My Life in Movies

As mentioned in my 2009 review, I’ve been spending the last few months watching selections from the AFI 100 Movies list (both the original 1998 list and the 2007 revision) and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s alternate 100, compiled as a reaction and counter to flaws within the AFI selections.  The idea came out of a desire to find a road map through all the American classics I haven’t yet seen and feel a need to experience.  Once I get through the bulk of pre-1960 black & white films on the list, I’ll discuss general thoughts on the selections, in addition to the whole concept of lists and canons.

Swing Time is, of course, not the first film on this compilation of lists, but it appears as #90 on the 2007 revision of AFI’s 100 Movies list.  It’s the 6th of 10 films in which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared together and regarded by many critics as one of the best.  To be completely honest, it’s the first Astaire/Rogers feature I’ve ever seen, minus a few clips I’d seen previously, so I’m hardly qualified to judge whether they made anything comparable.  But I did enjoy it and would place it among the best entertainments 1930’s Hollywood had to offer.

I say “entertainment” because the story is not particularly deep and contrived in the same manner as most Golden Age romantic comedies.  Astaire plays a dancer nicknamed “Lucky,” who misses his wedding and must come up with $25,000 to win back his bride.  He ends up in New York where he meets a young dance instructor, Penny (Ginger Rogers), with whom he has real chemistry on the dancefloor.  Of course they fall in love, and of course she refuses him after finding out that he’s already engaged, and of course circumstances conspire to bring the two together in the end.  Yes, it’s predictable, but it’s well written enough that the twists of fate are surprising, and gambling is used a clever metaphor for how the characters attempt to navigate fate and how easily luck can shift from one’s control.

The romance between the two leads is also allowed to develop gradually, not so much through the dialogue as through the three major dance numbers, which were choreographed by Astaire in collaboration with Hermes Pan.  Each of these sequence is built on a similar set of steps, modified to reflect the emotions between the characters in the particular scene.  It helps that Astaire is a masterful dancer, full of grace and elegance, while Rogers serves as the perfect foil.  These scenes are filmed in long shots with a single take, emphasizing the full movement and feeling of the body.  Watching An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain, it’s easy to see how Astaire’s approach towards dance in film influenced Gene Kelly and other dancers and choreographers for decades to come.

There are a few other numbers apart from the three pinnacle dance sequences, the most famous being “Bojangles of Harlem,” in which Astaire dons blackface and tap-dances in homage to Bill Robinson.  The sequence culminates in Astaire dancing with 3 shadows projected behind him.  It’s one of the few numbers in the film that does not pertain directly to the story but allows Astaire to show off his skills with a fun gimmick.  Another of my favorite numbers was the infamous “The Way You Look Tonight,” a standard I know well but had never seen in its original context.  The “punchline” of this sequence offers an amusing counterpoint to the content of the song.  While neither Astaire nor Rogers are brilliant singers, both have the ability to express the basic emotions within the songs and are thus engaging to listen to.  The music, composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, is among the most solid jazz-inflected pop of the period, comparable to George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Astaire, while charismatic, is not a particularly remarkable actor and really comes alive when he’s dancing, but Rogers is quite natural and engaging, and her presence improves most of the scenes.  Helen Broderick and Victor Moore offer plenty of comic relief as the older friends/sidekicks.  George Metaxa, as the bandleader whose eyes are also on Penny, is not particularly good, but the character himself is not very well written, serving primarily as another hurtle for the couple to overcome.

Despite this deficiency and the overall lightness of the film, I enjoyed Swing Time for its clever plotting and dialogue.  As someone who’s not an enormous fan of musicals (but hardly dislikes the form), I appreciated that the song & dance flowed naturally from the story, rather than imposed on the story or thrown in as a distraction.  Mostly, though, I enjoyed the opportunity to watch Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dance beautifully and gracefully across the screen.

