lugosi once before in <i>The Thirteenth Chair</i> (1929). Lugosi had drawn crowds to the theatrical version by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston on the stage and had a much publicized dalliance with Clara Bow, so he wasn't obscure, exactly. Just obscure in <i>movies</i>. The match was made and <i>Dracula</i> went into production on September 30, 1930.</p>
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<p>The story opens on a carriage traveling through Transylvania. On the carriage is solicitor Carl Renfield. At the feet of the mountains, the carriage stops and unloads the other passengers, but Renfield insists that he must carry on to Borgo Pass, where he is to meet the carriage from his employer, Count Dracula. The locals urge Renfield to stay away from Borgo Pass and cross themselves at the mention of Dracula. Renfield dismisses this as a bunch of superstition and carries on. At Castle Dracula, Dracula and his brides rise from their sarcophagi to greet the night. Dracula assumes the guise of a footman to drive his carriage to Borgo Pass, where he meets Renfield and brings him back to his castle. The grand ballroom is a ruin, festooned with spiderwebs and vermin. Here, Dracula reverts to his guise as a noble Count and welcomes Renfield. He guides Renfield to the rooms appointed for him and invites him to dine. During the meal, Renfield accidentally cuts his finger, which draws Dracula's intense interest. He is repelled by Renfield's crucifix, though Renfield believes his host is squeamish about blood. When Renfield offers his host some wine, the Count tells him, "I never drink...wine." Their business concluded, Renfield retires for the night. But the denizens of the castle are not through with him. Dracula's three brides appear on the balcony intent on feasting on Renfield, but Dracula waves them away. Instead, Dracula himself initiates Renfield into his service. They take ship to England the next day on the ill-fated Vesta. Renfield is the only survivor of the trip, found in the hold barking mad. He likes to consume small lives--flies and other insects--with the intent of graduating to larger creatures. He's institutionalized at Dr. Seward's Sanitarium, which is conveniently next door to Carfax Abbey, where Count Dracula has taken residence. Dracula contrives to meet Seward and his daughter, Mina, socially at the symphony, and becomes an infatuation for Mina's companion, Lucy. Dracula visits Lucy at night and soon, she perishes from a wasting disease. Seward's friend, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing has his suspicions about Lucy, and about the rash of murders in the area where victims have been drained of blood. Against all modern scientific instincts, Van Helsing suspects a vampire. His suspicions are confirmed when Dracula comes to visit, and Van Helsing notices that the Count casts no reflection in the mirror of John Harker's cigarette case. Soon, Mina has fallen under Dracula's sway as well, and her fiance, Harker, and Van Helsing must rush to save her from a fate worse than death as one of Dracula's newest concubines...</p>
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<p><i>Dracula</i> is a confounding film. What's good about it is very good indeed. What's bad about it is stagebound, unimaginative, and dare I say it? Dull. Almost a century later, it's easy to blame a contemporary sensibility for reacting to the deficiencies one finds in <i>Dracula</i>, but its flaws are by no means unique. The movies were still struggling with the switch to sound filmmaking and the limitations were more onerous to some directors than to others. Not everyone had the will or the wherewithal to rip the camera off its mountings to resume the techniques of the great silent films. Not everyone could be William Wellman. Browning certainly had no ambitions along those lines. His cinematographer might have had different ideas, though. <i>Dracula</i> was a chaotic production, and there are many reports from the people who worked on the film that Karl Freund was more than a cinematographer, he was a co-director. This may explain why the parts of the film play more in the silent film's register and why most of the first act resembles the free camera techniques Freund pioneered with F. W. Murnau in Germany. There's not a lot of dialogue in this part of the film, which made it easier to strike silent prints for theaters that were not yet equipped for sound. This is the part of the film where the filmmakers lavished their production resources. Castle Dracula is a vivid piece of cinematic un-real estate, armadillos and possums and all. Even when the film seems like it's unfolding in slow motion, there's always <i>something</i> to look at. Other parts of the film--most of the scenes in Dr. Seward's sanitarium, for example--are slaves to the proscenium of the stage play. Rather than show a big wolf on Dr. Seward's lawn, for example, an actor describes it. The film uses a lot of bat props, but never finds a way to show Dracula transforming into one of them. Dracula's demise at the end of the film is famously disappointing for being off-screen. The film is light on special effects. Its best special effect is Lugosi.</p>
<p>In his early career in America, Lugosi spoke almost no English. One would think that that would be an impediment to an acting career, but Lugosi soldiered on by memorizing his lines phonetically. I do not know how much English Lugosi had picked up by the time he made Dracula, but however much it was, it was buried under an accent so thick that it's a distinction without difference. A great deal of his performance in Dracula is silent. His costars described his process of getting into character as a sequence of poses he assumed in front of a mirror before shooting his scenes, and that makes a lot of sense given the gestural nature of his performance. Beyond that, great whacks of his performance are enhanced by the way it was shot, often in shadow, often with an unearthly light spilled across his eyes. Not everything can be attributed to the craft of the film. There is a complete lack of sympathy in Lugosi's Dracula. He's a malevolent figure without the kind of humanity Boris Karloff would imbue into Frankenstein's monster later that year. And that inhumanity is compelling. When Lugosi is on screen, he draws the eye and holds it. It doesn't matter that his line readings are ornate to the point of parody. They're of a piece with the actors presence. It shouldn't work, but a lot of things in movies shouldn't work but for the alchemy cinema. It doesn't hurt that almost everyone else in the film could be played by a floor lamp for all the impression they leave. Lugosi rides roughshod over David Manners and Helen Chandler and Herbert Bunston, who are all fine in the film. They just can't stick in the mind the way Lugosi does.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAVnt4ttK0GcJFqfasn7ScLelA7bQ6ZPzGcFaullVRcYJ5kTqcUJwP-IMWerMYa5qZuYO93NyVpZVD8P5Bz8GfuuIynZ3mX4h-hgKzxXGLChXh9AiZLLASgPWP1W9cXJiqdFlwflX_kQ5UK1SQTAx69atCfkbhpdkfJgE8yk4LBco0CwHIbBOmVg/s3142/dracula1931_06.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="2235" data-original-width="3142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAVnt4ttK0GcJFqfasn7ScLelA7bQ6ZPzGcFaullVRcYJ5kTqcUJwP-IMWerMYa5qZuYO93NyVpZVD8P5Bz8GfuuIynZ3mX4h-hgKzxXGLChXh9AiZLLASgPWP1W9cXJiqdFlwflX_kQ5UK1SQTAx69atCfkbhpdkfJgE8yk4LBco0CwHIbBOmVg/s400/dracula1931_06.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>The two other actors who rise to challenge are Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan. Van Sloan starred in the stage version as Van Helsing opposite Lugosi. His Van Helsing is the template for monster hunters in all of the horror cinema that follows. He's not my favorite Van Helsing--that would be Peter Cushing--but he's good enough. The cut of Dracula I originally saw as a kid had a coda in which Van Sloan turned to the audience and warned us that "there are such things!" which made an impression. Not every print of the film has this coda. The one I watched on Amazon for this review omits it. <i>Dracula</i> was recut a LOT to suit the whims of the Production Code when it was enforced. Then there's Dwight Frye, who plays Renfield. Frye was a go-to actor for twitchy secondary characters. In 1931, he was Wilmer Cook in the first version of <i>The Maltese Falcon</i> and would play Fritz, the hunchback assistant in <i>Frankenstein</i>, after <i>Dracula</i>. Frye is the first actor we meet in the film and the early part of the film features him as the audience's surrogate. This character is sensible and business-minded. Once Dracula has his way with him, he becomes unhinged and Frye plays his insanity to the rafters. His wide staring eyes are enhanced by the make-up department, and he adopts a distinctive mad laugh. You may not remember David Manners as Harker, but you damned sure remember Dwight Frye as Renfield.</p>
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<p>If I am honest, I'll own up to the fact that <i>Dracula</i> is not among my favorite horror movies, even from the 1930s. I think it's a deeply flawed film that could use a more cinematic treatment (I should also mention that I don't believe that that "more cinematic" treatment is to be found in the Spanish language version of <i>Dracula</i> made alongside Browning's film). As is the case with many things in cinema, the broader culture doesn't care what I think. In Lugosi, Dracula finds an image to match the archetype and you just can't beat that. This is significant because the character one finds in Stoker is thoroughly unpleasant, more akin to how Murnau depicted Dracula in <i>Nosferatu</i>. Stoker's Dracula was an outlier. The image of the vampire in Victorian literature other than Stoker derived from Lord Byron, whose persona was mapped on to Lord Ruthven in John Polidori's "The Vampyre." With the success of Lugosi's <i>Dracula</i> on stage and on screen, we see the public voting with their wallets for the Byronic vampire. From the 1931 film onward, the archetype was set and fixed in the cultural massmind.</p>
<p>There are a lot of ways to read Dracula that explain its success in its particular place in time. 1931 found the world in free-fall as the worst of the Great Depression took hold on the economies of the world. The first stirrings of National Socialism were abroad in Europe. The Russian revolution had given way to the first of the Stalinist purges. The world was spinning into chaos. The vampire in <i>Dracula</i> could be a scapegoat for all of this. A blood-sucking aristocrat? Sure. A menace from Eastern Europe? Absolutely. A rebuke to the sexual profligacy of the 1920s? Maybe. It's probable that all of these things and more struck the chord. What was bubbling through the culture was fuel for the horror explosion of the pre-Code era. It doesn't really matter whether <i>Dracula</i> is a good film, because <i>Dracula</i> is essentially a match thrown into a room full of gasoline fumes. </p>
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<p>Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>As usual with the challenge, I'll be prioritizing films that are new to me, so I'm off to a good start there. I'll also be prioritizing pre-Code and silent horror this year, because during the last few decades, the genre has gotten too big to really track and I feel a need to go back to the basics. We'll see how it goes.</p>
<p>My current progress:<br />
New to me films: 1<br />
Total films: 3</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-53348513914055350682023-10-05T09:01:00.002-07:002023-10-05T09:01:10.028-07:00Scare-a-Thon with DR. AC: Crimes of the Future<p>Here's another roundtable discussion with my friend and former erstwhile editor, Dr. AC about one of my favorite filmmakers. I need to turn up the volume on my microphone next time. Anyway, I'm the smurfette here... </p>
<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/out6P6CT3rk?si=72izcHnp40wTk-0f" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>I've got a couple of these coming this month, so enjoy.</p>
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This blog is supported on
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-37429866290085593302023-10-04T19:19:00.001-07:002023-10-04T19:19:26.666-07:00X Marks the Spot<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-7Dhy5xxU8zKdRAslSTaGHEFWBl_2V-7uBcnI4CjpYjGr3-R7Fm9iV28PgNmoZ2XckIe5WSP9Mkyq5Xot9RfQKt-Q-3VqN0og2ujo7i2Q_YY8XAG6nKxUYQXw20TXshT4b-4qUhwL1uszkovEGp2EznE7t4ie2hChhuFMrIra4R4g_nwSIS2WcQ/s989/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Lionel Atwill as Doctor X at the controls of his weird science device, which has many green glass tubes arrayed around him." border="0" data-original-height="725" data-original-width="989" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-7Dhy5xxU8zKdRAslSTaGHEFWBl_2V-7uBcnI4CjpYjGr3-R7Fm9iV28PgNmoZ2XckIe5WSP9Mkyq5Xot9RfQKt-Q-3VqN0og2ujo7i2Q_YY8XAG6nKxUYQXw20TXshT4b-4qUhwL1uszkovEGp2EznE7t4ie2hChhuFMrIra4R4g_nwSIS2WcQ/w400-h293/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" title="Lionel Atwill in Doctor X" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>According to one of my old spiral-bound movie notebooks, I saw <i><b>Doctor X</b></i> (1932, directed by Michael Curtiz) some time during my time as a video store owner back in the day. I still have the database from that fiasco, and sure enough, <i>Doctor X</i> was in our inventory. I don't remember seeing it, though. My suspicion is that the version we had on VHS was a seriously deficient edition, probably the black and white version of the film, though it's possible we had a washed out version in technicolor. The timing was right. It's a miracle that the technicolor version exists at all, given that it was thought to be a lost film after Warner Brothers discarded all their two strip technicolor materials in 1948. A print was found in Jack Warner's collection of private film holdings after his death in 1978, however, which found its way into distribution over the next decade or so. It underwent an extensive restoration in 2020.</p>
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<p>All of the major Hollywood studios were getting into the horror movie business in 1932 after seeing box office returns for <i>Dracula</i> and <i>Frankenstein</i> a year before. All of the major studios except MGM--and all of the minor ones too--were in dire financial straits in 1932. It was the worst year of the Great Depression. Everyone was desperate enough to try anything to stay afloat. Movie studios were not exempt. They were even willing to try horror movies. Warners handed the keys to Michael Curtiz for a pair of technicolor horror films--the other one was <i>The Mystery of the Wax Museum</i> the following year. Both are distinct from the films made by Universal or Paramount (we'll get into that as the month goes on). They feel like Warner Brothers movies, in spite of the horror elements. <i>Doctor X</i> in particular is more overtly a characteristic pre-Code film than most of the films Universal was making, particularly in regards to the strata of society it was willing to depict. The ostensible hero--or at least the audience surrogate--is a hard boiled reporter who hangs out in whore houses. This is not in the subtext. It's right there on screen. Warners always strove for street cred, for want of a better phrase. They were the studio of the common man, the everyday Joe, The New Deal, and that runs through their horror movies and makes them distinct. That they were willing to lavish two strip technicolor--a process that was not at all common--on horror movies WAS out of character, but it was a gamble that paid off handsomely. Both films were successes for a studio that desperately needed them.</p>
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<p>The story in <i>Doctor X</i> involves a series of murders committed in the vicinity of a medical research school. The murder weapon is a scalpel that could only have come from the school, prompting the police to pressure the school's proprietor, Dr. Jerry Xavier, to investigate his institution. Xavier prevails on the police to allow him to conduct his own investigation in order to head off any negative press, and he gathers his fellow scientists at his mansion on Long Island to conduct an experiment that he believes will reveal the murderer. There, he wires his colleagues and himself into a device that measures their reaction to various stressors and reenacts the murders in front of them. Meanwhile, intrepid reporter Lee Taylor had been shadowing Xavier and follows him to his mansion, He's caught by Xavier's daughter, Joanne, who he sweet talks and romances, much to her initial annoyance. Xavier's first attempt to flush the murderer ends in disaster. His second attempt is up against the deadline given him by the police, and he hasn't accounted for the scientific research behind which the murderer has concealed himself...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYxwkA3-xEJEbK5cd2EmNsq8M2iBEjyISM05QCfk_GqoRwA9ABMBoTwJT5KBhUgfJ2C7tv6mLb4eS1h7hluI575PyiuuQaBiJnnjuTnTJWoyOc3HaUdU2G1WI2-I1oWaXtpUeRT1zlibV6mom9w-cfA8GrJ8ib62FArjbx5D55-_AwlDywSi3zFw/s982/Doctorx01.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="The deformed murderer in Doctor X, surrounded by science equipment. The scene is lit in green and orange." border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="982" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYxwkA3-xEJEbK5cd2EmNsq8M2iBEjyISM05QCfk_GqoRwA9ABMBoTwJT5KBhUgfJ2C7tv6mLb4eS1h7hluI575PyiuuQaBiJnnjuTnTJWoyOc3HaUdU2G1WI2-I1oWaXtpUeRT1zlibV6mom9w-cfA8GrJ8ib62FArjbx5D55-_AwlDywSi3zFw/w400-h293/Doctorx01.png" title="Doctor X (1932)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>If you believe cultural historians like David Skal, the horror movies that appeared between the world wars were a trauma response to the calamity of the Great War to End All Wars. Even during the silent period, you have a gallery of maimed men driven to violent extremes when they are unable to adjust to society. You have that here with a couple of characters who have various disfigurements. This film goes out of its way to flout the production code. Beyond its usual racy sexuality, it touches on themes of cannibalism and implied rape. It is also more willing to look at the deformity of its characters than anything after the code might stomach. It's an uncomfortable film even ninety years later.</p>
<p>An audience with an awareness of how horror movies worked during this period will have a choice of murderers, and will probably suspect Dr. X himself, given that the film bears his name. The film plays its mystery close to the vest, and the identity of the killer is a surprise, but not out of character. The mask of synthetic flesh he wears is more deformed than his everyday appearance. You can sense the glee of make-up artist Max Factor who was usually responsible for making actors beautiful for the camera, but is here given free reign to create grotesques. (He does make Fay Wray look positively luminous, it should be noted). This is amplified by the otherworldly oranges and greens created by two-strip technicolor.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjARoiwunTf2MJHM5g_k-AglukbSSriw_8GtrICEOgIegYZWhekAPaHjdDzdQWnbWGUrJUegoXbtbso2DXSB7c2rHcTa7YlAP-p2oc8oAyKpY28ygZaQgMS924c-e8sNxy1_XGgteJSGeJ5aTDVOd_RT1A_HPOulK8tzJE09CL4PRjomFYgZCZjzQ/s989/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill in Doctor X (1932), Fay is wearing a green dress, Atwill is wearing a gray suit" border="0" data-original-height="725" data-original-width="989" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjARoiwunTf2MJHM5g_k-AglukbSSriw_8GtrICEOgIegYZWhekAPaHjdDzdQWnbWGUrJUegoXbtbso2DXSB7c2rHcTa7YlAP-p2oc8oAyKpY28ygZaQgMS924c-e8sNxy1_XGgteJSGeJ5aTDVOd_RT1A_HPOulK8tzJE09CL4PRjomFYgZCZjzQ/w400-h293/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" title="Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill in Doctor X (1932)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The design of the film by Anton Grot creates an art deco nightmare with the film's array of scientific equipment. These two are illuminated in vivid oranges and greens by the film's color design. This is state of the art production design that borrows a bit from the grandiosity of some of the German silent films like Metropolis, and it is beautiful. The UCLA restoration is stunning. Michael Curtiz was one of the great directors for creating vivid otherwheres, whether the Spanish Main in <i>Captain Blood</i>, Casablanca in the film of the same name, or Sherwood Forest in <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i>. He experiments with some of his later effects here. The sword fight between Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne in <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i> has a passage where the camera watches the action from above, down a spiral stone staircase where it can see only the shadowplay of the duel. That scene looks a LOT like how he films his sets and his action here. Curtiz doesn't get the respect he probably should because he's not a traditional auteur, but damned if he didn't make more great movies than many directors who bear that label.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYW-D5A5WPhDWZdl-Ey9au_k2qOgnRVFAgYQm10ItYC17aBUWbsrjY8MS8nURMBErB3B-E-_TwHjePoR8TE_r53kdbwJo398ykVHR8hPeFx6atOaMFcfAGw5cEMFadiJXh3eIhZxG3XklwqCiyTjWxPEQMYz3X8hGTfm3Ox1wrewmezKsoCBPkBw/s989/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Lee Tracy in a room full of bones and skeletons in Doctor X (1932)" border="0" data-original-height="725" data-original-width="989" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYW-D5A5WPhDWZdl-Ey9au_k2qOgnRVFAgYQm10ItYC17aBUWbsrjY8MS8nURMBErB3B-E-_TwHjePoR8TE_r53kdbwJo398ykVHR8hPeFx6atOaMFcfAGw5cEMFadiJXh3eIhZxG3XklwqCiyTjWxPEQMYz3X8hGTfm3Ox1wrewmezKsoCBPkBw/w400-h293/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.png" title="Lee Tracy in Doctor X (1932)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Lionel Atwill isn't usually mentioned in the same breath as Karloff or Lugosi, but in the early 1930s he was co-equal with them as one of the faces of horror movies. It's not for nothing that he appeared alongside Karloff and Lugosi in <i>Son of Frankenstein</i>. <i>Doctor X </i>is one of the high points of his career, and one of the few times he got to play a nominally heroic character (in truth, my favorite of his roles is as one of the actors in Jack Benny's troupe in <i>To Be or Not To Be</i>; Lubitsch had a taste for horror actors, given that he also had a pretty good non-horror part for Lugosi in <i>Ninotchka</i> This is off in the weeds, though). Fay Wray is the other big name in the cast, and she's good here. She's not nearly as helpless as some of the damsels she played in other films (hellooooo Kong). She was known as one of the best screamers in the business, principally from the films she made in 1932 and 1933. This is the start of that reputation. The ostensible leading man, the newspaperman played by Lee Tracy, is the film's weak link. He functions as the David Manners character, if that means something to you, AND he plays the comic relief. It's an uneasy mix. He seems out of his depth, though that's the character that's been written for him as much as it is his performance. That he gets the girl in the end seems more incredible than any of the film's weird science.</p><p>
