Month: January 2017

The Little Foxes (1941): the Melodrama for Our Political Moment

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I found it eerie watching Regina (Bette Davis) plotting with her brothers in a story described by a contemporary reviewer as a “grim and malignant melodrama.” Certain themes kept surfacing that read like today’s headlines: mistreatment of minorities, disregard for others’ health, promoting an unlivable wage, business trumping decency to others. I was in the mood for a soapy melodrama, and naturally sought out a Davis flick. Usually, there’s no one I’d rather see in the role of a ruthless schemer. But she played the part too well; I didn’t expect to recognize so much. If it was escape I was after, The Little Foxes was a remarkably poor choice.

That isn’t to say I felt no sympathy for Regina Giddens (Davis). Anyone married to the sleep-inducing characters Herbert Marshall unfailingly plays; this time an ailing, upright man named Horace; deserves a bit of sympathy. Especially a character as vibrant and smart as Regina. It is fun to watch her messing with her brothers, in full control, before her husband enters the picture.


But he does, and her satisfaction is therefore short-lived: To watch her husband not only refusing to join a business venture so sure of success, but then condescendingly explaining her powerlessness to stop him, doesn’t sit well with Regina, but neither does it with those of us accustomed to more equitable romantic relationships.


While her role as wife to Horace is hardly as pitiable as that of her sister-in-law, Birdie (Patricia Collinge), the victim of neglect and domestic abuse, Regina’s not exactly free. It’s 1900, after all. While a Southern state might have initiated women’s marital rights in the US, it’s clear from Regina’s and Horace’s behavior that she has no power over their money, which clearly originated with his family rather than hers. Her daughter (Theresa Wright) is right that berating her dying husband is wrong, but what other move (besides submission) does Regina have? We don’t like her, but it’s hard to watch her brothers (who control the venture if her husband is out) triumph over her, given their sexism and treatment of Birdie.

Of course, Regina doesn’t warrant much sympathy, and her self-destructiveness is hard to witness: it’s not exactly politic or wise to explain to your mortally ill spouse (who holds all the power) that you kinda hate his guts. Then there’s her desire to get more than her fair share of the spoils from the business. And of course, there’s the real crux of the matter: her utter lack of concern over the unlivable-wage-for-employees-thing, which is motivating her husband’s refusal to buy in. Regina takes rejection personally, unable to view any scruples about heartless business practices as anything but stupidity or pretension.

While viewing the ruthlessness of Regina and her brothers as they plot to build their cotton mill, I found myself thinking “realism” far more than “melodrama.” We know these people, their goals, their casual cruelties. We’ve seen them in action. That’s why you’re getting daily emails from political action groups urging you to call Congress members right now. Regina’s avarice may take her farther than we predict. But is it so hard to believe that in a moment of passion, greed would triumph over humanity?

I kept remembering as I watched the film that Lillian Hellman, who penned the original play, didn’t have the sunniest view of her fellow beings (a viewpoint which couldn’t have improved when her Blacklist-targeted boyfriend went to jail for refusing to name names years later). But unfortunately, I can’t help but believe her cynicism justified. The hope we do get—the ethical love interest for the daughter showing some spunk—is muted, his victories offscreen. Regina may look a little scared in the big bad house as the story closes, but she still looks victorious.


Needless to say, I’m watching a comedy next week.

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Gut Reactions to the Oscar Noms: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Oscar nominations are out, and as usual, my first reaction is outrage. But there are some good choices in the supporting category, so I’ll tone down some initial snark, and try to give credit where it’s due. So far, I’ve seen only four of the nominated films, so I’ll wait till I’ve seen more for additional commentary. Here we go:

Best Picture (of those I’ve seen):

The Good

Hell or High Water: Deserves the nomination, and the win (of the nominees I’ve seen). Understated, nuanced, beautifully written and acted.

La La Land: Deserves the nomination, not the win. Charming, creative, fun. A blast for those of us who love the classics. I’m glad it’s getting so much credit. But ultimately, no musical deserves the top prize with such forgettable songs. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has more memorable tunes in each episode than this film in its whole running time.

Moonlight: Deserves the nomination, possibly the win. Focused, touching story of one boy and his struggles with his sexuality and family. Points for subtlety. An unexpectedly nuanced depiction of a sensitive, quiet kid. Great acting too.

Thank you, Academy, for passing on the execrable Jackie, which was so wretched I almost left the theater 20 minutes in. Aside from jarring music, awful plotting, and a cruel portrayal of its heroine, its sum insight was this: Jackie O liked history, and losing her husband so tragically really sucked. Yeah, I kinda got that.

The Ugly

GLARING OMISSION: Where is Nocturnal Animals? Tightly edited, riveting, meaningful, beautifully acted, memorable, each frame relevant. Best film I’ve seen in years, and not even a nod.

