Turner Classic Movies in June

My favorites of the many interesting films showing on TCM in June:

Lubitsch's The Merry Widow and To Be or Not to Be:  a funny and erotic musical and a very dark comedy about Hitler and the Nazis.

Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.  A beautiful minimalist work about a housewife going about her daily routine, with an occasional interruption by a customer for her sexual favors.

Douglas Sirk's Tarnished Angels.  Widescreen black-and-white intense version of Faulkner's Pylon.

Anthony Mann's Winchester '73.  The first of Anthony Mann's intelligently violent Westerns with James Stewart.

Rudolph Mate's D.O.A.  A moving and fatalistic film noir.

Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, one of his most emotionally complex works.

Chaplin's City Lights.  Funny and sad, as only Chaplin can be.

Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window.  Another example from Lang about how one's impulsive choices can ruin one's life.

Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.  Still the best film version of Holmes, capturing his melancholy as well as his brilliance (in spite of studio cuts; one hopes the complete version still exists somewhere).

Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim.  My favorite of Val Lewton's low-budget horror films; it effectively captures the fear of death.

Philomena by Martin Sixsmith

My sin is that I love men.
  --Michael Hess

Philomena was originally published as The Lost Child of Philomena Lee in 2009 (Macmillan); the title was presumably changed to take advantage of the recent movie (written by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope and directed by Stephen Frears) but the original title is more accurate.  Basically, the book is about the life of Michael Hess (ne Anthony Lee) while the movie is about his mother's search for him, with the help of journalist Sixsmith.  By the time Philomena and Martin found out what had happened to her son, whom Catholic nuns had essentially sold to an American couple in St. Louis, Anthony was long dead, having died from AIDS at 43.

Sixsmith is very careful to avoid drawing psychological conclusions from his detailed research into Anthony Lee's life as a closeted gay man who worked as a lawyer for the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, but it is clear that some of Lee's self-loathing came from being adopted, being gay, being Roman Catholic and working for Republicans.  When Anthony and Philomena went to Ireland to find each other they were completely stonewalled by the nuns; they had waited for three years after Anthony had been born to give him up for adoption, mainly so that Philomena could work for them during that time.  Sixsmith was able to use his contacts to find out about Anthony and eventually he and Philomena were able to find Anthony's partner, who had film of their life together.

Sixsmith's book is not only a detailed biography of a man torn between Ireland and his home and adoptive parents in America, it's also a detailed reminder of how little was done originally to help the victims of AIDS.

The Designated Hitter

Now that there is inter-league play (which I am not too thrilled about, traditionalist that I am) it is time to ditch the designated hitter, which was introduced into the American League in 1973 under the dubious assumption that fans were less interested in strategy and more interested in seeing lots of runs scored;.  it was thought necessary to score more runs in order to compete with the more violent sport of football.  What happened was more use of steroids to hit home runs and more sore-armed pitchers, as pitchers were never taken out for pinch-hitters.  It also made it more difficult to retaliate against beanball-throwing pitchers, since pitchers in the American League never batted.

Tim Rohan, in yesterday's New York Times, pointed out that NY Mets pitchers went hitless in their first 64 times at bat this year, which leads John Thorn, official historian for Major League Baseball, to suggest that this means it is time for the D.H. in the National League.  Roger Angell once suggested that some day we might even have baseball teams divided like football teams, one team for fielding and one for hitting (notice I do not say "offense" and "defense," since these terms do not apply to the unique sport of baseball, where scoring is not done with the ball) which fortunately I think is unlikely, due to the cost of so many additional players.  I suggest instead that pitchers could learn to hit, or at least bunt, and help out themselves.  It goes back to the minor leagues, where A ball and lower uses the D.H. while in AA and AAA the pitcher only bats when both teams are National League affiliates.  This may have made some sense in the days when the reserve clause was still in effect, but in today's world of free agents, when players often change leagues, it no longer applies.  Have the pitchers all bat in the minor leagues; they are not that delicate.  As a follower of the New York teams I regret the loss of Chien-Ming Wang, injured while running the bases, but this was due more to lack of experience than anything else.

