Nothing particularly rare or unusual this month, just some good movies uncut, uninterrupted and in the proper aspect ratio.
June 1: Sam Wood's Our Town, 1940. recommended for William Cameron Menzies's production design.
June 2: Cy Enfield's Hell Drivers, 1958, critique of capitalism, made in England after Enfield was chased out of American by HUAC
June 3: Billy Wilder's corrosive Double Indemnity,1944, and Blake Edwards' bleak view of dipsomania Days of Wine and Roses,1962
.
June 4: Anthony Mann's complex Western The Man from Laramie, 1955
June 5; Orson Welles' funhouse mirror The Lady from Shanghai. 1948
Also on June 5 two rigorous and austere works from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer: Ordet, 1955, and Gertrud, 1964
June 8: Clash by Night, 1952, America as viewed by fatalistic German Fritz Lang.
June 9: Joseph H. Lewis's rich gangster film The Big Combo, 1955
June 10: two more cynical films from Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard, 1950, and Ace in the Hole, 1951.
June 11: Howard Hawks's powerful chamber Western, Rio Bravo, 1959, and Max Ophuls' elegant Earrings of Madame De... (especially for those of us who love tracking shots).
June 15: Buster Keaton's funny and somewhat sad The Cameraman, 1928
June 18: Robert Siodmak's exemplary film noir Criss-Cross,1949; I posted about it on Aug. 4, 2015.
June 19: two comedies of behavioral nuance from Vincente Minnelli: The Courtship of Eddie's Father,1963 and Father of the Bride,1950
June 20: Raoul Walsh's great Western about Custer, They Died with Their Boots On, 1941
June 21: Hitchcock's Lifeboat, 1944
June 23: an intelligent musical comedy from Minnelli, Bells Are Ringing, 1960
June 24: Billy Wilder's The Apartment, 1960
June 27: Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, 1951,adapted from Georges Bernanos's novel.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, N. Y. State Theatre, May 28,2016
George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream was choreographed in 1962 and has become for the Spring and Summer what The Nutcracker is for winter. It has beautiful choreography and enough of a story (it follows Shakespeare closely, though with music instead of words) for those who require it. The second act is abstract, however, and now can seem too short, after Balanchine trimmed the dances (in his symphonic style, including the use of Mendelssohn's Symphony Number 9 for Strings, rather than the divertissement style of The Nutcracker), presumably for the narrative-driven audience. The second act was danced with intensity and attack by Sterling Hyltin but I did not care for her partner, Amar Ramasar, who was technically okay but still lacks projection and personality. Still, the second act made clear the ascendance of love over stormy drama and discord.
The second act may be too much for those who don't like Balanchine's more abstract ballets (myself definitely not included!) but the first act is full of originality, Puck, and well-rehearsed children as elves and butterflies (supervised by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins). No one has ever danced Oberon as well as the originator of the role, Edward Villela, though Daniel Ulbricht was effective without turning himself into a horizontal corkscrew as I have seen others, including Gen Horiuchi, do and Teresa Reichlen was able to efficiently switch gears from nobility and firmness to loose frivolity, as she falls in love with Bottom as a donkey. Megan LeCrone, as Hippolyta, did a wonderful job with her grand jetes.
Balanchine uses half-a-dozen different Mendelssohn pieces to augment the limited music Mendelssohn did for the play and integrates them beautifully with the choreography. I haven't seen this ballet for some time, as it became a little down-at-the-heels, but the costumes have been refurbished and the production has had much of its elegance restored. My four-year-old daughter, who takes a weekly ballet class, loved every moment of it.
The second act may be too much for those who don't like Balanchine's more abstract ballets (myself definitely not included!) but the first act is full of originality, Puck, and well-rehearsed children as elves and butterflies (supervised by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins). No one has ever danced Oberon as well as the originator of the role, Edward Villela, though Daniel Ulbricht was effective without turning himself into a horizontal corkscrew as I have seen others, including Gen Horiuchi, do and Teresa Reichlen was able to efficiently switch gears from nobility and firmness to loose frivolity, as she falls in love with Bottom as a donkey. Megan LeCrone, as Hippolyta, did a wonderful job with her grand jetes.
