Drama (film)

The Dude Versus Hitchcock

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So the devious, sexy spy of North by Northwest, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), is trying to elude dupe Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant). She gets a secret call from her evil lover, Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), while she and Roger are together and writes down an address for their rendezvous.

She carefully tears off the paper with the address, places it in her purse, and then—ready for this?—walks away without the notepad.

There’s that notepad, just a pencil trick away from exposing that address. Will she remember to bring it with her? Roger is watching!

Alas. She walks away.

Will she remember before she sneaks away? Of course, right? It was just a momentary oversight, her wits clouded by the sexiness of her target, Roger.

We see her pick up several other things.

(Oh, that sly Hitchcock.)

Then she leaves the room, SANS NOTEPAD.

Roger, having watched five minutes of television/film in his life, of course knows the pencil trick. He holds the paper this way and that….(Why? What does he think he’ll see?)

Cary Grant holds notepad with clue, North by Northwest

He takes out his pencil. He does the trick pant-less (in a kind gesture of Hitchcock’s, who knows his female fans).

Cary Grant does the pencil trick with his clue.

There the address is. The super-secret address Eve was so anxious to hide.

Invisible address exposed thanks to pencil.

How long have you known this trick?  Were you six? Maybe seven? I’m pretty sure Encyclopedia Brown taught me. It’s the kind of spy craft a child can understand and appears in every detective/noir/suspense film or TV episode that assumes its audience is young/dumb/abysmally ignorant of pop culture. Frankly, I would have thought such a plot device beneath Hitchcock. But he never did like giving his heroines much credit, so of course, this spy who has supposedly fooled JAMES MASON must be outsmarted by a different man. Who has a background in….advertising. And lives with his mother.

Yes, our sexy spy was outfoxed by a trick that Micky Mouse might have taught me in the 80s, back when Disney was hawking his image on magic trick books, and I thought that a wand that lifted a playing card with a hidden piece of string was really something.

True, the pencil maneuver wasn’t QUITE as old of a trick when Hitchcock used it, but it wasn’t exactly fresh in 1959. (Though, as my friend points out, today it might become new again, with so few people using pencils.)

I used to roll my eyes when I saw this pencil-and-notepad trick, annoyed by the lazy writing. But now I laugh. Because the Coens offered a send-up of this trite scenario in their—appropriately enough—satire of/tribute to The Big Sleep, The Big Lebowski. The Dude tries to outsmart a villain using the pencil trick. His excitement is intense at his own cleverness. But alas for the Dude, the “secret” isn’t what he expected. If you are of delicate sensibility, I wouldn’t advise it, but if you don’t mind some crude humor, enjoy this film clip and Jeff Bridges’ brilliance in it. (Watch that loopy run of his! And his “just acting natural” look at the end!)

There are many, many jokes about detectives in The Big Lebowksi. One of the most evident is that unlike those brilliant sleuths who with scant clues manage to figure out everything, the Dude can’t figure out anything—the mystery, which people are manipulating him, where his rug is. And unlike the driven fictional detectives who will sacrifice anything for the job, the Dude is pathologically lazy, sharing with them only some loose sense of ethics, questionable associates, and a love for alcohol (but with the Dude, of course, it’s not a hardboiled choice like whisky, but instead White Russians).

Yes, the Dude is not a good detective, and would be an even worse spy. But guess what, Hitchcock?

Even the Dude knows the pencil trick.

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Depressed Heroines & Classic Film: Three on a Match

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Is there anything scarier than Bette Davis playing nice?

I see that sunny face, that sugary smile, and I’m just waiting for the other sledgehammer to drop. It’s unnerving in films like Three on a Match (1932) that she acts like a sweetheart throughout. It’s a terrible waste, of course. But early Hollywood didn’t know what they had in Bette. (Kind of like Amy Sherman-Palladino, who had Melissa McCarthy in her Gilmore Girls cast playing an annoying, bubbly local instead of, I dunno, someone funny. But I digress.)

Three on a Match is a peculiar, truly half-baked film in many ways. But it’s also a riveting one, and chock-full of stars. And its pace is breathless (it barely passes the hour mark). I’m not going to spoil the big plot developments near the end–too interesting–but I will spoil some of the earlier developments, so be warned.

First of all, when you have Edward Arnold and young Humphrey Bogart playing scary gangsters, you know you’re in for a good time.

(Not that their danger combined holds a candle to the terror that is sweet Bette, but….)

You have Joan Blondell, playing to type (which is always marvelous).

Warren William plays an unexpectedly bland part. And then there’s Ann Dvorak in a performance that should have secured her career, especially after her breakout in Scarface the same year.

The premise of the film is fascinating; it’s from an old WWI superstition about the danger of lighting three people’s cigarettes from the same match, an act said to doom one.

Three former schoolmates–played by Blondell, Dvorak, and Davis–get together to catch up on their lives and light that match, and soon one’s fate will rise, the other’s will fall, and the third’s (Davis) will be largely irrelevant, her presence simply for the sake of the film’s title.