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<p>Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>As usual with the challenge, I'll be prioritizing films that are new to me, so I'm off to a good start there. I'll also be prioritizing pre-Code and silent horror this year, because during the last few decades, the genre has gotten too big to really track. We'll see how it goes.</p>
<p>My current progress:<br />
New to me films: 1<br />
Total films: 2</p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfKLmjz4VuEB3c_ig4rEvnIX4Utctuuf8p6weJsEA5EGAjXpfI3jTnmLiXYcix8Jbl7f253wGsyfUbN9Fl8f1SHNbPumPVpG99Nja1QDw8nY4cvP4Xj4U7LlFrILGH6WtuGxYGBQGXWEZFF2cJX4XWmrplF-COuQPDziai4N4RMJazaOP345X9Nw/s883/OctoberChallenge2014-Haxan.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="883" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfKLmjz4VuEB3c_ig4rEvnIX4Utctuuf8p6weJsEA5EGAjXpfI3jTnmLiXYcix8Jbl7f253wGsyfUbN9Fl8f1SHNbPumPVpG99Nja1QDw8nY4cvP4Xj4U7LlFrILGH6WtuGxYGBQGXWEZFF2cJX4XWmrplF-COuQPDziai4N4RMJazaOP345X9Nw/s400/OctoberChallenge2014-Haxan.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-43776886553763741812023-10-03T13:20:00.000-07:002023-10-03T13:20:07.163-07:00Behind Castle Walls<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz5dHCj6ujdFpce0GgPb3Q7sJbRnE39Y1TOPpmkEl0eAKtgVwQ7qwWFaVIOI22jltgDo0mX07ktFPCtSY7AX8jJaKOFBWQ15QDB7dvcIQphmQlaL7KvkhdTHMXyUCpsGfcMTIQIBB79wsUy9Tkiup9-Ri2LFzntsHDS7VWDwbPXopi-qCIv2yWNQ/s1331/FinderScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Taissa Farmiga as Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, standing in an arched door" border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1331" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz5dHCj6ujdFpce0GgPb3Q7sJbRnE39Y1TOPpmkEl0eAKtgVwQ7qwWFaVIOI22jltgDo0mX07ktFPCtSY7AX8jJaKOFBWQ15QDB7dvcIQphmQlaL7KvkhdTHMXyUCpsGfcMTIQIBB79wsUy9Tkiup9-Ri2LFzntsHDS7VWDwbPXopi-qCIv2yWNQ/w400-h169/FinderScreenSnapz001.png" title="Taissa Farmiga in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>My partner and I were speculating in the course of a long drive last week about favorite authors we would like to have met. We've met a fair few of them, but she would like to have met Toni Morrison and I would like to have met Robert Bloch. I don't know what that says about us. An author I decided I would prefer not to have met is Shirley Jackson. On the evidence of her work and the general outline of her biography, I don't think I would have liked her. The dominant theme of her work is a neurotic paranoia that in her own life was apparently completely justified by the dynamics of her marriage. I watched the recent biopic starring Elisabeth Moss as Jackson and found myself nodding along even when I knew that they were fudging the details (they fudged the details a LOT). Jackson has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately, what with the Netflix adaptation of <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i> and renewed interest in her last completed novel, <i><b>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</b></i>, which serves as an ur-text for Park Chan-wook's Gothic potboiler, <i>Stoker</i>, and which was made into a film in 2018 by director Stacie Passon based on the book itself. Passon's film does an admirable job of meeting Jackson on her own terms, neurotic paranoia and all.</p>
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<p>The story concerns the Blackwood sisters, Mary Katherine and Constance, who live in Blackwood Manor with their Uncle Julian, who is an invalid. Their parents passed away under mysterious circumstances and the general consensus among the townies is that Constance poisoned their parents with arsenic. Constance no longer goes into town. That job falls to Mary Katherine--Merricat, as she is known to everyone--who endures the scorn of the townies when she goes to get groceries and library books. The Blackwoods have always been the town squires. They have always lived in Blackwood manor. Only a handful of town people ever visit them, and Constance greets them politely, but they never drink their tea, or eat their food. One day, their estranged cousin Charles arrives with the intention of looting the safe in which the sisters protect their inherited wealth. Charles is dashing and sweeps Constance off her feet and plies her with promises of traveling the world. Merricat distrusts Charles, and when her distrust comes to a head, they have an argument that results in a fire that burns the mansion. The townies use this as an opportunity to vandalize and potentially loot the place. Merricat and Constance hide from Charles in the woods, and when they return to Blackwood Manor, the upper floors have been ruined and their Uncle Julian has died. But Charles isn't done with the sisters. And Merricat isn't done with him...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibggUyx5bOt2hY2SCeTjeleC0CeiY5MDlLLlFuJ3Fhzo-FwtCr1BiSQeF2ATqHHjndYwvzilqeHWRecsGEc2DaL3wKTi1dY_8G2-I9PSYEYvOjgcFe3_Z6WbL21bQy6MSKwfxW_AWszDWP0luITaXJuEGbqUdShtdrNtL0HpQEv6YXU8UUCJ0IWg/s1331/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Alexandra Daddario as Constance Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1331" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibggUyx5bOt2hY2SCeTjeleC0CeiY5MDlLLlFuJ3Fhzo-FwtCr1BiSQeF2ATqHHjndYwvzilqeHWRecsGEc2DaL3wKTi1dY_8G2-I9PSYEYvOjgcFe3_Z6WbL21bQy6MSKwfxW_AWszDWP0luITaXJuEGbqUdShtdrNtL0HpQEv6YXU8UUCJ0IWg/w400-h169/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" title="Alexandra Daddario in We Have Always Lived In the Castle" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Film adaptations of Jackson have traditionally been a mixed bag. There are several short films and at least one feature film derived from "The Lottery," one film derived from "The Summer People," one film from <i>The Bird's Nest</i>, one film from the uncompleted <i>Come Along With Me</i>, and the various versions of <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i>. Some of these are good--Robert Wise's version of <i>The Haunting</i> is a damned masterpiece--but some of these are not. It is a surprise that it has taken this long for the movies to notice <i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</i>, though in retrospect, it's also understandable. Because, what is this story? It feels like a horror story, but isn't really one. It feels like a melodrama, too, but isn't one. The catch-all of "Gothic" doesn't seem to do it justice, even though an enumeration of its themes and narrative strategies scream "Gothic." It seems a singular story from a particular author's private universe. We'll stick with Gothic. And Gothic melodrama isn't the same as Gothic horror. So how do you market this? Jackson's name, associated with Horror for decades at this point, helps. The filmmakers have tweaked the narrative some to align it more with the Gothic's offspring, the horror movie and the mystery story. It loses a little by doing this, even if it gains an audience.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQmkCXUOlu3-ODdqZGCjCEIyKwMxOPNjWvD2zCr-mscuyyudZtvsjVfl7ouhQqXUt1iRW1q0azvDHLp92T2GtksrAuLVlJgeEDmZki9uI-lW0A-rKkND0nVlle26AImMn5-4t-Pvss-O6zRbPrQR60SYzD317hHbK4uGgCBOiQd5Oan-6pGnNBtg/s1000/wehavealwayslivedinthecastle01.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="The Blackwoods at dinner in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="1000" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQmkCXUOlu3-ODdqZGCjCEIyKwMxOPNjWvD2zCr-mscuyyudZtvsjVfl7ouhQqXUt1iRW1q0azvDHLp92T2GtksrAuLVlJgeEDmZki9uI-lW0A-rKkND0nVlle26AImMn5-4t-Pvss-O6zRbPrQR60SYzD317hHbK4uGgCBOiQd5Oan-6pGnNBtg/w400-h267/wehavealwayslivedinthecastle01.png" title="Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario, and Sebastian Stan in We Have Always Lived In the Castle" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>In truth, it doesn't need the tweak. Merricat is an ideal goth girl heroine, whose psychosis drives her to extreme lengths. The bits of magic she places around the borders of her world align the film with a folk horror sensibility, while her secret is the kind of secret that motivates much more violent films. Jackson's touch is more delicate than that of someone like Jim Thompson or Robert Bloch, who both specialized in first-person accounts of murderous psychopaths, but Merricat in her way is both crazier and deadlier than those characters. At the outset, she lists both Richard Plantagenet and <i>amanita phalloides</i> among her favorite things in a paragraph that rivals the start of Jackson's <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i> for linguistic virtuosity. The film takes its cue from the Wise version of <i>The Haunting</i> when it comes to translating that paragraph by having Merricat--played by Taissa Farmiga--narrate the opening in voice over. But not the whole thing. The film leaves Richard III and death cap mushrooms out of the narration and prefers to show the audience these things instead. The filmmakers are very keen on showing and not telling, even though the choice of using Merricat's narration throughout undercuts that a little. It keeps the important parts, though. It keeps her musings about poisoning the whole town, and her desire to eat a child only to have Constance tell her that she doesn't know how to cook one. The main change is a big one, though, in which the sisters become accomplices in a crime that doesn't appear in the book, perhaps as an offering to a horror audience that might demand a higher body count. In truth, it's a path that the book very much could have taken, if Jackson were a more conventional writer. It makes for a more conventional film regardless.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VhWeNzaGA36dk4r-jDrklDmX_H_2kf1yS3fuR7sAcLshi8ORABwjg6thKUvPpP5G75tqfnc75GPMYHLUpjmt5-5J4N1EoDDxZLvEy0iSZYC59JBppjGUFzhJkj85sHmX1HKqrSm9D8lGpU6rTMzZGVJV4GyDOxSd10HPaR3dS84A_KXiKRo3MA/s1331/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Merricat reflected in an upturned mirror in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1331" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VhWeNzaGA36dk4r-jDrklDmX_H_2kf1yS3fuR7sAcLshi8ORABwjg6thKUvPpP5G75tqfnc75GPMYHLUpjmt5-5J4N1EoDDxZLvEy0iSZYC59JBppjGUFzhJkj85sHmX1HKqrSm9D8lGpU6rTMzZGVJV4GyDOxSd10HPaR3dS84A_KXiKRo3MA/w400-h169/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.png" title="Taissa Farmiga in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Given the first-person nature of the film, even more than in the book, a viewer can be forgiven for wondering if the torment Merricat endures from the townies isn't her own paranoia. The taunting from children throughout certainly makes one understand why she might want to murder them all. There's a class element to this, too, given the wealth of the Blackwoods and the envy of the townies. The feeling of constant persecution is unsettling. So is the feeling of isolation.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnDTjHTdJUjTyqpo7dZDvdOLuTKJQQNB6kpBb4FzDVN2zo79nWyEKrbEghj5IQxQVKra_Quo60yHsRIMka4KjbtqQp7XdOyQDkT4PEVonyCBDl414W9JVWkxEMjdTU8LPSCIVTNRZt9keGILdxrj6iQIEttMM0R_kwiZAMHBIGgOZdWydVaXuiyA/s672/wehavealwayslivedinthecastle02.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Sebastian Stan as Charles looking dashing in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="672" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnDTjHTdJUjTyqpo7dZDvdOLuTKJQQNB6kpBb4FzDVN2zo79nWyEKrbEghj5IQxQVKra_Quo60yHsRIMka4KjbtqQp7XdOyQDkT4PEVonyCBDl414W9JVWkxEMjdTU8LPSCIVTNRZt9keGILdxrj6iQIEttMM0R_kwiZAMHBIGgOZdWydVaXuiyA/w400-h221/wehavealwayslivedinthecastle02.png" title="Sebastian Stan in We Have Always Lived in the Castl" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The "facts" of the deaths of the rest of the Blackwoods would seem to be a warning to fortune hunters, but Charles shows up anyway. As I was watching the film, I kept wanting Charles to be played by Matthew Goode, even though Sebastian Stan is a perfectly fine actor and eye candy to boot. This is the lingering impression of <i>Stoker</i>, I think. Fortune hunters never come to good ends in Gothic films, and this film, unlike the book, follows that trend. Charlie is dashing and oily in equal measures here and it's entirely understandable why Constance might fall for him. It's equally understandable why Merricat might loathe him, even if there weren't that vague undercurrent of incest running through the film.</p>
<p>This is unusually well-cast. Farmiga has apparently gone into the family business, starring in her own line of horror movies in parallel with her sister Vera, but the parts she chooses are strikingly different. She's a good fit for Merricat. I wouldn't have thought Alexandra Daddario would be a good fit for Constance Blackwood, but I am happy to be wrong about this. Crispin Glover's performance as Uncle Julian is a nice bonus. He gives it a touch of strange. Where the film falls down is in its generation--or lack thereof--of mood. This is a digital production where the crispness of its image is a disadvantage. The visual quality of the film has the airlessness of a film made for streaming. There's nothing wrong with the actual direction of the film and the actual production design is handsome, but the cinematography drains some of the life out of it. It could stand to have more shadows.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivjr8Cyifcw9Rp4zpJIVzdAZMQZbtdF_aJ-nnxrjzeuWMmTh6WMRIhErBtDuKOeLD6eWeTwNcvuzyiqXeaAaNkCPEuPzwWC44LyUWa6kpwm_nXngl9SDhft16ccOr_BAZRG5fxcpW9klHs-0XKtxS59gUjnZLw5hkL7aQroYsLV6VdRllpotfy5Q/s1275/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Constance and Charles seen dancing through a window in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="1275" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivjr8Cyifcw9Rp4zpJIVzdAZMQZbtdF_aJ-nnxrjzeuWMmTh6WMRIhErBtDuKOeLD6eWeTwNcvuzyiqXeaAaNkCPEuPzwWC44LyUWa6kpwm_nXngl9SDhft16ccOr_BAZRG5fxcpW9klHs-0XKtxS59gUjnZLw5hkL7aQroYsLV6VdRllpotfy5Q/w400-h167/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" title="Sebastian Stan and Alexandra Daddario in We Have Always Lived in the Castle" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Even so, a nominally faithful adaptation is surprising enough. My dad used to say "close enough for government work" all the time, and that's probably the case here. It's not bad at all. Not transcendent, mind you, which is its own kind of disappointment, but it'll do until transcendence comes along. </p>
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<p>Welcome to this year's October Horror Movie Challenge. I'm participating in my friend, Aaron Christensen's annual fundraiser during this year's challenge. Aaron has chosen the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project as this year's recipient for our community's largess, so if you've got a few bucks lying around, <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/womens-reproductive-rights-assistance-project-wrrap/scare-a-thon-2023" target="_blank">here's a donation link for the donor drive</a>. You know what to do.</p>
<p>As usual with the challenge, I'll be prioritizing films that are new to me, so I'm off to a good start there. I'll also be prioritizing pre-Code and silent horror this year, because during the last few decades, the genre has gotten too big to really track. We'll see how it goes.</p>
<p>My current progress:<br />
New to me films: 1<br />
Total films: 1</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-27621101760126953422023-09-26T19:43:00.000-07:002023-09-26T19:43:42.823-07:00Keep Watching the Sky!<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRcKAwhhfiexaewNjC95c-7H6liytAZJDrcPwJc7ow7ZLfuyjbVG7u0voJ7mNeT2LzDLIR5roSPrjGCCG77GyCDxiTuz4CGIEaIwHYa4wV7ocXf5Ba_PBD_pkHPZXy48p-Vy2WkAqvdbJk2zJzqYVDs0xwVnTecMba66bOCO2o9eurBTCF-8A3A/s1038/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1038" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRcKAwhhfiexaewNjC95c-7H6liytAZJDrcPwJc7ow7ZLfuyjbVG7u0voJ7mNeT2LzDLIR5roSPrjGCCG77GyCDxiTuz4CGIEaIwHYa4wV7ocXf5Ba_PBD_pkHPZXy48p-Vy2WkAqvdbJk2zJzqYVDs0xwVnTecMba66bOCO2o9eurBTCF-8A3A/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>I was eight years old the first time I saw <i><b>The Thing from Another World</b></i> (1951, directed by Christian Nyby). It played in the middle of a Saturday afternoon block of science fiction films on an independent TV station out of Denver. If memory serves (unreliable at this distance in my life), it was sandwiched between <i>The Neanderthal Man</i> and <i>Tarantula</i>. For all of <i>Tarantula's</i> virtues, <i>The Thing</i> was very much the cream of this crop. I knew its quality even then, and it's a film that rewards an adult viewer maybe even more than a monster kid. When I was talking about the film last year with a friend, we both were struck by the idea that all of the characters seemed to have a purpose in the film with their own motivations and inner lives. I went further by suggesting that, unlike the characters in many science fiction films, the characters in <i>The Thing</i> seem particularly adult to me. I take that to be the influence of Howard Hawks and Charles Lederer (and the unbilled Ben Hecht). This is a grim world of men--aviators and scientists--tasked with doing a job. Like Hawks's own films as a director, it's a film that builds communities in its shot compositions and compresses the dialogue in overlapping salvos that make its characters seem world weary and sly at the same time. The other thing that eight year old me noticed was that the monster wasn't so great. It seemed then and seems now to be a Frankenstein rip-off and not a particularly good one. It doesn't help that that's not the monster one finds in the film's source text, nor the one in the film's various remakes. That's why its star has dimmed over the years. Possibly, that's why it has been all but eclipsed by the 1982 remake. In common with the 1982 film, though, it is a portrait of its time etched in microcosm.</p>
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<p>The story is familiar by now. Captain Patrick Hendry of the United States Air Force and his crew are assigned to fly to a research station above the arctic circle to investigate a phenomenon reported by the scientists there. Along for the ride is reporter Ned Scott, who is kicking around looking for a story. Upon their arrival, they discover that their instruments--particularly their compass--have become unreliable due to the presence of a mass of metal that has fallen to earth. The scientists point out to them that "fallen" is the wrong word. Piloted is more like it. They suspect a UFO. Also at the research station is Hendry's on-again off-again girlfriend, Nikki Nicholson, who delights in teasing Hendry unmercifully. She's the secretary for the head scientist, Dr. Arthur Carrington, who is brilliant but distrustful of the military. The crew and the scientists and Scott journey to where the UFO came down and discover that it has embedded itself in the ice. The part that protrudes from the ice is made from an alloy unknown to science. The crew endeavours to free the craft from the ice, but the thermite bombs they use to melt the ice set the ship ablaze and it explodes, leaving no trace. However, the pilot of the ship is also embedded in the ice, away from the vessel. The crew chops him out in a block of ice they can return to base. Carrington wants to thaw the pilot for immediate examination, but Hendry refuses and puts the base under military command. Carrington's colleague, Dr. Chapman agrees with Hendry, cautioning that the alien may be carrying pathogens against which humans have no immunity or that the alien may have no immunity to earthbound pathogens. Hendry tries to radio for instructions, but inclement weather interferes with the radio's ability to transmit. Meanwhile, one of the men tasked with guarding the alien leaves an electric blanket on the ice because he doesn't like looking at it. It thaws. The alien reveals itself to be hostile. Carrington demands to communicate with the alien because it must be wiser than humans to cross the gulf of space, and his research determines that it is a plant-like organism, carrying seeds that can be grown into new aliens when fed human blood. Meanwhile, Hendry and his crew fight a desperate battle with the alien, who seems both indestructible and capable of regenerating grievous harm to itself. When Hendry discovers Carrington's conclusions about the alien, he realizes that it is an existential threat to human kind. But Carrington believes the alien must be preserved even at the cost of their own lives. Science demands a sacrifice. And the reporter, Scott? He's on to the story of the millennium if he can ever contact the rest of the world to file it...</p>
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<p>It's not hard to see the lingering trauma of World War II in <i>The Thing From Another World</i>, nor the paranoia that followed the U.S.S.R's detonation of a nuclear weapon in 1949, an event many Americans thought couldn't happen for decades, if ever. This is one of the first cinematic iterations of Cold War science fiction, a theme that would run through almost all of the science fiction movies that would follow. The central "heroes" of the film are military men. Like the heroes in other Howard Hawks films, they are cynical and pragmatic, under no illusions that their jobs will not get them killed and doing it anyway. This is an archetype that derives from WWII propaganda in films like <i>Air Force</i> and <i>The Sands of Iwo Jima</i>, and it's one that persists in films until the Vietnam war. The scientists are split. Carrington is the classic scientist as appeaser, maybe the scientist as traitor. He's styled differently from his peers, wearing a fur hat that looks vaguely Russian and a Van Dyke beard that's vaguely demonic. The urge to share military secrets--and the existence of a UFO and alien pilot in this film is absolutely a military secret during most of its length--plays to the grievance of a nation whose trump card, the atomic bomb, was given to its enemies by subversives. It's not hard to see the Rosenbergs in Carrington. At the very least, he's coded as a Communist. When Nikki tells Hendry that Carrington "Doesn't think like us," she's not just talking about his scientific genius. The film's counterbalance to Carrington isn't Hendry, though. It's Dr. Chapman, who is the voice of reason among the scientists. Like the military men, he's a pragmatist. He's the kind of man whose genius works on behalf of the state, on behalf of the military. I'd like to think that Chapman is a stand-in for Oppenheimer, maybe, but he could just as easily be Edward Teller. The film hand-waves Carrington's treason at the end with the excuse that he's overworked and hasn't slept in days, and the military grants him amnesty and forgiveness at the end of the film through their mouthpiece, the reporter, but is he really forgiven? The film exhorts the viewer to keep watching the skies, but we must also keep watching each other, too. It internalizes xenophobia in the best tradition of red scares throughout the 20th century and on into the 21st.</p>
