The usual good and bad holiday movies, as well as some other excellent films this month. My favorite holiday movies, for their beauty and humor, are Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940, showing on Dec. 3) and Minnelli's delightful period musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, on Dec. 10). And I highly recommend Remember the Night. directed by Mitch Leisen and written by Preston Sturges (1940, on Dec. 22). Other movies this month include:
Dec. 1. Leo McCarey's intriguing and complex Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Dec. 2. James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein (1933).
Dec. 3. Richard Quine's film noir Pushover (1954) and Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954).
Dec. 4. Bresson's A Condemned Man Escapes (1956), complex in its simplicity.
Dec. 5. Fritz Lang's corrosive Clash by Night (1952).
Dec. 6. James Whale's film about theatre and theatricality in the 18th C, The Great Garrick (1937)
Dec. 8. Deanna Durbin in the intelligent Lady on a Train (1945), directed by Charles David.
Dec. 9. John Ford's Three Godfathers (1949), a Western version of the three wise men.
Dec. 10. Michael Curtiz's Breaking Point (1950), a superb version of a Hemingway story.
Dec. 17. Murnau's Sunrise (1927), one of the great silent films, and Rossellini's The Flowers of St Francis (1950).
Dec. 25. Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).
Dec. 28. Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent (1962), the best American film about politics.
Dec. 29. Raoul Walsh's rollicking and moving Strawberry Blonde (1941).
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Monday, November 20, 2017
Most Likely to Suceed by Alan Gelb: a personal response.
First of all, Gelb fudges the title of his book (Dutton, 1990) a bit. Wyley Gates, he says, could "expect" to be salutatorian and voted "most likely to succeed" but this did not happen, since Wyley was in jail for most of his senior year at East Chatham High School, accused of killing his father, his father's live-in companion, his nineteen-year-old brother and his three-year-old orphaned nephew. Wyley was acquitted of the murders but sentenced, along with Damian Rossney, to 8-to-25 years for conspiracy in 1987. Wyley was released in 2003.
The acquittal, in 1987, shocked many of the residents of Columbia County (120 miles up the Hudson River from New York City) but did not shock me, who lived there from fourth grade until I left for prep school in 1962, a beneficiary of a full scholarship. I knew full well that it was only a matter of luck and circumstance whether a "hood" became a criminal or a policeman in his lust for power and authority in Hudson(where the trial was) and Columbia County. My father would bring in one of his policeman friends to lecture me whenever I complained about his arbitrary authority and I would just mock the threats to send me to reform school. The police made little or no effort to collect any physical evidence that Wyley had committed the crime and only had the dubious claim that Wyley had confessed to the man who was hired to give him a lie detector test, though Wyley's lawyer had been excluded from the testing room and, in fact, the test was never actually given.
Gelb had a summer place on the same street where Wyley lived, though his primary residence was New York City. His description of the crime and the trial is concise and accurate but he seems to have little understanding of what life in Columbia County was like for most residents. Wyley liked to read and use a computer, PC's just starting in the late 80's to be popular. Wyley's father Bob, however, felt differently. Bob had a machine and equipment repair business out of his garage and, according to Gelb, had "a concern about it being 'unatural' for the boy to stay in his room so much and would make an effort to get him outside and put him to work on gears and camshafts so that he would have some 'real' knowledge of the 'real' world." My father, who loved antique motorcars, never got his children interested in them. The closest I came was entering the local soap box derby: I hated working on the actual coasters but I did like that all the entrants got to go on trips to Yankee Stadium and the movies. And my father hated the time I spent reading, insisting it was bad for the eyes. Bob would make Wyley work in the garage in the summer, without pay and when I turned 12 my father cut off my measly allowance, since now I could get a paper route.
Hudson, which had neither a library nor a bookstore when I was growing up, was an anti-intellectual town in a blue-collar county. I spent a year at Hudson High before leaving for prep school and during that year parents complained bitterly about their children being required to read entire books (Death Be Not Proud, The Microbe Hunters): this was oppressive. When the guidance counselor saw what classes I was going to take at Exeter --Latin, English, Science, History -- he couldn't understand why I wanted to go away to school, since Hudson High offered the same courses! Wyley, of course, was accused of being a "sissy" and a "homo," just as I and anyone else who had cultural interests was. Wyley played trumpet in the high school band but never seems to have had the chance to hear a concert at near-by Tanglewood or even New York City, only two hours away by train.