The doomed character emerges early on because lovely Vivian (Dvorak) is unhappy despite a seemingly perfect husband, house, and kid, and while we modern viewers quickly identify her as depressed, no such word is uttered in the film. What’s fascinating is that though Vivian ditches her husband, starts sleeping with a gangster, neglects her child, and becomes a drug addict, the movie still extends sympathy for her, just as The Hours would do years later for women dissatisfied with their roles. “Pre-Code,” you remind yourself. “Pre-Code.” Vivian’s lust for the gangster is startlingly evident, as is her later addiction.

But where the film excels in a nuanced portrayal of a complicated woman, it stumbles with the supposed bond between the three schoolmates. When Vivian hooks up with the gangster, she hides from her husband, who is desperate to find her and their son. Mary (Blondell) gives her away. We understand that betrayal, given the squalor the son is living in. But then Mary takes Vivian’s place at her husband’s side. This is a pretty shady act, calling her motives into question. Yet we’re not asked to see it that way. It’s like the film is saying, “Well, Vivian wasn’t taking advantage of this wealthy dad, so someone should.” Vivian’s lack of anger for Mary could have been very interesting–if the film had suggested that there should have been any. And as for the third schoolmate, Ruth (Davis), why is she in the film at all? All Ruth does is read while babysitting Vivian’s child. And smile. And smile some more. It’s unnerving and unnecessary, and if you were as terrified as I was by What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Little Foxes, you’ll find it downright creepy.

Just when you’re thinking this bizarre relationship between the women isn’t really working for you, the film turns sinister and you can’t turn away. Bogart gets his chance to shine in a truly evil role.

Vivian gets boxed into a hopeless situation, and you fear for her, wondering what she can do to retain some smidgen of the woman she was before addiction took hold.

Dvorak holds her own against Bogart in powerful scenes that make you wonder why you know so little of her.

Alas, it’s a familiar story: Dvorak ticked off the bosses. It turns out she objected to the studio’s choice to pay her the same amount as her (very forgettable) son in Three on a Match, but she did enjoy the year-long honeymoon she took with her husband instead of putting out films for them.

I like to imagine Dvorak taking off on that honeymoon, leaving behind the sexists who would soon censor sympathetic characterizations of complex women, like Vivian. It might not have been a long-lasting victory, but it makes me smile just the same. And if you watch her heartbreaking, memorable performance in Three on a Match, you’ll feel the same.

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Beyond Melanie: Olivia de Havilland

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Olivia de Havilland in My Cousin Rachel

It’s always bothered me that Olivia de Havilland; the passionate, strong-minded, long-lived Hollywood star; is best known for a meek maternal role.

Did she perform it well? Oh yes. She imbued Melanie with incredible strength, empathy, and grit. But to be best known for Gone with the Wind in your obituary isn’t exactly a selling point in 2020. The mawkishness of the role has always annoyed me, especially because Olivia de Havilland is most riveting when she’s hard boiled. (She would have been great in noir.)

This was, after all, not a meek woman, convincingly as she nailed that famous steel magnolia part. This is the actress who sued her studio for extending her contract—and won. (A stupefying victory, given the long list of actresses whose studio fights got them nowhere and killed their careers.) And so I’d like to highlight a few of my favorite roles, which bear no resemblance to Melanie.

The Heiress (1949). I’m not alone here. This film won her an Oscar, an award she richly deserved. She plays a shy, undervalued, vulnerable “spinster” wooed by a handsome man (Montgomery Clift) who is likely after her wealth. Her growing strength as she begins to suspect him and question her father is something to see. Wow.

My Cousin Rachel (1952). A sexually and socially confident, cosmopolitan widow (de Havilland) meets the naïve young cousin/heir (Richard Burton) of her dead husband. At first, he suspects her of murdering her husband, then he falls for her, and then he suspects her again. Did she, or didn’t she? The book version leaves the answer open, the movies less so. The 1952 film itself is a mixed bag, but when it comes to embodying a fascinating heroine, de Havilland knows what she’s doing. (You know I think so when I say Rachel Weisz, whom I love in everything, couldn’t hold a candle to her in the remake.)

Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). I love some bonkers Bette Davis-de Havilland banter. Is it as fun as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? No, what could be? But it’s still a blast to watch, thanks in large part to de Havilland’s scheming character.

The Adventures of Robinhood (1938). OK, this is a bit of a sentimental choice, but de Havilland doesn’t play a weakling version of Maid Marian. She’s got some serious spirit, especially for the time this film was made. de Havilland’s stunning beauty in it explains the string of hearts she left in her Hollywood wake. And Errol Flynn’s and her dazzling chemistry, not to mention their ridiculously good looks, reveal why they were paired together so frequently. Plus, the film is just a hoot, with the cast clearly having Ocean’s 11-level fun on the set.

There’s much more to say about de Havilland. This list alone shows her incredible range as an actress. I don’t have the expertise to discuss her recent lawsuit, sister feud, or any of the myriad other topics that make her a compelling subject. I strongly recommend you check out some of my peers’ posts on The Classic Movie Blog Association’s blog roll (see right column). de Havilland has never been one of the stars I follow. Frankly, I find her a bit scary. Intimidating. Hard to know. (About as far from Melanie as it’s possible to be.) But you can’t ever discount her. And when she’s on the screen, you don’t want to watch anyone else.