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<p>This film does not have an a-list cast, but it does okay. Part of this is the writing, which has snappy dialogue in the best traditions of screwball comedies. Director Christian Nyby, working under the gimlet eye of Hawks, overlaps and speeds-up that dialogue along the lines of <i>His Girl Friday</i>. I mentioned that the characters seem like adults, and that's definitely true of the relationship between Hendry and Nikki, whose romance is only barely chaste, and probably isn't really. At one point Nikki ties Hendry to a chair to keep his hands off of her, while teasing him with sexual banter and I'll be damned if I know how they got this overt bondage game past the censors. This is a relationship between people comfortable with who they are and with each other. You can sense a history extending before the start of the film in all of their scenes together, even without the film telling you about it (the film tells you about it anyway, just to make sure). This is surely Kenneth Tobey's finest hour in a long and distinguished career. He's affable and competent, the kind of commander who reassures his troops and gets the best out of them. This is certainly the role for which Margaret Sheridan is best known. She's a type in this film, the "Hawksian" woman who gives as good as she gets from the men. The film doesn't do her a lot of favors as far as her role in the story. I can envision a parody of <i>The Thing</i> in which all she does is show up and ask if anyone wants a cup of coffee. But she's not a shrinking violet. She never has hysterics. In her own quiet way, she's as competent as the men, which is something Hawks admired in women.</p>
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<p>The supporting players--many of them unbilled--get their moments, too. The scene where MacPherson (Robert Nichols) reads the Air Force's official conclusions regarding the existence of UFOs is a droll bit of meta-commentary, as is his desire to read a "nice quiet horror story" while guarding the block of ice. Ned Scott (Douglas Spencer) is a familiar kind of character from Hawks's other films: the hard-boiled reporter on the trail of a scoop. He gets to be the audience's surrogate for receiving exposition, but he's cynical about it and none too happy about being silenced by the military. Still, he gets the film's most famous line as the movie comes to a close. Other character bits are sprinkled throughout (the general's repeated emphatic demand that his visitors close the door when they come for their orders; the ribbing Hendry's co-pilot gives him over his romantic foibles; even the soldier who puts the blanket over the block of ice because the alien gives him the creeps). It all makes for a world in microcosm, something the best science fiction films of the 50s learn from <i>The Thing</i> and the element that's lacking in the ones that are less than good.</p>
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<p>An audience seventy odd years later will find a lot to fault in the film's science fictional ideas, but even here, there are images that are indelible. The scene where the scientists and soldiers form a circle defining the shape of the flying saucer is so baked into the collective massmind that the 1982 remake restages it (Carpenter also included the scene on a television in <i>Halloween</i>). When I was a kid, I found the baby things that Carrington grows on a diet of human blood to be the creepiest damned things; they're still a thrill as an adult. The main creature, though? That hasn't aged well at all. Even in 1951 that was a design that was twenty years out of date, clearly plagiarized from James Whale's <i>Frankenstein</i>. There is a certain irony in the fact that in <i>Frankenstein</i>, it's lightning that gives The Creature life, while in <i>The Thing</i>, it is lightning that reduces it to ash. The science fiction writers of the day didn't much like <i>The Thing from Another World</i>, perhaps for the same reasons a contemporary audience is sometimes unimpressed. The monster doesn't hold up. The monster one finds in John W. Campbell's novella, "Who Goes There?," is a shapeshifting telepath, an alien that the filmmakers may have decided was too horrible and too technically complicated to create on screen. The 1982 film provides that monster, though, and shows up the 1951 film's paucity of imagination. It's also possible that the science fiction writers of the time were loath to get on John W. Campbell's bad side given his position as the editor of <i>Astounding Science Fiction</i>, the preeminent sci fi market of its day. You never know.</p>
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<p>I should pause here for a bit to mention that "Who Goes There?" is a <i>terrible</i> story. I mean, the raw material is strong, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that that raw material was already out there in Lovecraft's <i>At The Mountains of Madness</i> and "The Whisperer in Darkness," among others. Campbell's prose is godawful and his characters are as deep as a sheen of water on concrete. Never has a piece of literature benefited so much from its film adaptations as this story. Even the much derided 2010 version is better. So make of that what you will.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I think <i>The Thing From Another World</i> is a pretty good film in spite of its drawbacks. The strength of its filmmaking kept it in the bright circle of critical acclaim until well after the release of Carpenter's remake, until that film's reputation spread through the video revolution. It's certainly a film that fits into the canon of Hawks's films no matter the name on the director's chairs. Sometimes it's the producer who is the auteur, after all. In any event, it's a film I revisit with pleasure. It gets the human beings right and it has its finger on the pulse of its zeitgeist, and that's good enough for me.</p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-83271660199560478032023-09-01T20:31:00.000-07:002023-11-13T05:53:47.877-08:00The Grant Mystique: Operation Petticoat (1959)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5w52kUEAv8ioVUa2KzTubALYQGZdMj7kkv5do0xhLNM7FbNU8k80qDf-HiJokd5ClvKq6CTFEiztIA-F9sSlUUswnhN-BaIK1AVRe8gyqZhFoCwXtgIOjzwM3On0B4PnYhz2A4uoVDINLB4-p-Rja70GeuwozXS7fDnwrUZjJ53IiNJO67EcEGA/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz017.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Operation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5w52kUEAv8ioVUa2KzTubALYQGZdMj7kkv5do0xhLNM7FbNU8k80qDf-HiJokd5ClvKq6CTFEiztIA-F9sSlUUswnhN-BaIK1AVRe8gyqZhFoCwXtgIOjzwM3On0B4PnYhz2A4uoVDINLB4-p-Rja70GeuwozXS7fDnwrUZjJ53IiNJO67EcEGA/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz017.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>If you were to name Cary Grant's most influential movies, you might name films like <i>North by Northwest, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday,</i> or <i>The Philadelphia Story</i>, which are all <i>bona fide</i> Hollywood classics. You might not get around to <i><b>Operation Petticoat </b></i>(1959, directed by Blake Edwards), and you would be wrong to omit it. In its way, it is among the most influential of all of Grant's films, and not just because it was Grant's biggest box-office hit (spoiler: it was). My own relationship with the film might be instructive. I originally saw the film when I was a kid. I saw it on television with my dad on a Saturday afternoon. It was very much a "dad" kind of movie: a comedy about the experiences of a military unit in the war. This was familiar territory because service comedies were a staple of the television of my youth. <i>Hogan's Heroes</i>, <i>McHale's Navy, Gomer Pyle, F-Troop, M*A*S*H,</i> all of these were everywhere back then, playing endlessly in the vampiric half-life of syndication. All of them trace a lineage to <i>Operation Petticoat</i>, either directly or in passing. Because, as I've said, <i>Operation Petticoat</i> was an absolutely gigantic hit. Hollywood follows the money. The downside of its influence is that <i>Operation Petticoat</i> sometimes feels like a TV sitcom. Many of its supporting actors--particularly Dick Sargent and Gavin McLeod--went on to long television careers. The film begat a TV spinoff in 1977 unto itself, which I may have seen before I saw the film proper (this happened with <i>M*A*S*H,</i> too). Its director, Blake Edwards, was at that time primarily known as a television writer and director, whose work on <i>Peter Gunn</i> was contemporary with <i>Operation Petticoat</i>. <i>Operation Petticoat</i> would launch him into the big time, and his films over the next decade would include the <i>Pink Panther</i> movies, <i>Breakfast at Tiffanys</i>, <i>Days of Wine and Roses</i>, and <i>Experiment in Terror</i>, among others. For all that, the presence of Cary Grant and, to a lesser extent, Tony Curtis removes the film from being merely an elaborate TV sitcom. The film persona of Cary Grant guarantees this. Grant was well rewarded for his service here, too. The film netted him three million 1959 dollars, which is about thirty-one million in 2023 dollars. It's not for nothing that Grant was among the wealthiest movie stars who ever lived.</p>
<p>The film itself? It has its pleasures.</p>
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<p>The story follows the misfortunes of the Sea Tiger, a submarine bombed and sunk at the outset of the Second World War before its maiden voyage. The Japanese are on the march and the sub's skipper, Captain Matt Sherman, vows to repair the sub and sail to a safer sub tender to the south. The sub's status as "sunk" is only the beginning of the problems, though, because most of the Sea Tiger's crew has been reassigned and actually obtaining supplies to repair the ship is getting more difficult by the minute. Enter Lieutenant Holden, the only available naval officer available to transfer to the Sea Tiger. His previous posting was as a "morale" officer for an admiral in Honolulu, where there was a misunderstanding concerning the admiral's wife. Holden at first seems like a dandy, but underneath is a natural born con man whose career in the navy is an elaborate ruse to woo a wealthy girl back in the states ("She owns 5% of the railroad stocks in the United States," he says when asked if she was on the other side of the tracks. "She owns the tracks."). Holden enlists a prisoner who is the "best operator in the Pacific" and the beleaguered crew of the Sea Tiger to scrounge, loot, and steal what they need. Sherman's superior, upon seeing the scope of Holden's operation, tells his adjutant, "I believe we've just been the victim of Sherman's march to the sea." The Sea Tiger gets underway under the blessing of a witch doctor Holden finds in the bush, and their journey commences. Their first port of call for supplies yields a unit of nurses, whom Holden promises safe passage. This throws the entire crew into a state of arousal and triggers a number of conflicts between the crew and their duties. Holden starts up a campaign to woo Lt. Barbara Duran, in spite of his rich fiancé back home. This lands him in Sherman's dog house and he is confined to quarters. When they make their next port of call, however, Sherman finds that he needs Holden's gift for grand larceny to obtain needed supplies and parts, including paint for the hull. There is unfortunately no complete supply of primer in one color, but there is enough of red primer and white primer to coat the hull when mixed, resulting in a pink undercoat. The Japanese find the Sea Tiger before they can cover the hull with the gray top coat and they take to sea in pink. This comes to the attention of Tokyo Rose, who spreads misinformation about the Sea Tiger that arouses the suspicion of the rest of the US Navy in the vicinity, and when they find the pink submarine, their orders are to sink it on sight...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj53rcoeCnKnxQkQW-BVuEKqV-r12ZTv9MBiq_ZmUqlzw11IV_6C3oVbG7j9N3DJmeF-eGtNBJPtbGCScLpwm9o0xjyB8WawbiAlNqi6fpvGvkcJCWFZOBTsas2dWVGhGVlAnZJvCyKyc6R22YmEQ_haWE4ng23Jgq6zHva_JmK0KSEZeTQ2BOMZg/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz005.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj53rcoeCnKnxQkQW-BVuEKqV-r12ZTv9MBiq_ZmUqlzw11IV_6C3oVbG7j9N3DJmeF-eGtNBJPtbGCScLpwm9o0xjyB8WawbiAlNqi6fpvGvkcJCWFZOBTsas2dWVGhGVlAnZJvCyKyc6R22YmEQ_haWE4ng23Jgq6zHva_JmK0KSEZeTQ2BOMZg/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz005.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i>Operation Petticoat</i> was originally a project for Tony Curtis, who had the idea of casting Cary Grant as the captain of the Sea Tiger because he remembered Grant's role as a submarine commander in <i>Destination: Tokyo</i>. In some ways, this is a funhouse mirror version of <i>Destination: Tokyo</i>, with Curtis's Lieutenant Holden as the John Garfield character: he's the tough kid only in it for himself whose call to his patriotic duty grows from his experiences in war. Curtis was responsible for the hiring of Blake Edwards, with whom he had already made two other films (they would work together again on <i>The Great Race</i> six years later). While Grant is the audience's point of view character and has top billing, the film arguably casts both Grant and Curtis as coequal leads. <br /></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ciBkAYNOSn271ooV9012T5EB7RtkoTB71ckIZN1am1H9mJGmaRZVbokwbJbNT0j-2rqoH-tfOgO2iuKhhkyDzoShCZcFTxaGfcFZZ2_YU7tnvV9_CPbYFPMnSi78U2QTXbtfO5hqYTmPJ_yWLg5zaMVvQp0wTHx-8gEd_YietVAGjDfigp0aRA/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz008.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ciBkAYNOSn271ooV9012T5EB7RtkoTB71ckIZN1am1H9mJGmaRZVbokwbJbNT0j-2rqoH-tfOgO2iuKhhkyDzoShCZcFTxaGfcFZZ2_YU7tnvV9_CPbYFPMnSi78U2QTXbtfO5hqYTmPJ_yWLg5zaMVvQp0wTHx-8gEd_YietVAGjDfigp0aRA/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz008.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p> Many of the film's incidents are reflections of actual events from the war. There was apocryphally a pink submarine, painted that color because its captain thought it would make it hard to spot at dawn and at dusk against a pink sky. There's some credence to this, too, given the Navy's experiments with so-called "dazzle" paint schemes in the first World War, which disguised the shape, speed, and heading of ships so painted. There was also an evacuation of nurses from Corregidor via submarine. Matt Sherman's letter to the quartermaster regarding toilet paper is factual, too. All of this is evidence that while war may be a crucible of the nature of god and man a la <i>Blood Meridian</i> or <i>Come and See</i>, it's also a theater of the absurd. <i>Catch 22</i> was only barely fiction. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhavqGneGX60lwyXVlFkntumonljqrQYaxRnoPImGIdTwPPmxC8k-5LKb5mOQAWo3L3qLRtVtlqiScDQ1hPqYpKc7eHf9qI5D7LjgcFGvQCWO2px9F2bXxNdHAwM9vk2uysUs-fL4x6zoApqkP7IN1d7uyIx7gfnznfHNqDuVfNR-AYY7S2hTiLpw/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz015.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Gavin McLeod and Tony Curtis with pig in Operation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhavqGneGX60lwyXVlFkntumonljqrQYaxRnoPImGIdTwPPmxC8k-5LKb5mOQAWo3L3qLRtVtlqiScDQ1hPqYpKc7eHf9qI5D7LjgcFGvQCWO2px9F2bXxNdHAwM9vk2uysUs-fL4x6zoApqkP7IN1d7uyIx7gfnznfHNqDuVfNR-AYY7S2hTiLpw/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz015.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>While this film might have cast Grant for the submarine captain in <i>Destination: Tokyo</i>, the Grant it gets is the light comedian. The film is a sex farce, as far as it goes, and Grant gives a master class in underplaying for effect in this film. He's the straight-laced military man confronted with irregular and un-military situations at every turn. He only lets his unflappable facade slip when confronted with the unlucky Nurse Crandall, a blond bombshell who can't seem to get out of the way of the orderly operation of a submarine. When the Sea Tiger accidentally torpedoes a truck when they're targeting a tanker, the exasperation bubbles to the surface. A lot of this works because the Grant Persona itself is a chameleon--it takes on the colors of its surroundings. Put Grant into a naval uniform and he's an officer. You don't question it. It reminds me a bit of Daffy Duck in "Duck Amuck" whose profession and role changes with his costumes at the whims of an unseen animator. Once the parameters of the character are set, the rest of Grant's performance is borrowed from the actor's past catalogue. This is not a film that requires Grant to alter the persona for the sake of an actual performance, beyond performing the persona itself. But this does showcase one of Grant's more underrated characteristics: his generosity to his fellow actors. When the film veers toward letting Tony Curtis steal the show, Grant lets him. What's it to him? He's Cary Grant. You can't upstage Cary Grant at this point in his career. No more than you could upstage King Kong.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-zqtnbQ8tCRC6CripBRd1OHOm3G-t1c-J26qQV8K_7AAOJ5OMtYS4rqsKjdISxyZ9TL-vPN2l9oSl6F2WHhByHgWd-M6CkSSHFhBkxnkAykq-iiHF1tCENc7AvUc0AArwuUzQSgsDzSVLnJUe6qR8FSLvlkz7gz0AtoXz13mtgIeMbkvS_x-xFw/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz007.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-zqtnbQ8tCRC6CripBRd1OHOm3G-t1c-J26qQV8K_7AAOJ5OMtYS4rqsKjdISxyZ9TL-vPN2l9oSl6F2WHhByHgWd-M6CkSSHFhBkxnkAykq-iiHF1tCENc7AvUc0AArwuUzQSgsDzSVLnJUe6qR8FSLvlkz7gz0AtoXz13mtgIeMbkvS_x-xFw/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz007.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Curtis is an underrated actor. For an actor who was often regarded as a lightweight, he sure does show up in some major films. This is one of them. His Lieutenant Holden is a slicker, sexier version of Phil Silvers's Sgt. Bilko, and the scene where Sherman eventually lets Holden loose when he's at his wits end is one of the classic screen comedy transitions. When we see Holden holding court at the crooked casino he sets up to bilk servicemen of parts and supplies, I laugh every time. Every. Time. It's such an absurd image compared to what surrounds it. Slightly less outre, but maybe just as funny is the scene when Holden convinces some MPs that they need to be wearing "blackout camouflage" lest they look up and their faces reflect the moon and give away their position. It's a delightful bit of flim flam. <br /></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvwcVpE3KL5NTpzvJAw-qNytzAAiNwCeJHPiy2PXByihXlkgS1dI32ST7aKWzAykrAwE1yjrl3m4K4cNSieOLbbuHyLRTs2GOMQ2pKh7e4_u9EcIdEYnR3aSHggY9o_f2misgNhYfOp84JPzOhLmOvIGV2jMZ3X8EjsS_6W2ssA_x4aMZTmZA8Gg/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz013.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvwcVpE3KL5NTpzvJAw-qNytzAAiNwCeJHPiy2PXByihXlkgS1dI32ST7aKWzAykrAwE1yjrl3m4K4cNSieOLbbuHyLRTs2GOMQ2pKh7e4_u9EcIdEYnR3aSHggY9o_f2misgNhYfOp84JPzOhLmOvIGV2jMZ3X8EjsS_6W2ssA_x4aMZTmZA8Gg/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz013.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The film is generous to some of its supporting actors, too. Gavin McLeod's Hunkle has a tattoo that prevents him from going home at the end of his enlistment. Arthur O'Connell's Mechanic has an antipathy to romance with Major Heywood ("You're more than a woman! You're a mechanic!"). George Dunn's Prophet of Doom is delightfully emo. The film is more than just the heavy hitters at the top of the cast list, which helps sell the whole enterprise. It presents, for want of a better phrase, a world in microcosm. Both Holden and Sherman have female love interests among the nurses, but the film isn't as generous to them. The women in the
film are a catalyst for a lot of its plot, sure, but this isn't a film that
gives its women characters nor the actresses who play them much to do
except challenge the idea that women on a ship of war are bad luck. The
film goes out of its way to tell the audience that sailors regard women
as such.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFvcrdn7dZ6F5Mp7z-NiEZrmB91pQWFuJR2eyVDFOtplMtNjxM5cdAvDvSlYpkGfzHOMp_MVhY4lKx-SrQW225dVAXLf6-_Y9w0qZteUv3UoGVD5wJAPFdtJqtbeFyCSQgZBDRacoZ6OhLnhe-jw2bZCNsMmUkbfFFAfy_2RTnhmaUT-s6xMKCPA/s1026/VLCScreenSnapz012.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Cary Grant and Joan O'Brien inOperation Petticoat (1959)" border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1026" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFvcrdn7dZ6F5Mp7z-NiEZrmB91pQWFuJR2eyVDFOtplMtNjxM5cdAvDvSlYpkGfzHOMp_MVhY4lKx-SrQW225dVAXLf6-_Y9w0qZteUv3UoGVD5wJAPFdtJqtbeFyCSQgZBDRacoZ6OhLnhe-jw2bZCNsMmUkbfFFAfy_2RTnhmaUT-s6xMKCPA/w400-h242/VLCScreenSnapz012.png" title="Operation Petticoat (1959)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The main downside of <i>Operation Petticoat</i> is that it plays it too safe. Once the Sea Tiger takes on a cargo of pregnant women who all start to give birth, the plot of the film grants its characters an immunity that even the audience recognizes. As a result, the stakes at the end, when it's being shelled by the US Navy, aren't real. There is no discomfort. This is a war movie in which the audience is completely comforted that everything will come right in the end. This tends to reduce the film to a sitcom regardless of its star power. There's something inherently wrong with a cozy war movie. The participation of the US Navy in its making renders the film as propaganda underneath the sex farce.</p>
<p>Still, the film is genial and audiences respond to it. It's funny. Sometimes it's very funny. The only relevant critical metric for a comedy should be just that: does it make the audience laugh? Does it make the individual laugh? On that count, the audiences of its day voted with their wallets. It's funny all right. And the movie took that to the bank.</p>
<hr />
<p>My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
<br />
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-grant-mystique-this-is-night.html"><i>This is the Night</i> (1932)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-grant-mystique-enter-madame.html"><i>Enter: Madame</i> (1935) </a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2020/08/eagle-and-hawk-1933-review.html"><i>The Eagle and the Hawk</i> (1933)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/02/The-Last-Outpost-1935-Review.html"><i>The Last Outpost </i>(1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-grant-mystique-wings-in-dark.html"><i>Wings in the Dark</i> (1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2006/12/movies-for-week-of-117-12306.html"><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i> (1939)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/08/Penny-serenade-1941-review.html"><i>Penny Serenade</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/01/Suspicion-1941-Hitchcock-review.html"><i>Suspicion</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="https://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/06/To-Catch-A-Thief-1955-review.html"><i>To Catch a Thief</i> (1955)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/01/games-must-we.html"><i>North by Northwest</i> (1959)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/07/Charade-1963-review.html"><i>Charade</i> 1963</a>
