I recommend all movies directed by Douglas Sirk, Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Jacques Tourneur, Edgar Ulmer, Otto Preminger, Vincente Minnelli, Raoul Walsh, Fritz Lang.. This takes care of most of my recommendations for the month. Others include the great documentarian Robert Flaherty (Man of Aran, May 24), the incomparable dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (May 23), King Vidor's moving film Bird of Paradise, about the clash of modern and primitive civilizations (May 14),and his beautiful version of War and Peace (May 26), the complex and elegant films of Michael Powell, particularly I Know Where I'm Going (May 14) and Joseph H. Lewis's intense My Name is Julia Ross (May 19th).
As usual please feel free to send me an e-mail if you have questions about a particular film.
Monday, May 29, 2017
Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, May 28 2017
And when we are ready to end, Balanchine creates another of these crystalline montages, embracing lost lovers, Hippolyta's hunt, Puck's wiles and Titania's contagious fogs in a scene of mounting excitement.
--Arlene Croce, The New Yorker (March 23 1981).
I don't have a great deal to add at this point to my post about "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (May 29, 2016) a year ago: it is delightful story-ballet (the first act) and lovely abstract divertissements (the second act) and makes Mendelssohn's music sound even better than it is (admittedly Balanchine achieves this also with Mozart, Bach, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky). I think the cast was slightly better this year, especially Maria Kowroski as Titania and Justin Peck as the strangely mysterious cavalier. The children of the school, rehearsed by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins, were as charming and impressive as ever. Daniel Capps did a superb job of conducting the multiple Mendelssohn works.
My five-year-old daughter Victoria was most impressed by the dramatic elements of the choreography, especially when Titania's retinue thwarted Puck's attempts to steal Titania's page. Victoria also enjoyed recognizing particular steps in the choreography, based on her own ballet class experience.
--Arlene Croce, The New Yorker (March 23 1981).
I don't have a great deal to add at this point to my post about "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (May 29, 2016) a year ago: it is delightful story-ballet (the first act) and lovely abstract divertissements (the second act) and makes Mendelssohn's music sound even better than it is (admittedly Balanchine achieves this also with Mozart, Bach, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky). I think the cast was slightly better this year, especially Maria Kowroski as Titania and Justin Peck as the strangely mysterious cavalier. The children of the school, rehearsed by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins, were as charming and impressive as ever. Daniel Capps did a superb job of conducting the multiple Mendelssohn works.
My five-year-old daughter Victoria was most impressed by the dramatic elements of the choreography, especially when Titania's retinue thwarted Puck's attempts to steal Titania's page. Victoria also enjoyed recognizing particular steps in the choreography, based on her own ballet class experience.
Sunday, May 28, 2017
On Sports by Jay Caspian Kang
"Was the great Hollywood baseball movie killed by HD broadcasts or by our inability to connect with the players as characters anymore?" asks Kang in the New York Times Magazine today. There are several things wrong with the question itself: there are almost no great baseball movies (baseball being too immediate), baseball has never been effectively broadcast on TV (though I agree it is worse than ever, as I documented in my Oct. 9, 2013 post) and one can still connect with at least some of the players as flawed human beings, just like the rest of us.
The only baseball movie I would call even good is Frank Tashlin's (writer) and Lloyd Bacon's (director) 1950 film Kill the Umpire, in which William Bendix gets fired from jobs because he is always sneaking out to baseball games (they were played mostly during the day then!) and his family finally persuades him to go to umpiring school, the film emphasizing the importance of the rules in the game. I don't miss the clichés of scrappy underdogs that Kang thinks are so important to baseball movies. Meanwhile he complains about HD today while at the same time complaining about how one can't see Sandy Koufax's face when he pitched!
The beauty of baseball has not changed. I have two suggestions for Kang: stop watching baseball on TV, with its "informational clutter" and its ignorant announcers talking about their dinner plans, and listen on the radio, where there is more "room left for the imagination." I would also suggest getting out to live games; if a major league game is too expensive there are minor league teams in many areas of the country (especially New York!) where one can enjoy the beauty of the game undisturbed by close-ups and distorting telephoto lenses and where underpaid scrappy players are trying hard to make it to the majors. Informed announcers, such as Vin Scully, with their appreciation of the beauty of the game, will probably not be coming back and there is too much money for the televised game to return to two cameras that show the entire field. Baseball has survived the steroid era with its beauty mostly undisturbed, even if that beauty is mostly absent in televised games.