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Pandora’s Box (1929): Trailblazer

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Its not surprising that the actress who made her mark as a partially nude Ziegfeld Follies girl would star in one of the most seductive films of the 20s.

That the great German director G. W. Pabst would find it worthwhile to draw this star from American isn’t surprising either. The heroine of his 1929 Pandora’s Box had to be sexy enough to lure everyone around her, and heedless enough to rebel against the powerful without considering consequences….and that was kind of Louise Brooks’s forte.

The Kansas-born actress would make a point of ticking people off, refusing to conform to Hollywood expectations of her—or follow the directions of her bosses. In terms of roles, she didn’t really make a big splash, with few starring roles and many bit ones. But that didn’t stop her from demanding her rights. She expected more of her parts. She asked for promotions. She wasn’t much for punctuality. Most damagingly, she refused to do retakes of The Canary Murder Case (1929) to convert it from a silent to a talkie. She DID enjoy Hollywood social life–she was a regular at William Randolph Hearst’s and Marion Davies’s San Simeon, even romancing the latter’s niece, Pepi Lederer.

Her independent spirit ensured Louise Brooks didn’t make it far in Hollywood, but it’s also why we know her name still today. We like that she was who she was, and she didn’t apologize. Louise Brooks’s authenticity comes through in everything she did, especially in her acting. Her naturalistic performances might not have impressed all viewers back in 1929, but today they make her acting accessible to modern viewers–much more so than her contemporaries who followed the day’s more stylized acting trend.

And don’t we all love her rebellious soul? That flapper haircut, the partying all night after days on the set, the love affairs with men and some women that cut short her success. (Who turns down The Public Enemy to be with a guy?) And without that rebellion, we wouldn’t have her tripping off to Germany to make Pandora’s Box or Diary of a Lost Girl with a man who turned out to be one of the most impressive German directors of his time, whose films are still powerful enough to survive on best-of lists while those silents that had far higher box office draw are forgotten.

Of course, her legacy might still have disappeared, but Louise Brooks, as it happened, wasn’t just a good actress; she was talented at telling her own stories as well. The witty book of her movie reviews/Hollywood history in later life, Lulu in Hollywood, gave her a second burst of fame–and ensured that fame would endure. For many of us, she and Clara Bow are the face of the flapper.

I found myself instantly mesmerized by her in Pandora’s Box. Not since Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Marilyn Monroe in Niagara have I seen an actress in such full command of her sexuality.

The way Brooks moves from archness to innocence, from manipulation to fun as the character Lulu is a thrill to view. She seduces EVERYONE in Pandora’s Box. I mean, is this how you act with your lover’s son?

But the son, Alwa (Franz Lederer), is not alone. Every delivery person, businessman, and lawyer gets Lulu’s seductive treatment—most thrillingly, given the time period, Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts), a rich lesbian friend, gets Lulu’s full-press sexy attack. Watch as Anna stares at Lulu with stark hunger….

….and dances with her in a sensual sequence….

and expresses her longing to do more at Lulu’s bedroom door….

Wow! I kept checking the date. Was this film really made in 1929? (Of course, the censors butchered it after its initial release, erasing this maybe-maybe-not consummated love affair entirely.)

I’m avoiding all but minor & very vague spoilers, so the plot summary that follows will not be precise, especially after the first acts.

The untampered-with version of the film begins with Lulu hanging out at the apartment where her lover, Dr. Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner), is putting her up. She’s flirting and drinking with a deliveryman/mailman when a friend arrives. Lulu calls the new arrival, Schigolch (Carl Goetz), her “patron,” but it will be unclear from later events whether he is her first john, pimp, or father. Whatever he is to her, Schigolch is clearly an unsavory type, so Lulu hides him on her balcony when Ludgwig comes home unexpectedly. Ludwig has bad news for Lulu: he has to marry a respectable girl, not her. Lulu comforts her despondent lover on her bed.

Of course, Ludwig discovers Schön on the balcony and takes off, but Lulu doesn’t seem concerned for long. Nevermind that her lover/income source has now disappeared. Schigolch has another offer for her, a chance to return to the stage. And after all, this woman will have NO issues getting a new lover. Just look at these typical reactions to a Lulu encounter:

Whether Lulu’s flirty nature is mainly a result of calculation, high spirits, or just innocent fun is always unclear. What IS clear is that she always must have everyone in her thrall. Her supposed nonchalance at Ludwig’s loss doesn’t keep her from getting him back when she gets the chance (and what a great scene it is when she does).

After she reunites with her lover, things will go horribly wrong for everyone in the story, justifying one prognosticator’s claim that Lulu is Pandora, the mythical character who unleashed society’s ills into the world. Of course, this pronouncement about her Pandora nature annoys a modern woman to no end, as it’s clear that the man who says so assumes the jealousy Lulu inspires and whatever results from it are all her fault. Forget that the men who surround her are (a) weak, (b) dark/controlling/abusive, (c) silly alcoholics, and/or (d) con men. Forget too that any man who spends five minutes with her knows that fidelity probably isn’t Lulu’s strong suit.