Wyley found solace in religion for a time, when he was young. He was confirmed in the Episcopal Church and for a time was an acolyte and then, at thirteen, he totally rejected the church's teaching as "garbage." Perhaps he was subjected to what I was as an acolyte: since one could not have breakfast before communion and we had to kneel on unsupported pillows at least one of us would faint or throw up during the service, something our minister did not like, considering it a sign of "weakness." Gelb claims that Wyley's father, Bob, was not upset about his rejection of the church since Bob never showed up there. This may be true; on the other hand Bob might have been like my father, who insisted his children go to church even though he never did. My father said, with no irony, that I should do as he says, not as he does. He said he would go to church if there was ever an issue of the weekly church bulletin that did not ask for donations and when I would bring him examples of such bulletins he would just laugh them off.
Wyley's parents were divorced when he was young and his mother lived in California. Wyley lived with her from the ages of eight to ten, when he moved back in with his father. Apparently his mother left him alone all day to watch television while she was out with different men. My parents fought all the time and my father terrorized my mother as much as he did his children, usually punishing us when he came home for things we did during the day. The absence of a nurturing mother can make a big difference. I feel fortunate in many ways that I escaped Columbia County when I did, when the factories were closing and more people were moving in from the city. The radical changes and gentrification were setting in when Gelb published his book in 1990 and continue apace, for better or worse, the locals and the city people having little to do with one another.
The acquittal, in 1987, shocked many of the residents of Columbia County (120 miles up the Hudson River from New York City) but did not shock me, who lived there from fourth grade until I left for prep school in 1962, a beneficiary of a full scholarship. I knew full well that it was only a matter of luck and circumstance whether a "hood" became a criminal or a policeman in his lust for power and authority in Hudson(where the trial was) and Columbia County. My father would bring in one of his policeman friends to lecture me whenever I complained about his arbitrary authority and I would just mock the threats to send me to reform school. The police made little or no effort to collect any physical evidence that Wyley had committed the crime and only had the dubious claim that Wyley had confessed to the man who was hired to give him a lie detector test, though Wyley's lawyer had been excluded from the testing room and, in fact, the test was never actually given.
Gelb had a summer place on the same street where Wyley lived, though his primary residence was New York City. His description of the crime and the trial is concise and accurate but he seems to have little understanding of what life in Columbia County was like for most residents. Wyley liked to read and use a computer, PC's just starting in the late 80's to be popular. Wyley's father Bob, however, felt differently. Bob had a machine and equipment repair business out of his garage and, according to Gelb, had "a concern about it being 'unatural' for the boy to stay in his room so much and would make an effort to get him outside and put him to work on gears and camshafts so that he would have some 'real' knowledge of the 'real' world." My father, who loved antique motorcars, never got his children interested in them. The closest I came was entering the local soap box derby: I hated working on the actual coasters but I did like that all the entrants got to go on trips to Yankee Stadium and the movies. And my father hated the time I spent reading, insisting it was bad for the eyes. Bob would make Wyley work in the garage in the summer, without pay and when I turned 12 my father cut off my measly allowance, since now I could get a paper route.
Hudson, which had neither a library nor a bookstore when I was growing up, was an anti-intellectual town in a blue-collar county. I spent a year at Hudson High before leaving for prep school and during that year parents complained bitterly about their children being required to read entire books (Death Be Not Proud, The Microbe Hunters): this was oppressive. When the guidance counselor saw what classes I was going to take at Exeter --Latin, English, Science, History -- he couldn't understand why I wanted to go away to school, since Hudson High offered the same courses! Wyley, of course, was accused of being a "sissy" and a "homo," just as I and anyone else who had cultural interests was. Wyley played trumpet in the high school band but never seems to have had the chance to hear a concert at near-by Tanglewood or even New York City, only two hours away by train.
Wyley found solace in religion for a time, when he was young. He was confirmed in the Episcopal Church and for a time was an acolyte and then, at thirteen, he totally rejected the church's teaching as "garbage." Perhaps he was subjected to what I was as an acolyte: since one could not have breakfast before communion and we had to kneel on unsupported pillows at least one of us would faint or throw up during the service, something our minister did not like, considering it a sign of "weakness." Gelb claims that Wyley's father, Bob, was not upset about his rejection of the church since Bob never showed up there. This may be true; on the other hand Bob might have been like my father, who insisted his children go to church even though he never did. My father said, with no irony, that I should do as he says, not as he does. He said he would go to church if there was ever an issue of the weekly church bulletin that did not ask for donations and when I would bring him examples of such bulletins he would just laugh them off.