</p><p></p><p></p>
<hr />
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-38838543744949211452023-08-20T12:17:00.002-07:002023-08-21T14:33:55.035-07:00Strange Cargo<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcuCDtQNMYkdeD1cv-OZ6ftzFxC8UYY6hyX_FOvqXN-h6HCvbfD838wHZ6i1WztC7cLjPy-IPvVyVdP21C0FLht7PzumbRVxZBPEheyTwukVIZMXPDTdErM7Q0OEpFfcRRhdCuMYv1Em6uDw_jrq0NWVBPQjniDnh5fDEkgOMUaSdanzwQ-im2A/s1403/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="The Last Voyage of the Demeter" border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="1403" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcuCDtQNMYkdeD1cv-OZ6ftzFxC8UYY6hyX_FOvqXN-h6HCvbfD838wHZ6i1WztC7cLjPy-IPvVyVdP21C0FLht7PzumbRVxZBPEheyTwukVIZMXPDTdErM7Q0OEpFfcRRhdCuMYv1Em6uDw_jrq0NWVBPQjniDnh5fDEkgOMUaSdanzwQ-im2A/w400-h166/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.png" title="Aisling Franciosi and Corey Hawkins in The Last Voyage of the Demeter" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>I commented on social media last week that I thought you could stage <i><b>The Last Voyage of the Demeter</b></i> (2023, directed by André Øvredal) as a play. Find a production of <i>The Pirates of Penzance</i> that's closing and mooch on their sets and you're all ready to go. One of my friends asked if I would make it a musical. I absolutely would. It would be the off-off-Broadway hit of the season. Buy your tickets now.</p>
<p>The story of the Demeter is from <i>Dracula</i>, of course. It occupies chapter seven of Stoker's novel, represented as news clippings pasted into Mina Murray's journal and as the logbook of the ship as reported in those clippings. The Demeter is usually seen at the end of its journey in movies. In the Tod Browning film, the sole survivor is Renfield (he is not on the ship in the book), with Dwight Frye's mad grin staring up at the investigators when the Demeter drifts into harbor. In Murnau's film version, there's an abbreviated version of the voyage. The first still from <i>Nosferatu </i>I ever saw was of Max Schreck standing on the deck of the Demeter. This was years before I ever saw the film. The most indelible version of the Demeter I ever saw was in John Badham's 1979 version of <i>Dracula </i>in which Harker joins the rescuers for the wrecked ship only to discover a man lashed to the wheel with his throat ripped open. A version of this image appears in Jon J. Muth's graphic novel, <i>Dracula, A Symphony In Moonlight and Nightmares</i>. The final voyage of the Demeter from Varna, Bulgaria, to Whitby, United Kingdom is such a vivid part of the Dracula story that it's shocking that no-one has made a film of its voyage until now. It's been, what? A hundred and twenty-six years at this point?</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbTik-hYDMu2i5fiIU7VcSgjHf2t7s345fDAC6H41e7daZwwVM88Aj4k6MgDGM2zXLd9iSYtlpIEV_jX0MLMweDp22G8h-9WndJwLqh7O1NiqPGQ2Rjv_-foNmw48jKy8Vaxh7AcS-zd1yh_NDSH-vMl3KLb_N5NxZvbaoYQ1LmNQLfKGwMOCGA/s1280/nosferatu.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Nosferatu (1922)" border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbTik-hYDMu2i5fiIU7VcSgjHf2t7s345fDAC6H41e7daZwwVM88Aj4k6MgDGM2zXLd9iSYtlpIEV_jX0MLMweDp22G8h-9WndJwLqh7O1NiqPGQ2Rjv_-foNmw48jKy8Vaxh7AcS-zd1yh_NDSH-vMl3KLb_N5NxZvbaoYQ1LmNQLfKGwMOCGA/w320-h181/nosferatu.jpg" title="Max Schreck in Nosferatu (1922)" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRmt3ItV534eHOGRCBhV2tBs5fOuFzISLEfvW9TKXTL1ujWD61LcQLhBs227wPPGiPJobgKOEAVe8A4J9N4099BkmFhQv61gthljfR3PznKSCwcr01H1ywNA4HrfZzD0jDWIkzXas7HytuKLmPRjYBTXATpWlIV_6BIHmXQPEJQ-Bo32rTKvlraQ/s550/dracula-renfield-1931.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Dracula (1931)" border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="550" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRmt3ItV534eHOGRCBhV2tBs5fOuFzISLEfvW9TKXTL1ujWD61LcQLhBs227wPPGiPJobgKOEAVe8A4J9N4099BkmFhQv61gthljfR3PznKSCwcr01H1ywNA4HrfZzD0jDWIkzXas7HytuKLmPRjYBTXATpWlIV_6BIHmXQPEJQ-Bo32rTKvlraQ/w320-h254/dracula-renfield-1931.jpg" title="Dwight Frye in Dracula (1931)" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqTNeMEVAmVG66qj3EDnedFNLIhbGU2_2OHxPN0YFacyE7y5PgD52Ww2YxPkMFpD7IbYRHH2qYHBbFF1XN6760SvjeNmrXyxBTw96sKF5ylOtO2X3Rw5u_QojexpyeIqYES5G_liFGeFWwm649WFHW8lONTO46Kf5XF2aaZEEEWDqJz1SXn2PXQ/s720/dracula-1979-2.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Captain of the Demeter in Dracula (1979)" border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="720" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqTNeMEVAmVG66qj3EDnedFNLIhbGU2_2OHxPN0YFacyE7y5PgD52Ww2YxPkMFpD7IbYRHH2qYHBbFF1XN6760SvjeNmrXyxBTw96sKF5ylOtO2X3Rw5u_QojexpyeIqYES5G_liFGeFWwm649WFHW8lONTO46Kf5XF2aaZEEEWDqJz1SXn2PXQ/w320-h181/dracula-1979-2.jpg" title="Dracula (1979)" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfr6Kpm0ED-Uo_XaPSAo_T0Ja5bNKte_nnhwdBlCz_acrcrDzyS75k6ANJx7fO3ULMUlPUybICH8fBrnyRI0JWR5BPzZ29sEM9YN91E4DA_PE75MEDsGKcrv_ixasptoVbcnxEMcZt4Jo61HNrTZ-VJZ34cVaUOGqYD0lVDH-17svD-dLPVCBPg/s760/dracula%20a%20symphony_1.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Shadows by Jon J. Muth" border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="760" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfr6Kpm0ED-Uo_XaPSAo_T0Ja5bNKte_nnhwdBlCz_acrcrDzyS75k6ANJx7fO3ULMUlPUybICH8fBrnyRI0JWR5BPzZ29sEM9YN91E4DA_PE75MEDsGKcrv_ixasptoVbcnxEMcZt4Jo61HNrTZ-VJZ34cVaUOGqYD0lVDH-17svD-dLPVCBPg/w320-h301/dracula%20a%20symphony_1.jpg" title="Dracula: a Symphony in Moonlight and Shadows by Jon J. Muth" width="320" /></a></div>
<p>A lot of the imagery from previous versions makes it into this new film, but most of that imagery was already there in Stoker's book. It's a rich novel for interpolations.</p>
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<p>The story here begins with the wreck of the Demeter as one finds it in <i>Dracula</i>, and the men who are shaken by what they find on board. The ship's log is intact and offers a dire warning to England if the crew of the Demeter fails against the evil that has come on to their ship. Four weeks earlier, in Varna, the Demeter takes on its cargo and three new crewmen. Among these is Dr. Clemens, a black man who was unable to find employment in England after earning his medical degree. Clemens is initially passed over for the job, but when he saves the life of the Captain's grandson and when one of the new hands freaks out when he sees the crest on the cargo boxes, he's taken on. The captain's grandson, Toby, befriends Clemens and gives him a tour of the ship. Toby has been given responsibility over the ship's livestock. The journey from Varna to London will take several weeks, and that's the meat on board. The ship's mate, Wojchek, doesn't trust Clemens, and the other crewmen range from indifferent to hostile. Things begin to go sour once the Demeter is out of easy range of port. First, all of the livestock die, savaged by some unseen thing. Next, one of the boxes of their mysterious cargo is jostled out of its berth and breaks open. Inside is earth and a woman, near death. Clemens determines that she's lost a lot of blood and gives her a series of transfusions. Then the crew begin to die, one by one. When the stowaway woman wakes up, she tells them that they are all prey to the evil that has dominated her village in Transylvania for centuries. Dracula, she names him. The dwindling crew organize to find this fiend, but it soon becomes clear that if they can't defeat him, they must prevent him from ever reaching London...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOBjukIYG6t0-FN4oyzSZoNyFs7gtocOCw2Nrk4S9-sqjJBTF33RJP11Nv8R66v73Y5vUuxMML7k7u1TtyRhg_OKpXQDScYbSqSZdqWQ56KjkF28BoM8_JQ_wU4_5pghQLeQUbyNXi_xvpVZV_Zl7069_Zp-40EhRclluqNq42igBG3nTRa_jjw/s1920/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_03.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Liam Cunningham in The Last Voyage of the Demeter" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOBjukIYG6t0-FN4oyzSZoNyFs7gtocOCw2Nrk4S9-sqjJBTF33RJP11Nv8R66v73Y5vUuxMML7k7u1TtyRhg_OKpXQDScYbSqSZdqWQ56KjkF28BoM8_JQ_wU4_5pghQLeQUbyNXi_xvpVZV_Zl7069_Zp-40EhRclluqNq42igBG3nTRa_jjw/w400-h225/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_03.jpg" title="The Last Voyage of the Demeter" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Norwegian director André Øvredal has two modes of filmmaking, it seems: He is the maker of eccentric high concept horror movies like <i>Trollhunter</i> and <i>Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark</i> and <i>Mortal</i>. These are films that have a touch of whimsical absurdity to them. He is also the maker of grim, unrelenting horror movies like <i>The Autopsy of Jane Doe</i> and today's specimen. In this mode, Øvredal has an instinct for the jugular that's rare in commercial mid-budget horror movies. That category of film would rather reinforce a nuclear family uber alles ideology than discomfort their audience in any meaningful way. Øvredal has a gleeful disregard of the taboos of middlebrow horror movies. This film does not award any of its characters a plot immunity idol or a hero's death-battle exemption. In the grand tradition of the grindhouse horror of another era, this is a film where anyone can die at any moment. This is entirely appropriate for a story where the audience, if it knows <i>Dracula</i> at all, knows that the Demeter reaches its destination without a crew, save for the man lashed to the helm with his throat ripped open. Everyone on board at the beginning of the journey is a dead man walking. Øvredal and his collaborators oblige the material. They provide the audience with scenes that are every bit as horrific as the R-rating allows.</p>
<p>Which isn't to say they don't take some liberties with the material. They do.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh83M5TuQ5Xh9adjBD4_SYRdbkvm3z3xK7H6PoWvKu2AGBYuZ_GV91_tYgAv2shyIfhdtVHqamAYM0WUJ_h3rHjPIVkVz-P8mkOTTP-wST3pDQLQbP4HhlgHR6QAZR4QRmFNV5EwcRLLKGzBnBVC-Hk-d2j_iYzJYyklGjRYmERUjntQLMXstC4Cw/s1280/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_02.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Corey Hawkins in The Last Voyage of the Demeter" border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh83M5TuQ5Xh9adjBD4_SYRdbkvm3z3xK7H6PoWvKu2AGBYuZ_GV91_tYgAv2shyIfhdtVHqamAYM0WUJ_h3rHjPIVkVz-P8mkOTTP-wST3pDQLQbP4HhlgHR6QAZR4QRmFNV5EwcRLLKGzBnBVC-Hk-d2j_iYzJYyklGjRYmERUjntQLMXstC4Cw/w400-h266/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_02.jpg" title="The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The obvious model for <i>The Last Voyage of the Demeter</i>, per the director himself, is <i>Alien</i>, in which a blue-collar crew must hunt for a monster that is picking them off one by one. And that's fair. A number of scenes are closely analogous, particularly one scene at dinner in which the crew complain about the division of shares for the voyage. <i>Alien</i> is still scary after all these years, and this film manages to capture part of that scariness. But this isn't an <i>Alien</i> rip-off in the traditional sense. There's an element of contagion in this film, too, and of paranoia, both well beyond the singular influence of one film. This is a film that finds many of the trends of contemporary horror movies already there at the roots of the genre. It is particularly concerned with the taboos about death and how we deal with it. In this, there is something of the rawness of <i>Night of the Living Dead</i>. How do we deal with loved ones who become monsters? How do we burn the bodies of those who are close to us without the benefit of a Christian burial? How do we let go? This roots its horror, as <i>Dracula</i> does, in ideas about a bad death and a bad afterlife. It salts this with a dash of eschatology. It's the end of the world for the Demeter. It might be the end of the world for England, should Dracula make landfall.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxEh7UTxza4ig3uTxoWqor-bgpufApKG38jZ1t1AN_Er0jugFRTOLWR2oA2pxILSMumBUfCnMEOifWLKS0ZlV7yN9lNtbqli5k2HDl4tBKIzzc3KA8UAdZ0cXlUClfIgi8yxkVislfXlf8ec8TSq-pEjebgsC8_qfEIhf3J6H39S_5DSRehxhb9Q/s1200/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_04.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Javier Botet as Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)" border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="1200" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxEh7UTxza4ig3uTxoWqor-bgpufApKG38jZ1t1AN_Er0jugFRTOLWR2oA2pxILSMumBUfCnMEOifWLKS0ZlV7yN9lNtbqli5k2HDl4tBKIzzc3KA8UAdZ0cXlUClfIgi8yxkVislfXlf8ec8TSq-pEjebgsC8_qfEIhf3J6H39S_5DSRehxhb9Q/w400-h267/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_04.jpg" title="The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)" width="400" /></a></div><p></p>
<p>In spite of its familiarity, this version of the story finds great latitude for storytelling in what scant information Stoker provides. We never know the crew of the Demeter in the literary <i>Dracula</i> or in previous films. We meet them here for the first time. The film adds an interesting wrinkle as to why Dracula has to chow down on the crew (he's deprived of the midnight snack he's smuggled aboard). This version of Dracula is one of the most inhuman versions ever put on screen. There is no romance involved in this Dracula. No glamour whatsoever. He's a monster, full stop, and a terrifying one at that, well beyond the versions in <i>Nosferatu</i> and its remake. We also get as heroes characters who have no idea of how to slay a vampire. Indeed, the word "vampire" is never spoken in the film. There is no Van Helsing character, not even Dr. Clemens, who is an educated man. There is no savant with deep knowledge of the enemy. This puts stresses on the characters that other versions of Dracula don't and adds to their desperation. The scenes all of this generates are striking. The murder of the film's livestock at the outset foretells darker scenes, and the film delivers, whether it's a burial at sea with a victim who isn't quite dead yet, or Dracula alighting on the end of a lifeboat to forestall any attempts to escape him, or the fate of one of the hands who has been bitten and lashed to the mast as the sun comes up, or even the glance of the vampire at our heroes through a broken timbers of a locked door. If a horror film relies on good set-pieces for its scares, then this film has some doozies. The images put on camera here are indelible.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTV6cNFV7eEVkiQMF1Ut9MTY72qZ32KvgIVQINRvxigZw8REzqqWlQu2Mfv1OjcP7vdSxcCYYxZc15sWZ4qhW_OFj5owBJOuISkMnkVBwK8KAKWiu2rlg8SU5y8n_3rhSidpkQAyWs2oDFkp7e9EBCOh-QywfNlPY_4ZRhr7D1NLwJR-3L_klntw/s1399/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Aisling Franciosi in The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)" border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="1399" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTV6cNFV7eEVkiQMF1Ut9MTY72qZ32KvgIVQINRvxigZw8REzqqWlQu2Mfv1OjcP7vdSxcCYYxZc15sWZ4qhW_OFj5owBJOuISkMnkVBwK8KAKWiu2rlg8SU5y8n_3rhSidpkQAyWs2oDFkp7e9EBCOh-QywfNlPY_4ZRhr7D1NLwJR-3L_klntw/w400-h167/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" title="The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The film also has a conversation with the plight of The Other, though it takes The Other out of the hands of the vampire as allegorical figure and places it with the humans. Clemens is thoroughly distrusted by the crew of the Demeter, both along racial and class lines. Woycheck belittles his book learning as useless for a sailor, though Clemens points out--rightly--that a knowledge of astronomy might be handy for a navigator. It's the color of his skin that puts Clemens outside the circle of the crew, and Clemens has a list of grievances for that that he enumerates in due course. Ana, too, is an outsider, both because of her gender--women were accounted as "unlucky" on ships well into the 20th century, and as a harbinger of the monster. This is a role that is often played by a mad old man (see, for instance, the drunk at the start of <i>The Texas Chain Saw Massacre</i> or the old coot at the start of <i>Friday the 13th</i>), so it's an unusual framing. This is a film that understands the axes of oppression, and suggests that those divisions will destroy us all. Dracula still functions as a political metaphor. A hundred years later, he's no longer the menace of the Russian empire or the unwashed Slavic east (Dracula is a pretty racist text after all), but can rather be viewed as the resurrection of a predatory aristocracy who, having consumed the resources at hand, looks covetously at the West. Dracula doesn't look exactly like Vladimir Putin, but there's a familial resemblance. The book tipped its hand along these lines by naming one of Dracula's victims "Lucy Westenra" or "Light of the West," but this film doesn't need to be that cute.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbJVqdHYcjiYJNYzPb8wx6IMnzFMJS6vYanWMhBqjLCztFe-A76aas13QB57iYYnIdUFGv50aeKEsCGWACE_c-Hmpbaj785CoEYHyljpQ28zYsS0BDVHYXDSE-Yp8AYE0EuasP_8czDwTA21zCmEwi5UxZwT7JLCD2_NSTIWwnFns7kV11Sc2Lg/s1403/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="1403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbJVqdHYcjiYJNYzPb8wx6IMnzFMJS6vYanWMhBqjLCztFe-A76aas13QB57iYYnIdUFGv50aeKEsCGWACE_c-Hmpbaj785CoEYHyljpQ28zYsS0BDVHYXDSE-Yp8AYE0EuasP_8czDwTA21zCmEwi5UxZwT7JLCD2_NSTIWwnFns7kV11Sc2Lg/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The producers of <i>The Last Voyage of the Demeter</i> have spent their resources wisely. This is a film that understands that the genre is the star here, and they've cast the film full of familiar character actors rather than springing for movie stars. The ostensible star of the film is Corey Hawkins as Clemens and he's fine in the role. Best of show is probably Liam Cunningham as Captain Elliot, though, who brings the same gravitas and kindness to his character here that he brought to Davos Seaworth in <i>Game of Thrones</i>. He's the moral heart of the film. David Dastmalchian and Aisling Franciosi have less-well developed characters to play. Dastmalichian's character, Woychek, exists as a secondary antagonist for Clemens, while Franciosi's character, Dracula's midnight snack, largely exists to deliver exposition. It's her mouth that first utters the name, Dracula, after all. All of these actors are good even if their parts are often under-written. The concept of the film is the star, here, and the setting. This is an unusually handsome movie that manages the tricky feat of providing environments that are both pleasing to the eye and unassuming enough to not call attention to themselves. It has a lived-in naturalism to it that a more Gothic minded film might exaggerate. Dracula himself is mostly created using practical effects and prosthesis and the benefit of having an object that bounces actual light adds a level of realism to its monster that would escape a monster created in a computer. The filmmakers have gone the Nosferatu road for designing their Dracula, but they've gone beyond Max Schreck or Klaus Kinski and created something entirely devoid of romance or sympathy. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2KMGDjt2LT0Xn50eExni0X6ulA1st10T1ynCvs1AakOlFebUT6CQH8OaGxBIGN5fbbux1u3ZTK0cHKrsHYlSR5dYCj-GCQT_-sPQPhHK9UsMpjupxlu_uAOTKLfx5odk3bmZWg6khs-E6GUbQDAbny9pERBNcFra9I3PkD4b6ICO3wYYsmRsStQ/s1200/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_01.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Javier Botet as Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)" border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2KMGDjt2LT0Xn50eExni0X6ulA1st10T1ynCvs1AakOlFebUT6CQH8OaGxBIGN5fbbux1u3ZTK0cHKrsHYlSR5dYCj-GCQT_-sPQPhHK9UsMpjupxlu_uAOTKLfx5odk3bmZWg6khs-E6GUbQDAbny9pERBNcFra9I3PkD4b6ICO3wYYsmRsStQ/w400-h225/LastVoyageoftheDemeter_01.jpg" title="The Last Voyage of the Demeter" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>If the film has a flaw, it comes at the end, when we meet Dracula in a London pub. While there is certainly justification in the book for this scene, the way it's framed seems like naked franchise building. It's as if Universal can't get over its dream of launching a "Dark Universe" on the Marvel model. If they had any brains, they would have launched this film in October rather than early August. I'm almost happy that the film isn't doing enough business to reward them for their incompetence. Almost. Because this is a film that really ought to be seen with a receptive audience. When I was walking to the parking lot after the show, I tried to remember the last time a Dracula movie was legitimately scary and came up blank. This film stages scenes that are well beyond the imagination of the vampire cinema of the past. Hammer films only dreamed of making a film this mean. </p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-73976831743450229902023-08-06T21:13:00.002-07:002023-08-10T12:10:06.600-07:00Hand in Hand<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUA9NmjGX_J5J2qQB32uGz__RYcWDqle89uv6M-qcCogX8U1SoHx6OiMy_Z31tj1HchwQNuXVoaVqgNW1BrDXfysQV9xtDGtubHXNjAxagSIWyIrqKJIhoEKiqukTbzxurzg1-Lp7DrlL71HZjRrHivQsMbYUik7W30acXFnkWTjRoGvZD1ZVW0w/s1200/TalkToMe_02.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUA9NmjGX_J5J2qQB32uGz__RYcWDqle89uv6M-qcCogX8U1SoHx6OiMy_Z31tj1HchwQNuXVoaVqgNW1BrDXfysQV9xtDGtubHXNjAxagSIWyIrqKJIhoEKiqukTbzxurzg1-Lp7DrlL71HZjRrHivQsMbYUik7W30acXFnkWTjRoGvZD1ZVW0w/s400/TalkToMe_02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>There's a deep mythological undercurrent in <i><b>Talk to Me</b></i> (2022, directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou). When I described the film to my partner, she immediately suggested that the film's Maguffin is a hand of glory, a magical artifact made from the left hand of a hanged man which has powerful magic abilities. You may remember the hand of glory's appearance in <i>The Wicker Man</i>, among other places. The thought that it was a hand of glory occurred to me, too, while I was watching the movie. The severed hand in <i>Talk to Me</i> isn't <i>exactly </i>that, but bears a strong enough resemblance nonetheless, even down to the related use of a candle to invoke its power. It reminds me a little of the monkey's paw in the W. W. Jacob's story of the same name, as well, which itself seems descended from the hand of glory and its other mythological relatives. In <i>Talk to Me</i>, the severed hand of a medium is preserved inside a ceramic shell. It enables someone holding the hand, as if shaking it, to see and talk to the dead. If the holder invites the ghost, the ghost can possess them. Like the hand in "The Monkey's Paw," the hand in this film promises answers and wishes. Sort of. In the film, it's the center of teenage shenanigans so it all ends badly, as it must. These kids could have prevented a lot of heartache if they had all watched <i>The Ring</i> or <i>Witchboard</i> or some other tale of teens dabbling in the supernatural. But then you wouldn't have a movie.</p>