Of course, Lulu isn’t exactly an innocent. The way she repeatedly uses and betrays her lesbian friend is disturbing, and it doesn’t seem the result of any bigotry–just desperation and selfishness. Lulu’s lack of compassion about others’ suffering as she casually checks out magazine fashions is chilling. I like that we’re not merely asked to condemn her actions, but what we ARE to make of her isn’t entirely clear.

The production itself is sophisticated and effective, way ahead of its time. Her clothes are a joy to view. But the script is…odd. The first five acts are memorable, well-written, funny, and exciting, with clear plot development. But after the first five acts, I thought, “this is probably where the film ends.” And then another act would follow and I’d assume it was ending again, and another, and another. The story soon feels like a series of set pieces/vignettes pulled together rather than a coherent story, which is particularly evident in the last act. I guess I would have been OK with this if the story had been framed as a series of Lulu adventures, but there’s a morality play bent to it that just doesn’t work—because you can’t help but enjoy rather than judge Lulu thanks to her considerable charisma, and because you can’t really find a morality play effective without a clearer narrative arc/characterization.

For example, I think we’re meant to pity Ludgwig’s man-boy son, Alwa, for his hopeless passion for Lulu, but his actions throughout the narrative are weak, disloyal, and despicable, so I’m not sure why I’m meant to root for him. I mean, sure, he’s obsessed with Lulu, and Lulu, though she calls him her best friend, isn’t exactly empathetic toward him. But then again, she cheerfully puts up with his dour, leech-like company, and clearly could find a more congenial and ambitious companion. There has to be some strain of kindness and loyalty in Lulu to make her tolerance for him possible. (Think about the suitor she chooses over him/to help him late in the film, and you will see just how bad of company she considers Alwa.)

I also find it hard to understand why this woman, with such a magnetic personality and such great beauty, couldn’t find another well-heeled protector who would conceal her shady past AND help her support her two hangers-on. Her poverty late in the film–given her earlier adeptness with reinvention—isn’t well explained.

This film is often called a masterpiece, and in its first few acts, I think it is. After that, I’d argue that the film falls apart, though I know MANY would disagree with me.

But here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter. The first few acts have already seared into your memory. Your impression of Louise Brooks is already powerful given her electric performance and unforgettable beauty. And your admiration for Pabst’s technical proficiency and daring have already been won. What does it matter if the logic and narrative thread and even Lulu’s character are all a bit of a mystery to you in the end?

This film can be hard to track down at times, but luckily, it’s streaming on Kanopy, which is available for free to most library patrons. (Even if you don’t have a card, some temporary ones are being given during this pandemic.) You may not end up watching the whole thing, but don’t miss Acts 1-5! The court scene alone is worth the viewing.

This post is part of a Ziegfeld blogathon. Click here for fun-to-read entries in the Great Ziegfeld Blogathon, hosted by Hollywood Genes.

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Film on Inspiring Feminist Hedy Lamarr

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Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017) is that rare documentary that is somehow uplifting–even when its tale is not. The fact that Bombshell is a story of triumph amidst adversity makes it a perfect film for our time.

I knew the bare outlines of Lamarr’s story: the scandalous film that began her rise to fame, her fraught history with her husband and his Nazi buddies in Austria, her tenure as a beauty in Hollywood, and her frequency hopping invention that eventually led to my sharing this post with you right now, on WiFi. Those details would be enough to make a decent film, I figured, even if it turned out to be–as many actress documentaries are–cookie cutter in style.

But the documentary is so much better than I thought it would be. It seeks to make sense of the elusive personality behind the thousands of lives the actress/inventor lived. The story is greatly enriched by interview tapes of Lamarr, letting viewers hear her story as she wanted to tell it.

It’s hard to picture Lamarr’s life, that brilliant woman who co-created an invention to save soldiers’ lives after long days on the set of (mostly) inane films…and then was patted on the back for her little invention by the military and sent off to sell war bonds with that pretty face instead….which she did.

Crazy as the outlines of the life I knew were, there was so much more, as this inventor was equally bold in other roles she took on–in movie production, in entrepreneurship, in everything really. In the film, she says she helped boyfriend Howard Hughes with airplane design; she even managed to squeeze a big initial salary out of Louis B. Mayer with no English. What an amazing feminist she was, not letting societal conventions for women dictate her moves, but plowing ahead, doing whatever she believed she could do.

Director/writer Alexandra Dean has chosen her sources well, particularly the young animator wowed by Lamarr’s accomplishments. A Mel Brooks cameo, with reference to his Blazing Saddles tribute to the actress through the character Hedley Lamarr, is an unexpected treat.

Lamarr’s personal life was largely tragic: bad marriages, the public’s focus on her looks instead of her mind, the cruelty as those looks faded, financial woes, and the failure of others to value or credit her patriotism since she was an immigrant. The film gives Lamar her proper place in history, but it’s clear to all the subjects in the documentary that they’re trying to reclaim for Lamarr a tribute (besides some very late awards) she never received herself.