Balanchine uses half-a-dozen different Mendelssohn pieces to augment the limited music Mendelssohn did for the play and integrates them beautifully with the choreography. I haven't seen this ballet for some time, as it became a little down-at-the-heels, but the costumes have been refurbished and the production has had much of its elegance restored. My four-year-old daughter, who takes a weekly ballet class, loved every moment of it.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Winter by Christopher Nicholson
He hated these literary detectives, who failed to grasp the nature of art: that it was a shaping of reality, not reality itself.
--Christopher Nicholson, Winter (Europa Editions 2014)
This novel takes place in the 1920's when Thomas Hardy was eighty-four. His part is in the third person, while his wife Florence and young actress Gertrude Bugler have sections in the first person. Novels about real people tend to be a dubious enterprise, though this one is better than most and is a rather satisfying guilty pleasure. Hardy has become mellow with age, his much-younger (second) wife is something of a complainer and valetudinarian. Gertrude is married to a butcher and has a young child, but has been promised a role as Tess in a London stage production which the jealous Florence convinces her to turn down. Nicholson throughout has a deep understanding of the west of England and the novels and poems of Hardy, though I would recommend Hardy's actual novels over this secondary endeavor.
--Christopher Nicholson, Winter (Europa Editions 2014)
This novel takes place in the 1920's when Thomas Hardy was eighty-four. His part is in the third person, while his wife Florence and young actress Gertrude Bugler have sections in the first person. Novels about real people tend to be a dubious enterprise, though this one is better than most and is a rather satisfying guilty pleasure. Hardy has become mellow with age, his much-younger (second) wife is something of a complainer and valetudinarian. Gertrude is married to a butcher and has a young child, but has been promised a role as Tess in a London stage production which the jealous Florence convinces her to turn down. Nicholson throughout has a deep understanding of the west of England and the novels and poems of Hardy, though I would recommend Hardy's actual novels over this secondary endeavor.
Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922)
Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler was held together by its fervent belief in a top-rotting society threatened by a dark, fantastical conspiracy with one of the cinema's most mesmeric figures at the core: Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Dr. Mabuse.
-- Patick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (St. Martin's 1997)
There is no such thing as love -- there is only desire, and the will to possess what you most desire.
--Dr. Mabuse (script by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang).
Lang's German silent films are shown too seldom and are probably not much watched or appreciated when they are. But Turner Classic Movies showed Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (the gambler) recently in a lovely print, properly projected. The film is also titled ein Bild der Zeit (a picture of the time) and quite effectively captures the complicated world of the Weimar era in Germany, where one is greeted at the door of a nightclub with "cards or cocaine?" Dr. Mabuse is a psychoanalyst with the power to control men's minds, even just by looking at the back of their heads! He kills very few, rather he convinces his enemies to kill themselves, persuading them they nicht mehr leben (must not live). He is an extreme example of many of the problems of pre-Nazi Germany, stealing government documents and accelerating inflation by manipulating the stock market and printing counterfeit money. Dr. Mabuse is pursued by prosecutor von Wenk and they are both in love with Countess Told, whom Mabuse abducts and whose husband he convinces to kill himself. Mabuse and von Wenk play a cat-and-mouse game similar to that of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.
There is certainly an element of expressionism in Lang's film -- Count Told and Mabuse both see ghosts and place names appear in eerie form on the screen -- but much of Lang's four-hour film is quite "realistic," though in a stylized form that reminds one of Griffith, with an emphasis on cross-cutting and irising. The action scenes are particularly effective because of their slow and suspenseful build-up.
-- Patick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (St. Martin's 1997)
There is no such thing as love -- there is only desire, and the will to possess what you most desire.
--Dr. Mabuse (script by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang).
