Month: February 2020

American Gigolo (1980)

American Gigolo (1980)

(In French, On TV, February 2020) What I find interesting about American Gigolo is not only the multiple layers of interpretation that critics have assigned to the film over the years, but that I can almost see what they’re talking about. While it can be summarized in a deceptively simple fashion (a character study of a good-looking but an emotionally stunted man earning his living as a gigolo and framed for murder), you can read a lot into the depths of the film. Maybe it’s about sexual anxiety; maybe it’s about repressed homosexuality; maybe it’s about American capitalism reducing all relationships to a transaction; maybe it’s about the harsh reckoning of the post-hedonistic 1970s; maybe it’s about the loneliness of people without strong social ties; maybe it’s about Southern Californian post-scarcity malaise. Writer-director Paul Schrader has often been a leading obfuscator of his own work, encouraging various profound interpretations facilitated by scripts that leave a lot unstated. Since American Gigolo doesn’t move particularly quickly nor has a lot of moment-to-moment fun to offer, critics are free to let their thoughts wander trying to make sense of it all. Or, maybe, it’s just what it feels like: a dour, self-flagellating, sad meditation with a bit of pulp melodrama to make it all more interesting than just a superficial look at a man having sex with rich women and living a high-end lifestyle. Richard Gere became a superstar on the strength of his full-frontal performance here, so that’s one meaningful legacy for the film. So: jot down American Gigolo as being rich in alternate meanings for your next contentious movie podcast—you can see a whole lot of different things in it, and who’s to say that you’re wrong?

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) Unfortunately, Bye Bye Birdie’s first impressions are not all good. As a musical, it’s not that great even if adapted from a stage production—the songs are arrhythmic, not funny and (title song aside, by sheer force of simplistic repetition) not particularly memorable either. But it does fare better as a high school comedy that also acts as a satire of the music industry at the time, even if it takes some time to rev up: a lot of gags depend on a near-expert knowledge of early 1960s teenage pop-culture preferences. (Sure, the Elvis impersonation carries through, but many other references are now puzzling.) Fortunately, the over-the-top satire of 1963 teenage pop-mania does eventually become amusing, even if the premise about a singer going to kiss a teenage girl would not fly today. This being said, there’s one thing that this film exceptionally well: showcase Ann-Margret, who’s a constant joy whenever she’s on-screen. Some interesting special effects during “Put on a Happy Face” are also noteworthy. While Bye Bye Birdie is far from being as good as it could have been, it’s still joyful and easy to watch—a representative slice of early 1960s pop-optimism as incarnated by Ann-Margret herself.

Them! (1954)

Them! (1954)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) The 1950s, as the clichés go, were the defining decade for monster B-movies — one step removed from Science Fiction and one step closer to both gentle horror and unintentional comedy. But the 1950s were also the decade in which the Science Fiction genre leaped from the page to the screen. While Them!’s silly title and premise (giant ants invade!) suggest that it’s going to be a silly creature feature, the film proves to be much closer to true Science Fiction than to accidental horror-comedy—an interesting hybrid of those two streams of 1950s SF. The film’s first half, to be sure, is pure and genre-defining big-bug monster stuff: Nuclear tests produce giant ants, and the world at large gears to fight the menace. It’s in the second half—and specifically its well-handled execution thanks to director Gordon Douglas—where Them! becomes closer to a higher grade of Science Fiction: once mobilized, the armed forces and scientists react cleverly to stamp out the menace. The special effects aren’t too bad, considering the period. If there’s a single point to be made here, it’s that Them! is not like the later flood of schlocky monster features that copied its high points without belabouring the details: it’s rather good, well-made and works as serious Science Fiction more than unintentional horror-comedy.

The Letter (1940)

The Letter (1940)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) If you’re looking for a defining sequence from Bette Davis’s career, you could do a lot worse than the opening moments of The Letter, in which she viciously unloads a gun into a man we don’t know yet. Explaining how we got to that point (and whether the titular letter undermines her claims of self-defence) is the bulk of the narrative, which adapts a play from W. Somerset Maugham and heads to Malaya for an exotic setting. An early film noir, The Letter is merciless in its conclusion and in describing the corruption of its protagonist. A moody atmosphere from director William Wyler completes the package. Davis is exceptional here, taking on a protagonist’s mantle with typical skill and determination. It’s easy to see why The Letter is held in high esteem today, and how it influenced the film noir subgenre in the decade that followed. I defy anyone to watch the opening scene and not go “All right, tell me more.”