But what’s more tragic than her treatment is that had Lamarr been taken seriously earlier, her invention might have saved American lives in WW II, which was her goal all along. The bigotry, greed, bureaucracy, and sexism that made her life so challenging and her invention so tardily applied aren’t exactly difficult to trace in our society or government today. That such obstacles can actually PREVENT heroism like hers is a sobering thought, and a dismayingly timely one.

But the film remains inspiring because we witness Lamar’s refusal to let poor treatment override her determination to act with courage and integrity. What you mainly feel in watching are awe and a profound wish to cheer, Rocky style. Lamarr was a complicated person, and not without flaws, but she was an AMAZING person, and your time with her is truly something to savor.

You can find the film on Netflix (while it’s still there!) or rent it on Amazon. Why are you waiting?

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ILL, How Do I Love Thee?: A Classic Movie Fan’s Tribute

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For years I’ve been grumbling, waiting for streaming access to classics I hear about from other blogs: Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Great Lie, A Foreign Affair. Without a Netflix DVD cache or TCM, the classic movie fan is left with few options, and my brief affair with the Warner Archive had given me little love. Then it occurred to me, like a (clichéd) beacon of light in the night: YOU HAVE ACCESS TO INTERLIBRARY LOAN.

How do I love thee, ILL? Let me count the ways.

  1. You don’t tarry. Within a week, all three films were at my library’s front desk. The student helping me didn’t notice my bated breath or strong desire to do the worm in celebration. Used to her fellow students’ desperate and grumpy research requests, she was unaware of the yummy chocolate cake she was handing over to me. Her loss.
  2. You have so much to offer. Greedy after receiving all three films, I thought I’d dare for my elusive, longed-for white whale of a book. I’d just emailed Grace Collins of True Stories of Tinseltown about our upcoming podcast chat on Mae West and Cary Grant when my long-stamped-out desire resurfaced: Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It. I needed it–obviously–for research. Amazon was charging boatloads of cash for Mae’s autobiography, but was it possible I could get my hands on it for free? YES!!!
  3. You give me so MANY moments to savor. Here is one of hundreds of funny interchanges from Mae’s bio: She’s just put on opening night for her first play in New London, CT in 1926. The house manager is grumbling about the ticket purchases: “The title’s scaring them away. Nobody in this town will buy tickets for a show with the title SEX….We don’t talk about sex hereabouts, and we don’t put it on signs.” Only 85 people show for the first performance, and Mae is feeling blue that the first play she wrote and starred in looks like a bomb. But at the next day’s matinee, she sees lines of men from the naval base “two and three deep,” and the manager is scrambling for extra seats for his theater. “And you said it was a bad title,” observes Mae. And he replies, “I forgot about the sailors.”
  4. You let me savor each moment. On Monday morning, I’d been reading my usual dose of terrifying headlines on CNN. I was feeling blue, and knew I had to banish that mood if I had any chance of cheering my 9 am students, who had been staring at me for days with a peculiar type of hostility they’d developed from years of New England winters—the “how-dare-you-deny-me-another-snow-day, woman” look I knew so well. Naturally, I looked to Mae for mood elevation, and found her defense against the newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, who–in the midst of delivering his own era’s brand of terrifying headlines–had written this, “Is it not time Congress did something about Mae West?” Thanks to my generous love, ILL, I got to read Mae’s response: “All I have ever wanted to do is entertain people, make them laugh so hard they forget they’d like to cry.” Such an important reminder to me about the need for humor, dear Mae; you bolstered me the rest of the week. And by Friday? I was enjoying Jean Arthur’s and Marlene Dietrich’s charismatic performances in The Foreign Affair. Oh ILL, how I love thee…..

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The Long Goodbye Film: It’s All about the Cat

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**spoilers***

I was afraid to watch The Long Goodbye. It’s a favorite book, so much so that I starting drinking gimlets for a couple years, even though I hate gin*. It was an odd affectation. Even I knew drinking a grandpa concoction wouldn’t impress anyone, and would only mystify bartenders. But it gave me some secret romantic joy to drink one, even on non-memorable nights (and many nights in my late 20s were just that). With its appreciation for short-lived and missed connections, Raymond Chandler’s masterpiece is great stuff for those in transition, those who are watching peers’ lives move on without them. And what could the film do, but ruin my book? Who could make sense of such a meandering, mood-based affair, with more characters and tangents than any two-hour film could master? And The Long Goodbye (1973) wasn’t exactly produced in my favorite film era.

But I’d heard there was a cool cat scene in the opening of the film, and since Chandler loved cats (which of course, I knew), I thought there might be something there. And with Leigh Brackett listed as a screenwriter, I had hope. For the first half hour, I was grinning. Any cat owner has to love Marlowe’s (Elliott Gould’s) demanding animal, and any cat owner will sympathize with the the way Marlowe tries to fake the cat out with a different brand of cat food than he/she expects with a can switch.

