Seven Movies
I've been on a movie-watching binge lately (partly because I've been suffering from a really nasty cold), and I've seen some interesting and unusual stuff.
Red Dust (1932)
Clark Gable plays Dennis Carson, the rugged owner of a rubber plantation somewhere in Indochina who has a torrid affair with the well-bred, fish-out-of-water, good-girl wife of one of his employees. He vows to her that he will tell her husband all so that they can be together forever...will he trigger a violent crisis, or will he pull himself away from the brink?
The movie is a straight-up fantasy, and as such it was pretty entertaining, but it was also fascinating to watch because of what it says about the people of the time period (or any time period, maybe). Obviously, there is a lot here for the ladies, and the film is careful to allow the young wife to succumb to forbidden passion while at the same time making sure she doesn't come off as a tramp; after all, she firmly rejects Carson's advances—ever so many times!—but her heart is touched by his hidden good nature when he nurses her husband back to health, and then she is literally swept off her feet when he rescues her from a rampaging hurricane; breathless, soaking wet, held tight in his manly arms, how could she resist? Interestingly, though, the film is as much a fantasy for the men: out there in the wild, Carson is the boss; there is only him and his job, with none of society's rules holding him back. His temper flares, he throws things, he bellows at the inferior people around him, and it is a pure struggle of man versus nature. He also has a relationship with a spitfire prostie (with the requisite cardioaureate medical condition) played by the sexily sexful Jean Harlow, and there is a certain amount of pleasurable hair-pulling and ass-slapping involved.
What's also interesting is the contrast between Carson's life and the life of the wife before she traveled with her husband to Asia; Carson is entirely outside of society and is a man without peers, whereas the wife is deeply enmeshed within society, to a degree that perhaps does not even exist anymore here in the fragmented twenty-first century. Basically what the movie is saying is that back in those days you had to travel to the other side of the earth to get laid without the whole town finding out about it.
I See a Dark Stranger, a.k.a. The Adventuress (1946)
Deborah Kerr is Bridie Quilty, an idealistic young Irishwoman who hates the English so vehemently that she volunteers as a spy for the Nazis. Now, that might sound rather heavy, but there is a charming and humorous touch to the film, and Bridie's naiveté and her dangerous predicament are played for laughs as well as for gasps; think The Trouble with Harry, North by Northwest, or one of the screenwriters' other films, The Lady Vanishes.
Anyway, the movie was extremely well-made and incredibly entertaining, and I was amazed that I'd never heard of it before. I would recommend it highly to anyone...except maybe Irish nationalists who might disagree with the film's chripy assumption that if everyone will just stop fighting and make friends things will work out for the best. Incidentally, Captain Goodhusband is one of my new favorite characters in cinema.
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Humphrey Bogart plays a loner Hollywood screenwriter who unexpectedly finds himself accused of murder. His beautiful next-door neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, provides him with an alibi, and after a couple of subsequent dates the pair fall in love and get all frisky with each other. The suspicion of murder won't quite go away, however, and suddenly Laurel and the audience find themselves asking, wait—did he kill that girl?
Overall I'd say that this was an average thriller, nothing you'd have to run out and see, but it did have one really neat thing about it, which was that the movie starts out with Humphrey Bogart's character as the apparent hero, but then gradually switches alliances, alienating us from him and making us more concerned for the young woman's safety. Bogart's performance is perfectly done, and, in case you didn't get the hint from The Caine Mutiny, when Bogart wants to be creepy, he's really creepy. Like, "keep that guy away from the pets."
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
I'd seen this one many times before, of course, but a recent online discussion about its awesomeness made me want to watch it again. What needs to be said? If you've never seen this movie, you should watch it the first chance you get, even if you don't like Westerns. Man is it great! My wife always rolls her eyes at Eli Wallach and insists that he's chewing the scenery. She's crazy. "There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend...."
I think back in the day people used to just look on this as a guilty pleasure, a popcorn movie that you wouldn't necessarily tell anyone you were watching for the tenth time, but it seems like nowadays everyone just agrees that it's a classic. That makes me really happy.