Wyley's parents were divorced when he was young and his mother lived in California. Wyley lived with her from the ages of eight to ten, when he moved back in with his father. Apparently his mother left him alone all day to watch television while she was out with different men. My parents fought all the time and my father terrorized my mother as much as he did his children, usually punishing us when he came home for things we did during the day. The absence of a nurturing mother can make a big difference. I feel fortunate in many ways that I escaped Columbia County when I did, when the factories were closing and more people were moving in from the city. The radical changes and gentrification were setting in when Gelb published his book in 1990 and continue apace, for better or worse, the locals and the city people having little to do with one another.
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Two by Jim Jarmusch: Night on Earth (1991), Paterson (2016)
Jarmusch has a rare feeling for urban desolation, for loneliness, and the sweet, whimsical overlap of chance and companionship.
David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
From Night on Earth to Paterson Jarmusch's style had become more minimalist, i.e, saying more with less. In the town of Paterson a man named Paterson drives a local bus, focusing on his job and seldom talking to his passengers except once, when his bus breaks down. The film takes place during one week when Paterson drives his bus, writes poetry and walks his dog to the local tavern, where he has one beer. His wife is somewhat obsessed with things black-and-white (perhaps a comment on the ubiquity of color in movies as well as the racial composition of their New Jersey town), wearing clothes and making cupcakes in those colors. Drama is threatened and then diffused, as a car full of African-Americans jokes about dognapping Paterson's dog Marvin (a tribute to Jarmusch's membership in "The Sons of Marvin," composed of those who have a resemblance to Lee Marvin) and Paterson wrests a gun away from a distraught man in a bar, the gun only able to shoot foam pellets. Paterson on Sunday goes for a walk in the park by himself (Marvin chewed up Paterson's notebooks and is confined to the garage) and meets a Japanese tourist and writer; they talk about Paterson native William Carlos Williams and his new friend gives him a blank notebook as a present.
Jarmusch focuses beautifully in these films on work and the quotidian. Night on Earth has five segments with cabdrivers and passengers at 4 AM. In Los Angeles a female cabdriver takes a fare to Beverly Hills and is offered a screen test by the fare, a casting agent. She turns her down. In Rome a cabby picks up a priest who dies in the cab while the driver is giving an outlandish confession. In Paris a black cabdriver picks up a blind woman and they talk about sight and other senses. In New York a fare teaches the new immigrant cabby how to drive and in Helsinki a driver picks up three inebriated men and they discuss how bad one of the fares has it, while the driver tops them by having it much worse. The film captures the quiet beauty of cities at 4 AM, after most businesses have closed and few have opened, and those still awake talk about their lives.
David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
From Night on Earth to Paterson Jarmusch's style had become more minimalist, i.e, saying more with less. In the town of Paterson a man named Paterson drives a local bus, focusing on his job and seldom talking to his passengers except once, when his bus breaks down. The film takes place during one week when Paterson drives his bus, writes poetry and walks his dog to the local tavern, where he has one beer. His wife is somewhat obsessed with things black-and-white (perhaps a comment on the ubiquity of color in movies as well as the racial composition of their New Jersey town), wearing clothes and making cupcakes in those colors. Drama is threatened and then diffused, as a car full of African-Americans jokes about dognapping Paterson's dog Marvin (a tribute to Jarmusch's membership in "The Sons of Marvin," composed of those who have a resemblance to Lee Marvin) and Paterson wrests a gun away from a distraught man in a bar, the gun only able to shoot foam pellets. Paterson on Sunday goes for a walk in the park by himself (Marvin chewed up Paterson's notebooks and is confined to the garage) and meets a Japanese tourist and writer; they talk about Paterson native William Carlos Williams and his new friend gives him a blank notebook as a present.
Jarmusch focuses beautifully in these films on work and the quotidian. Night on Earth has five segments with cabdrivers and passengers at 4 AM. In Los Angeles a female cabdriver takes a fare to Beverly Hills and is offered a screen test by the fare, a casting agent. She turns her down. In Rome a cabby picks up a priest who dies in the cab while the driver is giving an outlandish confession. In Paris a black cabdriver picks up a blind woman and they talk about sight and other senses. In New York a fare teaches the new immigrant cabby how to drive and in Helsinki a driver picks up three inebriated men and they discuss how bad one of the fares has it, while the driver tops them by having it much worse. The film captures the quiet beauty of cities at 4 AM, after most businesses have closed and few have opened, and those still awake talk about their lives.
