leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com | Cary Grant Won't Eat You

From Poem to Boxing Ring: The Set-Up

09/13/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 8 Comments

An enthusiastic Rocky fan, I was curious how the classic films on boxing would measure up. The Set-Up sounded intriguing because it was about the underworld attached to the sport, and shockingly, was based on a poem.

Let’s sit here and think about that for moment. A poem. Say it to yourself. Boxing. Poem. Can you put the two together? I sure couldn’t. But once I viewed the film, I did see a kind of poetry in it, and thought I’d say a few words about why this film is so moving and—yes, poetic. The Set-Up is about weighing choices, each of which shapes the film. The fact that the movie plays in the exact running time of the prep for and fight itself emphasizes the crucial timing of each decision…

Should a Manager Tell His Boxer He’s Fixed a Fight?
Manager Tiny (George Tobias) believes boxer Stoker Thompson will blow his match, satisfying mobster Little Boy (Alan Baxter), who has paid Tiny to fix the fight between Stoker and his favorite, Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor). After all, Stoker is past his prime, and hasn’t been on a winning streak in quite some time.

If Tiny informs Stoker (Robert Ryan) about the fix, he will lose some of his cut. On the other hand, if Stoker doesn’t perform as expected, Tiny is in trouble with a mobster. Certain of his boxer’s ineptitude, Tiny considers neither the justice of his action, nor the danger it poses to Stoker. Only when his boxer shows spirit during the fight does Tiny begin to sweat—for himself.

Should An Aging Boxer Give Up The Sport To Please His Wife?
Stoker’s wife, Julie (Audrey Totter), proclaims her resolution to stop attending her husband’s fights. She wants him to quit. Stoker tries to convince her he’s almost done with the sport, but urges her to wait longer, until he can make a greater success. At the start of the movie, he keeps looking to her window and the chair he’s reserved for her at the fight; she wanders around the city trying to decide whether to go.

Clearly, Julie hates watching her husband get hurt, and worries about his survival. His love for her is painful to watch, as is hers for him. The problem is, all ambitions notwithstanding, Stoker also loves to fight. He enjoys the company of his fellow boxers, who thrive on hope, and rejuvenate his (comparatively) aging body and more resigned disposition with their energy and dreams.

Julie has put up with a lot to support him in this profession. How long should he ask it of her? Will she leave him if he doesn’t let it go?

How Long Should a Fighter Wait Before Abandoning that One Chance to Make It Big?
In the locker room, Stoker acts as a kind of patriarch to his peers, easing their nerves and encouraging their bravado. When a first-time boxer vomits before his first round, a trainer asks Stoker to admit it happens to everyone.

Yes, Stoker agrees aloud, recalling his own first bout, when he did the same: Trenton, NJ, 20 years before. Stoker’s face is poignant at the memory, back when he was as jubilant as the young men around him.

Among the many wonderful moments in the locker room, the best is perhaps the encounter between Gunboat and Stoker. Both aging fighters, both still trying to maintain ambition. Gunboat is inspired by a former middleweight champion who was beat 21 times before winning, a statistic he repeats to all who will listen, hoping his own record will soon resemble it.

“Can’t you see me, Stoke,” says Gunboat. “First I win the title, and then the exhibition tour, that’s where the easy dough is. I’ll be in the movie, Stokes, with a line of dames waiting for me a block long…”

When Gunboat returns from his fight unconscious, the camera pans over each fighter and trainer in turn, the fear and pain in all of their faces perfectly capturing the guts it takes to move from this moment, as several must do, to their own matches. And, of course, it presents Stoker with the inevitable question: Has he waited too long to quit?

What Spells the Difference Between Enjoying a Dangerous Sport, and Craving the Carnage?
The movie focuses in on just a few spectators the whole film, letting us see the fight between Stoker and Nelson through their often disturbing reactions. There’s the woman in the crowd who claims to hate matches, but reacts with glee when the fighting is most brutal, and grumbles when it’s not….

There’s the blind man relying on his friend for the play-by-play. “Nelson (Hal Baylor) opened up his left eye. He’s bleeding!” says the friend.

“Good,” his companion answers, and later yells at Nelson for not going for the eye again.

Then there’s the man who eats everything in the place, his appetite undisturbed by the blood, pain, or cries around him.

No wonder Julie doesn’t want to come. No wonder Stoker flinches before his fight at a spectator’s cries: “Kill ’im!”

What Should a Man Do When He Discovers Betrayal, But Payback Could Be Fatal?

Stoker begins to suspect foul play when his manager keeps trying to convince him to ease up once he begins to win. The bout itself is riveting, moving from the match to those few members of the crowd we’re tracking.

Ryan boxed in college, which explains why his moves are so convincing onscreen, unlike those of many actors in boxing films since. The confusion, anger, betrayal, and uncertainty of how to handle this fix play on this talented actor’s face. Given his pride, his conflict over Julie, and his disillusionment, we aren’t sure just what Stoker will do….

How Faithful Should Filmmakers Be to the Source Material?
The Set-Up has been criticized for changing the race of the poem’s hero from black to white, and among the harshest detractors were the poem’s author, Joseph Moncure March. It’s easy to dismiss the director’s claim that this change was because RKO didn’t have an African-American star then. The date alone (1949) suggests less elevated motives, and the black fighter in the movie, Luther, is played by James Edwards, who starred in the award-winning Home of the Brave that very same year.

Luther is portrayed sympathetically, which suggests the same could have happened with a black leading man, and the kind of treatment Tiny doles out to his boxer would have darkened and deepened the meaning of the movie had they not shared the same race (not to mention more faithfully reflecting the boxing world at the time).

However, the poem’s author, Joseph Moncure March, according to scholar Jefferson Hunter, “attacks an injustice without fully understanding his own involvement in it” and “is more a denizen of his time and place than he knows.” That is, March referred to his hero as a “jungle jinx” and saddled him with bigamy and a prison record. Therefore, some changes needed to be made to the story, and given its audience’s likely prejudices, perhaps some might even have been a good idea. But what a film it would have been with a morally questionable fighter, and an exploration of race politics in the ring….