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<p>The film opens with a young man, Cole, searching a party for his brother, Duckett. Duckett has locked himself in a room and Cole must break down the door to locate his brother. As Cole drags Duckett from the house, Duckett stabs Cole with a kitchen knife before plunging the knife into his own face, killing him. The story then centers itself on Mia, whose mother's death haunts her. She doesn't know if her mother died a suicide or by accident, and her father won't tell her which. She is distant from her father. She instead finds family with her best friend, Jade, and Jade's younger brother, Riley. Jade is currently dating Mia's ex, Daniel, with Mia's blessing. All four of them wind up at a party where the hosts, Joss and Haley, have a peculiar party game. They have a ceramic hand they claim encases the severed hand of a dead medium. When someone grasps the hand and asks the spirits to "Talk to me," a ghost will appear. The holder can then invite the ghost into themselves, but only for ninety seconds. Haley and Joss assert that if you go over ninety seconds, the ghosts become unwilling to leave. Mia volunteers to try it. Mia is a particularly open conduit, and sees multiple ghosts, one of which appears to have designs on Riley. It manifests physical influence on the real-world surroundings, much to the shock of everyone, including Joss and Haley who have never seen such a thing before. Mia goes over her ninety seconds. When she goes home with Jade and Riley, she's concerned at the attention Riley drew from the ghosts, but she's also thrilled at the experience. She wants to try it again. Mia and Jade arrange another session with the hand at Jade's house while her mother is away, and this time, Riley wants a go at it. Jade is adamantly opposed, but Mia gives him permission. Riley manifests a ghost who talks to Mia as if it is her mother before another ghost takes control and Riley suddenly becomes violent, bashing his own head into the table and mantlepiece before trying to pluck out his own eye. The assembled teens are shocked, and when Riley is inevitably hospitalized, it becomes apparent that no one disconnected him from the spirit in his body. Mia becomes more and more obsessed with communicating with her mother, who tells her that she must "help" Riley. But that spirit's story conflicts with the story Mia's dad tells her. She decides to trust the spirits and embarks to find Riley's spirit on the other side. Things don't go exactly to plan...</p>
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<p>This is a glum film that goes to some pretty dark places. The filmmakers, making their first feature, haven't salted the film with anything like a sense of humor while piling up their horrors. Their opening sequence is a doozy, giving the audience a nasty shock at the outset. It's as if the filmmakers are priming the pump. They make good on the promise of this sequence with some pretty potent scenes of shock and violence, too, made all the nastier because they are generally inflicted by and upon people who are already hurting. This is obviously a film about grief, as many upscale horror movies these days are (this is very much of a piece with studio A24's horror preferences). Riley is open to the manipulations of malevolent spirits because her grief has made her blind to the love of those around her and the film follows her down the rabbit hole to an ending that is both of a piece with her headspace and a kind of E.C. Comics twist of the tale. There is a tension between the film's artier pretensions and its essential pulp fiction infrastructure. The Philippous have taken a lot of notes from the broader genre, combining the melancholy ghosts of <i>The Sixth Sense</i> with the vengeful spirits of the J-horror boom, with a salting of George Romero and even John Wayne Gacy (the attention paid to Riley by his ghost strikes me as paedophillic). Sometimes this melange of art and pulp works. As a story structure, this is fundamentally sound. It feeds off its influences (like a hungry ghost?) and plays a bit like an urban legend. It's the sort of story that should be passed around a teen-age sleep-over party in late October.</p>
<p>As a matter of style, however...</p>
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<p><i>Talk to Me</i> is aggressively color-graded in monotone shades of steel gray and steel blue-gray most of the time, and it's under lit. I get that they're trying to impart a mood with these choices, but it looks like a thousand other films going for the same effect. The cinematography is functional, but it's also lazy, even accounting for the fact that this movie was made for a minuscule budget. It also has a kind of unintelligible sound mix that is the equivalent of its color palette, and I found myself wishing through most of its length that I had chosen to watch the film at home rather than at a theater because at home I would have the option of subtitles. The accents of the actors are inconsistent, inviting me to wonder why Mia and her dad, Max, have American accents while the rest of the cast have Australian accents. The accents don't help the sound mix. Indeed, they work in tandem to garble parts of the film, including the accents themselves. I'm told that Sophie Wilde is Australian so why she would sport an American accent is mystifying.</p>
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<p>For the most part, the actors are good, though the film gives them limited emotional ranges to play. Sophie Wilde is the lead as Mia, and she spends most of the film playing depression, though she comes alive at the prospect of revisiting the dead. There's a metaphor there, maybe. Alexandra Jensen's Jade also gets two modes of expression, either as an infatuated teen girl obsessed with her boyfriend or as the sibling saddled with a tagalong little brother. As a matter of representation, I appreciated the presence of Zoe Terakes as Haley, whose transness and queerness isn't even remarked upon. That they are a quasi villain is a nice touch, too. I like a film that walks the walk enough to get itself banned in someplace like Kuwait because of the mere presence of a trans and queer actor. The most nuanced performance comes from Miranda Otto, which is not a surprise given that she is a much bigger talent than this film requires. It's not surprising that she gets the widest range of performance as Jade and Riley's working mom. Her exchange with Mia late in the film outside Riley's hospital room requires an actor of her ability else it would feel inauthentic. Otto is more than up to it.</p>
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<p>In spite of my reservations about the craft of the film, I like its dedication to its big idea. It has an ending in mind and damned if it doesn't pursue that end with a vengeance. I admire that. This is the kind of film that will linger because of that ending, long after all of my complaints are forgotten. Its life on streaming will surely smooth over all of those rough edges in the fullness of time should I ever choose to watch it again. And horror is still the only area of film that's holding off the onslaught of "IP-based cinema" because it's profitable without the stamp of corporate branding. Capitalism is ruining horror movies, too--don't even get me started on the most recent <i>Scream</i> sequel--but horror movies are uniquely able to resist the process of enshitification endemic to most corporate "content." An effective original horror movie in this economy? That's not only gold, it's a one way ticket to the cultural memory pool.</p>
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<p>Still, I wish it were better. Its ideas deserve to be better-executed. I freely admit that it's probably good enough. It gets to where it means to go. Maybe if I let the film sit in my mind for a while, its ideas will age well. It happens sometimes, so who knows, eh?</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-90193993227879054472023-07-23T13:30:00.002-07:002023-07-23T13:30:50.485-07:00A Sympathy of Choices<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAC66VrA6_nxHZEUDmpZ-2l8vHL3ADt3dVlnJJNSb-8HUon6TKRO4fHHgPTlrMqQVdyxqPa8DOHPhLfwkcVwmA2orwSJJ0Zr_IbV88otQlbvU52ZKWX1rgAV_dsZSUmehAW4NmhU9jJ7Q-LDbiBeOulgHAbRwQnoZqR04m47_hekkFWFBFlGIjbA/s1248/MI7_01.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning Part 1" border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="1248" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAC66VrA6_nxHZEUDmpZ-2l8vHL3ADt3dVlnJJNSb-8HUon6TKRO4fHHgPTlrMqQVdyxqPa8DOHPhLfwkcVwmA2orwSJJ0Zr_IbV88otQlbvU52ZKWX1rgAV_dsZSUmehAW4NmhU9jJ7Q-LDbiBeOulgHAbRwQnoZqR04m47_hekkFWFBFlGIjbA/w400-h225/MI7_01.png" title="Tom Cruise and Haley Atwell in Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning Part 1" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i>“If there were a sympathy in choice,
<br />War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,
<br />Making it momentary as a sound,
<br />Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
<br />Brief as the lightning in the collied night
<br />That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
<br />And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
<br />The jaws of darkness do devour it up;
<br />So quick bright things come to confusion.”
<br />--William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I, Scene I</i></p>
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<p>The espionage thriller has been flirting with science fiction for decades now. The first James Bond film, <i>Dr. No</i>, set the precedent, and the Harry Palmer films, the Flint films, and the Jason Bourne films have all followed its lead. The Marvel films are built in equal measure on the espionage thriller and on science fiction, with their very own super spy organization as a through-line lacing the entire franchise together. <i>Get Smart</i> had a character who was an android. It's in the DNA of the form now in spite of the best efforts of John le Carré and Graham Greene to ground the genre in reality. The <i>Mission: Impossible</i> television series and films are science fiction-y most of the time, with their cyberpunk stylings, but this year's <i><b>Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part 1</b></i> (2023, directed by Christopher McQuarrie) crosses the border into broad sci fi with nary a backward glance. Like a good science fiction story, it starts with a what if: "What if a self-aware artificial intelligence infiltrated every corner of the internet? What if truth and reality became suspect, at the whims of that intelligence? What if the world's powers raced to gain sole control of that intelligence, and by extension, the world? And what if that intelligence had plans of its own?" Given the socio-political moment into which the film was released, an aware viewer can be excused for wondering if this question is even science fictional. She should ask, rather, are we living in a science fiction reality? (Note: we absolutely are). This is another film about The Singularity, a subject matter that is moving more and more out of science fiction and into the broader discourse about, well, everything. At this writing, the artists who create movies are on strike specifically to thwart the movie industry from replacing them with machines. There's a meme on social media noting that a future in which AIs compose poetry and art while human beings perform subsistence menial labor is NOT the future anyone imagined. More ominously, there is debate in technology schools like Cal Tech and MIT about the ethics of developing autonomous AI for use in drone weapons for the military. Every job in the world that doesn't require a pair of hands is under threat right now. If this sounds like a scenario that leads to Skynet, don't think the makers of <i>Mission: Impossible</i> haven't noticed this too. <i>Dead Reckoning</i> is absolutely descended from <i>Colossus: The Forbin Project</i> and <i>The Terminator</i>.</p>
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<p>The plot begins on a Russian submarine equipped with a new computer brain and software that enables it to move through the ocean invisible to other powers. When it plays tag with an enemy submarine under the polar ice cap, they discover that they CAN be seen, and that their enemy is the phantom. Their new computer brain is compromised and they are sunk by their own torpedo. The two halves of the key to their computer float to the surface with the drowned crew, awaiting the thaw. Some time later, IMF agent Ethan Hunt is delivered a mission to retrieve one of the keys from a rogue agent. The agent is Ilsa Faust, Hunt's friend and longtime collaborator. He tracks her to the desert just as enemies are descending upon her. After a fierce firefight, Ilsa goes down just before Ethan can reach her. In Washington, a gathering of allied intelligence agencies are holding a summit. The CIA is in the process of transcribing all of their digital records to hard files because there is a ghost in their machine. There is a ghost in EVERYONE'S machine. To date, that ghost seems to be a prankster, causing no real harm, but the threat is there. The liaison to the IMF, Kitteridge, explains the apocalyptic implications of what he calls "The Entity" and notes that there are two halves of a key to unlock...something. One of Kitteridge's men delivers Kitteridge a gas mask before gassing the entire room. It's Hunt in disguise. He tells Kitteridge that he intends to destroy The Entity before it can fall into the wrong hands. The wrong hands, he assesses, are anyone's hands. Kitteridge demures. His orders are to acquire The Entity for the United States. Hunt and his team will be rogue agents if they pursue Hunt's agenda. Hunt proceeds anyway. The first step is to gain the second half of the key. There are other interested parties. At a meet with buyers for the key, it is lifted from Hunt by a pickpocket, a woman named Grace. Her motives and employer are ambiguous. Is her presence an accident? Also present are the agents working for Kitteridge and CIA director Denlinger, who have orders to put a stake through Ethan's heart if necessary. And there's a third presence, Gideon, a man who can wipe his digital footprint from surveillance in real time. He's a figure from Hunt's past who sends a chill down his spine. The race for the key takes all parties to Rome and then Venice, where a buyer has been arranged by Hunt's old frenemy, The White Widow. Gabriel and his assassins are on the hunt there, too, and Gabriel confronts Ethan directly with a murderous choice. Gabriel is working on behalf of The Entity, as its human disciple and avatar. Meanwhile, the systems Ethan and his team rely on begin to go haywire. The Entity has infiltrated them. When the White Widow and Gabriel move to the Orient Express the next day, Ethan and his team must chase them using old school low tech methods. They recruit a reluctant Grace for the mission, and tell her that she may be offered a choice, should she choose to accept it...</p>
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<p>This edition of <i>Mission: Impossible</i> casts a wide net for influences. The opening of the film reminds me of <i>The Hunt for Red October</i> while I stopped counting the gags inspired by Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton about halfway through the movie. A friend of mine said of this film's signature stunt--the one in all the trailers--that she'd already seen <i>The Spy Who Loved Me</i>. The end of the film is an escalation of the best part of <i>Jurassic Park 2</i>. The party in Venice seems like a refugee from <i>John Wick 2</i> where the criminal underworld debauch themselves in the splendor of a vanishing or vanished world. (Actually, a lot of the film seems inspired by the John Wick movies now that I think about it). As a <i>story</i>, this is an overlay of <i>The Terminator</i> onto the espionage thriller. The various roles from <i>The Terminator</i> can be mapped onto specific characters: Gabriel is The Terminator, Hunt is either John Connor or Kyle Reese or maybe both at once. Grace is Sarah Connor. I mean, this is a genre film and genre films are all thieving magpies, so none of this bothers me in the least, particularly because Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie are very, very good at taking their inspirations and speculating, "Yes, and...," to expand them in meaningful and often spectacular ways. This was a characteristic of their previous two <i>Mission: Impossible</i> movies, and they've honed that to a fine art in this third film.</p>
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<p>For example: The extended climax of this film includes a fight sequence on the roof of a train. There have been a lot of these in the history of cinema. This sequence specifically lifts a gag from Harold Lloyd's short film, "<a href="https://youtu.be/Z1n8haqiRY0">Now or Never</a>." In that film, Lloyd winds up running along the length of a train just ahead of a tunnel--a stunt Lloyd performed for real (his famous climb up a clock tower in <i>Safety Last</i> was aided by camera trickery; that stunt forms the inspiration for Tom Cruise's ascent up the Burj Khalifa Tower in the fourth M:I film). The Lloyd stunt is a hundred years old and has seen many variations over the years. This film's embellishment is novel: both Cruise and Esai Morales as Gideon end up sliding from side to side once the train enters the tunnel to avoid the emergency lights on the roof. For what it's worth, I don't know how much of this was real and how much of it was CGI, but knowing Cruise, I think the answer is probably "more than you might think." The film's signature stunt, in which Cruise jumps a motorcycle off a mountain and parachutes to the train was famously done for real <i>by Cruise himself</i> and contrary to my friend who compared it to <i>The Spy Who Loved Me</i>, included a number of wrinkles that distinguish it, including a fair number of close-up shots taken by drones that followed Cruise off the mountain. This is spectacular. Also spectacular is the ever escalating obstacles inside the train once the movie goes literally off the rails. This is a combination of the plate-glass scene in <i>The Lost World</i> with a dash of Laurel and Hardy and a piano going up some stairs. It's an instance of one damned thing after another on steroids. It's an incredible sequence, one that ratchet's up the tension in a way a film full of digital stunts would fail at. Ditto the chase through Rome in a tiny Fiat that culminates in a nod to The Italian Job. More than once, I stopped to ask myself how in the world they got that footage, including a shot from inside the car where a barrel roll causes Cruise and Atwell to change seats. I just threw up my hands at that one. Purely as a movie experience, <i>Dead Reckoning 1</i> is state of the art action filmmaking and it can stand with its predecessors in the pantheon, in whose mighty company it shall now feel unashamed. That the film is <i>more</i> than an action film is an unlooked-for blessing.</p>
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<p>The first two <i>Terminator</i> movies are a touchstone for this film's epistemology, too. Sure, this is a thrill ride, but it's a thrill ride where part of the thrill is in the ideas underneath the story. This is a film, like The Terminator, where the ascendancy of artificial intelligence promises a deterministic future, where every choice is forestalled by an algorithm. If you've been on social media a while, you can already see this happening if you've ever tried to get Facebook or Twitter to show you the content YOU want rather than what those services want you to see. The counterbalance to this deterministic future is the underlying ethos of the Impossible Missions Force, in which there is an emphasis on choice ("your mission, should you choose to accept it..."), which is normally just a quirk of the franchise but which seeps into the plot of this film and into its overarching themes. In order to preserve their choice, the members of Ethan's team have to abandon algorithms and surveillance for the efforts of their own eyes and their own wills. This is a startling development for a franchise that has always been on the cutting edge of technological trickery. It is significant that Grace's profession as a pickpocket and thief generally relies not on technological trickery or what have you, but on pure legerdemain. That set of skills becomes increasingly important to the plot of the film as it goes on. This is a fundamentally melancholy film, perhaps reflecting the times into which it has been released. The previous several <i>Mission: Impossible</i> films have had an apocalyptic bent, but they've been apocalypses of a James Bondian sort. The apocalypse posited by this film seems like a funhouse mirror of the apocalypse ongoing in our own world outside the film frame. The questions this film is asking about free will, about the role of artificial intelligence as either a servant or a master of humanity, are questions that are very much <i>au currant</i>. We are heading into this film's future like a speeding out of control train. That image, so central to this brand of thrill ride, can't be an accident.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5zrBpnvpr03iDFJImS1kAetTsDQS803ucIk10oPEFlne5Io5VKuXXFvuiUie0RbuNgVi81--qHxW1Z_eQAnCizcjzqDVvV2dG6WsGzHzFN5m708yURT4OA3v4vpsadtwQ1OzeZi-vWtLf54OaAgndQXdtdtjT20c-SJUva-4LPSjLLmL4JLmrdA/s2494/MI7_04.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning Part 1" border="0" data-original-height="1390" data-original-width="2494" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5zrBpnvpr03iDFJImS1kAetTsDQS803ucIk10oPEFlne5Io5VKuXXFvuiUie0RbuNgVi81--qHxW1Z_eQAnCizcjzqDVvV2dG6WsGzHzFN5m708yURT4OA3v4vpsadtwQ1OzeZi-vWtLf54OaAgndQXdtdtjT20c-SJUva-4LPSjLLmL4JLmrdA/w400-h223/MI7_04.jpg" title="Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning Part 1" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>This feels like a franchise winding down, too. Cruise was 61 years old the day this film debuted at theaters, after it was delayed by the Covid pandemic. Surely he can't keep doing these films. His co-stars are aging, too, particularly Ving Rhames, who is the only actor to also appear in every film of the series. The idea of replacing Cruise with, say, Jeremy Renner seems to have fallen by the wayside and whenever a series splits a film in two, like this one has, it's generally a sign that we're at the end. This film has not exhausted the series potential, though. The variety of new and returning characters is impressive. Kitteridge hasn't been seen since the first film and he hasn't missed a beat. Henry is just as shady and reptilian here as he was in the first film. Paris, Gabriel's chief assassin played by Pom Klementieff, is a striking film presence in spite of her limited screen time and almost complete lack of dialogue. Gabriel himself seems like Morales is channeling Deathstroke from the Teen Titans (who he played for the second season of HBO's <i>Titans</i> series). This makes his character another coded reference to <i>The Terminator</i> given that in the comics, Deathstroke is also named "The Terminator". On the other side of the fence, Haley Atwell's Grace is delightfully ambiguous throughout, and represents the chaos individual choices introduce to a deterministic system. She's this film's Golden Apple of Discord, she's the Mule conquering the Foundation by flouting psychohistory, she's John McLaine at the party by mistake. Harnessing or reacting to that chaos forms a large part of the film's plot. An old military dictum states that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy and it seems like it is Grace's role to teach that to both Ethan Hunt AND The Entity. If the film has a sour note, it's the role given to Ilsa Faust in the film's plot. Rebecca Ferguson is such a charismatic actor in the role that it seems almost criminal for the film to consign her to the sidelines and then to oblivion, though I wonder if her fate in this film is foreshadowed by the opening movement as an elaborate feint. I hope so. If not, it's a sorry use of a fabulous character.</p>