Friday, November 10, 2017
Fred Zinnemann's Kid Glove Killer (1942)
Kid Glove Killer is a crisp and efficient MGM B film about a corrupt America town, where the DA murders the mayor in order to cover up his own corruption. The DA, played by the sleazy Lee Bowman, courts lab assistant Marsha Hunt while lab technician Van Heflin uses every technical and analytical tool of the time to track down the murderer. The DA tries to frame a diner owner who tried to complain to the mayor about a shakedown because when he originally tried to go to the police they passed on the information to the mob and the diner owner took quite a beating. This pessimistic film is something of a precursor to the postwar film noir; it was written by John C. Higgins, who later wrote T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948) for Anthony Mann.
Marsha Hunt plays a low-key and intelligent lab investigator, hard-working and intelligent, the kind of woman rare in contemporary films; she later was blacklisted and worked mostly in TV. The film was the first film directed by Fred Zinnemann, who started our making shorts, and directed another intelligent crime film (Act of Violence, 1949) before going on to direct High Noon, the Western for people who don't like Westerns, and the bloated Oscar-bait and white elephants From Here to Eternity (1953)and A Man for All Seasons.(1965).
Marsha Hunt plays a low-key and intelligent lab investigator, hard-working and intelligent, the kind of woman rare in contemporary films; she later was blacklisted and worked mostly in TV. The film was the first film directed by Fred Zinnemann, who started our making shorts, and directed another intelligent crime film (Act of Violence, 1949) before going on to direct High Noon, the Western for people who don't like Westerns, and the bloated Oscar-bait and white elephants From Here to Eternity (1953)and A Man for All Seasons.(1965).
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
John Huston
I never cared much for Huston's most celebrated films: the literate Maltese Falcon (1941) and The African Queen (1951) but I think The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is one of the great caper films and Huston's final film, The Dead (1987), is intensely moving and beautiful, true in spirit to James Joyce's story. Lately I have been watching some of Huston's films from the 70's, particularly The Mackintosh Man (1973) and Fat City (1972). (I wrote about Huston's The Man Who Would Be King, (1975), on Jan 15, 2016)
Fat City is a fatalistic film about one boxer down-and-out (Stacey Keach) and another up-and-coming (Jeff Bridges). In typical Huston style they are both failing and flailing in their attempts to succeed and make a life and the film has some interesting analogies to Huston's own life of early success and later obscurity.. Huston never stopped making films, traveling all over the world to make them, even as he was more recognized as an actor (The Cardinal,1963; Chinatown, 1974 et al.). And Huston always had his pick of collaborators; Richard Sylbert for the production design of Fat City and Conrad Hall for the cinematography, capturing the grittiness of the boxers and onion harvesters of Stockton, Ca.
The Mackintosh Man is a cerebral spy film in the era of James Bond; it is more like John LeCarre than Ian Fleming. It is not as merciless and ruthless as Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1970) but, once again, the infiltrator of the spy network (Paul Newman) fails in his mission(as Huston's protagonists usually do) to capture the British traitor. Newman is helped by Domique Sanda (an actress discovered by Bresson, who is always enigmatic). Huston does some extraordinary location shooting in Ireland, capturing the wild beauty of the countryside and the isolation of the towns (the main thing I remembered from when I first saw the film in 1973) and the island of Malta. The film, like many Huston films, builds the story slowly, leading up to an impressive prison break and confrontation with the pompous member of Parliament (James Mason) who is the leader of the spy ring.
Fat City is a fatalistic film about one boxer down-and-out (Stacey Keach) and another up-and-coming (Jeff Bridges). In typical Huston style they are both failing and flailing in their attempts to succeed and make a life and the film has some interesting analogies to Huston's own life of early success and later obscurity.. Huston never stopped making films, traveling all over the world to make them, even as he was more recognized as an actor (The Cardinal,1963; Chinatown, 1974 et al.). And Huston always had his pick of collaborators; Richard Sylbert for the production design of Fat City and Conrad Hall for the cinematography, capturing the grittiness of the boxers and onion harvesters of Stockton, Ca.
The Mackintosh Man is a cerebral spy film in the era of James Bond; it is more like John LeCarre than Ian Fleming. It is not as merciless and ruthless as Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1970) but, once again, the infiltrator of the spy network (Paul Newman) fails in his mission(as Huston's protagonists usually do) to capture the British traitor. Newman is helped by Domique Sanda (an actress discovered by Bresson, who is always enigmatic). Huston does some extraordinary location shooting in Ireland, capturing the wild beauty of the countryside and the isolation of the towns (the main thing I remembered from when I first saw the film in 1973) and the island of Malta. The film, like many Huston films, builds the story slowly, leading up to an impressive prison break and confrontation with the pompous member of Parliament (James Mason) who is the leader of the spy ring.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Ruben Ostlund's Force Majeure (2014)
Though I doubt that Ostlund intended the film Force Majeure to dissuade people from skiing,it certainly had that effect on me, with its white-outs, avalanches and dangerous bus rides on mountain roads. A bourgeois family is having lunch after skiing and an avalanche heads their way. The husband Tomas (played by Johnanes Kuhnke) grabs his smartphone and runs, while Ebba (played by Lisa Loven Kongsli) struggles to flee with the two young children. The avalanche is controlled and everyone returns to their lunch, but Ebba cannot easily forgive Tomas. The "happy family" struggles to understand what happened and Tomas, who initially defended himself, breaks down in self-pity and the children think a divorce is imminent as they leave the resort.