Le Samouraï (1967)
If I called this a "stylish existential gangster movie," I would probably be the 500th person to say exactly that, but really that kind of nails it. I liked it because, despite the title, it doesn't glorify the main character, and really the cop is just as interesting as the killer. Also, a lot of it is just plain cool-looking; the atmosphere is everything here.
Women in Love (1969)
There is some very strenuous acting in this movie, and a lot of important-sounding speeches. "I want to know love completely, a new kind of love, a love that transcends all barriers. I want to breathe love, I want to drown in it, I want to be born into a shining light of loving love in loveliness!" Oof. The characters are all listless, self-absorbed and unlikable, and while stuff happens, there's a falseness to everything and it's hard to say why anyone is doing the stuff we're watching them doing. There are some weird and interesting images, and everything has a veneer of importance, but it's all disconnected and empty; compare Polanski's Knife in the Water, which is also about relationships between people, except that at any given moment we know exactly how those relationships are evolving and why the characters are doing what they are doing. Anyway, I thought it was terrible. It's the kind of movie that gives art films a bad name.
Fur (2006)
It's only natural to be curious about the lives of the great artists. What were they like? What of their world? Did they trod the earth like us mere mortals, or was their existence as if on some ether plane, with naught to eat but heavenly ambrosia, every day a kaleidoscope of color and delight?
More specifically, one might wonder what it would be like if photographer Diane Arbus had had a romantic affair with a genetically challenged man who was covered in hair like some kind of afghan hound. The movie "Fur" sets out to tell this story. And it tells the hell out of it.
The movie begins with poor fictionalized Diane (portrayed by Nicole Kidman) having not yet found her muse; she spends her days assisting her average-looking husband in his photography studio, raising her two daughters with good-natured indifference and conveying her artistic and sexual repression to the world by keeping her collars tightly buttoned and sighing in bathrooms. Her life is thrown into turmoil, however, when a mysterious masked man moves into the apartment upstairs. Her curiosity is aroused, and after some minor stalking she discovers the stranger to be a colossal mop of hair piloted from within by an invisible Robert Downey Jr. What woman would not be intrigued by such a creature? The stranger lives in a magical world of whimsy and knickknacks, his apartment full to bursting with beaded curtains, tame animals, incunabula, portraits of famous circus freaks, antique personal irrigation equipment, and quill pens. His friends are giants, dwarves, siamese twins and a woman with no arms who plays the cello with one foot and a chin. Thankfully we only see this armless musician playing pieces which are not very demanding, otherwise she would be obliged to bob her head up and down the strings like some kind of out-of-control chicken. One might well wonder why she didn't just take up the drums instead.
Soon Diane's hubby is getting neglected and the children are wearing potato sacks to school. He tries to entice her back into domesticity by growing a beard, but it's too little too late. Finally in a moment of rapture the dog-man neighbor instructs Diane to shave off his pelt so that the two can be intimate without lapsing into coughing fits or choking on hairballs. She tackles this Herculean task with aplomb, and the viewer is treated to the unforgettable and magnificently unerotic sight of Nicole Kidman shaving a man's hairy ass. Thanks, movie!
Unfortunately, Cousin It's strange genetical condition is also turning his lungs to swiss cheese, and his days are numbered. As a parting gift to Diane, he blows up an air mattress with the last of his strength and presents it to her (no, seriously). Later, after he swims off into the sunset, we see her taking little fugitive whiffs of her hairy boyfriend's diseased final breaths from the air mattress. And they say romance is dead.
In the end the movie is all about a Creative Person Finding Their Muse, and while you'd think that this would be really really interesting, it's really really not; muses are like dreams, in that they are extraordinarily fascinating to the person that they belong to and utterly boring for everyone else. Also, am I the only one bugged that this movie is getting a free ride off of Diane Arbus?
Anyway, here's the scorecard: I See a Dark Stranger and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, great. Le Samouraï and Red Dust, pretty good, glad I saw them. In a Lonely Place, just okay, but kind of interesting. Women in Love and Fur, please, please, make it stop. Next up: the reconstructed Battleship Potemkin. Anchors aweigh!