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<p>In most respects, this film lives up to the standards of the best films of the franchise, but somehow, I like it a tad less than I like either <i>Rogue Nation</i> or <i>Fallout</i>. Those films form a dyad within the series, much like this film will form with its sequel. Those films feel self-contained. You don't need to see either one to enjoy the other. This film, by contrast, feels like half a movie. True, the filmmakers tell you this up front with the title of the film, but it lacks something at the end; a catharsis or a sense of closure perhaps. I suspect that after the last ten years of tentpole franchises, I'm tired of franchise building. <i>Dead Reckoning Part 1</i> is good enough to get me in the theater for Part 2, but it could have done that without its open ending and lack of resolution. I almost feel sorry for the filmmakers for setting themselves up to fail. This film is so charged with rocket fuel that if the follow-up fizzles even a little, it will seem a disappointment. But who knows? The future, as Kyle Reese once told Sarah Connor, is not fixed. There is no fate but what we make. Here's hoping that's true.</p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-26257432469365276582023-07-19T21:46:00.003-07:002024-01-24T18:23:52.553-08:00The Grant Mystique: Charade (1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjf9aWlTxyHdvMMDTzWkHnZBl7qsNu87bCd8IWuQHO4Lu_L0r5CbnaRdpdAXknBBGooXfU8-VRmbPWkvk1C599rxzLS6mPwi6lR6ePgKsYgdJF0J9ijFoM-721ftenScvlWANtePTRlabX9uSDC9OYRjEoqwFp4VGFM1_r_uPPM21v0NMYMqIjhg/s1278/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjf9aWlTxyHdvMMDTzWkHnZBl7qsNu87bCd8IWuQHO4Lu_L0r5CbnaRdpdAXknBBGooXfU8-VRmbPWkvk1C599rxzLS6mPwi6lR6ePgKsYgdJF0J9ijFoM-721ftenScvlWANtePTRlabX9uSDC9OYRjEoqwFp4VGFM1_r_uPPM21v0NMYMqIjhg/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Cary Grant made three films with director Stanley Donen between 1958 and 1963. Those three films arguably define the sunset of his acting career. The last of the three, <i><b>Charade</b></i> (1963), is Grant's last legitimately great film. He made two more films afterward and then retired from acting in 1966. <i>Charade</i> is also a transitional film for American cinema generally, perched as it is between the last gasps of big studio filmmaking in the 1950s and the first rumblings of the American New Wave. Stanley Donen was the ideal director for such a film, given that his filmmaking style already resembled various New Waves before any of them even began to swell on the cinematic horizon. Donen was flexible and creative, able to slot right into whatever genre to which he was assigned (maybe not science fiction, but that may not have been his fault). Even though Donen was primarily known for making musicals in the 1950s including arguably the greatest musical ever made, <i>Charade</i> demonstrates a surprising--and surprisingly brutal--facility for thrillers in the mode of Alfred Hitchcock. <i>Charade</i> is sometimes described as the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made, though that might be hyperbole.</p>
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<p>Donen was also one of Audrey Hepburn's principal directors, having made <i>Funny Face</i> with her in 1957 and with <i>Two For the Road</i>--a New Wave film if ever there was one--ahead in 1967. The pairing of Hepburn and Cary Grant perhaps delayed Grant's retirement. Of his experience on <i>Charade</i>, he said, "All I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn." Alas, that never came to pass. He was lured into making <i>Father Goose</i> with the promise of Hepburn as a co-star, though the part ultimately went to Leslie Caron. Maybe that's just as well. Donen intended to make a further film with Grant, too, but the actor retired and the part in <i>Arabesque</i> went to Gregory Peck instead. For what it's worth, that's a pretty good movie, but I don't think Grant and Sophia Loren would have gotten along well. They had a history. And Grant was probably too old by then for that kind of globetrotting adventure anyway.</p>
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<p><i>Charade </i>begins with a man being thrown from a moving train. He's been murdered. This is Charles Lampert. His widow, Regina, is on a skiing holiday with their son at the time. She tells her best friend that she's thinking of leaving Charles, but when she returns to her flat in Paris, she discovers that it has been cleared out and Charles is gone. The police are waiting to talk to her, too, given that he has been murdered. They hand her his effects, including a letter offering his apologies for what he's done to her. She doesn't know whether to be relieved or apprehensive, because the cop on the case, one Hamilton Bartholemew of the CIA, tells her that Charles has absconded with $250,000 dollars from a World War II heist his unit pulled near the end of the war. At his funeral, his army buddies come one by one to pay their respects. One by one, they menace Regina for information about the money. She hasn't got it. She has no idea where it might be. They don't believe her. Her only help is Peter Joshua, an American she met on holiday who helps her move into a hotel. But Joshua has secrets of his own. The thieves tell Regina that he is not "Peter Joshua" but the brother of one of their confederates who was killed in the heist. Then Regina discovers that that man had no brother, and he owns that he is a professional thief. Meanwhile, the thieves themselves start to get murdered, casting suspicion everywhere. And what DID Charles do with the money, anyway?</p>
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<p><i>Charade</i> gives the Cary Grant persona a good workout. The character he plays here is protean, changing from scene to scene to fit the needs of the plot while remaining essentially Cary Grant. A viewer who thinks that Grant was always playing himself will not change their minds while watching this film, but Grant, as usual, had the last word. "Have you ever seen people trying to play themselves at parties?" he once asked an interviewer some years after he retired from film. "They're terrible!" Unspoken here is the idea that Grant was NOT playing himself. He also once told an admirer who said they always wanted to be Cary Grant, "So did I." Archie Leach was always somewhere down at the foundations of his identity. What <i>Charade</i> does with the Grant persona is akin to the Kuleshov effect. It is charming, sinister, untrustworthy, and heroic by turns not through any particular change in Grant's performance, but by the context of the given scene in which it is placed. Grant absolutely <i>could </i>change the tenor of his performance for effect, but in this film he doesn't have to. Indeed, it's not even a desirable thing. The steadiness of the character here, by whatever name he goes, keeps the audience in the dark. The character's true motivations are opaque until the very end. It's a compelling hook. All Grant needs to do is hit his marks and not flub his lines. The <i>persona</i> does the rest.</p>
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<p>This is not Grant's movie, though. It's Audrey Hepburn's. Fittingly, she's the character we meet first, and it's her point of view through which we perceive the events of the film. Hepburn is asked to play a wide range of emotions. Her character is not reliant on her movie-star persona. The movie asks her for terror, attraction, comedy, craftiness, motherhood, distrust, sorrow, resignation, and anger. It's a broad canvas for an actor, and Hepburn was certainly game for it. Significantly, Hepburn is an actor who did not cultivate a specific movie-star persona, per se, though in the public's mind she was probably Holly Golightly or Sabrina. She was never accused of "playing herself," because her portfolio doesn't allow that kind of pigeonholing (and, seriously, have you ever actually read her biography? It's a LOT). The <i>character</i> is a type, though. Regina is a variant of the wrong man accused, or the poor sap mistaken for a guilty party. She's the equivalent of Roger Thornhill in <i>North by Northwest</i>, a character who thinks her world is secure and comprehensible until the bottom drops out and a world of chaos lies below. She doesn't understand anything for most of the film, and has to keep her wits to stay alive as she pieces things together. This was Hepburn's first go at this character type, and you can look at this film as a warm-up exercise for <i>Wait Until Dark</i> five years later if you like. That film is very similar to <i>Charade</i>, though it removes the comfort of a white knight.</p>
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<p><i>Charade</i> leans in to the more romantic aspects of the Hitchcockian thriller. Grant, for his part, thought the increasing age gap between him and his leading ladies was troublesome, while Hepburn had been paired with a ridiculous succession of MUCH older co-stars. The gap between Hepburn and Grant was "only" 25 years, which is perhaps less distasteful when Hepburn was in her mid-1930s than it was a decade earlier. Grant insisted that it would be undignified for him to chase after her, so the filmmakers reversed this element of their dynamic and had her chase after him. For my tastes, it works better this way. Both of these characters are worldly and tired of the world. Their banter doesn't seem rehearsed so much as it comes from deep wells of experience. Regina is married to Charles at the beginning of the film, but she's resigned to divorcing him. She knows he doesn't love her and she doesn't love him and that's that. This is not Audrey Hepburn the ingenue, nor Cary Grant the handsome screwball comedian. This is a movie about adults, starring adults. The scenes of intimacy between them aren't coy, and their relationship isn't headed anywhere chaste.<br /></p>
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<p>Donen's directorial style here is geared for editing rather than indulging in elaborate shot compositions. This isn't a film that overawes you with it's beauty, no matter how photogenic it finds Paris to be. It's an attractive film as a baseline of commercial professionalism, but it's one that moves rapidly and doesn't dawdle on the scenery. Donen finds his meaning in the cut. It differs from Hitchcock in so far as this film isn't interested in emphasizing significant objects, which makes the deftness of how it leads the audience to the conclusion even more remarkable. The film tells us where Charles hid the money within the first five minutes of the film, which puts the audience in the same situation as the characters. The solution to the mystery is hidden in plain sight. When Regina eventually figures it out, the film rewards both her and the audience for their cleverness with a riot of images related to that solution thrown onto the screen in a rapid montage. The film conceals its true Villain, too, though there are plenty of villains with a lowercase "v" throughout. Of the major characters, four of them are played by actors who had already won or would go on to win Oscars. Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy are a murderer's row of supporting actors, if you'll pardon the pun. In one respect, Donen takes his cues from Hitchcock: he puts his leading lady in a series of chic outfits. Audrey Hepburn could wear the hell out of clothes and this film insists on indulging that skill. The chic of 1963 pins this film firmly in its era, if the style of the film didn't do that, too. The film debuted in theaters a month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and you can look at this film as a coda of sorts for the fashions of Camelot. Things changed quickly afterward. The form of the film is more forward looking than its fashions. This is a New Wave film in spite of dialogue that sometimes seems like it comes from a 1930s screwball comedy. A lot of the film's flourishes are completely arbitrary in the finest tradition of Godard and his followers. I like to think that Godard is a follower of Donen, though I doubt that's the case. The goofy face Grant makes when Regina figures out who he is being perhaps the most arbitrary of the film's flourishes. But the cast, though...the cast imparts on the film a Hollywood glamour and commercial sheen that disguises its provenance. This is a film first and foremost about movie stars, and in some ways the plot and even the form of the film doesn't matter so long as light is bouncing off Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.</p>
<p>I wonder if Ian Fleming saw <i>Charade</i> and again contemplated the idea of Grant as James Bond, given that the opening credits have a sinister early sixties espionage score and were designed by Maurice Binder. Maybe not, though. Even after he retired and all the way until his death in 1986, Grant was thought to be ageless, but I think he looks noticeably his age and noticeably out of shape in <i>Charade</i>. It makes the fight sequence with the much younger, much larger George Kennedy seem rigged for the story because Grant is the designated hero. Because, you know, he's Cary friggin' Grant. </p>
<p>The credit sequence deserves one other piece of scrutiny. It doesn't have a correct copyright notice, which means that the film entered the public domain the minute it was first exhibited to an audience. This also means there are a raft of shady versions of the film. The one I've used for screen caps is the Universal blu-ray and digital edition, though the Criterion edition is excellent, too. Beware of other vendors, though. The film has long been a favorite of fly-by-night grifters.<br /></p>
<hr />
<p>My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
<br />
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-grant-mystique-this-is-night.html"><i>This is the Night</i> (1932)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-grant-mystique-enter-madame.html"><i>Enter: Madame</i> (1935) </a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2020/08/eagle-and-hawk-1933-review.html"><i>The Eagle and the Hawk</i> (1933)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/02/The-Last-Outpost-1935-Review.html"><i>The Last Outpost </i>(1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-grant-mystique-wings-in-dark.html"><i>Wings in the Dark</i> (1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2006/12/movies-for-week-of-117-12306.html"><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i> (1939)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/08/Penny-serenade-1941-review.html"><i>Penny Serenade</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/01/Suspicion-1941-Hitchcock-review.html"><i>Suspicion</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="https://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/06/To-Catch-A-Thief-1955-review.html"><i>To Catch a Thief</i> (1955)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/01/games-must-we.html"><i>North by Northwest</i> (1959)</a>
</p><p></p><p></p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-35398772794341668302023-07-08T08:27:00.001-07:002023-07-08T08:27:52.625-07:00The Quatermass Legacy<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zzrgx6VIVnY" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>I sat in on this vodcast (is that even a word?) celebrating the 70th anniversary of the original broadcast of <i>The Quatermass Experiment</i>. Please pardon my nervous energy. I have a fear of speaking in public. <br /></p>
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<p></p><p></p>Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-20531732929392696842023-07-04T08:54:00.001-07:002023-07-06T10:36:53.781-07:00Victory Through Air Power<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMlLnAsjuM2WVf3LSKaQNWbJYCkpYxq6ngvqKfTS9C2VjX-9w3jVKUGjm81wkQPze3DvKeXV0ECpAK_T6ttn6QtlgHpd2IzCuC55oTIXAt9N3nHGwuLWW_w3P0GulxqmTMMh-JyjZmRjmBWzhwzCJBhOnOT9ulno5hJhjvthy_NUdxF5IDiMo/s840/airforce_9.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Air Force (1943)" border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="840" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMlLnAsjuM2WVf3LSKaQNWbJYCkpYxq6ngvqKfTS9C2VjX-9w3jVKUGjm81wkQPze3DvKeXV0ECpAK_T6ttn6QtlgHpd2IzCuC55oTIXAt9N3nHGwuLWW_w3P0GulxqmTMMh-JyjZmRjmBWzhwzCJBhOnOT9ulno5hJhjvthy_NUdxF5IDiMo/w400-h299/airforce_9.JPG" title="John Ridgely and John Garfield in Air Force (1943)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><b><i>Air Force</i></b> (1943, directed by Howard Hawks) is absolutely propaganda. Let's make that crystal clear at the outset. Almost all war films made during the Second World War were propaganda and there was no space for anti-war sentiment in the cinema of the day. Nor was there room for criticism or pacifism in the era's politics more generally. Many such propaganda films are a drag, reducing characters into symbols without any interior life and choking on their own patriotism. This one is not like that, or not <i>much</i> like that, which makes it effective. It's a gripping adventure film from beginning to end, even in spite of the fact that it starts with a quote from the Gettysburg Address and ends with a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In between, though, is a pure Howard Hawks action film about his favorite types of people: Flyers. Men banded together to do a job. Professionals.</p>
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<p>The story follows the crew of the Mary Ann, a B-17 bomber assigned to a wing in San Francisco. They've received orders for a flight to Honolulu, carrying no ammunition. It's a training exercise. The crew don't know their destination at the outset. The crew include a new tail gunner who is disgruntled with the army and plans to muster out when his tour is over in a few weeks, a radio man living up to the legacy of his legendary father, a chief mechanic whose boy is an aviator in the Philippines, a co-pilot who hopes to see his sister in Hawaii, a newlywed captain who kisses his wife goodbye on the tarmac. There is no hint that they are flying into danger, but when they arrive at Hawaii, they find Hickam Airfield and Pearl Harbor under attack by the Japanese. It's the morning of December 7, 1941. Their entire wing is redirected to alternate landing fields. The Mary Ann lands on Maui, only to come under fire from suspected fifth columnist Japanese agents. They are obliged to take to the air again and land at the ruins of Hickam Field, where they receive new orders. They must fly to the Philippines via Wake Island to help relieve American forces. The Japanese have hit Americans everywhere in the Pacific. While they wait to refit for the flight, the co-pilot discovers that his sister has been gravely injured in the attack, while her boyfriend is unscathed. The co-pilot blames him for his sister's misfortune and is none too happy to have him assigned to the Mary Ann. He's a fighter pilot, and the Philippines needs pilots. When they find out that he was one of the only pilots off the ground in the attack and that he took out three Japanese planes when the sister was injured, the crew is mollified. At Wake Island, they find more of the same, with the American personnel there grim and resigned to an impending Japanese invasion. The tail gunner and mechanic take on the marines' dog as a mascot and promise to deliver him to the marines in the Philippines. The dog becomes their own mascot, especially once they reach their destination and join the war... </p>
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<p>Let's start with the negative. As propaganda, this film understands in its bones that racism is the way to motivate Americans to do anything. And this film is <i>very</i> racist.* A key part of its plot involves fifth columnists in Hawaii aiding the Japanese attack. In the film, the Mary Ann is directed to an alternate landing spot on Maui where they are chased off the island by Japanese snipers. At Hickam Field proper on Oahu, the co-pilot's sister was injured not by the hail of ordinance from the Japanese planes, but by a fifth columnist on the ground. All of this is an ugly libel. There was no Japanese fifth column activity on Hawaii leading up to or during the Pearl Harbor attack or afterward, but paranoia--which this film stokes with ruthless efficiency--is what led the United States to round up Japanese Americans and put them into concentration camps. The on-screen hatred exhibited by the cast's designated hothead--played by John Garfield--is palpable and contagious. When the younger gunner is platooned to a smaller fighter and is obliged to abandon ship, he's shot as a helpless parachuter by a Zero. This prompts Garfield's Sgt. Wynocki to exclaim "Dirty--" when he blasts the offending plane out of the sky. The film leaves it for the viewer to fill in the word after "dirty." There is a definite intention in this film to render the Japanese simultaneously inhuman and less competent than the American Air Force. I understand that it's easy for me to question this 80 years later. Doubtless, the makers of this film and the American military had no such second thoughts in the face of an existential threat. It hasn't aged well, though, and may explain why this film isn't discussed much in conversations about Howard Hawks's great films from the period. Hawks was on a roll at the time, making classic after classic (the five films that precede this in his filmography are: <i>Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York,</i> and <i>Ball of Fire</i>). Purely in terms of its craft, this film plays at that same level. Unfortunately, this one is tarnished and for some contemporary viewers all of this will be a deal breaker. I'm not going to try to convince anyone otherwise.</p>