Say Anything Fan? Holiday (1938) Is the Classic Film for You

09/06/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 2 Comments

A hero who reveals his vulnerability, yet retains his pride; the kind of man devoted enough to lift a jukebox above his head blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to woo the girl who dumped him, yet still grounded enough to enjoy relaxing with his friends; a boy with few prospects who is seeking a “dare-to-be-great” situation.

There’s a reason Say Anything (1989) and its hero, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), were nearly universally worshipped by every middle and high school girl I knew. Cusack quickly became the heartthrob of my generation, just as Cary Grant was to his. In Holiday, Grant played a role much like Cusack’s in Say Anything. That’s why if you’re a diehard lover of Lloyd Dobler, I think you should check out this 1938 film and see for yourself the many similarities:

Lightheartedness
Those accustomed to seeing Grant’s suave persona on display in clips and photos might not realize how fun it is to witness him being the opposite—silly, playful, with that same uneasily expressed, coltish confidence in himself that makes Lloyd Dobler so appealing. In Holiday, Johnny (Grant) likes to do flips to cheer himself out of tough times or worries, just as Lloyd chides his sister for not being able to pull out of hers.

Romancing the Daddy’s Girl—and Daddy Ain’t So Great
Both films feature heroines who are too close to fathers who don’t deserve such adulation. In Say Anything, Diane’s dad (John Mahoney) winds up being a crook; in Holiday, Julia’s (Henry Kolker) is so obsessed with money and status that he verges on caricature.

Johnny’s fiancée and her father

Much of Holiday focuses on Johnny’s discovery that Julia (Doris Nolan) is much closer to her father’s character than he realized, just as Say Anything shows Diane (Ione Skye) slowly recognizing that her father is not the moral center of her universe. Luckily, we have both of Julia’s siblings, Linda (Katharine Hepburn) and Ned (Lew Ayres), mocking their dad the whole time in Holiday, which is way funnier than the whole Diane-Dad snooze fest.

Unconventional Ambitions
Both heroes have unpopular dreams. Lloyd’s is beautifully expressed when Diane’s dad opens the door and he tries to sell himself as a trustworthy date: “I’m an athlete, so I rarely drink. You heard of kickboxing, sport of the future?”*

Lloyd responds to a question about his career plans with “Spend as much time as possible with Diane before she leaves” and proceeds to give an amusing description of his hopes: “Considering what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career….So what I’ve been doing lately is kickboxing….”

Grant’s plan, captured in the film’s title, is to take a vacation from employment. He’s worked since the age of ten, and isn’t sure what he’s doing it for: “I want to know how I stand, where I fit in the picture, what it’s all gonna mean to me. I can’t find that out sitting behind some desk in an office, so as soon as I get enough money together, I’m going to knock off for a while….I want to save part of my life for myself….You know, retire young, work old, come back and work when I know what I’m working for, does that make sense to you?”

Johnny, like Lloyd, makes fun of the idea of needing familial or professional connections: “When I find myself in a position like this, I ask myself what would General Motors do? And then I do the opposite.”

And like Lloyd, Johnny thinks his love should be enough for Julia’s father: After offering a character reference, he adds, “I’m quite decent and fairly civilized. I love your daughter very much, which isn’t a bit hard. She seems to like me a lot too. And uh, well, that’s about all that can be said for me, except that I think we have a grand chance of being awfully happy.”

A Marvelous Support Network
Both men are backed by funny friends who provide much of the comic relief of their films. Edward Everett Horton plays a professor and Jean Dixon his wife, Susan; they are friends of Johnny’s who gravitate toward Linda rather than Johnny’s fiancée. When they arrive at the fussy engagement party for the couple, Susan says, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got a run in my stocking.” “Good heavens, we’re ruined,” answers her husband. “Not a word of this to a soul,” he warns the butler.

Among Lloyd’s many entertaining friends, Corey (Lili Taylor) is the obvious standout, with her 63 songs about her ex and classic line in response to Lloyd’s “…I’m a guy. I have pride”: “You’re not a guy…The world is full of guys. Be a man.”

In Johnny’s case, Julia proves to be remarkably dull, and soon is outshone by her supportive sister, Linda (Hepburn). Linda can be quite amusing, though at times she’s a bit melodramatic about the family woes.

In Say Anything, we’re stuck with Ione Skye as the romantic interest the whole film, with that terrible acting doing nothing for any of us. When Diane dumps Cusack, all the viewers may protest, but it was a relief not to hear Skye talk for a bit and listen to Lloyd’s friends instead.

Rising Above…
Both Johnny and Lloyd display a remarkable level of emotional maturity—Lloyd, in his continued efforts to unite Diane and her father once they become estranged in spite of the latter’s hostility toward him.

And Johnny, in his attention to his fiancée’s needs and sensitivity to her family despite her father’s rudeness toward him.

After asking many not-so-subtle questions about Johnny’s connections, Julia’s father expresses zero interest in her suitor’s obvious resourcefulness, the loss of his mother, and his pride in who he is. Johnny freely discusses his background: his dad’s grocery ownership and debts, an alcoholic uncle, and his own work as a steel mill worker, garbage truck driver, and laundry worker while earning his degree at Harvard. While he isn’t exactly trying to provoke the father’s snobbery, he clearly is amused by it.

“Admirable,” the father says after hearing Johnny’s answers about his life, with no sincerity whatsoever.

“Anything else, sir?” Johnny finally asks.

“I beg your pardon?” the father replies.

“I should think you would,” snaps Linda.

Luckily, fun-loving Linda is the one Johnny will eventually be falling for. If my description doesn’t win you, hopefully this image of the former acrobat (Grant) in action will.

*When I mentioned this quote on kickboxing, my husband pointed out that Lloyd was one prescient guy given the success of UFC….

M: A Serial Killer’s Story about Us

08/27/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 2 Comments

I’ve always been puzzled by The Silence of the Lambs becoming more successful than Manhunter. The latter’s subtlety, especially Brian Cox’s portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, was far more alarming to me than the campy style of Anthony Hopkins. The former I could mistake for a normal human being, making his monstrosity all the more terrifying. Yes, I might jump out of my seat during The Silence of the Lambs, but Manhunter is the stuff of lasting nightmares.