Marlowe’s scene with the cops when he’s refusing to give his friend Terry up is so funny (those fingerprint ink antics!), and the way the story is updated for current viewers wowed me. Something about the dreamy landscape and shots, the way Marlowe doesn’t fit in with the crooks and the hippies (including his gratuitously topless neighbors) around him really captures the loneliness of Chandler’s famous character and the “mean streets” he inhabits. His loyalty to his cat captures his sweetness, his romanticism, and his befuddlement with the world around him. That’s why at first I bought into the film’s characterization, as Marlowe mutters to himself and treats most people around him well in spite of poor treatment. There’s always something sad and noble about him. As Chandler wrote, his PI “must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

In terms of acting, Gould is lovable in this movie. He doesn’t embody Marlowe’s pain, as Humphrey Bogart did. But unlike Dick Powell’s annoyingly slick Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, he’s believable and much more compelling than I expected (even if his toughness in the face of violence isn’t quite convincing).

But my mood toward the movie began to change about a third of the way in. Part of seeing the world through Marlowe’s eyes is finding something redeemable in those others have dismissed–Wade’s honesty, Eileen’s idealism, Mendy’s loyalty, Terry’s quaint good manners. Yet none of these characters are anything but one-notes in the film; none of them are even remotely redeemable. Altman’s violent take on The Big Heat‘s (1955) girlfriend treatment felt like a rip-off rather than a homage, and Marlowe’s lack of sympathy for her was baffling. I understood dispensing with the Linda character, but why not that sweet, yet hopeless tribute to Terry in the bar? Marlowe could have just had a conversation with the bartender. It would have SET UP that ending. Just knowing he was friends with Terry for a long time (a change from the book) wasn’t enough.

As for the plot, well, Chandler was famous for admitting to the convoluted nature of his plotting (though as anyone who reads The Big Sleep knows, censorship is a far greater reason for the plot’s confusing nature in the film.) Perhaps Chandler’s alleged plot aversion is what attracted Altman. As far as I was concerned, Altman could play with the plot all he wanted if he made it interesting. But he didn’t. And turning Mendy into such a loathsome bad guy made the story feel derivative in a boring way.

The ending was undoubtedly shocking and clever, and I liked that the cat became a symbol of Marlowe’s treatment and expectations, but look, if you want Marlowe this resentful about others’ treatment of him, you’re going to have to do more to foreshadow it. Marlowe is pretty much ALWAYS treated poorly in Chandler’s books–by nearly everyone. That isn’t enough to make him crack. And Gould doesn’t seem resentful as Marlowe; he seems naïve and stupid instead.

For Marlowe to betray his knight errant traits (what makes him admirable), and instead focus only on his own resentments, to have him flat out MURDER a former friend, you have to do more to make that betrayal convincing. What’s so lovable about him in the book is that he knows Terry’s pretty worthless, but cares about and defends him anyway, just as the crooks do. Terry’s war record (completely absent here) also makes him more sympathetic. Marlowe is not–as in the movie–shocked to discover Terry’s even more worthless as a friend than he thought–even if he’s not (in the book) a murderer. Marlowe is RESIGNED, expects little of others. In the film, Marlowe is anything but.

There is, of course, something fascinating in Altman essentially killing off the former PI character Chandler (and his peers) made famous. To take away his ethics is truly to murder the man. But I’m not going to believe (as Altman argues in this film) that such a character is unrealistic in today’s world without a better cinematic argument than the character floundering around (as Marlowe always did for a bit). The same year as this film came out, Robert Parker introduced Spenser to the world, a clear homage to Marlowe (so much so that Parker would later complete Chandler’s unfinished novel). And the 80s TV show of the Spenser character was still a decade after Altman’s film. Parker made a Marlowe type a modern man quite successfully (though Spenser was a significantly happier character than his predecessors).

Is it worth it to watch the film? Yes. But how I wish Altman had used that cat like he should have. The cat’s addition was, after all, brilliant. What if Marlowe had shown more love for the cat throughout? Shouldn’t the cat have come up more than a couple times after the beginning, given how crucial Marlowe’s devotion becomes at the end? I felt like Billy Madison as I watched Marlowe in the film. (In that dopey movie, Adam Sandler is outraged that a dog owner would wait for a lost dog’s return rather than making even a cursory effort to find it.)

What if the cat had starved while Marlowe was in jail for Terry, and the detective found out? Then that ending would be not about himself, but about the cat, the only connection he really had—just as Marlowe (in the book) is so lonely that Terry’s chance connection with him means more than anyone understands. Throughout the book and movie, Marlowe insists that Terry could have murdered his wife, but not as brutally as she’d been killed. Like him, I contend that Marlowe wasn’t the type to kill someone over his own hurts. But over his cat’s? Maybe.

*Gimlets symbolize Marlowe’s relationship with Terry.

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Comic Relief: A Simple Favor & Can You Ever Forgive Me?

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Need comic respite? I’m happy to report that two new dramedies featuring strong women are even better than you’ve heard.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?, starring national treasure Melissa McCarthy, is based on the memoir of real-life writer Lee Israel, who became a con artist to pay the vet bills (out in wide release on Oct. 19th). Unable to get anyone to care about the subject of her new biography, Fanny Brice, much less her dwindling finances, Israel turns to stealing letters of famous movie stars and writers, and soon begins penning fake ones herself. Classic movie lovers and bibliophiles will sympathize with her alienation from those who don’t spend their days reading Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker. (And you’ll enjoy a line about Louise Brooks, a nod to classic movie fans.)