Lang's German silent films are shown too seldom and are probably not much watched or appreciated when they are. But Turner Classic Movies showed Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (the gambler) recently in a lovely print, properly projected. The film is also titled ein Bild der Zeit (a picture of the time) and quite effectively captures the complicated world of the Weimar era in Germany, where one is greeted at the door of a nightclub with "cards or cocaine?" Dr. Mabuse is a psychoanalyst with the power to control men's minds, even just by looking at the back of their heads! He kills very few, rather he convinces his enemies to kill themselves, persuading them they nicht mehr leben (must not live). He is an extreme example of many of the problems of pre-Nazi Germany, stealing government documents and accelerating inflation by manipulating the stock market and printing counterfeit money. Dr. Mabuse is pursued by prosecutor von Wenk and they are both in love with Countess Told, whom Mabuse abducts and whose husband he convinces to kill himself. Mabuse and von Wenk play a cat-and-mouse game similar to that of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.
There is certainly an element of expressionism in Lang's film -- Count Told and Mabuse both see ghosts and place names appear in eerie form on the screen -- but much of Lang's four-hour film is quite "realistic," though in a stylized form that reminds one of Griffith, with an emphasis on cross-cutting and irising. The action scenes are particularly effective because of their slow and suspenseful build-up.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Simon sweats, pacing his cell. That's what you do, it turns out, when what was safely tucked away in books becomes real life. You're in a cell and sure enough you pace it. There's nothing else you can do. Nothing left.
--Helen Dunmore, Exposure (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016)
Dunmore's novel is something of an oblique spy novel, with its poetic style and its emphasis on how children's lives are affected (Dunmore is a poet and author of children's books). The novel is told from several different points of view: Simon, his wife Lily, their three young children, Simon's former lover and current co-worker Giles (who is also a spy for the Soviets). Simon tends to do Giles' bidding, including hiding a file from the Admiralty, where they both work, and ends up taking the rap. The book takes place in England in 1960 when sodomy was still illegal and spies had deeply penetrated English intelligence. Most of the novel deals with Lily's struggle to pay the bills and the children's struggle with name-calling and ridicule from their peers. Lily and the children --Sally, Paul and Bridget -- stay loyal to Simon, even when Lily is told of Simon's earlier affair with Giles and he is threatened with exposure. It seems to have not been unusual for young men in England to have homosexual affairs (Evelyn Waugh's biographers mention his, for instance, though they are usually described as brief and temporary) but combine that knowledge with espionage and that could produce substantial prison time. Dunmore handles this all with intelligence and style, as well as a keen insight into family dynamics.
--Helen Dunmore, Exposure (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016)
Dunmore's novel is something of an oblique spy novel, with its poetic style and its emphasis on how children's lives are affected (Dunmore is a poet and author of children's books). The novel is told from several different points of view: Simon, his wife Lily, their three young children, Simon's former lover and current co-worker Giles (who is also a spy for the Soviets). Simon tends to do Giles' bidding, including hiding a file from the Admiralty, where they both work, and ends up taking the rap. The book takes place in England in 1960 when sodomy was still illegal and spies had deeply penetrated English intelligence. Most of the novel deals with Lily's struggle to pay the bills and the children's struggle with name-calling and ridicule from their peers. Lily and the children --Sally, Paul and Bridget -- stay loyal to Simon, even when Lily is told of Simon's earlier affair with Giles and he is threatened with exposure. It seems to have not been unusual for young men in England to have homosexual affairs (Evelyn Waugh's biographers mention his, for instance, though they are usually described as brief and temporary) but combine that knowledge with espionage and that could produce substantial prison time. Dunmore handles this all with intelligence and style, as well as a keen insight into family dynamics.
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Eighth inning, Yankees v. Diamondbacks, YES network, May 17 2016
Watching the eighth inning of the Yankees/Diamondbacks game on May 17 one received an instructive lesson in what is wrong with televised baseball.
Brandon Drury hit a ball off the right-field wall and the camera stayed on Carlos Beltran as he fielded it; only after he fielded it and threw it in did the camera show Drury, who at that point was rounding second on his way to third; the throw caught him in-between second and third and he was tagged out. What we missed, of course, was seeing both the ball as Beltran tried to field it and Drury running. That tension between the batter and the fielder, a crucial part of the beauty of baseball, was entirely missing. In other words, the producers do not care about the immediacy that the contributes significantly to the beauty of the game. After all, they can always show additional angles on the replays, another proof that they do not care about the what's happening as it's happening. I refer you to my post of Oct. 30, 2013, in which Fox producer Pete Macteska said he missed a key moment in a World Series game because the game was too boring to show without plenty of cuts to the fans!