The story is better too, as the deeper fear is not of the serial killer, but of being like him. Mann (and novelist Thomas Harris) question whether investigator Will Graham’s (William Petersen’s) uncanny understanding of psychopaths’ minds means that he has the same dark passions. And of course, that leads to us: Does it make us somehow sick to be interested in a killer’s psychology or his/her capture, to read the stories and watch the films? And if that doesn’t mean we share his/her pursuits, what form does our sickness take?

Perhaps that’s why I think Michael Mann fans would be drawn to M, the 1931 film that begins with a frightening depiction of a child killer, but ends by questioning the wider society that is hunting him. Like Mann, director Fritz Lang did not employ every bell and whistle at his disposal, did not play melodramatic music in the background or make us witness gore or the frightened faces or cries of children. Instead, this director in his first talkie displayed a restrained artistry: an image here, a sound there—just enough, and never more. The result is a haunting film that lingers long after its conclusion.

M begins simply, with a disturbing children’s game about a murderer. A woman tries to shush the kids because what’s going on in Berlin is too similar to their words: a child killer is at large in the city. The camera then narrows in on mother Frau Beckmann (Ellen Widmann), who displays her love for her child, Elsie, through her loving arrangements for the child’s return from school: washing the clothes, preparing a meal with care, peering up at the time with a smile.

The film cuts to Elsie (Inge Landgut), the only sound her ball hitting the pavement. The almost complete silence of these scenes is paralytic to the viewer. We don’t see the killer, just a posting about children’s disappearances obscured by the girl’s ball and a man’s shadow. The man praises the ball; he asks Elsie her name.

As the time passes when Elsie should have arrived, Frau Beckmann looks at the clock. She asks returning kids whether Elsie was with them. They say no.

We see the murderer buy Elsie a balloon from a blind man (Georg John). We hear very little but Elsie’s thanks as the killer whistles Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” which will later have us jumping, like we did in hearing the arrival of Jaws.

Meanwhile, the mother smiles when a salesmen stops by her door, thinking him Elsie, and can barely attend to his words before she questions him about her daughter. She calls down the stairs to her.

Now overcome with worry, she opens the window.

As she calls, “Elsie!!” the first of several silent shots tells viewers that Elsie will not be coming home.

The quiet street; the untouched place setting for Elsie

The quiet street; Elsie’s place setting

Elsie’s ball coming to rest; her balloon stuck in the wires

Elsie’s ball; her balloon caught in the wires

The images are harrowing; the viewer feels horror: at the child’s death, and the mother’s loss. The ethics are simple: the killer is evil, the mom and child good. The spare use of sound and imagery contribute to this clear-cut moral universe, which Lang is about to disrupt, for this film, we soon discover, is not about the murderer: it’s about the citizens, criminals, and police who pursue him.

Next, we hear a newspaper hawker talking about the crimes, as the murderer (Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre) whistles his tune and writes a letter to the paper explaining that his spree is not finished. As friends around a table discuss the murders, they are soon viewing each other with suspicion, one even accusing another of being the man in question.

A mob mistakes an innocent elderly man for the predator, simply because he answered a young girl’s question.

The shouts of the crowd are then cut short, as the words of the murderer’s letter appear on the screen in absolute silence. When the commissioner begins to discuss his investigation on the phone, we see the police in action: tracing the fingerprints on that letter, investigating the handwriting, scanning the crime scene, interviewing confectioners due to a wrapper that’s been found.

As the killer’s pathology is explained, we see him closely for the first time; he makes faces in the mirror, as if trying to see himself as others do. The film’s writers, Lang and spouse Thea von Harbou, achieve a high level of verisimilitude that makes the film resemble today’s police procedurals. (Some say, despite Lang’s denials, that this was due to their attention to the extensive media coverage of serial killer Peter Kürten.)

But all of the police’s efforts prove fruitless. Desperate, they soon resort to frequent raids to catch the child murderer. Lang covers these raids beautifully, beginning with a silent scene of a prostitute soliciting, and segueing into the police marching down the streets en route to the bars to demand papers. The sound finally returns in the form of a whistle to warn customers the police are arriving, after which we hear the uproar of the crowd’s dismay as they try to escape.

A bar owner explains that this treatment of customers is unfair to them and to her, and unlikely to result in an arrest.

“I know a lot of toughs who get all teary-eyed just seein’ the little ones at play,” she explains to a police sergeant, warning, “If they ever get their hands on that monster, they’ll make toothpicks out of him.”

This Cassandra leads us to the next scene: Upset with the disruption to their business, the criminal underworld, led by Safecracker (Gustaf Gründgens), decides they’ve had enough. They’ll find the killer themselves. These mob leaders have a conference to plan their strategy, much like in The Godfather.

Lang cuts back and forth between this conference and a similar one the police are holding about the case, causing the viewer to confuse the two, and then start to wonder whether there is any difference between them.

The police decide that they’ll go the mental health route, finding patients who’ve been dismissed as harmless but have suspicious tendencies. The criminals decide they’ll organize a league of beggars, who, as unnoticed observers of their surroundings, can spot the predator without scaring him. Both groups succeed in narrowing in on Hans Beckert through these means, even as the latter follows a new girl, his silent contemplation of her soon erupting into his signature whistle.

Among the beggars is the blind balloon seller, who, upon recognizing the whistle, sets the alarm, leading to the killer being chased into an office building, a chalked M mark from a beggar having pegged him as the one to follow. The longer the hunt continues, the more the viewers’ allegiance shifts. We don’t want Beckert to go free, but there’s something sadistic about this manhunt, perfectly captured in the large eyes of the predator who has suddenly become prey.

We know now that these criminals are no longer just out to save their business; something more primitive is at play. What happens next is too fascinating for me to give away. But I will say that the film’s treatment of the child killer is surprising; he’s even given a chance to explain his affliction: “Can I do anything about it? Don’t I have this cursed thing inside me? This fire, this voice, this agony?”

Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels, who later offered Lang a job, obviously interpreted the film as less complex in its sympathies than I have. Certainly, there is room for dispute about what Lang was trying to say. But with the Third Reich imminent, Lang (who had Jewish heritage) was about to skip town, job offers notwithstanding. It’s hard not to see in the film’s conflation of police and criminal, citizen and predator, an indictment of the authoritarian regime, especially since Lang’s next film more explicitly attacked it (though, interestingly, facts apparently don’t bear out Lang’s account of his own precipitous escape).