Fences: I challenge a first-year film student to do a worse job converting a play to a film than Denzel in this unwatchable turkey. Gabriel and a literal horn? Are you kidding me? Clichés writ large, full earnestness, awkward closeups, dialogue that translates poorly to film, and histrionic acting almost all round. Larry McMurty, in a funny, humble essay, wrote that Hud would have been better if the filmmakers had diverged more from his original story. Denzel needed that lesson.

Lead Actor

The Good
Ryan Gosling anchors La La Land, which wouldn’t have been nominated without him. The man has comic skills; it’s good to see a role requiring both drama and comedy chops get some credit.

The Bad
Where is Jake? Jake Gyllenhaal, who gets (unlike Denzel did in this year’s film) that sadness can be about weighty limbs and haunted eyes, not screeching?

Where is Joel Edgerton? I’m wondering if the Academy hadn’t seen enough of his work to know what a departure this role was for him. Watching his restraint, the pain he shows in every limb at being unable to protect his wife, is powerful.

The Ugly
Instead, we get one of the best actors of our generation in his hammiest performance ever. Worst I’ve seen since The Book of Eli. You’re not in a theater, Denzel! Stop shouting down the house, making unfunny jokes, and smirking. It’s not the role. It’s you. You’re so, so much better than this.

Lead Actress

The Good and Bad
I suspect Annette Bening deserved the award this year, but I haven’t seen her film yet, and The Academy would probably just have passed her over for inferior performances, as they usually do. Emma Stone was very good, not great, and Ruth Negga just solid in Loving. But where is Amy Adams? She was memorable in Nocturnal Animals, and apparently even better in Arrival. But she’s a subtle actress, and the Academy likes to wait until the mid-golden years to award that quality (I’m looking at you, Jeff Bridges). Bring it on, Natalie. Shouts and painful closeups win.

The Ugly
Oh, Natalie. It’s funny that comics get no nominations for mimicry, and the Academy falls over itself to nominate dramatic performances for the same skill. Portman does imitate Jackie’s voice well, but in a distracting way (especially when she slips), and her histrionic, Black Swanish take on the first lady was disturbing, one-note and insulting. Weirdest of all was her awkward, hands stiffly held penguin walk. I guess when she was observing footage of her subject she missed the poise and grace. Cause you know, those don’t come up that often when we’re talking about Jackie….

Supporting Actor and Actress:

The Good
Very happy about Mahershala Ali for Moonlight. A magnetic, yet still understated performance. Likewise Jeff Bridges deserves the nod, though I wish he’d mumbled a bit less in the role. Had to watch it twice to catch all of his great dialogue. I think I was one of the few who preferred Michael Shannon’s performance in Nocturnal Animals to Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s.

Naomie Harris was very convincing in a small, but pivotal role. I hate to give credit to anything in Fences, but Viola Davis was tremendous, and unlike her costar, modulated her performance to suit the film. Give this woman an Oscar already, even if it should have been for best actress.

The Bad
I’m upset about the lack of love for Ben Foster in Hell or High Water. Even the reviews credit Chris Pine more, but Foster enlivens and gives depth to a role that in lesser hands could have been cartoonish. He sells the bond between the brothers, which keeps us hooked on this rather slowly spooling story. And he adds comedy as well as pathos.

OK, that’s it for now. When I’ve seen more, I’m sure I’ll gripe some more…:) (I’m posting more fully about Jake later this month for an Oscar blogathon, and will, of course, want to discuss the screenplays soon….)

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Interview on CMBA Site

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One of my favorite bloggers interviewed me for the Classic Movie Blog Association‘s profile. Check it out here. Such an honor. I feel like this:


For fantastic reading, view the author’s site, Silver Screenings. Her support, and that of other awesome veteran bloggers (such as Caftan Woman), has kept me going when it’s hard to continue with the blog.

While you’re at CMBA site, don’t neglect to check out the sites of my other wonderful peers at CMBA, whose recent posts are featured in the right-hand column.

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Fred and Ginger Fans, Watch La La Land

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Sometimes when I’m watching Gene Kelly, I’ve had to resist my urge to reach through the screen and push him into one of the puddles he’s leaping around.  I want to enjoy his joyful movements, his talent, but for me, the acting just kills it. His characters seem so smug, so sentimental, so cheesy, as if they were born to and continue to expect a cheering section. (Forgive me, Kelly fans. I can’t help it.)

Fred Astaire’s characters, in contrast, are cynical, world-weary, and as a result, often quite funny. Ginger Rogers, his most frequent sparring partner, is at her best when she’s delivering the snark too.