When Worlds Collide (1951)

When Worlds Collide (1951)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) The scientific basis of When Worlds Collide is garbage, but the film itself is interesting in a few ways. The most striking of these is that it’s an early example of the disaster movie subgenre, with the Earth being threatened by a collision with another celestial object. (Hence the garbage thing—in adapting an early Science Fiction novel from 1933, the film posits a rogue star with an accompanying planet where survivors can land and colonize, which is patently absurd. But while modern SF has a more refined bestiary of celestial objects with the potential to hit our planet, the premise of Earth being slated for destruction remains irresistible across the ages—descendants of When Worlds Collide include 1978’s Meteor, 1998’s Deep Impact and Armageddon, as well as 2009’s near-spiritual remake 2012. So, it is rather fun to go back to the 1950s and see how they did it, with the special effects of the time and the specific period detail. The melodrama and social/political conditions of the time may not have impressed reviewers at the time, but they’re now a charming time capsule—you could try a retro-themed version of the same story today and still not quite capture what the film does. If nothing else, the film’s producer George Pal thinks big and sets up the kind of spectacle that Hollywood would increasingly turn to as the 1950s advanced and television started being a competition for audiences. (It’s significant that 1950–1951 represents the birth of the Science Fiction genre at the movies, in between this, Destination Moon and The Day the Earth Stood Still.) Now, the specifics of the film are certainly to be quibbled with—I vehemently disagree with the idea that 99% of the population needs to die to save the rest, even if the film features plenty of biblical references in “support” of this idea. (Also, the odds are that the film’s happy ending is momentary—alien microorganisms will kill everyone within weeks—but let’s keep the illusion intact!) The point of seeing When Worlds Collide is that it is quaint, dated and yet timeless in Hollywood terms. Good or bad almost doesn’t mean anything here—the spectacle is what’s always worth watching.

The Paperboy (2012)

The Paperboy (2012)

(On TV, February 2020) There’s something disappointing about films that could have been solid hits being transformed into pricklier creations due to a lack of discipline. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the bones of The Paperboy, for instance—In 1969, two journalists travel from the city to a small town in Florida to investigate a murder and possible miscarriage of justice. Add to that the atmosphere of backwoods Florida, the threat of locals banding against the meddling outsiders, the eccentric characters met along the way and you’ve got the makings of a small but interesting crime drama. Part of the trick, however, is staying focused and being clever about just how eccentric the characters are going to be. And while The Paperboy is not quite a disaster, much of what’s wrong about it can be summed up with this: If you’ve ever wanted to see Nicole Kidman urinate on Zac Efron, then this is the film for you. In the hands of writer-director Lee Daniels (then fresh off a major socially conscious hit with Precious, which raised expectations for The Paperboy to unreachable levels), the film oscillates between a sordid murder mystery in a sweltering Florida town (where it’s at its best) and a series of trashier, more impressionistic moments. The surprisingly downbeat ending is disappointing, and there’s a sense that the film mishandles actors who probably wanted to work with Daniels more than they cared about the script. Kidman is stuck in an unglamorous, ungrateful role, for instance, and Matthew McConaughey (in retrospect) had a bit of a bump in the road here during his McConnaissance, even if it was squarely in his then-intention of trying new things. Sure, The Paperboy can be watched without too much trouble—that is, if you’re willing to forgive some weirder plot turns and scenes.

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) As I make my way down Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, I’m now way past the classics and into his lower-rated, lesser-known work. Most of the time, I can understand why the work is not included in his highlights—atypical, less mastered, not quite exploiting his own strengths as a director. Foreign Correspondent is recognizably not one of Hitchcock’s best works, but it’s easily in the second tier: suspenseful, thrilling, fast-paced and quite funny at times, it’s recognizably a Hitchcockian film. Following a journalist as he gets embroiled uncovering a spy ring in Europe on the eve of World War II, it’s a one-thrill-after-another suspense film with a romantic component and a striking conclusion. Joel McRae is up to his most likable self as the two-fisted newspaperman, while Laraine Day is lovely and spirited as the love interest (back when Hitchcock didn’t obsess over blondes) and George Sanders is also quite likable as the sidekick to the pair. There are a few centrepiece sequences in here—the much-anthologized “walking through a sea of black umbrellas” sequence shows Hitchcock at his visual best, whereas the final sequence set aboard an airplane brought down over the sea is still hair-raising and a masterpiece of 1940s special effects. The end sequence reminds us that the film belongs to the WW2 propaganda subgenre, with a stirring call to arms delivered in a way that would be echoed in later real-life war broadcasts. Foreign Correspondent remains a pretty good Hitchcockian film—not a classic, but certainly one of his better efforts and one in continuity with his entire filmography.