Regardless of his initial motives, by giving the murderer voice at all, Lang questions whether this man might be more than the “rapid dog” he is accused of being, might be in need of a doctor’s care, not a hangman’s noose, as a reluctant defender in the film claims. And since we know the killer is not the subject of this story, we viewers soon turn to the crowd condemning him. Just as there is within this man, Lang seems to imply, there’s a sickness within society. After all, normal German citizens will come to support the Nazi party, including his wife and cowriter. Who is to say any culture isn’t vulnerable to the same manipulation, the same results, given the right fears to make them operate? Whether or not that sickness and those who’ve let it spread are capable of redemption or not, he leaves it to his audience to determine.

The Moment I Fell for Robin Williams

08/20/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 4 Comments

Last week, while I was seeking Lauren Bacall tributes online, I avoided my TV because I didn’t want to see any Robin Williams ones. The loss was simply too raw, too big for me to watch some summary of a man who slipped through any easy definitions. After all, it was this breathtaking versatility; best demonstrated in Good Morning, Vietnam; that I couldn’t face losing.

While I’m usually quick to attack the Academy for their humorlessness, I agreed with them that dramas displayed Williams’s most remarkable work. Who else could be so manic in humor, and then so quiet in pathos? So riveting in his energy, and even more so (perhaps because of it) in his stillness?

The actor’s sad scenes were the more so because you could feel the good humor bubbling beneath, the fact that this man was capable of very great joy. The first word that comes to mind with Williams is not funny, but empathetic. This man understood human nature like no comic I’ve ever witnessed, and any humor writer will tell you that truth is at the root of all good comedy.

The surprise of finally seeing the actor win an Oscar for Good Will Hunting was not at the Academy having snored through Good Morning, Vietnam (how else to explain Michael Douglas winning instead for his one-dimensional performance in Wall Street?). The shock was in recognizing that this guy should have been playing therapists all along.

My favorite Williams performance was probably in Awakenings. But I fell for him much, much earlier. It wasn’t in Mork & Mindy, in which his fevered acting was exhausting to watch, even for a little kid. I couldn’t take the show very often, even though I always did laugh. No. I fell for Williams in Popeye, the first film he starred in.

Now hear me out. I am not going to argue that this flop is a good film, that it’s under-appreciated or even tolerable. Oh no. It’s so much worse than you remember.

Paul L. Smith as villain Bluto

Williams is not very good in it either. But I fell hard for him for agreeing to take the role at all, and for having so much fun with it once he did. This spinach-eating cartoon character was always my favorite, and though I’ll admit to a vague horror on first hearing a human would be playing it, and in a musical, I was impressed with how completely Williams embraced the role. Such an unsuccessful campy movie I could easily dismiss, but for Williams as Popeye, even in a shaky performance, I felt a kind of awe.

Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall) with Popeye

One could argue that the actor was just beginning, that this was a role he could get. But that wouldn’t explain all of Williams’s baffling choices over the years, that sense that he sometimes took parts simply to avoid taking his career, or himself, too seriously. How else can anyone explain Hook? And as I mourn Williams, I don’t want to see his best work; it’s too easy to imagine in his depiction of every emotion the darkness that would take him from us. So instead, I’m gonna stick with his silliness for a while. I’ll rewatch The World according to Garp, perhaps The Birdcage, maybe even the batshit-crazy Shakes the Clown. And yes, I’m going to spend some time with the ever-mumbling, ever-smiling, greens-loving sailor man.

The Novels? No. But Still Worth Viewing: Outlander (2014) and Portrait of Jennie (1948)

08/13/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 1 Comment

I’ve always been a sucker for time-travel narratives, from Somewhere in Time and Back to the Future to 2012’s Looper and Safety Not Guaranteed. Not surprisingly, I quickly devoured Diana Gabaldon’s first four Outlander novels, and was excited to hear that Starz had picked up the series. One episode into the network’s translation of the books may be too early to compare the series to its source. But given how few of us subscribe to Starz, the question must be an early one: is the TV show playing it close enough to Diana Gabaldon’s beloved novels to be worth the investment?

For those who haven’t read it, the first Outlander book’s premise is this: Swept from the 1940s to the 1740s through a magical stone circle, nurse Claire Randall keeps attempting to return to her husband Frank.

As she plots her homecoming, Claire becomes increasingly caught up in the lives of the MacKenzie clan.

The book is an impressive amalgam of sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and Scottish historical and medical history, with Claire’s role as a healer contributing to her being mistaken for a witch and a spy by Scots and Brits alike. Unfortunately, Claire soon forms an enemy she can’t harm, Frank’s ancestor.

And she runs into a complication she can’t resolve, an increasing attraction and debt to protector Jamie Fraser.

Like any reader, I watched the pilot of Outlander expecting to be disappointed by the casting. But Starz has done an astonishingly good job with its selections, particularly of lead Jamie (Sam Heughan). I still remain skeptical about actress Caitriona Balfe as Claire, but my doubts may be the result of the exposition she was forced to relay in voiceover, probably a necessity due to the complicated plot.

What surprised me is how nostalgic the pilot made me for a movie from my childhood, Portrait of Jennie (1948), and how much my concerns about Claire’s casting echoed my irritation with the choice of Jennifer Jones (the future wife of its producer, David O. Selznick) for its heroine.

To compare the complex story of Outlander to this simple romance might be a stretch, but hear me out. Both productions began with well-regarded novels. (Admittedly, Gabaldon has a substantial following, while enough time has passed since Robert Nathan’s glory days that his 1940 book now sits in that Kindle-Nook limbo, with new paperbacks less easy to come by.)

Nathan’s bittersweet fantasy is fairly simple, and the film follows it somewhat closely: Struggling painter Eben Adams (Joseph Cotten) runs into a girl in the park. She is dressed in old-fashioned clothes and has a timeless quality about her. He doesn’t know yet that she’s from the past.

Only when she continues to visit him, having aged considerably each time, does he discover that her time is out of joint with his. Mysteriously (we never learn how), she’s able to slowly catch up with his age, hopeful that if she does, they can be together.

In the meantime, Eben begins to sketch Jennie, and his portrait of her soon leads him to the success his landscapes never afforded him.