Appreciators of one-liners will ask themselves why they haven’t bought Israel’s memoir yet: this woman could WRITE. There’s a reason she was successful at mimicking Parker and Coward. Brought to caustic life by Melissa McCarthy, Israel is sympathetic even at her darkest and lowest. Despite the depth of her despair and loneliness, she is relentlessly funny in the film. Israel and her similarly lost companion (and later conspirator), Jack Hock (Richard Grant), engage in so much snarky, on-point banter that you wish the two could have had an Algonquin Round Table of their own.


These two boozy companions are simply joyful company for anyone who doesn’t mind a bit of darkness in their humor. And McCarthy deserves the awards buzz she’s getting for a riveting performance.

McCarthy’s frequent director Paul Feig has a film of his own out this month. Feig, who has a George Cukor flair for creating great vehicles for female stars, is at it again. The only question is whether Blake Lively or Anna Kendrick gets a meatier, more complex part in A Simple Favor, a story that is tonally closer to the light cynicism of Young Adult (2011) or the campiness of Serial Mom (1994) than to the darkness of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2014), to which it’s being compared. I’m hearing references to Double Indemnity from classic movie fans due to the film’s humor. Beat the Devil (1953) is more like it. Though A Simple Favor is a bit more controlled than that messy Truman Capote delight, there’s a bit of Mrs. Gwendolen Chelm (Jennifer Jones) in both of these heroines.

Feig; the director of Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, and Ghostbusters (the reboot); is so open about preferring female leads and so appreciative of their comedic skills that it’s unsurprising to see both stars so funny and magnetic in his film. Their profane banter is hilarious, and the casual cruelty, self-interest, and denial of these particular frenemies are a blast to watch. I won’t spoil the surprise of what becomes of Emily (Lively), whose disappearance spurs mommy blogger Stephanie (Kendrick) into amateur detective/life-stalker mode.

There are some seriously batty plot developments that seem more like old-school soap operas than big screen fare (again, like Beat the Devil). But anyone paying attention knows plausibility is not the point. Just sit back and enjoy this dark comedy fun. (And don’t miss the recent titles and commentary on Stephanie’s bizarrely eclectic blog.) Those of us who have been following Feig since his brilliant creation, Freaks and Geeks, will be glad to see his first female lead, Linda Cardellini, in a scene-chewing, funny bit part. Let’s hope the films to follow these two this fall are half as fun.

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Women Who Love Too Much in Film

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I had another fun talk with Grace Collins of True Stories of Tinseltown! We chatted about women who love too much–from Tierney’s character in Leave Her to Heaven to Irene Dunne’s in Back Street (1932 version). Grace is a wonderful host and we had so much to say, especially about the dreadful narcissists John Boles liked to play, and how Bette Davis could really be a post of her own on this topic.

Clearly, this is a subject that needs much, much more discussion! Check it out here:

And definitely check out Grace’s other posts and other podcasts. She’s so witty and so knowledgeable about so many things!

https://www.inyourfacewithdonnieandgrace.com/news

http://www.truestoriesoftinseltown.com/

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Two Critics Pan Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain

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Friends and fellow film buffs: Brian Wilkins and Mike Gutierrez have written wonderful guest posts here at Cary Grant Won’t Eat You—Brian, on fighting in Sword and Sandals films, and Mike, on his ideal casting for Hitchcock remakes. Today they’re joining the second annual Alfred Hitchcock blogathon to consider what the famous director could have been thinking with Torn Curtain (1966).

B: This all started because I had a memory of a movie where a drunken Paul Newman, at the Nobel Ceremony in Stockholm, chats up beautiful blondes and a physicist who may or may not be trying to defect to East Germany. So when Torn Curtain was still available, I texted Mike and said we should grab it.

There’s only one problem.

Torn Curtain is a Paul Newman and Julie Andrews vehicle, about a conference in Copenhagen that ends in a physicist possibly defecting to East Germany. And it’s not the movie I remembered. That movie is The Prize directed by Mark Robson. This was Torn Curtain, and as Mike put it…

M: Torn Curtain is a deeply stupid movie.

And it shouldn’t be.

It’s 1966.  Newman and Andrews are two of the biggest stars in the world. It’s true that Hitchcock was winding down by then, but he’d only done The Birds three years earlier. The three of them coming together for some Cold War intrigue sounds like a sure-fire hit, or at least a fun two hours. But that’s not what happened. And, frankly, I’m not sure what happened during the film.

Newman is “defecting,” but no one believes that for a minute. Andrews is his doting girlfriend who follows him to East Germany and decides to stay with him–betraying her country for a guy who has been lying to her. The East German secret police announce themselves as the “secret police,” which doesn’t seem like something the secret police should do. It’s not clear if Newman is working with the US government or is going completely rogue, but somehow he has ties to the resistance even though he’s just a scientist.

I could keep going–the plot is inane, the characters inconsistent, and Newman and Andrews seemed to have lost their charms on the flight to Berlin–but you get the point. So, Brian, what do you see as the reason this movie went off the rails?