The only baseball movie I would call even good is Frank Tashlin's (writer) and Lloyd Bacon's (director) 1950 film Kill the Umpire, in which William Bendix gets fired from jobs because he is always sneaking out to baseball games (they were played mostly during the day then!) and his family finally persuades him to go to umpiring school, the film emphasizing the importance of the rules in the game. I don't miss the clichés of scrappy underdogs that Kang thinks are so important to baseball movies. Meanwhile he complains about HD today while at the same time complaining about how one can't see Sandy Koufax's face when he pitched!
The beauty of baseball has not changed. I have two suggestions for Kang: stop watching baseball on TV, with its "informational clutter" and its ignorant announcers talking about their dinner plans, and listen on the radio, where there is more "room left for the imagination." I would also suggest getting out to live games; if a major league game is too expensive there are minor league teams in many areas of the country (especially New York!) where one can enjoy the beauty of the game undisturbed by close-ups and distorting telephoto lenses and where underpaid scrappy players are trying hard to make it to the majors. Informed announcers, such as Vin Scully, with their appreciation of the beauty of the game, will probably not be coming back and there is too much money for the televised game to return to two cameras that show the entire field. Baseball has survived the steroid era with its beauty mostly undisturbed, even if that beauty is mostly absent in televised games.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
William K Howards' Don't Bet on Women (1931)
William K. Howard directed well-crafted films which only succeeded, to the extent they did, when he had a good script, such as the one by Preston Sturges for Power and the Glory (1933), a fragmented narrative that is seen as a precursor to Citizen Kane. Don't Bet on Women is from the play "All Women are Bad" by William Anthony McGuire and is a rather unfunny comedy about men condescending to women who, of course, outmaneuver them at every turn. Una Merkle and Jeanette MacDonald are the women and the droll Roland Young and the dull Edmund Lowe are the men. Howard's direction is routine and uninspired.
For those who think early sound films are dull and static (though even Don't Bet on Women has some impressive camera movement) I recommend two early sound films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, both of which star Jeanette MacDonald: Love Parade (1929) and Monte Carlo (1930), sparkling and beautiful comedies, with impressive mobile camerawork. Jeanette MacDonald does not sing in Don't Bet on Women, though she does in the two Lubitsch films. MacDonald is rather out-of-favor these days because of the awful movies she made with Nelson Eddy, in which they tried to perform popular music as though it were opera, but in the Lubitsch films her limited singing is effectively restrained and moving.
For those who think early sound films are dull and static (though even Don't Bet on Women has some impressive camera movement) I recommend two early sound films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, both of which star Jeanette MacDonald: Love Parade (1929) and Monte Carlo (1930), sparkling and beautiful comedies, with impressive mobile camerawork. Jeanette MacDonald does not sing in Don't Bet on Women, though she does in the two Lubitsch films. MacDonald is rather out-of-favor these days because of the awful movies she made with Nelson Eddy, in which they tried to perform popular music as though it were opera, but in the Lubitsch films her limited singing is effectively restrained and moving.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
William Castle's Mysterious Intruder (1946)
The Whistler was a voice of fate, baiting the guilty with his smiling malevolence.
---John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford, 1998)
"The Whistler" was a radio program on CBS from 1942 to 1955, always with the title character, representing fate, as omniscient narrator. In the 1940's it also became a series of B films at Columbia, some of them directed by William Castle. On those few chances I had to go to the movies when I was a kid (my father tried to keep his kids away from movies, claiming that perverts hung out at movie theatres but actually considering movies -- or anything that gave one pleasure -- a waste of money.). Castle's films of my childhood -- Zotz(1962), Mr. Sardonicus (1961) -- seldom lived up to their hype but always drew me in hopefully.
Castle's earlier films, such as Mysterious Intruder (a late entry in The Whistler series), were more imaginative than his later ones and overcame some of the limits of the B film, using 61 minutes to pack in a great deal of plot and filmed mostly in medium shot (to avoid the expense of close-ups and to keep the sets limited) by the experienced B film cinematographer Philip Tannua. Mysterious Intruder, like Castle's later films, is severely underpopulated (streets are empty, to save money) but does at least have some good character actors: including Charles Lane, Barton MacLane, Helen Mowery, Pamela Blake and Nina Wade. The "star" was Richard Dix, rough and gruff as a sleazy private eye of dubious morality trying to recover two wax cylinder recordings by Jenny Lind. Because of his own greed Dix ends up dead, with the Lind recordings (worth $200,000 dollars to the collector looking for them) destroyed by the same bullets.