One of the beauties of baseball is the balance of hitting and fielding and it rankles to have a player doing only one of those, taking away the strategy of balancing how well a pitcher is doing against the need to score enough runs to win. Career D.H. Edgar Martinez did not get enough votes for the Hall of Fame and I doubt that David Ortiz will either.  I cherish memories of games such as the Mets and the Braves on July 4, 1985 when the Mets went ahead in the top of the 18th by one run and Braves pitcher Rick Camp tied it in the bottom of the 18th with a home run!

Movie Journal: Classical Movies and Children

A couple of recent examples of how having children can intensify one's perceptions.

D.O.A.(1950) is an impressive film noir by director Rudolph Mate.  Edmond O'Brien plays a character on vacation in San Francisco who suddenly does not feel well and pops in to see a doctor who examines him and announces "you've been murdered."  He has been given a slow-acting poison which has now penetrated his system and he only has a few days left to live.  He runs down the street in an unbelieving panic and when he stops to take a breath he rescues a wayward ball for a little girl and sees a loving couple on the street.  The look on his face indicates quite clearly his distress; we know he has been dragging his feet about marrying his girlfriend and one knows what he must be feeling:  that he now will never marry or have children because he will soon be dead. No words are spoken; Mate trusts one to understand O'Brien's despair.

Scapegoat, directed by Robert Hamer in 1959, has Alec Guinness playing two roles, a French count and a British teacher who looks like the count and whom the count tricks into taking his place with the count's family.  This unlikely story, more effective in the Daphne Du Maurier novel, works to the extent it does because the British teacher, a lonely bachelor, is obviously so enthralled by his new "daughter", played charmingly by Annabel Bartlett (for whom I could find no other acting credits).  Before I had children I missed out almost totally on this aspect of the film, which gives it a more emotional validity.

Balanchine: Union Jack, Robert Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze

I saw these two ballets with my son Gideon and wife Susan on Saturday:  the Schumann was sad and beautiful and Union Jack joyous and beautiful.  And for those who complain about there not being enough about ballet in this blog I will simply say that when Alexei Ratmansky or Christopher Wheeldon come up with ballets anywhere near this quality I will write about them!

It mirrors the passion of Robert Schumann, his intransigent daemon, his lust for the unknown.
Arlene Croce on Robert Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze (Going to the Dance, Knopf, 1982).

The four couples in this ballet mirror aspects of Schumann and his wife Clara and this dance reminds one of Chaplin's Limelight:  Balanchine and Chaplin foresee their own deaths (it was one of Balanchine's last major works, premiering in 1980, three years before his death).  In Davidsbundlertanze  (the title means David's Band and refers to Schumann's multiple selves battling the Philistines) the exquisite music is performed onstage (Saturday by Cameron Grant) and the women change from pumps to toe shoes (as in Liebeslieder Walzer), a change from the mundane to the ethereal and Schumann, pursued by Philistines with large black pens, eventually throws himself into the Rhine.  A constant theme is the use of the tour jete, when the couples face each other, turn away and jump, turning 180 degrees and face each other again, symbolic of running away and returning and the feelings between Schuman and his wife Clara.
If I have any quibble it is with the unfortunate fact that Balanchine is not around to change the choreography for different dancers; one way he kept his dances alive and vibrant was his keen understanding of a particular dancer's strengths and weaknesses.  One can see in the current performance of Robert Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze echoes of the original cast, particularly the off-center turns and prancing of the Suzanne Farrell role, but also reflected are the strengths of Jacques d'Amboise, Karin von Aroldingen, Adam Luders, Heather Watts, Peter Martins, Kay Mazzo and Ib Andersen.