I’m willing to surrender to some sentimentality, but only if it’s tempered with some sarcasm; that’s why La La Land was an unexpectedly welcome surprise. Writer-director Damien Chazelle clearly gets that need for bite, and his own musician past is as evident here as it was in Whiplash. Thanks to him, my Ginger-and-Fred-loving peers will discover a bit of that magic they’ve missed in films since. Here’s how Chazelle pulls it off:

Witty Conversations
The plot is pretty simple: an aspiring jazz club owner and pianist, Sebastian (Gosling), and actress (Stone) fall in love and wrestle with the conflicts in their dreams and relationship. The previews are heavy on the cheesy side, but I should have trusted the actors, especially Gosling, whose  flight to indies after The Notebook revealed the level of his aversion to saccharine.


Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling excel at sarcastic banter. Their expressions are hilarious to witness. When Mia mocks Sebastian’s embarrassing keyboard gig by requesting an 80s abomination, I fell for the film, and for them. Astaire-Rogers films similarly begin with hostility: his character’s making a racket, tearing the heroine’s (Rogers’) dress, pretending to be Russian. Her characters’ (Rogers’) icy responses only begin to melt when the dancing brings the two together, and the self-protection their characters have constructed for themselves collapse.

Singing by Nonexpert Actors


Astaire and Rogers weren’t gifted in the choral department, but they sang their own tunes anyway, and as a result, there’s an authenticity to the chemistry between them, and the move from (relative) realism to song is less jarring. If I were watching a Broadway musical, I’d expect some serious pipes. But in a film, amateurism can work. As with Astaire and Rogers, Stone’s and Gosling’s lack of expertise works to highlight their characters’ insecurities and the fragility of their new bond. Their lack of professional music cred also helps give the impression that this singing is natural, just a way to express something that regular conversation can’t quite capture.

Dancing as Foreplay
Stone and Gosling are far better dancers than singers, and as with Astaire-Rogers, the dancing numbers are when their defenses dissolve, and they begin to fall in love.

My favorite moment is actually when the uber handsome Gosling approaches an older couple and starts dancing with the wife. The husband’s outraged response is so funny, but what’s lovely is the moment after: when we see the couple in the background, dancing with one another.

Characters Inspiring Each Other
I love in Shall We Dance (1937) that Petrov (Astaire) feels his dancing is so inspired by Linda (Rogers) that he must have actresses in his musical all don images of her face.


Petrov begins not with love, but professional admiration. And it’s fun to watch Mia (Stone) and Sebastian (Gosling) do the same: respect and promote one another’s art. As in Once, one of my favorite films of the past decade, the romance (or in Once‘s case, almost-romance) matters less than the impact the characters have on one another, the way they force one another to be honest about the decisions they’re making, the repercussions, and the inevitable conflicts an artistic life creates.

Talent
Astaire and Rogers are obviously finer dancers than their 2016 imitators. But Stone and Gosling are both fine actors, which Astaire was not.* Stone brings that effervescent charm she does to everything. She excels at mocking, as she has since Easy A. Her auditions for various terrible acting gigs are hilarious.

But it’s Gosling I couldn’t stop watching (and not just because of that ridiculously handsome face). Gosling’s timing, expressions, and posture deliver the humor, and the pathos of Sebastian’s unbending personality, his devotion to something others don’t love (jazz), is beautifully conveyed. Sebastian’s efforts to conceal his vulnerability are heartbreaking. A conversation late in the film when Mia calls him out on being a sellout is particularly tough to witness, as for Sebastian, giving in to some need for practicality demonstrates growth. Mia’s simply not been forced into the kind of compromises he has, and she doesn’t get what those decisions have cost him. I could see why Gosling–who has taken a long time to come around to big-budget films–was drawn to the role, and why the writer-director, a musician himself, knew just how to capture it. I don’t think it’s an accident that Sebastian is a far more developed character than is Mia.

Whimsy & Joy
What a pleasure it is, to watch actors with chemistry having fun with one another. It was always true for Astaire and Rogers, and is true for Stone and Gosling as well.


I didn’t find the music in La La Land that memorable, certainly not as strong as any of Astaire’s or Rogers’s outings. (Admittedly, that would be a bit unfair to expect, with Irving Berlin and the Gershwins at the helm.) Still, the enjoyment of singing, of dancing, of just playing around is there. At one point, in a surreal, An American in Paris kind of way, realism just leaves, and Mia and Sebastian act as if a departure from the rules of gravity is a natural result of their connection. In a way, it is. The moment conveys how art can transport a person away from reality, just as love can. That a director just over 30 can convey that sentiment so beautifully and lovingly–and with such humor–gives me excitement about whatever he’s cooking up next.

*Rogers, it could be argued, bests Stone in certain roles, but Gosling is a stronger actor than all of them.

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