A sketch and a later portrait of Jennie (the latter by artist Robert Brackman)

Eben’s professional life is on the rise, but his future with Jennie is uncertain: will she be able to make it to and stay in his future, or will time/the elements pull these lovers apart?

The book is so whimsical, yet so straightforwardly written, that it has a charm and mystery about it that the less subtle film never manages to master. My bias against Jones, which had its root in having only seen her as a saint, may have tainted my first evaluation of the movie (as did my childhood skepticism about classic film). But I think it didn’t help that, as in The Major and the Minor, the film tried to pass off an adult woman as a girl instead of hiring a child who resembled Jones.

While I may nitpick about details still, I neglected to consider as a kid just how much the camera work DID capture the lovely, haunting mood of the book; how perfectly Ethel Barrymore (grand-aunt to Drew) portrays Eben’s patron; and how beautifully Jones expresses the terror and pathos of this young woman, who has lost her family in a tragic accident, and longs for a man she may never attain. It may be true, as one could easily charge, that Selznick was too enamored with his love (Jones) to judge the film clearly, but after all, she was his muse in the same way Jennie was Eben’s, and the soft focus on Jones’ features does convey the level of obsession and love Eben feels for this timeslipping girl. I find myself liking it more every time I see it. (Warning: Do not read about it online before viewing it; spoilers abound.)

The fear Jennie faces is what The Outlander pilot gets so right about Claire. The show will inevitably have to reduce and simplify some of that book’s (and its sequels’) rich complexity, and will lose much in the process. But it will gain in shots of the landscape, in period details the reader can’t quite imagine, and most of all, in helping us experience the terror of being lost in time, and not sure, as with Jennie, of ever getting to the moment where we feel we belong.

Ruined by Romance: Drive (2011) and The Hustler (1961)

08/07/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 4 Comments

I was excited when Drive came out: finally, I thought, a new Bourne. An action flick with intelligence and fine acting, starring a man who had bypassed romantic leads after The Notebook to refine his skills in indies. And the promo! It looked exciting and moody, with the kind of premise that meant my car enthusiast husband and I would be carrying the popcorn to our seats with equal enthusiasm.

Of course I had neglected to consider the amazing skills of this woman, who would later manage to portray one of the most self-centered characters in American fiction as a victim:

Mulligan as a vulnerable waif—again

So instead of racing cars, instead of truly exploring the depths of his character’s moral confusion and darkness, Ryan Gosling gets to spend most of the film destroying his life for a mother (Carey Mulligan) who is (a) hopelessly fragile (b) already married and (c) unutterably dull.

I wouldn’t say that The Hustler (1961) was ruined as completely as Drive was by a bad romance, but I was more appalled by its mistakes. Because this is a film I’d thought to be a classic, with George C. Scott as the money man and the brilliant Jackie Gleason playing Minnesota Fats, the reigning master of pool.

The master’s challenger is cocky young upstart Fast Eddie (Paul Newman), who struggles with confidence in spite of his successes hustling on the road. (Yes, the same character from The Color of Money).

Imagine my surprise then to find that after the wonderful battle between Fats and Eddie ends with the latter deflated and broke, pool disappears for a long stretch of the film, to be replaced by a romance as inadvisable as it is boring to watch.

Sarah (Piper Laurie) is a more interesting character than Mulligan’s Irene. She is depressed, moody, and drunk most of the time, but she is also compassionate and prickly with pride, and though I might have asked for more range and nuance from Laurie, others disagreed; she received an Oscar nomination for the role.

But whatever you think of Laurie’s performance, the romance itself is based on co-dependence. The two drink and have sex, and that’s about it; she even starts to write a story about their supposed depravity. When money-man Bert (Scott) accuses Newman of being a talented loser, the audience has to agree. It’s understandable that Eddie would align himself with Bert to lift up his career, even that he’d bring Sarah with him on the road since she can’t handle being left alone for a week (or more likely, doesn’t trust him to return). Sure, we know Bert is a bad guy, but Eddie isn’t exactly full of either options or patience.

Sarah with Bert (Scott), her nemesis

But to link Newman’s increased character and confidence to his remorse at his treatment of Sarah? Really? Eddie didn’t seem to mind leaving his long-time buddy and manager, Charlie (Myron McCormick), in the lurch.

Charlie (Myron McCormick) trying to win Eddie back

Charlie (McCormick) appealing to Eddie

His treatment of Charlie is far worse than his neglect of Sarah. The problem isn’t what Eddie did during his travels with Sarah and Bert; the problem is whom he chose to do it to: you don’t get involved with someone this fragile unless you’re in it for good, especially with a predator like Bert in your company. What Eddie should have done is drive the poor woman straight to rehab, not to the Derby.

Are you bored yet? Yeah, me too. I didn’t sign up for a movie about a doomed love affair—and if I had, I could have found a far better one than this. Here’s what I wanted to see, and finally did at the end of the film:

Note the vulnerability on Fats’ face as Eddie begins a streak:

Or his insistence that Eddie stop getting distracted and focus on the game, the defeat on his face clearly showing that he’s sold himself to Bert too:

Watch Bert’s celebration of his power over both men:

And most of all, witness the beautiful pool shots throughout–while you can get them. For a film called The Hustler, I didn’t get to see much hustling. Luckily, I did get to see this: Fats dressing up to rejuvenate himself during a losing streak:

I could watch the pool passages in the film again and again and again.

Why do Hollywood films always use romance as a replacement for self-struggle? I haven’t read Walter Tevis’s novel, which may have managed the matter better, but the best films I know about competition don’t rely on gimmicky stand-ins as substitutes for the practice scenes (with pool!) they should have included. Even if a love affair is involved, it’s one that forces the hero/heroine to confront weaknesses. And it’s Bert—not Sarah—who tells Eddie the truth in The Hustler. If anything, I would think remorse would lead Eddie right back to the aimless life he and Sarah had been leading.

Did I enjoy the film? Yes. Would I fast forward through the Laurie-Newman scenes next time? Oh yes. Do I think at the end of the day The Cutting Edge was more convincing? Absolutely.

The Red Shoes, Pied Piper to Aspiring Ballerinas

08/03/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 14 Comments

This post is part of A Shroud of Thoughts’ The British Invaders Blogathon. Check out all the great entries!