Working with traditional folk and popular dance forms, Balanchine has this time exalted them through a process of scrutiny rather than of adaptation.
Arlene Croce on Union Jack (Afterimages, Vintage, 1979).

For the bicentennial Balanchine produced this great piece of theatre, combining ballet with traditional jigs and reels.  Again, one regrets that Balanchine is not around to make changes (the costermonger pas de deux was never that funny, though Baryshnikov kept it alive for a while) and the WRENS sequence to the Colonel Bogey March is a bit dated (though Suzanne Farrell letting her hair down in 1976 was rather charming in its way) but it still is an astonishing piece and I remember how thrilled the audiences were in 1976, when one never knew what Balanchine would do next. The first part is mostly marching, complex and beautiful, highlighted by "Regimental Drum Variations", a series of astonishing wild leaps led by Sara Mearns, almost worthy of von Aroldingen's original, followed by the costermonger piece (the donkey who had been in it since 1976 recently died and his replacement is not yet fully trained) and male and female dancers doing hornpipes, and ending with semaphores signaling "God Save the Queen" while the orchestra plays "Rule, Britannia."  It is an amazing spectacle that does not stint on exciting and complex choreography, with more than seventy dancers on stage.

Talking with Susan after the performance I felt like an old fuddy-duddy:  why are current dancers not as vivid and distinctive as those who danced during Balanchine's lifetime?  We came up with several possible reasons.
1 We don't go to the ballet as much as we did before we had children (only one of whom is old enough to go now) so we aren't as familiar with the dancers.
2. Our favorite ballets are Balanchine's and he is not around to tailor his works, old and new, to particular dancers, so we don't get as much of a sense of their individuality.
3. The choosing of dancers these days might be more conservative, i.e., dancers who stick out for their individuality -- in style, looks, personality -- might not be as encouraged as they once were.

Baseball: The Shift

Nice piece by David Waldstein in yesterday's New York Times about shifting fielders, a current trend in baseball pioneered by Joe Maddon, manager of the Tampa Bay Rays.  Of course the shift goes back many years but is now starting to be used more often against more players because of computer tracking of every play.  The shift was used against Ted Williams, first used extensively in 1946 by Lou Boudreau, player-manager of the Cleveland Indians, who knew that Williams hit to right field 85% of the time.  Manager Jimmy Dykes of the Chicago White Sox employed the shift in 1941, moving his fielders to the right of 2nd base, but quickly abandoned it when Williams got a hit down the left-field line.  Which brings up the crucial question of why don't players just hit to the opposite field or bunt when the shift is on? One reason is certainly mental, as Maddon said, "it's a psychological ploy," everything looks different and that has an effect.  Also, batters such as Ted Williams and other power hitters have been reluctant to adjust the natural arc of their swing and settle for an opposite field single or a successful bunt.  One result of the shift may be to get power hitters to learn to bunt and hit singles, both better than outs.  Any diminution of home runs can only be a good thing for the game and more opposite-field hitting and bunting for base hits can only bring beauty and excitement to the game.  Perhaps next will be the return of the stolen base!

Of course one problem for the TV watcher of baseball is that one usually doesn't even see the shift, since to show the whole field would mean lost revenue from the virtual ads behind the catcher. At least Mets radio announcers Howie Rose and Josh Lewin let you know when the shift is on and Gary Cohen on TV usually does also, in spite of his frustration that they can't even show it on TV.  John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman, the Yankee radio announcers, barely know who is at bat, much less where the fielders are, and Michael Kay, on TV, seldom mentions when the shift is on.  Perhaps the increasing use of the shift will get more fans out to the ballpark!.