Alligator (1980)

Alligator (1980)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) As B-grade monster movies go, Alligator is remarkably good—and while this may not translate into a good movie on most scales, it does make for pretty good entertainment. Taking the urban legend to heart, this film follows the adventure of a police officer and a herpetologist as they fight a gigantic alligator turned loose in the sewers of “Chicago,” and turned to gigantic size by some pharmaceutical research shenanigans. Alligator does take a while to rev up, but by midpoint the film is able to show (in relatively low-budget fashion) a city gripped with terror and marshalling a grand police response. The highlight of the film is clearly the upscale party sequence in which the alligator eats municipal oligarchs, guests, servants, and cars alike. What’s interesting throughout the film is that the script by John Sayles (then a budding filmmaker, not the indie darling and script doctor he’d later become) constantly messes around with assumptions of the genre in utterly deadpan fashion, throwing various tangents (a nasty journalist, a big-game hunter, corrupt executives, etc.) and reining them in with a reasonably good sense of story structure. On the execution side, Robert Foster is quite likable as a jaded policeman fighting against the monster. Alligator is not particularly great even as a monster film (there’s a significant distance between it and Tremors, for instance), but it’s watchable enough and clever enough to significantly eclipse much of the genre. It’s particularly good for late-night B-movie fans.

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) One of the appealing characteristics of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is how it charmed readers and filmmakers throughout generations, meaning that we can compare and contrast adaptions dating back to early Hollywood history. Now, there are Austen devotees that can give you lengthy explanations about the merits and issues of the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice with far more detail and passion than I can. I’ll do my own best by underlining the cast (the lovely Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier in the lead role, with notables such as Edna May Olvier and Marsha Hunt in supporting roles), the lavish nature of the MGM production and the fact that none other than Brave New World’s Aldous Huxley contributed to the screenplay. It’s not necessarily a problem if the costumes here are all about the 1940s conception of a historical drama than actually being exact to the period—it’s the kind of thing that adds to the charm of a particular take on the material. Most importantly, Austen’s bon mots and comedy of manners have been adapted rather well to the screen, creating not only a hit back then, but also a nice little classic adaptation that still holds its own against more modern takes on the same source material.

Destination Tokyo (1943)

Destination Tokyo (1943)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) Not even Cary Grant in the leading role can raise Destination Tokyo’s profile above being a straight-up propaganda picture. Assembled in efficient wartime hurry, the narrative invents a dangerous submarine mission to plant spies near Tokyo in preparation for the Doolittle Raid. As one of the first big wartime submarine movies, it boldly invents what would become clichés of the form and indulges into blunt anti-enemy rhetoric –most notably by claiming that the Japanese devalue their women. If you can put aside Destination Tokyo’s straight-up propaganda value and methods, it’s not badly done: the portrait of life aboard a submarine is credibly portrayed in the buildup to the straightforward action sequences (even if the quarters are somewhat more spacious than in real life) and the Oscar-nominated script does fine with characterization. Destination Tokyo is also notable for decent-for-the-time special effects using a scale model in a water tank: they’re not all that credible today, but they certainly make their point. Grant is remarkable not simply for lending his usual charm to the production, but playing an out-of-persona dramatic role as a military man far removed from his usual romantic leads. But any prospective viewers should be reminded once more that Destination Tokyo was made to boost patriotism and recruitment at a time when the United States was at war against the Japanese with no idea about how it would end.

Night and Day (1946)

Night and Day (1946)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) As far as Hollywood biopics of famous composers go, Night and Day has three things going for it, even if the third is a double-edged sword. It’s in colour, it has good songs recognized as classics, and it features Cary Grant in the lead role as Cole Porter. But while Grant raises the profile of the film, no one ever mentions this film as one of his great roles: he’s not much of a singer, his screen persona is so distinct as to be unable to disappear in a specific role, and it’s not clear what he brings to the role that another actor couldn’t. Once past the songs, the colour and Grant, there’s not a whole lot left. Even Night and Day’s official TCM logline recognizes that it’s “fanciful”—which is code for saying that the openly gay Porter is here portrayed as straight, that nearly every biographical fact of his life has been altered and that the film doesn’t really care about accuracy—just reading his Wikipedia article is enough to make you realize just how “fanciful” the film is. Otherwise, Night and Day also sticks close to its Broadway-friendly topic by remaining resolutely theatre-bound, in subject matter and in staging. It’s all very old-fashioned even by 1940s standards, and that may not work for many newer viewers. Some forced comedy can’t quite shake the cobwebs out of this rather dull film, and its strengths can’t dispel its well-earned reputation as one of the least accurate Classic Hollywood biopics ever made.