B: They squeezed all the fun out of the movie. In every single case where you could find a joke or a bit of dash, they threw a lead blanket on it. I’m mostly blaming the writer.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t think it was humanly possible to have zero chemistry with Paul Newman. I’m pretty sure even inanimate objects have chemistry with Paul Newman. Even his crutch in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof looks into being leaned on. Julie Andrews looks like he started every take by mansplaining parliamentary procedure.

M: Do you think they took out the fun or had no intention of making a fun movie? I’m thinking the writer considered this his grand epic about a deadly serious topic and wanted to make a bold statement about love and patriotism and the threat of the Soviets; that he believed it was high art, Oscar-bait.

And tonally, it keeps shifting from a romance to faux-intrigue to, well, we should probably talk about how Paul Newman and some farmer’s wife re-imagined Sylvia Plath’s death on the Stasi officer. That scene manages the incredible trick of being both disturbing and boring.

B: Let me do some research <looks at Wikipedia for 2 minutes>…oh, shit, this was a hot mess. Hitchcock shopped the idea to Nabokov, who turned it down (genius) then gave the script to Brian Moore (shortlisted 3 three times for the Booker prize) who really should have known better. Moore complained Hitch had no sense of characters. Hitchcock complained Moore wasn’t funny. So Hitchcock thought he was making North by Northwest and Moore thought he was writing…a boring version of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold?

But to the murder. Listen, I hate to get all professional about this, but there are a million things to murder someone with in a kitchen other than a gas stove. It’s almost like the house frau in question was like, “Do you know how hard it is to get Stasi brains out of a cast iron pan? I just seasoned it!”

M: I just spent five minutes re-imagining this film as if Nabokov wrote it. Then I started imagining if he’d written The Sound of Music. “No, you cannot sing the Nazi’s away, Julie Andrews. No.” I digress.

B: Rolling pin. Cleaning chemicals. Towel garrote. Meat hammer. Fork.

M: Ice pick?

B: Only if he’s a real Communist (yes, that’s a Trotsky joke, David Ives fans).

M: This was one of the big set pieces, the one that shows us that Newman isn’t just a dainty scientist but a badass with a Ph.D. Now, you’re married to a scientist–who I’m certain would have used a paring knife—

B: Correct. Or poison.

M: …and you’ve met scores of scientists in your life: is there anything about Newman’s character that seems the least bit authentic? Or, a better question, what do you think Newman thought he was supposed to be? He’s never been so charmless. He has that great, knowing smirk in everything he does. What movie did he think he was in?

B:  I think Newman read the character as a boring CIA agent the whole time. His character “starts in Washington” and ends with a “teaching position.” He’s just a physicist who couldn’t actually cut it, but as a bureaucrat briefing real spies on what to steal, he’s sort of useful. And I think Paul Newman would hate that man intensely. I’m guessing he needed to fund some sort of charity for kids with horrific cancer. Seriously, that man is a sexy, sexy saint.

M: I’m not sure the first Mrs. Paul Newman would agree. There is a voodoo doll of Joanne Woodward out there floating in the aether.

B: I started wondering if Joanne Woodward would be better casting than Julie Andrews, but, honestly, I don’t think anyone could have chewing gum and twined a performance from this script. Is there any trace of Hitchcock at all with the escape scene?

M: Sure. It’s an elaborate set piece–a bus chase before sneaking onto a ship–that’s supposed to be Hitchcock’s version of how he’d escape past the Berlin Wall. But it feels like a knock-off version of a Hitchcock climax, sort of like how 2 Days in the Valley ripped off Tarantino. The problem is that Andrews and Newman are passive characters in the escape. They’re sitting on a bus driven by someone else, and then shuffled onto a boat where they are shoved into baskets to sit in their own filth for days (weeks?) while someone else pilots the ship. Passive. It’s like Hitchcock forgot what made for great Hitchcock.

B: I never even thought of how this would be Hitchcock’s personal fantasy of how to get away: “Well, I’m certainly not going to run. And riding a motorcycle sounds sweaty. Perhaps I could just drift peacefully into freedom?”

M: Here’s the thing: Cary Grant kills a dude and saves the girl in North by Northwest.

Paul Newman sits in the back of the bus and hopes no one hurts him.

B: I think this film needs more dynamite, there, Butch. I tried to think of something I liked about this film but I’m coming up as empty as a housefrau looking for a murder weapon in a gun closet.

M: Yeah, I’ve got nothing. In the end, I found myself rooting for the Stasi.

B: Well, thank you for your patience, kind readers. I hope you’ve enjoyed being warned off what has to be in my top 5 worst movies of all time. See The Prize instead for all your Paul Newman Cold War-related hijinks. And …oh! Bear Island with Julie Andrews. It’s got the UN, it’s set off the coast of Norway, and there’s a possibly gold-filled U-Boat.

M: That sounds awesome. I’ve never seen it. Let me do some research <looks at Wikipedia for 2 minutes>…. You did it again: You got Julie Andrews confused with Vanessa Redgrave.

B: That’s more telling about my fantasy life than I would like. MEA CULPA!

Check out the other posts in Maddy Loves Her Classic Film‘s The Second Annual Alfred Hitchcock Blogathon, including her post on Rebecca!

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