Another big problem with televised baseball is the announcers, especially when they lose interest in a one-sided game. In the eighth inning the Diamondbacks were leading 12-2 and announcer Michael Kay said the score wrong three times: the Yankees leading 12-2, the Diamondbacks leading 15-2 (they had fifteen hits) and the score in the middle of the eighth being 12-5!
My suggested solutions include showing the whole field much of the time (common when baseball was televised in the fifties), which would undoubtedly cause problems with the advertisers who advertise behind home plate, and only having one announcer, who should concentrate on the game and wouldn't have to indulge in boring chitchat with additional commentators who have nothing to say. I recommend listening to Vin Scully when the MLB Network broadcasts from Dodger Stadium; he knows that the game is still beautiful even when the score is lopsided.
Brandon Drury hit a ball off the right-field wall and the camera stayed on Carlos Beltran as he fielded it; only after he fielded it and threw it in did the camera show Drury, who at that point was rounding second on his way to third; the throw caught him in-between second and third and he was tagged out. What we missed, of course, was seeing both the ball as Beltran tried to field it and Drury running. That tension between the batter and the fielder, a crucial part of the beauty of baseball, was entirely missing. In other words, the producers do not care about the immediacy that the contributes significantly to the beauty of the game. After all, they can always show additional angles on the replays, another proof that they do not care about the what's happening as it's happening. I refer you to my post of Oct. 30, 2013, in which Fox producer Pete Macteska said he missed a key moment in a World Series game because the game was too boring to show without plenty of cuts to the fans!
Another big problem with televised baseball is the announcers, especially when they lose interest in a one-sided game. In the eighth inning the Diamondbacks were leading 12-2 and announcer Michael Kay said the score wrong three times: the Yankees leading 12-2, the Diamondbacks leading 15-2 (they had fifteen hits) and the score in the middle of the eighth being 12-5!
My suggested solutions include showing the whole field much of the time (common when baseball was televised in the fifties), which would undoubtedly cause problems with the advertisers who advertise behind home plate, and only having one announcer, who should concentrate on the game and wouldn't have to indulge in boring chitchat with additional commentators who have nothing to say. I recommend listening to Vin Scully when the MLB Network broadcasts from Dodger Stadium; he knows that the game is still beautiful even when the score is lopsided.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Mitch Leisen's Suddenly It's Spring (1947)
It should not be too difficult to respond to the glorious amalgam of sets, costume, lighting and female beauty in Leisen's work.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow, 1976).
Mitch Leisen is mostly remembered now as a director of superb scripts by Preston Sturges (Remember the Night, 1940 and Easy Living, 1937) and Billy Wilder (Hold Back the Dawn, 1941 and Midnight,1939). One of the reasons both Sturges and Wilder became directors themselves is because they did not like the changes Leisen had made to their scripts and his preference of style over substance. But I think also one thing that interested Leisen more than it interested Wilder and Sturges was gender roles and gender fluidity. This subject may have had something to do with the fact that Leisen himself was gay, an open secret in Hollywood.
Leisen's Suddenly It's Spring starts off with a strange written title: "Remember way, way back in 1945?" Leisen's film deals with Fred MacMurray trying to get Paulette Godard to sign divorce papers in 1945, a divorce they had agreed to in 1941, before she went off as a WAC to Europe and he was assigned to the Pacific. When Goddard arrives home MacMurray has a new shackjob, played by Arleen Whelan, to whom he is now engaged, and spends the film chasing Goddard all over America trying to get her to sign the papers, before they realize that they still do love each other; at the point they are dividing assets the camera shoots from inside their closet, allowing them to privately discover the layette and briefly discuss what happened to their plans to have a child.
MacMurray has help in the pursuit of Goddard's signature in the person of a client of his, played by Macdonald Carey. The atmosphere is of changing gender roles, with MacMurray in civilian clothes and Goddard in uniform, though she is also constantly changing into a black negligee when she expects MacMurray to show up. Carey is not only attracted to Goddard, he also seems to be attracted to Whelan and even to MacMurray himself, as Macdonald and Fred end up at one point in bed together; though nothing sexual is suggested between them there is no doubt that Leisen took some pleasure in showing two men together in bed when the production code would not even allow married couples to be shown in the same bed!