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<p>If the propaganda elements of <i>Air Force</i> are not a dealbreaker, then this is a great director at the summit of his abilities. It's astonishing how gripping this film is considering its first half is basically a long plane ride. This film is a good example of Hitchcock's ticking bomb hypothesis. Put a bomb under the table, show it to the audience, watch the characters talk about anything else, and voila! Suspense. The ticking bomb at the outset of the film is the date. The Mary Ann and its bomber wing depart for Honolulu on December 6, 1941, a fact that is shown to the audience by the writing in the logbook. The characters don't know what they're flying into, but the audience does. The bomb is set, and the audience is primed. The second half of the film provides its characters with two different kinds of problems. The first is finding Wake Island and hoping they can land there before running out of fuel. The second is getting the Mary Ann repaired and airworthy after its first mission in the Philippines before the Japanese overwhelm them. There are a couple of side stories that concern the individual characters running in parallel here, but they're all subsumed by the clock the film has set on its action. This is a plot-driven film, though the crucible of the plot dictates the evolution of the characters.</p>
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<p>This isn't a film about movie stars even though John Garfield was a huge star at the time. This was an all hands on deck for the war effort kind of film. Hawks said of Garfield in Hawks on Hawks by Joseph Citro:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>"He came around and said he wanted to be in it. And I said, 'I haven't got much for you. You're just gonna be one of the crew.' He said, 'That's all I want to be.' And as a matter of fact, he's about the only well-known actor in it. Well, Harry Carrey--"</i></p></blockquote>
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<p>Most of the actors were volunteers. Some of them, like Gig Young and Arthur Kennedy, were on their way to bigger things. Hawks emphasized the nature of the film by listing the cast by their jobs in the credits, rather than by the names of their characters, but he had an eye for faces and an eye for talent. Even so, Garfield had the "it" quality of a movie star, and it's hard not to notice him. He has a fairly showy part, too. Joe Wynocki is memorable for his bitterness and his turnaround in the face of an existential threat to his country. The character is so indelible that he played a variant in <i>Destination Tokyo</i> later in 1943. He's referenced in the monologue Christopher Walken gives to young Butch in <i>Pulp Fiction</i> concerning the provenance of Butch's watch, which is a deep cut. Garfield doesn't try to steal the film, though. He's on board with the program. This is a collective effort and the progressive Garfield was down for that.</p>
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<p>This is a film about communities formed around men doing their jobs. In Hawks's universe, each man is a professional and the team is only as good as its weakest man. He valued anyone who showed up for the job and did it with no muss and fuss. Even Wynocki does his job even though the film (and audience) initially distrust him because he wants out of doing it at the outset. His pride of work in the second half of the film, bloodthirsty though it is, is the means for his redemption. It's his idea to saw off the tail cone of the plane and put a machine gun there, and he's the reason the plane survives to fight on after its first action. This is a major theme in Hawks's work, maybe THE major theme in his work. It certainly informs the way he blocks actors and stages scenes. One of the distinctive visual textures of Hawks's work--why they're so interesting to look at even when nothing in particular is on screen--is the way he <i>just packs</i> the frame with human beings. One-shots of solitary actors are not as common in Hawks's films as they are in other films. When they occur in his films, it's often to indicate an outsider, as one-shots of John Garfield in <i>Air Force</i> often indicate. If an actor signed up to work with Hawks, he was signing on to an ensemble, even if that actor was Cary Grant or John Wayne. This has propaganda value in <i>Air Force</i>, because the visual image of men from all walks of life from across the country coming together to do a job aligned with the military needs of the war effort. The subplot with Lt. Rader is a key element of this, in so far as he's a solitary pursuit pilot who is subsumed into the collective of the Mary Ann's crew for the greater good. Hawks is generous with scenes for his individual characters, though. The scene where Harry Carey's Sgt. White learns the fate of his son in the Philippines only to have no time to grieve is a fine bit of acting. So is Captain Quinncannon's death scene after Wynocki pilots the crippled Mary Ann back to base. This last was written by an unbilled William Faulkner. But it's in scenes with multiple characters talking over one another that the film really shines. Hawks had refined his technique of overlapping dialogue to a fine art by this time and he uses it to move the plot along at a fierce clip.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLzGiQQDpEaTquFOy7NpNFKXjkaxnI2x9MY5uDdeXw7Hms7XDfb_LptzARtDyR8pJBpuSVW9IfpayMeSMWGSGAKlZfSbCWdVZhh08gtqDL4wjhmDBA7AeIi8T2WKrxKbb2ctqzRgl2y42SW-1x27aZf4GcHg3K0vrhbdaQ8h6aZLvW9IMijTk/s839/airforce_4.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Air Force (1943)" border="0" data-original-height="633" data-original-width="839" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLzGiQQDpEaTquFOy7NpNFKXjkaxnI2x9MY5uDdeXw7Hms7XDfb_LptzARtDyR8pJBpuSVW9IfpayMeSMWGSGAKlZfSbCWdVZhh08gtqDL4wjhmDBA7AeIi8T2WKrxKbb2ctqzRgl2y42SW-1x27aZf4GcHg3K0vrhbdaQ8h6aZLvW9IMijTk/w400-h302/airforce_4.JPG" title="Gig Young, John Ridgely, and James Brown in Air Force (1943)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Hawks was not happy with the concluding battle scene, which he felt went on too long. Most of that sequence was assembled by producer Hal Wallis and the film went out before Hawks had a chance to cut it down. This sequence strikes a false note because the events it depicts don't fit the timeline of the film. This battle most closely resembles the Battle of the Coral Sea, which took place in mid-1942, while the film was being shot. This is the film at its most flag-waving. The events of the film previously--the attack on Pearl Harbor, the grim fate of Wake Island, the invasion of the Philippines--all represented defeats for the American forces. Moreover, Hawks made a point of killing off every character who was seen off by their loved ones at the airfield at the start of the film. He knew that war was a meat grinder. He was the man who made <i>The Dawn Patrol</i>, after all. By shoehorning in a victory that hadn't taken place in the film's timeline, the film aims to uplift an audience who are under a cloud of anxiety over the relentless bad news of the early war. For what it's worth, the Allies "lost" or at the very least fought to a draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea, though it paid unexpected dividends at the Battle of Midway. I think Hawks bristled at this kind of fantasy . He was at pains to depict things he knew and events he could justify. He couldn't exactly justify the wish-fulfillment of this film's final battle, at least not inside the confines of the story he wanted to tell. But that's not why the film was made and Hawks knew it. He needed the military's blessing to get the film made at all, so he swallowed it. Other things he wouldn't swallow. He almost walked off the picture when it became clear that General Curtis Le May wanted a film about long range bombers (eventually made as <i>Strategic Air Command</i>). Hawks wanted to make a film about his own interests. He got his way in spite of some compromises, but he never worked with Hal Wallis again.</p>
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<p>In spite of its narrative flaws, <i>Air Force</i> remains a terrific picture. Even though Hawks intended that there be no movie stars as such, the film had a secret weapon in cinematographer James Wong Howe. It's hard to overstate just how good this film looks. There's an element of <i>noir </i>to it given the time it was made, but there's more than that. There's a poetry to the way Howe shoots things, particularly in the early parts of the film, watching planes take off just before dawn in an absolutely gorgeous crepuscular light. The night-time airfields at Hickam and Wake Island are an exercise in outright expressionism which may have roots in a need to disguise sets, but which nevertheless conveys the dire circumstances of the aftermath of the attack in ways that more elaborate daylit sets might miss. The faces Howe has to work with are distinctive, too. John Garfield in particular had a face for <i>film noir</i>; both hard and soft at once with angles that could be shot with expressive shadows. Howe feels this instinctively. His camera loves Garfield. It loves Harry Carrey and George Tobias, too, and to a lesser extent the more baby-faced cabin crew played by John Ridgely, Gig Young, and James Brown (not that James Brown, natch). Even in sunlit scenes, Howe pulls things toward expressionism. This all works in tandem with Hawks's blocking that makes for a film that is absolutely gorgeous on a scene by scene level.</p>
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<p>I understand all too well why <i>Air Force</i> has fallen into neglect while Hawks's other films from the same era endure as classics. I don't question it. Every generation has a right to view old films through their own set of values. For myself, though? I like it a lot. It's not entirely uncritical of war even if it's not explicitly anti-war. I think it's a key film in its director's output, and it's probably better than some of his more well-known films (I'm looking at you, <i>Sergeant York</i>). My dad was a twenty year Air Force master sergeant who was a veteran of Korea <i>and</i> Vietnam. I think he would have liked this film. I have no idea if he ever saw it, though. I would have liked watching it with him.</p>
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<p><i>*Anti-Japanese racism was a feature not a bug in World War II propaganda. Without excusing it, in the grand scheme of things the racism in <i>Air Force</i> isn't nearly as virulent as what one finds in other propaganda of the era. If you go looking for, say, "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" or Disney's "Commando Duck," you'll see what I mean. The racism baked into Gregg Toland's <i>December 7</i> was so bad that he was removed from the project by the Pentagon and it was retooled by John Ford, which is suggestive of a military command that at least had an awareness of the possible consequences of their actions. The war was going to end eventually and America was going to have to live in the world with Japan by and by.</i></p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-15378712764184197762023-06-26T21:52:00.000-07:002023-06-26T21:52:08.529-07:00The Prodigal Daughter<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiclbrIzRMGhVc1ZYUgaWgOiI2dQFzxGvlW2P68OF5HMr0tYhHMKpi7rRFIuzOQ7FBg9nIclWWadCu9pxaAq3ZbpKyTWWLPalEYE_BaPKGziOTznLC_waubV2jS6wCeSmswVAvqsJLl2pta8a01H71ccyKJ-CO7_2JcHtZE7a5EWi3T_iZW5iVGhg/s1296/monica2022_1.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Monica (2022)" border="0" data-original-height="730" data-original-width="1296" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiclbrIzRMGhVc1ZYUgaWgOiI2dQFzxGvlW2P68OF5HMr0tYhHMKpi7rRFIuzOQ7FBg9nIclWWadCu9pxaAq3ZbpKyTWWLPalEYE_BaPKGziOTznLC_waubV2jS6wCeSmswVAvqsJLl2pta8a01H71ccyKJ-CO7_2JcHtZE7a5EWi3T_iZW5iVGhg/w400-h225/monica2022_1.png" title="Trace Lysette and Patricia Clarkson in Monica (2022)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>One of the first questions I asked myself about <b><i>Monica</i> </b>(2022, directed by Andrea Pallaoro) as the projectionist closed the curtains on the screen to a narrower tableau than is usual for the contemporary cinema was, "why is this in the Academy ratio?"* The flippant answer I gave myself is that transgender people don't get widescreen epics. Upon reflection, that's not far off. The frame of the film constrains its central character as much as her circumstances. It creates a claustrophobic space for her to exist in with no obvious room to transcend that space. The second question I asked myself, mid-film, was "why is this character a sex worker?" I know the answer to that, too, but it would be a huge relief to see a film about a trans woman who wasn't a sex worker. No shade toward sex workers, or trans women who are sex workers, but I think I can name three films this century where a trans woman character wasn't a sex worker when her occupation was known to the audience. Maybe. The third question, and it's one I asked about the similar <i>A Fantastic Woman</i> a few years ago, was, "is there no possibility for joy for this character?" <i>Monica</i> veers perilously close to trans misery porn. But then its B-plot is about a woman dying of brain cancer, so these things are relative.</p>
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<p>Monica is in the middle of a bad break-up where the man she loves is ghosting her even as she leaves him message after message. When the phone finally rings, it's not the boyfriend, but her sister in law, Laura, who has tracked her down to tell her that her mother has terminal brain cancer. The same mother who disowned Monica and left her at a bus station as a teen with the words, "I can't be your mother anymore." Monica leaves Los Angeles and travels to her mother's house in the east, where her mother doesn't recognize her. Monica takes on the burden of caring for her mother when the daytime care-giver goes home. Meanwhile, Monica needs to earn a living, and her attempts to perform on cam or meet paying men while at her mother's house are both fraught and unproductive. She also becomes re-acquainted with her brother and his family, and feels a tug of longing for a family that accepts her. She enjoys the company of her brother's children, playing the role of "Aunt Monica." After a particularly bad experience with a potential client, Monica sneaks into her mother's room at night and falls asleep next to her. For Monica's mother, Eugenia, every day is a struggle and a confusion, but she begins to piece together Monica's identity...</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiltPJbiTQenJQelEbMgIJQLyQWwUQ--Fbo_UI6BE-K4sPOcWm0zFSyRpErUBTAals-zNY-XftQevO2OKIeFNWINcJYIOXc2sUnhZTKAIFQItsxRSVGNfFXesKEmIQlpt43fRSMRssNQhVhuqDCYAU19SW3OKV3Ran9I-7BfI4DkqbM2gEKY7UmZQ/s1280/monica2022_2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Monica (2022)" border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiltPJbiTQenJQelEbMgIJQLyQWwUQ--Fbo_UI6BE-K4sPOcWm0zFSyRpErUBTAals-zNY-XftQevO2OKIeFNWINcJYIOXc2sUnhZTKAIFQItsxRSVGNfFXesKEmIQlpt43fRSMRssNQhVhuqDCYAU19SW3OKV3Ran9I-7BfI4DkqbM2gEKY7UmZQ/w400-h225/monica2022_2.jpg" title="Trace Lysette in Monica (2022)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p><i>Monica</i> maintains the morbid fascination cis filmmakers have with trans bodies and transness in general, though in its defense, it has moved past the transition narrative and its insistence on the transformation. The film mercifully never shows us Monica's past self, a depiction that maybe has an understanding that the trans person in the present is probably who that person was in the first place. It still holds to the identifiers of trans cinema, though. We are shown Monica shooting her hormones into her thigh, we are shown what she looks like without clothes, we see her putting on make-up, and we often see her framed in mirrors. Moreover, we don't generally see her happy, which is a key component of cis filmmakers' understanding of trans lives. There's a point late in the film when Monica's brother tells her that, "I don't know anything about your life," which seems remarkably, if accidentally, self-aware. The pathetic trans person is one of the key archetypes of trans-feminine depiction. So is the trans sex worker, which also gets a workout here in two scenes: one in which Monica is interrupted from a cam show by her mother's needs in the night; the other in an extended sequence in which the "date" she has arranged stands her up and she winds up fucking a truck driver in the back of his rig. At least she's not depicted as a psychopath or an object of ridicule, though I suspect those depictions will be returning to movies given the current political climate. Monica's sex work is a key component of her misery. Both instances are unfulfilling for her and presumably thwart her need for money. God knows, we can't show sex workers living fulfilled lives, either, if you'll pardon the sarcasm. There's a stiff puritanism in both the film's awareness of sex work and of transgender lives, and a lack of imagination, too. This isn't surprising. Just disappointing.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkENXbmOFDx-hGxlKlJ21vWLgTRisgVkpwCg42Y3449BPc1cZmFajaeZnk8riu_m2BLEtqHQ_g0BBziMH45q29mx5V7Gt6xr9DTs7b69K-Y4nFbQ4I56UzfKTDtz-W7NlRf9e5K_fzxKQGYWVvEg-S8TYV19UHh635ImlsgxJ9n39ii-Hf7nzgUw/s2000/monica2022_4.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Monica (2022)" border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="2000" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkENXbmOFDx-hGxlKlJ21vWLgTRisgVkpwCg42Y3449BPc1cZmFajaeZnk8riu_m2BLEtqHQ_g0BBziMH45q29mx5V7Gt6xr9DTs7b69K-Y4nFbQ4I56UzfKTDtz-W7NlRf9e5K_fzxKQGYWVvEg-S8TYV19UHh635ImlsgxJ9n39ii-Hf7nzgUw/w400-h267/monica2022_4.jpg" title="Patricia Clarkson in Monica (2022)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>What humanity this film grants its central character is almost entirely provided by Trace Lysette. The character arc she plays in the film mirrors her own public biography of estrangement from her family, so it would be easy to dismiss her performance as "playing herself." But she goes beyond that. She manages to imbue Monica with both a dignity and an interiority that frankly isn't there in the screenplay. It's a performance that's a rebuke to every cis person playing trans, because there are nuances in the way she holds her body and controls her voice, as well as a barely contained rage at the world behind a learned stoicism that would absolutely elude a cis actor who might distill transness down to surface tics. They're visitors and dilettantes, after all. Lysette is an inhabitant, which makes all the difference. And she's not playing against lightweights. Her opposite number is Patricia Clarkson as her mother. Clarkson is a formidable actor and she has a part that's showy: a woman dying of brain cancer who is losing her grip on her memory and her surroundings. Clarkson underplays her role, rather than providing an award-bait barnstormer. When she eventually comes to a recognition, it's a moment of grace rather than an opportunity for overbearing the audience. The filmmakers, to their credit, leave this moment ambiguous enough.</p>
<p>The film's underlying structure <i>is</i> compelling. It's a story that has deep mythological roots, whether in the Biblical story of the prodigal son or in Shakespeare's <i>King Lear</i>. Every generation strains at the disapproval of the generation that comes before, though perhaps not in such stark terms as a family who expels a queer child from the covenant between parents and children. That extreme makes for a story of high tragedy, and both Lysette and Clarkson are both more than capable of playing the notes that make its primal nature resonate with an audience. If anything, the way the filmmakers behind the camera have styled the film hinders the central story. Long takes and the lack of a score may seem like discipline, but this particular film could stand for some melodrama. I mean, there are shots and moments in the film of great emotional power. The scene when Eugenia realizes why Monica is sleeping next to her. The scene where Monica and her brother discuss her life after leaving the family while standing in their childhood home's derelict swimming pool. The rage Monica expresses when her car breaks down and adds that little extra misery on a life already drenched in misery. The style of the film muffles the impact of these scenes. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuBOEeTyPcV-vrmdZiYF8y5O7alkgHnIjpb-3VOdiPCF43jgdztRevonuuhgGv-27DJSoj8BZGB5hCgrhIv2PVygNeKGfZgDLehCUo6VP7DrdfAtf4igl79RjCUehrp3hdFZkEsTKT4BYKhK_9SAOBmUEMy1Th3YNY_ardMpEDNsrglKhgbQuLyg/s1996/monica2022_3.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="Monica (2022)" border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1996" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuBOEeTyPcV-vrmdZiYF8y5O7alkgHnIjpb-3VOdiPCF43jgdztRevonuuhgGv-27DJSoj8BZGB5hCgrhIv2PVygNeKGfZgDLehCUo6VP7DrdfAtf4igl79RjCUehrp3hdFZkEsTKT4BYKhK_9SAOBmUEMy1Th3YNY_ardMpEDNsrglKhgbQuLyg/w400-h240/monica2022_3.png" title="Emily Browning and Trace Lysette in Monica (2022)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The filmmakers back away from the misery of their lead character at the end of the film. Grudgingly, it seems. There are two scenes that suggest a path toward joy not only for Monica but maybe beyond her. In the first, her niece and nephew are playing at the act of giving birth, using a doll for a prop. Significantly, it's the nephew with the doll wedged between his legs. Monica eavesdrops on their play and barges in to join them. This is <i>highly</i> gendered play. The film seems to be welcoming a future with less rigidly defined gender roles. In the second scene, the last scene in the film, Monica's nephew is giving a musical performance at a school graduation ceremony (it's the end of the sixth grade for him). Monica gives him pointers on owning the stage and slips him the music box she's had since childhood. As she watches with his parents, the rapprochment is tentatively complete. It's quite a change from the woman whose first instinct when Laura calls her is to ask her how she got her number. Maybe, just maybe, there's a family for Monica after all...</p>
<p>...which strikes me as weird. Because queer people of every stripe have been drawn to "found" families for years and trans people in particular have communities around them. Trace Lysette herself found her own community with the Ballroom culture in New York when she was young. So the insistence on a rapprochement between Monica and her biological family--a family that deliberately exiled her--seems both tone deaf to the lives of actual queer people and more than a little victim blame-y. It also feels weird that Monica is so profoundly alone in the first part of the film. Even the guy who harasses her in her car is entirely off camera. The narrow framing serves not just to constrain her actions, but to isolate her. The movie goes out of its way to arrange her life so that she needs her reconciliation with her family or else she'll be alone forever. This undercuts what grace it deigns to bestow upon her in the end. It's biological family or the bush. For a film that aims to be trans positive, it sure is conservative in its underlying social politics.</p>
<p>I don't know. I have complex feelings about this movie, and some of them are me assembling the film I'd like to see in my head rather than responding to the one I actually saw. It's not fair to the film. Don't get me wrong, I like Trace Lysette in the role and think the film is worth seeing for her. For Patty Clarkson, too. But it nags at me that this is really just more of the same from cis filmmakers trying to sympathize with us poor difficult trans folks.</p>