Higher Education? by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus

This book (Times Books,2010) is subtitled How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids -- and What We Can Do About It, a rather lurid subtitle for an intelligent and analytical book that I found especially useful as my son, now a sophomore in high school, starts thinking about college.  Of course the common sense this book demonstrates is something my wife Susan and I share:  she went to Binghamton and I went to Columbia and we both received an excellent education, an education that came from our own intellectual curiosity as much as from our professors and courses.  As Hacker and Driefus make clear, a good education can be obtained at many different colleges, state and private, though many parents who think only the Golden Dozen (the eight Ivy League schools and Stanford, Duke, Amherst and Williams) will do won't be dissuaded by this book, which proves, with statistics and interviews, that these schools do not provide a better education than many others. Some of this book appeared first in The New York Review of Books, where Hacker has been writing excellent articles about education for years.

Half of all undergraduates are now enrolled in vocational training programs and I agree with Hacker and Dreifus that it is difficult to call these programs "education."  They say, correctly, that "college should be a cultural journey, an intellectual expedition, a voyage confronting new ideas and information, together expanding and deepening our understanding of ourselves and our world."  And to those who say that that is not realistic in today's economy the authors recommend that we stop relying on loans and have the colleges make up the difference from what parents can pay.  It seems that one of the reasons that college tuition increases are so much greater than inflation is simply because loans have become more available.  Activities other than education should be made to justify themselves:  administrators, athletics, amenities and top-heavy faculties add to the cost of college.

As far as top-heavy faculty goes, the authors recommend replacing tenure with multiyear contracts, especially since tenure does not protect academic freedom but subverts it, promoting conformity.  Replacing tenure can lead to better teaching, less emphasis on research and less exploitation of adjuncts, who get paid a fraction of what a professor gets for teaching the same course.

The authors also suggest that colleges should engage all students and make all students use their minds.  This is going to be tricky and difficult and should start early with parents and high schools; too many of us know high school graduates who have never read a book:  no wonder they want vocational training and to avoid stretching their intellect!  Parents need to read and to encourage their children to read and to think for themselves.

Movie Chronicle

I get most of the movies I see from three sources:  Netflix, Turner Classic Movies, the Brooklyn Public Library.  If it's on DVD I get it from the latter two sources, while Turner shows many movies not available on tape.  Netflix is great because they have no late fees; I remember how I felt in the early days of video stores when I suddenly did not feel like watching a tape and had to pay a late fee or return it unwatched; with Netflix the incentive to return is that you pay a monthly fee for as many films as you can watch.  Turner Classic Movies is the only place that shows movies uncut, uninterrupted and in the proper aspect ratio (good-bye AMC, IFC, Sundance) and is the only reason I have cable TV.  I hope gone forever are the times I had to watch movies with a stopwatch to see if they were complete, constantly interrupted as they were by commercials (garish color commercials interrupting beautiful black-and-white are the worst). 

The two movies I have seen on Turner recently and the one each from Netflix and the library demonstrate that I am not inflexible when it comes to directors who are not my favorites.  From TCM Pennies from Heaven (1936) was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, whom Garry Giddins, in his biography of Bing Crosby, calls "an underrated comedy specialist" (I disagree), who keeps the movie moving along.  But the real value of the film is the low-key Bing Crosby, who brought in Louis Armstrong for one terrific number and does a wonderful job with a score by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke.  In the same way My Reputation (1946) is fairly routinely directed by Curtis Bernhardt but soars with its star Barbara Stanwyck and its cinematographer James Wong Howe, even if the later There's Always Tomorrow,(1956, directed by Douglas Sirk), is a better film.

From Netflix I watched Stephen Frears's Philomena, an intensely emotional film of genuine sentiment, with a star (Judi Dench) and a director (Stephen Frears) both in their 70's and a heart-breaking film for one with young children. From the library I watched Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station.  Both the Frears and the Coogler are based on real events and derive their power from the rather straightforward depiction of those events, without too much intervention from their directors, i.e., the events speak strongly for themselves.

Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is an ingenious "thriller" about which I have two quibbles.