Why did this film about the terrible choices a woman must make for her art inspire generations of ballerinas? Every little girl raised on Hans Christian Anderson knows that Karen, the red shoe-shod girl, doesn’t fare well: as punishment for her vanity in choosing red shoes for her confirmation (and similar sins), Karen can’t stop the shoes from dancing, can’t take them off, can’t go to church, can’t even prevent her detached legs from dancing when they’re cut off and replaced with wooden ones. Only when she truly feels remorse does she find peace—in death.

Surely then, a film about these shoes won’t bode well for the heroine, Vicky Page (Moira Shearer), as indeed, proves to be the case. The aspiring ballerina’s fierce impresario, Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), expects unwavering commitment to dance. Vicky arrests his attention and is allowed into his troupe mainly because she seems to possess it:

“Why do you want to dance?” Lermontov asks when he meets her.

“Why do you want to live?” Vicky answers.

“I don’t know exactly why, but I must,” he admits.

“That’s my answer too,” Vicky answers.

His prima ballerina’s nuptials lead the fiery director to boot her out, and usher Vicky in. He’s not interested in any dancer “imbecile enough to get married.” “You cannot have it both ways,” he explains to his choreographer. “A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer, never.” Vicky is soon in training for Lermontov’s new ballet, which is based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale, with a company skeptical about her abilities and self-doubt growing under everyone’s exacting standards.

She relaxes when The Red Shoes becomes a spectacular smash, but conflict soon arises in the form of the ballet’s young composer, Julian Craster (Marius Goring), who has fallen for Vicky, and she for him. At this point, we viewers are still happy: she’s gotten her role, as has Julian, whom we’re also rooting for; she’s a hit, as is he; they’re in love, and have earned the respect and affection of the rest of the troupe. But then Lermontov finds out, and she has to choose: greatness with him, or mediocrity with Julian (only minor roles, minor ballets for her). And like every woman before her, this choice between love and ambition will not be an easy one, and she will be tortured either way.

Why then, did this tragic film result in so many enthusiastic young ballerinas? I have a few theories on that, having been in ballet from ages 5-12 myself, and seen this movie when I was gobbling up Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes series.

For Young Girls, It Wouldn’t Have Been a Tough Choice
Julian is a likeable guy (for most of the film). He’s ambitious, cocky, devoted to his art, smart. He stands up for himself when he’s cheated; he’s supportive, sweet, and appreciative of Vicky as an artist, as he demonstrates during their loveliest moment together, when he envisions a time when a child will ask him as an old man where he was most happy, and he’ll answer this moment with Vicky: “‘What?’ [the girl] will say. ‘Do you mean the famous dancer?’ I will nod. ‘Yes, my dear, I do….We were, I remember, very much in love.’”

But let’s be frank here: Aside from the romantic streak, these are the types of traits women long on the dating scene may appreciate, but are not the type to win over pre-pubescent girls. This is not the kind of face girls’ dreams are made of:

Without the conflict, no tragedy. And after all, even those girls who dream of perfect love and great achievement know a ballerina’s career is short. Their gossiping friends in the dance company will tell them so (if they’ve made it that far). And if they’re still beginning, well, they will learn as much after a day with some dance flicks: The Turning Point, Center Stage. Is it so impossible for the young dreamer to think she’ll simply fall in love later, as the actress (Moira Shearer) herself did in her mid-twenties after her greatest dancing successes?

The Caliber of the Dancing
The pet peeve of dancing enthusiasts is when films substitute allegedly good actors for good dancers—because Jennifer Beals, my friends, sure did have acting chops. Perhaps I would understand this choice if any of the actors and actresses selected were talented.

Take, for example, Center Stage (2000), which played it both ways, inserting a few actors among real-life ballet dancers to elevate the film’s quality. While the result is good dancing, but an array of poor acting performances, the worst among the bunch are Zoe Saldana and Susan May Pratt, who were chosen for their supposed dramatic skills; the latter can’t even manage graceful walking. People, no dancer has ever regretted watching a Fred Astaire film, and the man was at best a passable actor. No dancer says, “I would have enjoyed that movie if he could act,” even if an occasional person among the general audience does.

The Red Shoes, like the Rogers-Astaire films before it, did something more than highlight amateur beginners. It featured world-renowned ballet dancers and choreographers. Léonide Massine, who plays the choreographer (Ljubov) in the film, was a choreographer of nearly the status as George Balanchine. He created and acted the part of the shoemaker in the ballet. The replaced prima ballerina, Boronskaja (Ludmilla Tcherina), was in real life a prima ballerina in France.

And Moira Shearer? She danced for both Balanchine and Massine as a principal in the Sadler’s Wells (later the Royal Ballet), along with, you guessed it, that little-known ballerina Margot Fonteyn, whose costar in the company choreographed and played the male lead in the ballet within the film, Robert Helpmann.

Helpmann, Shearer, and Massine

Choosing such ballet luminaries didn’t hurt directors/writers Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell’s movie; they were even lucky enough to find in these stars acting skills as well (which we rather expect in our greatest ballet dancers).

The Red Shoes’ most famous ballet itself is stunning, surreal, inventive and truly impossible to put into words, capturing the darkness of the fairy tale and all of its creepy, moralistic, vaguely misogynistic undertones, and giving Shearer the chance to demonstrate just why she was considered by some to be Fonteyn’s equal. It probably didn’t hurt that the film was scored by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Realism
The movie is known for its surreal use of color and special effects and for a riveting performance by Walbrook as Lermontov.

It’s recognized now as ridiculously ahead of its time; one shivers to think what an American studio would have done with the same material in 1948: the starlets they would have chosen, the bizarre beauty they would have stamped out.

But by any standards, this film captures ballet as it is lived as well: the punishing practices, the demand for perfection, the colorful personalities, the scary choreographers and directors. I didn’t even make it into the company in my school, but I was terrified of the man who was our head. I’ll never forget his sharp eyes on me when I missed a move in The Nutcracker, nor his poise, which was every bit as still and intimidating as Lermontov’s. And this was a director of a small company in a minor city.