<p>Anyway, happy Pride.</p>
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<p>*<i>Academy ratio is traditionally 1.33 to 1. Old Hollywood movies before the 1950s were in this ratio. Old televisions, too. It is unusual to see it on new movies.</i></p>
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Vulnavia Morbiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04722740955194993451noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18814440.post-48218149803175932752023-06-18T16:28:00.007-07:002023-07-23T18:41:19.732-07:00The Grant Mystique: To Catch A Thief (1955)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmhhbVgrDrMqFVk11WziXt_7kG7A5Q1xQFqWjrdYfcyG7FbJGxg-x578Pf0wXWYNOEdowg6MUI7Js9bIhwcG2DDV8_n2Qp-06rke_1DWAMyDWbh9D2Fs49Dol4-UzuoLVTrcr05PnJqtU2D7WNUBRSsDgnxlAaT4dwAOZuLtYPPZ6NbfESLU/s1581/VLCScreenSnapz002.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="879" data-original-width="1581" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmhhbVgrDrMqFVk11WziXt_7kG7A5Q1xQFqWjrdYfcyG7FbJGxg-x578Pf0wXWYNOEdowg6MUI7Js9bIhwcG2DDV8_n2Qp-06rke_1DWAMyDWbh9D2Fs49Dol4-UzuoLVTrcr05PnJqtU2D7WNUBRSsDgnxlAaT4dwAOZuLtYPPZ6NbfESLU/w400-h223/VLCScreenSnapz002.png" title="Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Of the films Cary Grant made with Alfred Hitchcock, <i><b>To Catch A Thief</b></i> (1955) is the one that has been dismissed most often by the director's admirers and detractors as a lightweight "entertainment." A bauble, if you will. Candy. Empty calories. It is certainly a film conceived of and drenched in the glamour of classic Hollywood. It pairs the biggest star in the world opposite one of the most unattainable beauties of its era. It sets its action against a backdrop of wealth and intrigue on the French Riviera and Monaco. It hobnobs with the idle rich. It's a caper film about an international jewel thief. It's pop filmmaking at its most trivial. It's a fantasy. And sure: It lacks the sinister undertones of <i>Suspicion</i>, the complex psychological depth of <i>Notorious</i>, and the stakes and forward motion of <i>North by Northwest</i>. But to look only at its surface gloss is a mistake. Smuggled under the candy coating is a story about hollow men in a Europe still recovering from the calamity of the great wars, in which bad men never escape their pasts and visit their sins on the next generations. It's a significantly darker film than its reputation would have you believe. It's also a portrait of Hollywood films in transition from the studio era--whose days on the stage were numbered--into a conversation with the rest of the world. This was partially filmed in Europe, perhaps with a propagandist intent. Like many American films of its era, it's a weapon in the Cold War, when Hollywood movies that wallowed in a gaudy affluence were a bulwark against the gray economic heat death of Soviet communism. All weapons should be so brazenly sexual.</p>
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<p>The story follows John Robie, "The Cat," a former jewel thief whose crimes were pardoned because of his service to the French Resistance during the war. Ten years after the war ended, someone who knows his methods has taken to stealing jewels from the rich clientele who come to play on the Riviera. This puts Robie in a bit of a bind. He's still on parole and the police really like him for the crimes. Evading the Sûreté as they come to arrest him in his home, Robie makes his way to the beach resorts in Monaco and Cannes, intent on bracing his former associates for information. They are none too happy to see him. They believe him to be guilty, too, and thus a menace to their own lives and freedom. He proposes to catch the thief at their own game, using his own skills to run them down. To this end, he consults with H. H. Hughson (John Williams), the insurance man representing the victims and obtains a list of likely targets. One such is Francis Stevens and her mother, Jessie (Grace Kelly and Jessie Royce Landis, respectively). Francis in particular has her eye on Robie and flirts with him mercilessly. She's on to him, sure. But apparently she likes dangerous men. The Stevenses have a fortune in jewels, an ideal target for the Cat. Robie hopes to use them as a stalking horse. Francis has other ideas, but those other ideas fly out the window when her mother's jewels are robbed. She blames Robie, providing him with yet another incentive to clear his name. Circumstances finger another man, though: Robie's ex-accomplice, Foussard, who attacks Robie in the night and is killed in the scrum. Foussard's daughter, Danielle, blames Robie for her father's death. The police still suspect Robie. Robie knows that Foussard couldn't have been the thief. He had a wooden leg after the war so climbing over rooftops was beyond his ability. He decides a fancy costume ball is the ideal venue to flush the Cat into the open...</p>
<p>Tone and idiom are everything. Were it not for the light comedy and technicolor, <i>To Catch a Thief</i> might be mistaken for film noir. John Robie is an ideal hero for such a framing: a man with a shady past whose life is upended when that past visits him in the present. There's a femme fatale and a cadre of former associates with malice in their hearts. The elements are certainly there, and with a slight twist of its ending, it could be a dark film indeed. But it's not dark and it's not noir. No one could make that mistake. If there's a slight hint of noir it's like salt on caramel. It's an undertone rather than the main flavor. A better frame of reference might be films from before the war like <i>Trouble in Paradise</i> or <i>Jewel Robbery</i>, in which a gentleman thief makes off with both the loot and the leading lady's heart. It certainly has the same kind of flair for the double <i>entendre</i> one finds in Lubitsch. This film has a doozy of an <i>entendre</i>, double or otherwise. When Grace Kelly is taunting Cary Grant with the jewels hanging above her plunging decolletage; she's not talking about jewelry here at all: </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5CLs5RxrGUY3ay8q5pPjp25TO24FMV49eAJ8iz30f6r-mJimS7J2wI6ZPtuJDYVN1fHzwzeQZ449IhjfPsHtSI14nbHCF8Xv0yPzvz_px4E2J7h_iWf6jYqKbUtsC7TcPvEmPkD2-ZALuxYaV27Yes7Ar5iak3uQQzlnmz4u8HYciFgl7RUU/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz005.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5CLs5RxrGUY3ay8q5pPjp25TO24FMV49eAJ8iz30f6r-mJimS7J2wI6ZPtuJDYVN1fHzwzeQZ449IhjfPsHtSI14nbHCF8Xv0yPzvz_px4E2J7h_iWf6jYqKbUtsC7TcPvEmPkD2-ZALuxYaV27Yes7Ar5iak3uQQzlnmz4u8HYciFgl7RUU/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz005.png" title="Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixuZ68Z8iD4RWadgIKlNCsEgatsq9HFlPRT5c4Dxlms4Sir4tdquPh8XDkyksMP2IxoM_hf9dahxipvEj25sAI7RjbcSB0TyZMvAPU52uhfYzt2HHoWssV8hvDb55lrRL-_03-OMn4ILohBhGnpyOQ-qzj_crGwrOKRy0VLXZXSny_3tiTOVM/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz007.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixuZ68Z8iD4RWadgIKlNCsEgatsq9HFlPRT5c4Dxlms4Sir4tdquPh8XDkyksMP2IxoM_hf9dahxipvEj25sAI7RjbcSB0TyZMvAPU52uhfYzt2HHoWssV8hvDb55lrRL-_03-OMn4ILohBhGnpyOQ-qzj_crGwrOKRy0VLXZXSny_3tiTOVM/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz007.png" title="Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2L-PYajAxlsPoGpGh-Z2nLGXyxDz-xIKsNXpN3mUCMyzk2dIm1pcb45xIqGpUjky0FZwocnM8SEFXPaihfy12zmlf6WQATIj7HEKPc0RRrZcZoDJYH_FOupRxZhL21-O3_8g8KlG133Bf73_2s2yzEomRONKYk8BJxdqR9PnmpC9cnsAC-wg/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz006.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2L-PYajAxlsPoGpGh-Z2nLGXyxDz-xIKsNXpN3mUCMyzk2dIm1pcb45xIqGpUjky0FZwocnM8SEFXPaihfy12zmlf6WQATIj7HEKPc0RRrZcZoDJYH_FOupRxZhL21-O3_8g8KlG133Bf73_2s2yzEomRONKYk8BJxdqR9PnmpC9cnsAC-wg/s400/FirefoxScreenSnapz006.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>While this is technically one of Hitchcock's "Innocent man wrongly accused" films, Robie is anything but innocent. While he runs from the cops at first, he seems more in command of events than Hichcock's usual patsys and he carries a larger than usual burden of guilt. He's a career thief, after all, and he knows where the bodies are buried. When John Robie runs, he knows where he's going and where he'll find his answers. Grant's performance as Robie is unflappable. He's a man of experience and Grant wears that experience like an expensive suit of clothes, even when he's done up as a parody of a rural Gallic retiree in white pants and striped shirt. Grant wears the hell out of clothes in this film, too, as does his leading lady. This film is costume designer Edith Head at her most ostentatious, which is saying something.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwuGGFgr2COol3V16uigDim5v3pLUJ81sF4LkhOcvb1u0pWfR-fIWjqhYtToKMMDvR0TyGSDSfyR_i02vzxi4BJ505sETwLEa_vWq2doVl4F44Bho6kKPRYhZOgF4MAK8zBmov_IcXTADWbdXQ73FxV_bKRFtKdhHusDQj9-hPDtg3qJAhPQM/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwuGGFgr2COol3V16uigDim5v3pLUJ81sF4LkhOcvb1u0pWfR-fIWjqhYtToKMMDvR0TyGSDSfyR_i02vzxi4BJ505sETwLEa_vWq2doVl4F44Bho6kKPRYhZOgF4MAK8zBmov_IcXTADWbdXQ73FxV_bKRFtKdhHusDQj9-hPDtg3qJAhPQM/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.png" title="Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
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<p><i>To Catch a Thief</i> doesn't have one particular bravura sequence to make auteurist film viewers salivate. There's no equivalent to the crop duster scene in <i>North by Northwest</i> or the merry go round climax of <i>Strangers on a Train</i>, so it's not as obvious to a casual viewer that <i>To Catch a Thief</i> is the work of a master at the top of his game. Hitchcock strives for invisibility here, as much as he ever did during his peak years (which isn't very invisible at all). Rather, this is a film where its average scenes are so precise that in the aggregate the film becomes a finely machined engine. The devil is in the details. Take the scene where Cary Grant arrives on the beach at Cannes after jumping from the boat piloted by Danielle. This is an example of how a good director moves his chess pieces around the board. Grant is the object of the frame, and Hitchock makes sure you're watching him, but he's placed another actor into the frame as Grant makes his way ashore, a woman in a gold and white swimsuit. This woman notices Grant from behind sunglasses. Grant lays down on the sand; the camera is still following him and the director cuts to a closer shot as he comes to rest, only to have a shadow loom over him. Then follows a shot from Grant's point of view looking up at a looming figure backlit by the sun. The looming man says "Monsieur Robie?" Then back to Grant in the master shot, who nods, gets up, and follows the looming figure off camera. The camera does not follow him, though. Instead, we are left with the woman in the gold swimsuit in the master shot, then Hitchcock cuts to a closer shot of her. It's not immediately obvious that this woman is Grace Kelly, because Hitchcock and Edith Head have disguised her a bit with a turban to hide her blonde hair and sunglasses to hide her features. She doesn't say anything in this sequence of shots. But leaving the camera on her as Grant leaves the frame notes her significance. There's no significant dialogue in this sequence except for Robie's name, so what you have is pure cinema even if it's not showy at all. Hitchock guides the audience's eyes around the frame with exact visual cues. Moreover, it seeds the fact that she's on to Robie from the get go and
becomes his accomplice from the very start of their acquaintance. It's an efficient expository scene that codes its information in images rather than text. The movie as a whole is like that, down to Grace Kelly wearing a ridiculous gold lame gown at the ball during the climax whose color recalls the swimsuit in which the audience first sees her.</p>
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<p>The picnic scene is a case study in character coding, too. The first part is the drive. There are a lot of car scenes in Hitchcock films, maybe because they're a way to let characters talk while they're doing something. Almost all of Hitchcock's car scenes are filmed with rear-projection, and rely on the actors to carry them. In this one, Frances Stevens drives fast, perhaps recklessly, in a way that unnerves John Robie. This is the first indication that she's attracted to danger. As they have their picnic, she tells him outright that she knows he's John Robie the Cat, even as he continues to deny it. At the villa, she picks up on the fact that he's casing the place, and wants to know what the plan is. She acts as if she wants in on the job. She's not a "nice" girl, or, more accurately, she likes to role-play as a girl who isn't "nice."</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv47ZZsn1gR_loNwjIZhwAREJgcoQ-_FfYQ1uTAwnuOca83BClW-bfthimJJdthBIsBJL5c2065KBTe_LzviCJVUQlPnabCUfMhi7EOtHsVw2ryohzwOntcztRQ0U8lbpE800AUZ8ZdwVK9F7HBwDhq172GgPQA46J8Hl6kFoXPYYRR-vFFdg/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz004.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv47ZZsn1gR_loNwjIZhwAREJgcoQ-_FfYQ1uTAwnuOca83BClW-bfthimJJdthBIsBJL5c2065KBTe_LzviCJVUQlPnabCUfMhi7EOtHsVw2ryohzwOntcztRQ0U8lbpE800AUZ8ZdwVK9F7HBwDhq172GgPQA46J8Hl6kFoXPYYRR-vFFdg/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz004.png" title="Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>A further example of Hitchcock exerting his influence on elements that another director might ignore can be seen in the way he stylizes the rooftop environs of his cat burglars. The first couple of heists depicted don't even bother with the details of the robberies: they consist of shots of a black cat walking across roofs that are lit with an unearthly green light. It elides the robberies but gives nothing of the details. It's enough to know that they've happened. The rooftop set isn't naturalistic at all. The unnatural color with which it's lit aestheticizes it and removes it a bit from reality while the various angles of the roof and the chimneys break the film's horizon line into an expressionist collection shapes that only approximate a roof. Again, this is pure cinema and completely unnecessary, until the end of the film when it becomes a dangerous playground where Robie plays cat and mouse with the impostor and with the bullets pinning him down from below. This all has an effect. It's all a cumulative sum of details that distinguish a film that is more than just "well directed" (as if "well directed" was even something that is common among films), and never mind the additional auteurist baggage of personal themes and consistency of technique and image. That's there, too. One thing a viewer might notice if she's seen a bunch of Hitchcock films is the way he re-stages the end of <i>Saboteur</i>, in which the ending of the film depends on the hero saving the life of the villain in order to clear his name. In both films, the villain dangles from the hero's hand over a fatal height. This film revises the end of <i>Saboteur</i> a little, changing the outcome. Hitch would revisit this formulation again in <i>North by Northwest</i>, when he completely reverses the positions of the hero and the villain, changing the outcome yet again.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz-jAONp9FJg3rFGwk9CDfmZTXEHX6QQmfCYfBDR5MoAknQDa5soyU3icY-Y1mERufLLTpg4k67aH0YkP1PWm9ncSe-1YSzEMdPFoubzV6sZJZo6TyBRJ-vwHsI0s_h7txBranf_Dw7SHEfSaNbY723mqCzQIJqnoVmdVuq101FZeNI4HlV3s/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz013.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz-jAONp9FJg3rFGwk9CDfmZTXEHX6QQmfCYfBDR5MoAknQDa5soyU3icY-Y1mERufLLTpg4k67aH0YkP1PWm9ncSe-1YSzEMdPFoubzV6sZJZo6TyBRJ-vwHsI0s_h7txBranf_Dw7SHEfSaNbY723mqCzQIJqnoVmdVuq101FZeNI4HlV3s/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz013.png" title="Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>It should be noted that one of the flaws of auteurism is the fact that all of the tools that directors use to lead the viewer through the narrative are in collaboration with the other filmmaking departments. The beach scene I've referenced doesn't have the shadows of a film like <i>Suspicion</i> to lead the eye, so Hitchcock uses costume design, movement (Grant is the only thing moving in the first two shots of that sequence), and the presence of movie stars in the frame. Movie stars, it should be noted, are often stars because light just bounces off of them differently. Other scenes rely on production design and lighting. None of the director's primary job of blocking the frame and the movement of the actors and cameras exist in a vacuum. Maybe that's why Hitchcock prefered the pre-production process to actual filming. He could keep his own vision without anyone else's input.</p>
<p>This is the only film Grant made with Hitchcock that really leans into the Grant persona as a movie star, though I suppose no film starring Cary Grant can avoid this element entirely. Both <i>Suspicion</i> and <i>Notorious</i> explore the more sinister possibilities of Grant's polished veneer, while <i>North by Northwest</i> almost seems gleeful in the way it punctures Grant's stardom. By contrast, <i>To Catch a Thief</i> luxuriates in it. The world Grant moves through here is a dangerous one of thieves and murderers, true, but it's also one of glamour and fantasy. He moves through it with a self-assured calm. He never really seems frantic in this film, or disheveled. Characters in the film itself take note of this, particularly this look that Jessie Royce Landis, playing the elder Mrs. Stevens, directs Grant's way:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzb0I6UibgxgXeQnmUQTqZCPQSAPrSlnnqWJkD6ai4l1VeeKpN1XIVsCwWUEUc70bWf6t-wh9Om0dSvHpYUxPsDFQWnRHH2O1XGQLDyLycdtT7L7GiZFX7P-C33JPVEv1TQBdFjkfavAhpClGQe3LQyY3Tfp6ZUkpt69478Ur8PM8xhu4hS4o/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz009.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzb0I6UibgxgXeQnmUQTqZCPQSAPrSlnnqWJkD6ai4l1VeeKpN1XIVsCwWUEUc70bWf6t-wh9Om0dSvHpYUxPsDFQWnRHH2O1XGQLDyLycdtT7L7GiZFX7P-C33JPVEv1TQBdFjkfavAhpClGQe3LQyY3Tfp6ZUkpt69478Ur8PM8xhu4hS4o/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz009.png" title="Jessie Royce Landis in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XieVFh04pWgGNdaCYWIVnrmbTtOYskCss6kwgjjBr2asjpegQTaUzr4b-ijZTH4iLS5purGfsBhoTYDSrlBDbxtoJEhbtNdK7u2E68mPKOUHSCw3T7T0VsM40OJvzWvDjZWcpzXYGSbccgC_Wavzd2dbhs1EU1iSuVlEESdYAuc108TvKfw/s2224/FirefoxScreenSnapz010.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="2224" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XieVFh04pWgGNdaCYWIVnrmbTtOYskCss6kwgjjBr2asjpegQTaUzr4b-ijZTH4iLS5purGfsBhoTYDSrlBDbxtoJEhbtNdK7u2E68mPKOUHSCw3T7T0VsM40OJvzWvDjZWcpzXYGSbccgC_Wavzd2dbhs1EU1iSuVlEESdYAuc108TvKfw/w400-h225/FirefoxScreenSnapz010.png" title="Jessie Royce Landis in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>Hitchcock's staging treats Grace Kelly the same as Grant. The camera is enamoured of her. Kelly was Hitchcock's favorite leading lady and more than in his previous films with her, he lets the camera surrender to her beauty. He eventually dresses her like a fairy princess at the end of the film (the dress resembles the one Belle wears in <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> forty years later, so it sticks in the cultural massmind). The film prefigures Kelly's marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Over and above the plot of the film and the director's suspense techniques, this is a film about watching very beautiful people court each other, and Hitchcock does not interfere with that impulse at all. Indeed, he acts as a facilitator.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_-QMfVgisA1VQIz-hT3_s00ijrytzCvJUuK4pWWHvHht_HbsGT9gXsAJ_KXZyY1QMVnLooDSR0EEMVD64vTVOofVglsRs5UBd4YsnC28T8Ugygngz6NGyAqCnankGrvFdPLHf2xKW6cuOd2sn8hRWzNL0r9ChVXyuHgO2XaFkEWKGdmQi4Lc/s1222/VLCScreenSnapz019.png" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="To Catch a Thief (1955)" border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1222" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_-QMfVgisA1VQIz-hT3_s00ijrytzCvJUuK4pWWHvHht_HbsGT9gXsAJ_KXZyY1QMVnLooDSR0EEMVD64vTVOofVglsRs5UBd4YsnC28T8Ugygngz6NGyAqCnankGrvFdPLHf2xKW6cuOd2sn8hRWzNL0r9ChVXyuHgO2XaFkEWKGdmQi4Lc/w400-h223/VLCScreenSnapz019.png" title="Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (1955)" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Bond. James Bond.</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><i>To Catch a Thief</i> found Grant at a crossroads. After the failure of his previous film, <i>Dream Wife</i>, Grant thought his career was over. Between 1953 and 1957, <i>To Catch A Thief</i> was the only film in which he appeared. The period was the most idle of his career. He was considering retirement at age 49. To an extent, <i>To Catch a Thief</i> gave the actor a second wind. In 1957, he would appear in three films and then two more in 1958. Some of Grant's best-remembered films lay ahead. None of that would have been possible if <i>To Catch a Thief</i> had failed. It DID fail with critics, who have largely dismissed it to this very day, but not with audiences. It was a gigantic money-maker. It is significant that when Alfred Hitchcock was himself coming off the financial failure of <i>Vertigo</i> three years later, he turned back to Grant to resurrect his status as a hitmaker. It's said that Ian Fleming wanted Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock to bring James Bond to life after seeing <i>North by Northwest</i>, but <i>To Catch a Thief</i> strikes me as more a Bond-like film. The image of Cary Grant in the casino lacks only the line "Bond, James Bond." So while <i>To Catch a Thief</i> may be a slight "entertainment"--and for what it's worth, I think it's more than that--it seems to me that it is undervalued for its influence on the careers of its principal creators and on cinema more broadly. It's also a pretty good film.</p>
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<p>My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-grant-mystique-this-is-night.html"><i>This is the Night</i> (1932)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-grant-mystique-enter-madame.html"><i>Enter: Madame</i> (1935) </a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2020/08/eagle-and-hawk-1933-review.html"><i>The Eagle and the Hawk</i> (1933)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/02/The-Last-Outpost-1935-Review.html"><i>The Last Outpost </i>(1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-grant-mystique-wings-in-dark.html"><i>Wings in the Dark</i> (1935)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2006/12/movies-for-week-of-117-12306.html"><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i> (1939)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2022/08/Penny-serenade-1941-review.html"><i>Penny Serenade</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2023/01/Suspicion-1941-Hitchcock-review.html"><i>Suspicion</i> (1941)</a>
<br /><a href="http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/01/games-must-we.html"><i>North by Northwest</i> (1959)</a>
</p><p></p><p></p>
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