It’s been a couple weeks since I saw Terry Gilliam’s latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and I don’t really have a lot of say about it.  For the most part, it hit the same sweet spots that his previous Imagination Trilogy hit–baroquely referential production design that evokes many cultures and times all at once; often discursive narrative structure with overlapping plot threads; and rumination on the power (and danger) of imagination and storytelling.  At times I found the plot hard to follow and required my partner’s help on some details.  While understanding of Gilliam’s storylines often improves on subsequent viewings, Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen all took less initial effort (though I realize plenty of people have difficulty with all his films).  Nonetheless, comparisons to those previous films is apt, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is one of the best films Gilliam has directed in the last decade.  One senses that the story has very personal appeal to Gilliam, since Parnassus is a storyteller who must face old age and come to grips with his daughter’s passage into adulthood.  The end of this Faustian tale is touching, suggesting a greater maturity than the previous films it is most comparable to.

Panic in the Streets is a tense crime thriller/drama shot primarily on-location in New Orleans.  Some scenes and dialogue were improvised, and non-professionals appear among familiar faces (like Richard Widmark and Jack Palance).  One of the most memorably intense scenes occurs early on, when a feverish immigrant leaves a game of cards and is chased through the trainyards by some smalltime thugs.  The interplay of light and shadow enhances the sense of claustrophobia as the man is caught and murdered.  The next morning, his body is discovered, and what at first seems to be a routine case for the cops turns into a potential outbreak of the plague.  Much of the film concerns the rush by the police and the health officials to find the murderers and contain the risk.

Richard Widmark plays Dr. Clinton Reed, a uniformed doctor working for the U.S. Public Health Service.  While Widmark does well enough playing Reed’s terse frustration and lends him an uneasy quality, the role is simply not as interesting as the ones in Pickup On South Street or Night and the City.  Barbara Bel Geddes, playing his wife, and Paul Douglas as the police captain do a similarly solid job with somewhat basic characters.  The best scenes are the less tense personal interactions between Reed and his wife or the police captain.  One of the more interesting performances comes from Jack Palance as the gangster, Blackie, which is a case study in minimalism.  His calm, studied reactions to the ever-tightening grip of the law is thankfully unexpected.  And Zero Mostel is surprisingly solid as his greasy, toad-like henchman.

Panic in the Streets is weaker compared to the other Kazan films I’ve seen (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, and Baby Doll).  As tense and dark as it is, the parts never quite gel; as enjoyable and interesting as it is, it just feels like a lesser film.  As noir, it’s somewhat comparable to Dassin’s The Naked City, with its use of location shooting and a reasonably upbeat ending.  While Kazan also depicts the authorities as basically well-meaning and good, the internal dynamics are less than perfect, not quite the well-oiled machine found in Dassin’s film.  Aesthetically, Panic in the Streets is a much darker film, and the plague as uncontrollable fate looms more heavily.  Definitely something I’d recommend if you’ve seen most of the major noir classics or are interested in Kazan’s direction.

In early 2009, I set up a Twitter account, attempting to see whether I could make use of the device.  While I do use Twitter for the occasional update on my activies or mood, I quickly discovered that it worked better as a means to track and share the interesting links and articles I come across each week.  I’ve also posted any quote I can stuff into 140 characters or less.

So I’ve decided to post a condensed list of 2009’s links and quotations pertaining primarily to cinema, but also art and literature.  Enjoy, and discuss!

Art

Artaud’s Tableaux for Matthew Lewis’s “The Monk”

Beinart International Surreal Art Collective

Claude Cahun:

Who is this mysterious person, donning myriad constumes and attitudes before her own camera, eluding categorization by her versatility with media and disguise?

A Conversation with R. Crumb

Dino Valls

14 View Magazine Covers

Francesca Woodman
Archive of 21 photos
Tumblr collection

Herbert Pfostl’s Paper Graveyard

Interview with Peter McGough of McDermott and McGough

A Journey Around My Skull

Cinema

Alice in Wonderland Teaser Trailer

A.O. Scott’s New York Times Critics’ Picks
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
La Dolce Vita
Vertigo
Wings of Desire

The Esoteric Interpretation of [Disney's] Pinocchio:

Seen through the eyes of an initiate, Pinocchio’s story, instead of being a series of random adventures, becomes a deeply symbolic spiritual allegory.  Details in the movie that are seemingly meaningless suddenly reveal an esoteric truth or at least a brutally honest social commentary.