Over 500 episodes of the original radio series, adroitly and intelligently directed by George Allen, are available on the internet.
---John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford, 1998)
"The Whistler" was a radio program on CBS from 1942 to 1955, always with the title character, representing fate, as omniscient narrator. In the 1940's it also became a series of B films at Columbia, some of them directed by William Castle. On those few chances I had to go to the movies when I was a kid (my father tried to keep his kids away from movies, claiming that perverts hung out at movie theatres but actually considering movies -- or anything that gave one pleasure -- a waste of money.). Castle's films of my childhood -- Zotz(1962), Mr. Sardonicus (1961) -- seldom lived up to their hype but always drew me in hopefully.
Castle's earlier films, such as Mysterious Intruder (a late entry in The Whistler series), were more imaginative than his later ones and overcame some of the limits of the B film, using 61 minutes to pack in a great deal of plot and filmed mostly in medium shot (to avoid the expense of close-ups and to keep the sets limited) by the experienced B film cinematographer Philip Tannua. Mysterious Intruder, like Castle's later films, is severely underpopulated (streets are empty, to save money) but does at least have some good character actors: including Charles Lane, Barton MacLane, Helen Mowery, Pamela Blake and Nina Wade. The "star" was Richard Dix, rough and gruff as a sleazy private eye of dubious morality trying to recover two wax cylinder recordings by Jenny Lind. Because of his own greed Dix ends up dead, with the Lind recordings (worth $200,000 dollars to the collector looking for them) destroyed by the same bullets.
Over 500 episodes of the original radio series, adroitly and intelligently directed by George Allen, are available on the internet.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Ron Honsa's Dancing at Jacob's Pillow: Never Stand Still
Ron Honsa's documentary about Jacob's Pillow was made in 2012 and recently shown again on PBS. Jacob's Pillow was started in the forties by Ted Shawn, a modern dancer, as a venue exclusively for dance. It's in Becket, Mass. and a couple of times when I was in Southampton Ma. for tennis camp in the 80's I would go there to see dance performances in its wonderfully intimate theatre. Honsa's documentary emphasizes the similarities of all kinds of dance: ballet, modern, folk et al. That is, he is a lumper rather than a splitter; dance is movement.
I have generally preferred ballet to modern dance, feeling that ballet is an attempt to escape from gravity while modern dance uses gravity as a positive element. Honsa's film makes clear that this difference is less true than it ever was, if it ever was. When the great choreographer George Balanchine died in 1983 it seemed to free some modern choreographers -- Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp -- to choreograph more ballet, with extensive use of turnout and women dancing on point, and to see ballet as just another kind of movement. Honsa has interviews with Morris, Taylor and Merce Cunningham, but also with Nikolaj Hubbe of The Royal Danish Ballet and Suzanne Farrell of her own company (which I have seen several times in Washington, D.C. and unfortunately is being disbanded this year). All the interviewees are impressively articulate about the time and opportunity for creativity at Jacob's Pillow.
Honsa also talks to many students, including Rasta Thomas, who was exiled to ballet class when he was seven for misbehaving in martial arts class, learned to love ballet and eventually started his own company Bad Boys of Dance. The dancers all love Jacob's Pillow because it allows them to concentrate completely on dance, without distraction.
I have generally preferred ballet to modern dance, feeling that ballet is an attempt to escape from gravity while modern dance uses gravity as a positive element. Honsa's film makes clear that this difference is less true than it ever was, if it ever was. When the great choreographer George Balanchine died in 1983 it seemed to free some modern choreographers -- Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp -- to choreograph more ballet, with extensive use of turnout and women dancing on point, and to see ballet as just another kind of movement. Honsa has interviews with Morris, Taylor and Merce Cunningham, but also with Nikolaj Hubbe of The Royal Danish Ballet and Suzanne Farrell of her own company (which I have seen several times in Washington, D.C. and unfortunately is being disbanded this year). All the interviewees are impressively articulate about the time and opportunity for creativity at Jacob's Pillow.