Vicky (Shearer) rebuffed by Ljubov (Massine)

The film, however, captures more than the tribulations of a dancer’s life. It conveys too the joy of the right move, of building toward something creative together, of earning not just the admiration of a crowd, but of those whose judgment you know to value.

Vicky (Shearer) with her fellow lead (Helpmann) and choreographer (Massine); all three were involved with Sadler's Wells ballets.

Colleagues in film and on the stage: Helpmann, Massine, and Shearer

And it portrays the thrill of those impossibly lovely gestures, pirouettes, and leaps too, which no other experience can quite replicate.

Shearer believed the film injured her classical dance career because critics assumed she was riding on her fame from it rather than technical talent. If that’s true, I want to thank her for the sacrifice (admittedly too late). For it meant many young aspiring ballerinas like me, who would never go very far in dance, would understand in watching and re-watching The Red Shoes just what had made those hours in the studio worth it for us. Yes, it was literally a pain to practice (I feel a cramp in the arch of my foot just remembering those pointe shoes). And it hurt even more when it was time to let ballet go. But look! Just watch Vicky.

Why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that, even for a little while?

The Public Enemy*: the Crime Flick with No Glamour?

07/31/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 4 Comments

Having attacked James Cagney in a previous post, but seen few of his films, I thought I owed it to him to watch one of his hits. I found The Public Enemy on a streaming site and rec list (thanks, John!) and was instantly sucked into this understated gem.

The hyperbolic title of the film suggests it will glamorize crime, much like films of my generation. (It’s disturbing when I scan through the films produced not long before my birth–Bonnie and Clyde, the Godfather series—and those popular during my childhood and early adulthood— Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Natural Born Killers—and find it hard to remember many that didn’t glamorize crime.) The Public Enemy does not glorify crime, despite some contemporary detractors’ claims. Neither, in spite of the PSA-style opening and closing of the film, does it truly condemn it. Instead, in The Wire-like fashion, the film simply shows you the life the main character leads, and lets you decide for yourself whether that life is worth emulating.

James Cagney as Tom

Tom Powers (James Cagney), the film’s antihero, is a small-time thug, not the leader of the underworld. Even in the glamorous gangster films of today, the small-timers don’t fare well. Tom may be a public enemy, but he’s hardly deserving of a “the.” It’s rare and satisfying to see a film highlight such a character, to show his humble beginnings without a big rise. The plot gives us enough of Depression-era Chicago to explain why crime might have attracted Tom and his buddy Matt (Edward Woods), who move from watch thefts to beer heists. The naturalistic tone of the film is likely due to its Oscar-nominated screenwriters, Kubec Glasmon and John Bright, whose story was supposedly based on real criminals’ accounts.

Tom’s unsavory allies

Of course, I must admit that the laughter the movie’s famous misogynistic scene produced (spoiler here) and Cagney’s star status as a result of it might have undercut the serious tone of the film, and explain some audience’s admiration for a character as pathetic as Tom. This is, after all, a guy who takes pride in intimidating others as a small-time mobster, and extends that bullying to his romantic relationships with Kitty (Mae Clark) and Gwen (Jean Harlow in an uncharacteristically tone-deaf performance).

An unromantic fling (with Clark)

But Cagney is such a compelling presence that you can’t help but admire Tom just a little. His fiercely controlled energy and easygoing, natural style in spite of (or because of) his outsized personality make Cagney riveting to watch, much like Goodfellas standout Joe Pesci. Tom’s a terrible person, but thanks to Cagney, he’s an entertaining terrible person.

Cagney and Pesci: unkind to necks

Even before Cagney shows up on the screen, the kids playing the young versions of him (Frank Coghlan Jr.) and his friend Matt (Frankie Darro) hooked me with their toughness and swagger, bravado that is hopelessly poignant in clothes like these:

Tom and Matt

Tom sneaking from the family beer bucket

Young Matt has a rather exaggerated way of swiping his arm across his nose, which Woods (as adult Matt) adopts to show viewers that the men we’re seeing in 1915, six years after the film’s start, are the same people we’ve been watching.

This simple transition is followed by a silent scene in which the adult hoodlums affirm with a guy at the bar that the boss is available through small movements.

It’s all about the gestures: Pacino & De Niro anyone?

The plot is fairly simple too—about friendship and betrayal, allies and enemies, as most mob stories are. But because the narrative is so minimalistic, the revenge is more difficult to watch, and more personal when it comes. We know the characters who end well—and those who don’t. Tom’s coldness is difficult to witness, especially when Matt, who is comparatively softhearted, can’t bring himself to stop his friend’s violence. I won’t spoil what happens, instead hoping you’ll give the film a try. If my review hasn’t convinced you, perhaps the framing of this shot will:

*Not to be confused with the Johnny Depp vehicle, which was generous with glamour but frugal with character development.

Help Me Turn My Sister into a Classic Film Fan

07/23/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 12 Comments

I’ve been trying to get my sisters into classic movies for a couple decades now. I have failed utterly. Their objections are:

The acting is stagey.
Who can get over the black and white?
Just as technology has improved, so have the films using it.

I have to give some share of the blame to my mother, who has a weakness for Hayley Mills Disney flicks and insisted the three of us view them as kids; Pollyanna, That Darn Cat! and The Parent Trap may have done irreparable damage. Mom tried to make up for these deplorable choices with some Shirley Temple movies and The Song of Bernadette, but though these films represented a qualitative improvement, they still didn’t demonstrate any perceptiveness about her children’s likely preferences.*

Hayley is calling for help, as am I.

Some of the blame for my sisters’ hostility toward classic film must go to my father too, as he shares his daughters’ innate sarcasm and should have known to discourage the viewing of such sugary slosh, which would shade their opinion of all classic movies thereafter. (Had I not caught a five-minute clip of Ball of Fire as a teen and been lured into AMC addiction, I might possess my sisters’ baffling convictions myself.)

Luckily, my sister Rachel wants me to watch Breaking Bad so much that she has accepted a trade: I watch the show; she watches 10 classic films.

In terms of time, of course, this is not a fair exchange, as Rachel knows me well enough to predict I’ll be sucked into all five seasons. However, I am desperate enough to go along.

I’m sure you can see what’s at stake here: this is my best chance, possibly my only one in the (hopefully) decades left until I croak. Would anyone who either knows my sister or these films weigh in with advice on or alternatives to my tentative list?