Red Dust (1932)
Clark Gable plays Dennis Carson, the rugged owner of a rubber plantation somewhere in Indochina who has a torrid affair with the well-bred, fish-out-of-water, good-girl wife of one of his employees. He vows to her that he will tell her husband all so that they can be together forever...will he trigger a violent crisis, or will he pull himself away from the brink?
The movie is a straight-up fantasy, and as such it was pretty entertaining, but it was also fascinating to watch because of what it says about the people of the time period (or any time period, maybe). Obviously, there is a lot here for the ladies, and the film is careful to allow the young wife to succumb to forbidden passion while at the same time making sure she doesn't come off as a tramp; after all, she firmly rejects Carson's advances—ever so many times!—but her heart is touched by his hidden good nature when he nurses her husband back to health, and then she is literally swept off her feet when he rescues her from a rampaging hurricane; breathless, soaking wet, held tight in his manly arms, how could she resist? Interestingly, though, the film is as much a fantasy for the men: out there in the wild, Carson is the boss; there is only him and his job, with none of society's rules holding him back. His temper flares, he throws things, he bellows at the inferior people around him, and it is a pure struggle of man versus nature. He also has a relationship with a spitfire prostie (with the requisite cardioaureate medical condition) played by the sexily sexful Jean Harlow, and there is a certain amount of pleasurable hair-pulling and ass-slapping involved.
What's also interesting is the contrast between Carson's life and the life of the wife before she traveled with her husband to Asia; Carson is entirely outside of society and is a man without peers, whereas the wife is deeply enmeshed within society, to a degree that perhaps does not even exist anymore here in the fragmented twenty-first century. Basically what the movie is saying is that back in those days you had to travel to the other side of the earth to get laid without the whole town finding out about it.
I See a Dark Stranger, a.k.a. The Adventuress (1946)
Deborah Kerr is Bridie Quilty, an idealistic young Irishwoman who hates the English so vehemently that she volunteers as a spy for the Nazis. Now, that might sound rather heavy, but there is a charming and humorous touch to the film, and Bridie's naiveté and her dangerous predicament are played for laughs as well as for gasps; think The Trouble with Harry, North by Northwest, or one of the screenwriters' other films, The Lady Vanishes.
Anyway, the movie was extremely well-made and incredibly entertaining, and I was amazed that I'd never heard of it before. I would recommend it highly to anyone...except maybe Irish nationalists who might disagree with the film's chripy assumption that if everyone will just stop fighting and make friends things will work out for the best. Incidentally, Captain Goodhusband is one of my new favorite characters in cinema.
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Humphrey Bogart plays a loner Hollywood screenwriter who unexpectedly finds himself accused of murder. His beautiful next-door neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, provides him with an alibi, and after a couple of subsequent dates the pair fall in love and get all frisky with each other. The suspicion of murder won't quite go away, however, and suddenly Laurel and the audience find themselves asking, wait—did he kill that girl?
Overall I'd say that this was an average thriller, nothing you'd have to run out and see, but it did have one really neat thing about it, which was that the movie starts out with Humphrey Bogart's character as the apparent hero, but then gradually switches alliances, alienating us from him and making us more concerned for the young woman's safety. Bogart's performance is perfectly done, and, in case you didn't get the hint from The Caine Mutiny, when Bogart wants to be creepy, he's really creepy. Like, "keep that guy away from the pets."
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
I'd seen this one many times before, of course, but a recent online discussion about its awesomeness made me want to watch it again. What needs to be said? If you've never seen this movie, you should watch it the first chance you get, even if you don't like Westerns. Man is it great! My wife always rolls her eyes at Eli Wallach and insists that he's chewing the scenery. She's crazy. "There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend...."
I think back in the day people used to just look on this as a guilty pleasure, a popcorn movie that you wouldn't necessarily tell anyone you were watching for the tenth time, but it seems like nowadays everyone just agrees that it's a classic. That makes me really happy.