Another level of Leisen irony is that one of Goddard's job in the army had been to write an advice to the lovelorn column; she was known as Captain Lonely Hearts. At one point on the train with MacMurray pursuing her to sign the divorce papers she takes time out to counsel a WAC and her husband in which the husband, played with a certain effeteness by Frank Faylen, suggests that his wife had been fooling around in Europe and MacMurray and Goddard are offended so much by this that it seems to have struck home, though MacMurray claims his own unfaithfulness was okay because they had agreed to a divorce before they were both shipped off (it is unclear how long MacMurray has been home from the war, though he had certainly used his time well). Goddard insists on continuing to be called by the gender-neutral term "counselor" -- they were law partners as well as life partners -- and objects when MacMurray calls her "darling" when she gives him flamboyant pajamas she bought for him in Paris, which he ends up carrying with him as he chases Goddard.
Suddenly It's Spring, a title apparently intended to be ironic, reminds one of certain other films, including Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937), but whether one finds it as funny as these films is subjective and somewhat irrelevant, as Suddenly It's Spring is ultimately about love triumphing over circumstances and the shifting roles of the sexes.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow, 1976).
Mitch Leisen is mostly remembered now as a director of superb scripts by Preston Sturges (Remember the Night, 1940 and Easy Living, 1937) and Billy Wilder (Hold Back the Dawn, 1941 and Midnight,1939). One of the reasons both Sturges and Wilder became directors themselves is because they did not like the changes Leisen had made to their scripts and his preference of style over substance. But I think also one thing that interested Leisen more than it interested Wilder and Sturges was gender roles and gender fluidity. This subject may have had something to do with the fact that Leisen himself was gay, an open secret in Hollywood.
Leisen's Suddenly It's Spring starts off with a strange written title: "Remember way, way back in 1945?" Leisen's film deals with Fred MacMurray trying to get Paulette Godard to sign divorce papers in 1945, a divorce they had agreed to in 1941, before she went off as a WAC to Europe and he was assigned to the Pacific. When Goddard arrives home MacMurray has a new shackjob, played by Arleen Whelan, to whom he is now engaged, and spends the film chasing Goddard all over America trying to get her to sign the papers, before they realize that they still do love each other; at the point they are dividing assets the camera shoots from inside their closet, allowing them to privately discover the layette and briefly discuss what happened to their plans to have a child.
MacMurray has help in the pursuit of Goddard's signature in the person of a client of his, played by Macdonald Carey. The atmosphere is of changing gender roles, with MacMurray in civilian clothes and Goddard in uniform, though she is also constantly changing into a black negligee when she expects MacMurray to show up. Carey is not only attracted to Goddard, he also seems to be attracted to Whelan and even to MacMurray himself, as Macdonald and Fred end up at one point in bed together; though nothing sexual is suggested between them there is no doubt that Leisen took some pleasure in showing two men together in bed when the production code would not even allow married couples to be shown in the same bed!
Another level of Leisen irony is that one of Goddard's job in the army had been to write an advice to the lovelorn column; she was known as Captain Lonely Hearts. At one point on the train with MacMurray pursuing her to sign the divorce papers she takes time out to counsel a WAC and her husband in which the husband, played with a certain effeteness by Frank Faylen, suggests that his wife had been fooling around in Europe and MacMurray and Goddard are offended so much by this that it seems to have struck home, though MacMurray claims his own unfaithfulness was okay because they had agreed to a divorce before they were both shipped off (it is unclear how long MacMurray has been home from the war, though he had certainly used his time well). Goddard insists on continuing to be called by the gender-neutral term "counselor" -- they were law partners as well as life partners -- and objects when MacMurray calls her "darling" when she gives him flamboyant pajamas she bought for him in Paris, which he ends up carrying with him as he chases Goddard.
Suddenly It's Spring, a title apparently intended to be ironic, reminds one of certain other films, including Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937), but whether one finds it as funny as these films is subjective and somewhat irrelevant, as Suddenly It's Spring is ultimately about love triumphing over circumstances and the shifting roles of the sexes.
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