1. Like many such best-sellers these days it takes pleasure in manipulating the reader, constantly pulling the rug out from under one.  I think that some readers must like this because it is so common these days but I am not fond of being led to views that turn out to be nonsense.  Some may think this is even "Hitchcockian" but Hitchcock understood the important of suspense over surprise:  one can be quite sloppy and still surprise the reader or viewer but producing successful suspense takes much more skill.  One criterion is whether one would return to a work or not:  I can't imagine re-reading Gone Girl after one knows what happens, yet I can enjoy Hitchcock's Vertigo over and over again, the emotional and psychological elements being more important than the plot.  And one of the reasons Vertigo is so successful is because Hitchcock revealed the mechanics of the plot rather than making the ending a surprise (he was roundly criticized for this at the time).  I find some of the same to be true about comedy.  Comedy writer James L. Brooks once said that the key to comedy is surprise; I totally disagree.  Again, surprise can be an easy laugh but well-constructed humor is funnier and more satisfying:  Lubitsch and Chaplin are much funnier than Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers.  And when it comes to detective stories or murder mysteries I much prefer the first-person narration of John D. MacDonald and Raymond Chandler, where we only learn and know things as Travis McGee and Philip Marlowe do and we are only manipulated as they are, not by a smug author.

2. I reject the idea that foul language is necessary in the name of "realism", even if it were true that middle-class people, such as those in Gone Girl, use it constantly.  It is ineffective and numbing to use it as routinely as it is in Flynn's novel.  In March Jesse Sheidlower had a piece in The New York Times that suggested the paper should use various vulgarities, again in the name of "realism."  I think there is little to gain in that and much to lose, in the coarsening of public discourse.  The more these words are used the more they lose any power to shock (which some, of course, would think a good thing), as has happened as they become more common in The New Yorker, among other places.  I once thought that the loosening of censorship on films and cable TV would be liberating for writers, but it seems --at least so far-- that's it's become a lazy substitute for good writing. One of the (many) reasons I think that Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad is a better series than The Sopranos or The Wire is because it was on AMC rather than HBO and therefore the writers could not take the easy way out and use vulgarities as a substitute for good writing.

Turner Classic Movies in May

I was somewhat disappointed that the TCM June Allyson series in May does not include the relatively rare Interlude (directed by Douglas Sirk), probably for rights reasons.  In any case, these are some of the movies of some of my favorite directors that will be shown in May:

Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo, an austere, iconic Western. 
In the background, never very far away, is the eternal darkness surrounding human existence, against which the Hawksian stoicism shines.  Robin Wood, Howard Hawks (Doubleday,1968).

Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina, one of the two cases where Greta Garbo had a good director (Lubitsch's Ninotchka is the other).
Queen Christina is, precisely, the story of a woman who grows up in the belief that the world is a place of solitude, then suddenly discovers the power to communicate with its enchantment.
Tom Milne, Rouben Mamoulian (Indiana University Press, 1969).

Fritz Lang's Clash by Night, a tense and fatalistic film, typical of Lang's films in the 50's. 
...a strong sense of psychological conflict defining the characters.  Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang (British Film Institute, 2000).

Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet, a film made during the Korean War, very much ahead of its time in its understanding of the U.S. in Asia. 
The settings of Fuller's movies are as bleak as the world of Samuel Beckett -- a perfect objective correlative of the Hobbesian state of nature.  Nicholas Garnham, Samuel Fuller (The Viking Press, 1971).

Rudolph Mate's D.O.A., an intense meditation on an unkind and unfair world.
 D.O.A. is a prime example of a thriller accentuated by factors of cynicism, alienation, chaos, and the corrupt nature of society to convey a dark vision of contemporary America. Carl Macek,  Film Noir (Overlook Press, 1979).

Mitch Leisen's The Mating Season, a film with an unusual understanding of the comedy of history. 
A crackling comedy.  David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow, 1975).

Frank Borzage's History is Made at Night, wonderfully romantic. 
A profound expression of Borzage's commitment to love over probability.  Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968).