My choices are based on my sister’s love for sports films; interest in the media, crime, and politics; sense of humor; and previous film favorites. Since she hates stagey acting, I’m a little hesitant about melodramas not of the dark variety—Sweet Smell of Success, perhaps; Grand Hotel, not so much. I’m thinking of James Garfield, Barbara Stanwyck, and their ilk for acting style—the more natural, the better. Rachel lists the following as among her favorite movies: The Big Lebowski, Absence of Malice, …And Justice for All, Good Will Hunting, Shawshank Redemption, Office Space, Ordinary People, Il Postino, Some Kind of Wonderful, and The Legend of Billy Jean.

One note: I’m better at predicting her taste in dramas than comedies, as she tends to be annoyed by my love for broad humor. She’s appreciated my Coen brothers and Arrested Development recs, but is disturbed by my appreciation for Judd Apatow.

Here’s my first try, with options (in no particular order):

Scarface (1932) (since a remake, she might be interested)
Ace in the Hole (since she liked The Paper)
Notorious/Shadow of a Doubt (both reminded me of My Cousin Rachel, a Daphne du Maurier book she liked—I don’t think she’d appreciate the du Maurier adaptations)
3:10 to Yuma (for the Glenn Ford-Van Heflin interchange)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (since she’s into politics)
His Girl Friday (she’s seen Switching Channels and likes good dialogue)
It Happened One Night/The Awful Truth/Libeled Lady/The Lady Eve (Which one???)
On the Waterfront (as she likes some of Brando’s admirers)
Hud/Out of the Past (since she likes Paul Newman, and might appreciate the style & looks of Robert Mitchum)
The Third Man (perhaps iffy–I can’t come up with plot objections, but she really hated Citizen Kane and might therefore dislike Orson Welles.)

Films I haven’t seen yet she might like: Body and Soul, M, or possibly a noir such as Kiss Me Deadly or They Live by Night. I worry about any films with bad acting, as that will confirm her prejudice against old films. She couldn’t get past the mysteries’ quality in Psych, so I have no hopes for her with The Thin Man.

Any help you can give me?

*I should admit that Mom may have some odd favorites, but she is willing to read about all of mine; she has been my most loyal blog reader.

The Moment I Fell for Jean Harlow

07/16/2014 by leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com 8 Comments

I’ll admit that I didn’t get the appeal of Jean Harlow initially. I originally saw her in a portion of the film Bombshell, and thought it dull and her annoying. I couldn’t understand why she was a sex symbol, the Marilyn Monroe of the 30s. It took a lackluster movie in which she was riveting to change my mind.

Red-Headed Woman (1932) is one of those pre-code films in which a loose woman doesn’t pay the penalty for her behavior. Harlow is Lil (also known as Red), a secretary who seduces her married boss, Bill Legendre Jr. (Chester Morris), to make her way up in the world. His wife, Irene (Leila Hyams), is given the tired you-should-have-forgiven-him-instead-of-leaving-him-the-prey-of-that-hussy argument when she divorces him. Usually, this argument infuriates me, but in this case, I had some sympathy for it: Bill is such a sucker that it’s hard not to pity him. How could he succeed in business when he falls so easily for a woman’s wiles? (In today’s corporate world, he’d be bankrupt in a week.)

After the divorce, Lil (Harlow) marries Bill and then trades him in for a richer model, just as she dropped her bootlegger boyfriend at the start of the film to pursue Bill. It’s this single-minded self-interest that makes Lil such a wonderful anti-heroine, and Harlow so good at playing her. The actress is just so hilarious when conveying a conniving mind in action.

The story begins with Lil’s bold plan to go over to Bill’s house in a revealing outfit while his wife is away. She’s pretending to help with his dictation, but obviously planning on sex.

First, she gussies herself up in readiness for her scheme.

Her pal, Sally (Una Merkel), is so convinced the plot will fail that she says she’ll wait outside Bill’s door for Lil; the first sign that Lil’s plans have succeeded is when we see Sally still outside in the dark, uncomfortably rising from her seat.

Lil has many seduction methods at her disposal, all of which she needs, since her boss is in love with his wife. Something about the transparency of her attempts, and lack of any hesitation, cracked me up so much that Harlow had won me just a minute into this routine, long before her Lil got to Bill.

Lil tries some pouting…

Shows a little leg….

Sobs a bit…

Pretends she will take his initial rebuffs in stride…

Feigns a longstanding affection for him, even going so far as to pin a photo of him to her garter (Her words when she was planning this ruse: “Well, it’ll get me more there than it will hanging on the wall”).

Reveals her scheming ways when he’s not looking…

And finally, in just going for the direct approach, gets what she wants:

Throughout the film, Harlow repeats a cycle of the techniques in Lil’s repertoire: baby talk, tears, denials, lies, threats, kisses. The character’s faux sweet veneer is so easily discarded for her brassy, true self; as in other Harlow roles; and it’s so much fun to watch the transition. Who wouldn’t want to see this shift again, and again, and again, especially in much finer films, with better-written parts? (My favorite may be the put-upon fiancée in Libeled Lady—I could watch Harlow marching toward jilter Spencer Tracy in that wedding dress all day long.)

As for the sex symbol status I didn’t understand? Ummm, I don’t know what to say for myself there. It’s about as hard to miss Harlow’s blazing sensuality as this predecessor’s. All you have to do is watch her posing, walking, or smiling for a few minutes, and you understand. There’s a reason Lil is confident she’ll win Bill and every other man she encounters. She just never seems to understand why her irresistibility doesn’t translate into success at the country club, a naiveté Harlow would repeat in other film roles as well–as if other wives would want her anywhere near their husbands.

As for Lil, once she decides Bill, the country club, and the town are too small for her, she moves on to richer grounds, ultimately hooking an old French sugar daddy.

She’s won a trophy for her thoroughbred, is flooded by admirers, and is still holding onto her young lover in full view of her meal ticket at the movie’s close. Of course. How else could this film possibly end?

This is the third in a monthly series of The Moment I Fell for posts…Hope you’ll share some of your favorites!

Cary Grant Won't Eat You

Classic movies for phobics

Author: leah@carygrantwonteatyou.com