Honsa also talks to many students, including Rasta Thomas, who was exiled to ballet class when he was seven for misbehaving in martial arts class, learned to love ballet and eventually started his own company Bad Boys of Dance. The dancers all love Jacob's Pillow because it allows them to concentrate completely on dance, without distraction.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Books and Films
Some preliminary thoughts on turning books into movies, after reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral and seeing Ewan McGregor's film version.
1. The best films are often made from less-than-perfect books, which directors choose because of a few ideas or plot elements that appeal to them. A good example is John Ford's The Searchers (1956) from a 1954 novel by Alan Le May, good solid prose that Ford turned into cinematic poetry. Another example is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), from the French novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac. Hitchcock made significant changes, including revealing what had actually happened well in advance of the ending. Hitchcock was relatively unsuccessful with Joseph Conrad (Sabotage, 1936) as was Ford with Graham Greene (The Fugitive, 1947)
2. Good films are seldom made from artistically successful books, complete in their own way. Neither Stanley Kubrick's (1962) nor Adrian Lyne's (1997) version of Lolita is effective: Nabokov's elegant prose has no cinematic equivalent (at least one has not yet been found), leaving just the dubious "plot." This does not mean, of course, that parts of a novel can not be turned into a successful film, such as King Vidor's War and Peace, 1956, which captured beautifully certain elements of Tolstoy's novel, especially the retreat from Russia; John Huston's Moby Dick, 1956, focused on Ahab and embodied Huston's theme of failure.
3. As time goes on the sources of films are forgotten. Does anyone today read Fannie Hurst, whose novel Imitation of Life was twice made into a good film: John Stahl in 1934 and Douglas Sirk in 1959? Reasons that the Western is such an important genre in American films include its appeal to good directors (Ford, Hawks, Mann) and the fact that there are many novels and stories to use without much concern that the resulting films will be compared to the obscure sources. A favorite film of mine, Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent,1962 -- a great film about American politics --is from Allen Drury's novel, 1959,,seldom read these days.
Where does this leave American Pastoral? Yes, McGregor's film is very different from Roth's novel but also it is more generally focused on the generation gap of the 60's and less on the religious and social problems of the time that interest Roth. Andrew Sarris suggested, in response to Ernest Lehman's misbegotten film of Portnoy's Complaint, 1972, that the best way to film a Phillip Roth novel would be to just film Roth reading it. There are those that think a film and its literary source should be thought of as completely separate; is it possible to compare them while respecting the integrity of each?
1. The best films are often made from less-than-perfect books, which directors choose because of a few ideas or plot elements that appeal to them. A good example is John Ford's The Searchers (1956) from a 1954 novel by Alan Le May, good solid prose that Ford turned into cinematic poetry. Another example is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), from the French novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac. Hitchcock made significant changes, including revealing what had actually happened well in advance of the ending. Hitchcock was relatively unsuccessful with Joseph Conrad (Sabotage, 1936) as was Ford with Graham Greene (The Fugitive, 1947)
2. Good films are seldom made from artistically successful books, complete in their own way. Neither Stanley Kubrick's (1962) nor Adrian Lyne's (1997) version of Lolita is effective: Nabokov's elegant prose has no cinematic equivalent (at least one has not yet been found), leaving just the dubious "plot." This does not mean, of course, that parts of a novel can not be turned into a successful film, such as King Vidor's War and Peace, 1956, which captured beautifully certain elements of Tolstoy's novel, especially the retreat from Russia; John Huston's Moby Dick, 1956, focused on Ahab and embodied Huston's theme of failure.
3. As time goes on the sources of films are forgotten. Does anyone today read Fannie Hurst, whose novel Imitation of Life was twice made into a good film: John Stahl in 1934 and Douglas Sirk in 1959? Reasons that the Western is such an important genre in American films include its appeal to good directors (Ford, Hawks, Mann) and the fact that there are many novels and stories to use without much concern that the resulting films will be compared to the obscure sources. A favorite film of mine, Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent,1962 -- a great film about American politics --is from Allen Drury's novel, 1959,,seldom read these days.
Where does this leave American Pastoral? Yes, McGregor's film is very different from Roth's novel but also it is more generally focused on the generation gap of the 60's and less on the religious and social problems of the time that interest Roth. Andrew Sarris suggested, in response to Ernest Lehman's misbegotten film of Portnoy's Complaint, 1972, that the best way to film a Phillip Roth novel would be to just film Roth reading it. There are those that think a film and its literary source should be thought of as completely separate; is it possible to compare them while respecting the integrity of each?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)