Le Samouraï (1967)
If I called this a "stylish existential gangster movie," I would probably be the 500th person to say exactly that, but really that kind of nails it. I liked it because, despite the title, it doesn't glorify the main character, and really the cop is just as interesting as the killer. Also, a lot of it is just plain cool-looking; the atmosphere is everything here.
Women in Love (1969)
There is some very strenuous acting in this movie, and a lot of important-sounding speeches. "I want to know love completely, a new kind of love, a love that transcends all barriers. I want to breathe love, I want to drown in it, I want to be born into a shining light of loving love in loveliness!" Oof. The characters are all listless, self-absorbed and unlikable, and while stuff happens, there's a falseness to everything and it's hard to say why anyone is doing the stuff we're watching them doing. There are some weird and interesting images, and everything has a veneer of importance, but it's all disconnected and empty; compare Polanski's Knife in the Water, which is also about relationships between people, except that at any given moment we know exactly how those relationships are evolving and why the characters are doing what they are doing. Anyway, I thought it was terrible. It's the kind of movie that gives art films a bad name.
Fur (2006)
It's only natural to be curious about the lives of the great artists. What were they like? What of their world? Did they trod the earth like us mere mortals, or was their existence as if on some ether plane, with naught to eat but heavenly ambrosia, every day a kaleidoscope of color and delight?
More specifically, one might wonder what it would be like if photographer Diane Arbus had had a romantic affair with a genetically challenged man who was covered in hair like some kind of afghan hound. The movie "Fur" sets out to tell this story. And it tells the hell out of it.
The movie begins with poor fictionalized Diane (portrayed by Nicole Kidman) having not yet found her muse; she spends her days assisting her average-looking husband in his photography studio, raising her two daughters with good-natured indifference and conveying her artistic and sexual repression to the world by keeping her collars tightly buttoned and sighing in bathrooms. Her life is thrown into turmoil, however, when a mysterious masked man moves into the apartment upstairs. Her curiosity is aroused, and after some minor stalking she discovers the stranger to be a colossal mop of hair piloted from within by an invisible Robert Downey Jr. What woman would not be intrigued by such a creature? The stranger lives in a magical world of whimsy and knickknacks, his apartment full to bursting with beaded curtains, tame animals, incunabula, portraits of famous circus freaks, antique personal irrigation equipment, and quill pens. His friends are giants, dwarves, siamese twins and a woman with no arms who plays the cello with one foot and a chin. Thankfully we only see this armless musician playing pieces which are not very demanding, otherwise she would be obliged to bob her head up and down the strings like some kind of out-of-control chicken. One might well wonder why she didn't just take up the drums instead.
Soon Diane's hubby is getting neglected and the children are wearing potato sacks to school. He tries to entice her back into domesticity by growing a beard, but it's too little too late. Finally in a moment of rapture the dog-man neighbor instructs Diane to shave off his pelt so that the two can be intimate without lapsing into coughing fits or choking on hairballs. She tackles this Herculean task with aplomb, and the viewer is treated to the unforgettable and magnificently unerotic sight of Nicole Kidman shaving a man's hairy ass. Thanks, movie!
Unfortunately, Cousin It's strange genetical condition is also turning his lungs to swiss cheese, and his days are numbered. As a parting gift to Diane, he blows up an air mattress with the last of his strength and presents it to her (no, seriously). Later, after he swims off into the sunset, we see her taking little fugitive whiffs of her hairy boyfriend's diseased final breaths from the air mattress. And they say romance is dead.
In the end the movie is all about a Creative Person Finding Their Muse, and while you'd think that this would be really really interesting, it's really really not; muses are like dreams, in that they are extraordinarily fascinating to the person that they belong to and utterly boring for everyone else. Also, am I the only one bugged that this movie is getting a free ride off of Diane Arbus?
Anyway, here's the scorecard: I See a Dark Stranger and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, great. Le Samouraï and Red Dust, pretty good, glad I saw them. In a Lonely Place, just okay, but kind of interesting. Women in Love and Fur, please, please, make it stop. Next up: the reconstructed Battleship Potemkin. Anchors aweigh!
Labels: Movies
posted by Joe Gola at 9:18 AM
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