Ostlund and his cinematographer, Fredrik Wenzel, capture the lonely beauty of skiing in the snow as well as the claustrophobia of the blonde wood of the hotel rooms, the widescreen shots emphasizing the difference between the creations of nature and of man. At night strange machines traverse the skiing areas as they groom the slopes, looking like something on another planet. Most shots, indoors and out, are long shots in long takes, capturing the members of the family together with their doubts and fears. Much of the film is simply conversation, especially a scene with another couple who are trying to understand what happened with Tomas and Ebba and end up turning on each other. The film, with its conversation and moral discussions, suggests that Ostlund is an heir and successor to certain other European directors who take a similar intellectual approach: Bergman, Rohmer, Atonioni, Dreyer, et al.
Ostlund and his cinematographer, Fredrik Wenzel, capture the lonely beauty of skiing in the snow as well as the claustrophobia of the blonde wood of the hotel rooms, the widescreen shots emphasizing the difference between the creations of nature and of man. At night strange machines traverse the skiing areas as they groom the slopes, looking like something on another planet. Most shots, indoors and out, are long shots in long takes, capturing the members of the family together with their doubts and fears. Much of the film is simply conversation, especially a scene with another couple who are trying to understand what happened with Tomas and Ebba and end up turning on each other. The film, with its conversation and moral discussions, suggests that Ostlund is an heir and successor to certain other European directors who take a similar intellectual approach: Bergman, Rohmer, Atonioni, Dreyer, et al.
Noah Hawley's Before the Fall
The universe is filled with things that don't make sense.
--Noah Hawley, Before the Fall, Hachette, 2016
I read Noah Hawley's book because I was impressed with the two seasons of Fargo he wrote, though admittedly I did not care as much for the other TV work he has done. An important theme of the Fargo episodes he wrote is the arbitrary timing of how things happen and their consequences. This theme is carried over in Before the Fall, about the crash of a small plane, with two survivors from the passengers and crew. This novel was recently awarded the Edgar for best novel of the year and it makes one wonder what the competing books were like (I haven't read any of them at this point), as Before the Fall reads like a decent outline for a possibly interesting TV series: an artist gets on the plane at the last minute, with a bunch of rich people, and survives the crash, while rescuing a four-year-old boy. The authorities get involved and, of course, so does the media. Conspiracy and terrorist theories fly until it turns out that the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane because the flight attendant rejected his advances.
Red herrings abound, as they do in too many examples of so-called "suspense" and "mystery" novels, in order to distract and manipulate the reader. Hawley does a decent job of going back to the lives of those in the crash, though only the survivors come across as successful characters. "Before the fall" of course refers to a prelapsarian time when things were supposedly idyllic but for most of us --and certainly for the characters in this book -- no such time actually exists.
--Noah Hawley, Before the Fall, Hachette, 2016
I read Noah Hawley's book because I was impressed with the two seasons of Fargo he wrote, though admittedly I did not care as much for the other TV work he has done. An important theme of the Fargo episodes he wrote is the arbitrary timing of how things happen and their consequences. This theme is carried over in Before the Fall, about the crash of a small plane, with two survivors from the passengers and crew. This novel was recently awarded the Edgar for best novel of the year and it makes one wonder what the competing books were like (I haven't read any of them at this point), as Before the Fall reads like a decent outline for a possibly interesting TV series: an artist gets on the plane at the last minute, with a bunch of rich people, and survives the crash, while rescuing a four-year-old boy. The authorities get involved and, of course, so does the media. Conspiracy and terrorist theories fly until it turns out that the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane because the flight attendant rejected his advances.
Red herrings abound, as they do in too many examples of so-called "suspense" and "mystery" novels, in order to distract and manipulate the reader. Hawley does a decent job of going back to the lives of those in the crash, though only the survivors come across as successful characters. "Before the fall" of course refers to a prelapsarian time when things were supposedly idyllic but for most of us --and certainly for the characters in this book -- no such time actually exists.
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