Turner Classic Movies March 2017

I'm dialing down a bit on my recommendations, suggesting mostly films I have not recently suggested or that are new to TCM. 

On March 3 is Jacques Demy's extraordinary Young Girls of Rochefort from 1967, something of an American-influenced French musical, with Gene Kelly in the cast,music by Michel Legrand and lyrics by Demy himself.

On the 5th is Carl Th. Dreyer's Gertrud from Denmark in 1964.  What could be more cinematic than people talking,mostly about love?

There are a number of films by Nicholas Ray on the 7th and 8th, with his impressive uses of color and widescreen and on the 12th is Edgar Ulmer's low-budget and intense film noir Detour (1945).

On the 20th is Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), a brilliant movie that was so offensive to some that Powell was practically ridden out of England on a rail.

Of course I will be happy to give my opinions on any other films; just send me an e-mail.  See my entry from last month for a list of  directors.

Baseball 2017

I approach every new baseball season with hope but also usually with some dread.  This year I am worried about what the new commissioner is going to do to "speed up the game" (I am certain it will not include shorter breaks between half-innings; this would involve sacrificing income and we certainly don't want that).  Veteran writer Tyler Kepner reported in yesterday's New York Times that commissioner Rob Manfred is going to push for a pitch clock, limits on visits to the mound, automatic intentional walks and the raising of the strike zone, the last supposedly to produce more hittable strikes!  I emphatically agree with Tony Clark, the executive director of the players' union, who said he would prefer to educate fans on baseball's nuances rather than make major changes.

The important question becomes how exactly do we educate fans on nuances, especially fans who were attracted by the excessive and ultimately boring home runs of the steroid era.  My modest suggestion would be to begin with the announcers, many of whom don't seem to know how to calculate earned run average or slugging percentage, much less the more current and more esoteric calculations. Every once in a while the announcers could quickly mention what earned run and batting averages mean and how they are calculated, for example, or mention the strategy behind the hit-and-run play.  Which means, of course, that we need more educated announcers who are encouraged to talk about the many and varied nuances of the game.  More nuances I would like to see myself this season include stolen bases, bunts (for sacrifices and hits, both) and relief pitchers, including closers, coming in the game with runners on base.

Stephanie Rothman's Terminal Island (1973)

When I was publisher of the film magazine Rear Window in the 70’s we had planned (just before the magazine folded) an issue devoted to director Stephanie Rothman, who in that decade directed six extraordinary exploitation films for Roger Corman, who had also been a mentor for Martin Scorcese, Peter Bogdanovitch and others.  But Corman paid little and Rothman left him to make movies elsewhere, movies that never got made.  Among other factors, she had gotten stereotyped as an exploitation director, even though she had only become that in order to be able to make any films at all!  And, of course, female directors had a hard time breaking into quality films, something that has only changed slightly.  Rothman’s last film was Working Girls in 1974, after which she went into the real estate business.  She is now 80 years old.

Terminal Island is a place where the worst criminals are sent, isolated from civilization and forced to form their own groups.  One group is headed by Bobby (Sean Kenney), where the women do as they are told, being sex slaves at night and pulling plows during the day.  The other group is egalitarian, rescuing the women from Bobby’s group and moving around the island to avoid Bobby, who has the guns.  As Bobby becomes more of a tyrant the rebels attack him with homemade bombs and he isolates himself in a bunker, saying “I don’t need anybody,” the same thing hero John Chance (John Wayne) says in Rio Bravo (1959).  Rothman agrees with director Howard Hawks, however, that one can only survive successfully by accepting the help of others, when necessary.

Working with a limited palette –mostly blue, green and brown – Rothman and cinematographer Daniel Lecambre made a film that captures both the despair and hope of the criminals isolated on an island and forced to create their own civilization from scratch.  This was a common theme for Roger Corman, e.g., Teenage Caveman (1958), though Rothman’s approach is more optimistic than Corman’s.  She imbues an exploitation film with hope for womankind as well as mankind.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer (Doubleday, 2016)

There is no question that the Koch brothers, David and Charles, have given a great deal of money to many different organizations to promote their libertarian views, though as Jane Mayer says, “it is difficult to disentangle Charles’s philosophical opposition to regulations from his financial interest in avoiding them;” Koch industries alone routinely releases some 300 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year. 

Aside from their environmental excesses and their dumping of toxic wastes, for which the Koch brothers have been regularly fined, it does not seem that their spending on political candidates has broken the law, as dubious as many of their favorite candidates and causes have been.  If the problem is with the laws then the laws should be changed, to which the understandable response is that the laws will not be changed as long as they benefit the donors to politicians.  One of the very few things that Trump has going for him is that he owes nothing to the Koch brothers and at least some of his “ideas” – such as higher tariffs and more restricted immigration – are anathema to the Koch boys, though there is also considerable agreement, such as “the hoax” of global warming. 

How much are voters persuaded by the amount of money spent by a candidate?  Dick DeVos (husband of our new Secretary of Education) spent $35 million dollars in the 2006 race for governor of Michigan and still lost.  It seems to me we need better educated citizens, as capable of seeing through dubious political ads as well as other kinds of advertising.  But where will that education come from?  Currently most high school and college graduates learn little about our country and its constitution –ask a college graduate when the Civil War was, for instance – and are too easily swayed by demagogues

Edward L. Cahn's Riot in Juvenile Prison (1959)

Riot in Juvenile Prison is something of a combination of the juvenile delinquent film (Rebel Without a Cause, 1955) and the prison film (Riot in Cell Block 11, 1954, which I wrote about on January 4, 2017).  I have written about Edward L. Cahn before (Nov. 21, 2014; March 26,2015; Oct. 31, 2016), a prolific director (Riot in Juvenile Prison was one of seven films he directed in 1959) whose favorite themes are greed and lust.  There is not much greed in Riot… but there is plenty of lust, as a noble doctor turns a reform school co-ed and falls for one of the matrons, who has been afraid of men since her sister was raped.

The film begins with a riot, with two inmates killed, and ends with a riot.  In between Dr. Furman (Jerome Thor) makes the boys school co-ed and tries to treat the inmates as human beings, something the warden and the governor don’t support.  And neither does the public, once there is an attempted rape. There is much discussion of irresponsible parents but the film has no flashbacks and only leaves the school to show the governor in his office talking to newspaper reporters. Nor do any of the inmates have any visitors, leaving them to socialize with each other and with the staff and giving the film an effective feeling of claustrophobia, especially when the “bad” boys are regularly put in solitary.

The lessons to be learned are no different today:  treat prisoners as human beings, whatever their age, and help to rehabilitate them to return to society – something today considered too expensive and little supported by the public.

There are some details about this film on the Turner Classic Movies website, in which Richard Harland Smith lists the credits (mostly TV) of the actors.

Turner Classic Moves Feb. 2017

During Feb. and early March TCM is doing "31 Days of Oscar," in other words, a lot of lousy movies.  I have stated many times that I find the Oscars bogus and dubious.  However, TCM intelligently also includes some pretty good films that were nominated but did not win.  This month there is almost nothing that I have not recommended before so I will simply say that one cannot go wrong watching the films in February with the following directors:  Otto Preminger, John Huston, Preston Sturges, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Douglas Sirk, John Stahl, Vincente Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, Budd Boetticher, Billy Wilder, Anthony Mann, Leo McCarey, Joseph Mankiewicz, Blake Edwards, George Cukor and Max Ophuls.  I also recommend the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the best of which were directed by Mark Sandrich.

I hope to be back listing particular films in March.