Deadly Blessing (1981)

Deadly Blessing (1981)

(In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) Writer-Director Wes Craven has had a very strange career. His filmography includes everything between horror-defining classics and some of the ordinary derivative filmmaking imaginable. Deadly Blessing is closer to the bottom of the barrel, although not quite the worst. The story is pure farmhouse horror, as a widow and two visiting friends have to fend off the aggressive behaviour of a local sect of totally-not-Amish farmers. It’s all quite unusual in terms of what passed for slasher horror back in the early 1980s (the rural setting is distinctive enough) and while Craven’s execution still had some young-filmmaker energy, the sum of it all doesn’t quite make up something worth remembering. Weird ending, too; when is a slasher not a slasher, it perhaps should foreshadow that it’s not a slasher. Amusingly, Sharon Stone stars (not very well) in a very early role, while Ernest Borgnine doesn’t cover himself with honours with a histrionic performance as a sect elder. Some individual moments are interesting (the bathtub-snake sequence strongly suggests another bathtub scene in Craven’s later Nightmare on Elm Street) but Deadly Blessing as a whole is more dud than success—although, as any Craven fan knows, there are far worse movies in his filmography.

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) I had three reasons to watch the 1921 version of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and none of them can be considered good ones. First, I wanted to measure this film against its far more popular 1962 remake; second, it was as good a reason as any to experience a Rudolph Valentino role away from his popular image as a seducer; and third, it was right there at the top of my list of the most popular films of 1921 that I hadn’t yet seen. Perhaps the most interesting point of comparison between this story of a family divided by war and its remake is that this one is about World War I; the remake would update it to include Nazis. As a nearly hundred-year-old film, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is unsurprisingly rough, and not just around the edges: while it was among the best that Hollywood could offer at the time, it’s not always an easy watch. As usual for films of the time, the camera never moves. As is specific to this film, the copious dialogue (adapted from a novel) regularly interrupts the flow of the film through title cards. But it’s still interesting: the production clearly had money to spend in large-scale sequences, and the resolutely anti-war message of the film remains effective. Meanwhile, Rudolph Valentino is both the Latin lover of legends and not too bad in a dramatic role. As a dive into 1921 cinema, this is probably as good as any film not from Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd ever gets: it’s a serious drama that toys with ideas that would be once again very relevant less than twenty years later, and it does show the beginning of cinema as a feature-length narrative form. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse didn’t go beyond my expectations, but it wasn’t a disappointment either. (I still like the flawed remake better, though.)

Fury (1936)

Fury (1936)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) Some social issues movies still resonate through the ages, and there’s something still very unnerving about Fury’s depiction of mob justice in a small community—the collective unconscious of the group demanding sacrifice and stopping at nothing—certainly not proof—to get it. There’s certainly something eerie in seeing director Fritz Lang, freshly escaped from Nazi Germany, taking on the project as his first American film. Spencer Tracy brings his everyman quality to the protagonist, accused of kidnapping and left for dead by a mob seeking vengeance. Fury still strikes a nerve despite constraints imposed by the Production Code and limited technical means—even in politically charged 2020, where performative political discourse quickly descends to personal accusations, it’s far too close to plausibility to be comfortable. Lang brings an outsider’s perspective to something—lynching—that was still very much part of American culture at the time, and does so in just a way to make the matter feel atemporal—maybe it’s still quiet, but the impulse toward mob justice is still very much there.

The Hustle (2019)

The Hustle (2019)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) In theory, the idea of a gender-flipped remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrel (or Bedtime Story even earlier) doesn’t seem like a terrible idea: The French Riviera as a backdrop, rich idiots getting conned out of their money by quick-witted protagonists, with twists and turns until the credits. But that’s presuming a competent version of such a remake, and one that doesn’t sabotage itself. For instance, the biggest problem with The Hustle is Rebel Wilson—but she’s not the only thing dragging it down. Her usual trashy persona is a strong repellent to creating any sense of affection for the protagonists, and it’s telling that her brand of humour aims much, much lower than her equivalents in the previous films. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway could have been an interesting foil as a con artist with far better manners, but the problem is that she can’t sell a laugh, and that the script doesn’t write her character wittily enough to compensate. This hints at the overall poor state of the screenplay, which seems to be so satisfied with the idea of female retribution against men that it doesn’t develop any additional reason to be on the protagonists’ side (and then pits both women against each other, undermining whatever it was going for). Several dumb set-pieces further erode any attachment we should have with the heroines—indulging into the worst and basest comedy instincts of filmmakers who obviously can’t handle any kind of sophistication. The Hustle is just one continuous misfire, but one that repeatedly back-pats itself without having deserved any of its self-congratulation. Both Wilson and Hathaway can be effective in other contexts (Wilson being best used as a supporting character, for one thing), but that’s not the case here. At best, The Hustle is a fluffy comedy that you’ll forget the next day, but that presupposes a lot of indulgence along the way.