FilmsFolded on Bright Star:

The story is a simple one: ordinary in many ways. Instead of romanticizing the woman, and their love, Campion does us a real service. She shows that this great love was largely a matter of accident: two primed lonely souls finding each other. The woman in this case really was not very special, except in finding deep love. The contrast between the souls of the poems, and similar pure romantic love of movies and what we have here is striking.

John Waters on the Origins of Teabagging

The New Cult Canon: Hedwig and the Angry Inch:

…Hedwig’s journey (and Mitchell’s magnificent performance) speaks to outsiders without being guilty of generalization; for a movie about an irreverent, outspoken, celebrity-obsessed would-be star who sucks up all the oxygen in the room, it’s remarkable how intimate and personal it seems. It’s the sort of movie that makes viewers feel like it was made just for them.

Orson Welles: The Most Glorious Film Failure of Them All:

People who knew Orson believed this above all: you never let him meet the money people. Why? He was his own worst enemy. You could say: now, Orson, just sit with them for a lunch, be patient, be polite, tell good stories, let them know the patrons of art and progress they would be if they gave you a little of their money. Just be humble. And Orson would say: of course, of course – I get it. Then lunch began and in 10 minutes he had been unruly, offensive, ugly. He turned on the moneybags and lashed them with envy and contempt. He blew it! Because he could not be humble.

Precious Based on the Movie Female Trouble by John Waters

The Real Trailer for 2012

The Rise of the Intermovie

Roger Ebert’s Best Films of the Decade

Terry Gilliam & The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Report from Cannes
Senses of Cinema Interview:

With Parnassus, I’ve always liked the idea of something from another time entering our world – or whichever way it goes, it doesn’t matter. Here’s an old way of telling stories and this old show comes into a modern town. Nobody is interested, because everything about it is just so antique. But if you can get past the show and trust them to take you on a journey of imagination, extraordinary things happen. And it’s your imagination that’s being allowed to expand.

The Windmills of His Mind

The Unofficial Female Film Canon

Women in Hollywood 2009

Literature

Alfred Jarry and Ubu Roi

Amy Tan on Creativity

The Breaking of Vessels

The fact is, writing is a lot of hard work…Whether the muse shows up or not, you have to sit at that computer. And it doesn’t always, or even often, feel like pure zen creamy goodness.

Charles Henri Ford
An Afternoon with Andre Breton
Interview
From Blues to Haikus

Georges Bataille’s Blue of Noon

Was Holly Golightly Really a Prostitute?

JD Salinger: “Holden Caulfield is unactable…”

I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes” – only a fool would deny that – but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons – in a word, his thoughts.

Rimbaud’s Illuminations

Quotations

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

–Jean Genet

Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs.

Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

–Ignatius Reilly, Confederacy of Dunces, J.K. Toole

When you have no imagination, dying is small beer; when you do have imagination, dying is too much.

–Journey to the End of the Night, Ferdinand Celine

God keep me from ever completing anything.

“Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall!

–Moby Dick, Herman Melville

2009 was a more active movie-viewing year than 2008, with a total of 40 feature films viewed and the 22 short films I saw bringing the grand total up to 62.  I did not manage to get to the theatre any more often than I did last year; I saw only 4 new releases and also made it to a showing of Aguirre: The Wrath of God, one of my favorite movies.  I did not go into 2009 with much of a plan, other than to be more regular in my viewing habits, which I didn’t follow up on as well as I would have liked.

At some point during the summer, I began devising a couple of concrete projects I have not yet discussed.  The first is to see all the major classic 20th century American films I have not yet seen, based on a list compiled from AFI’s 100 Years 100 Movies and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s response.  I’ve already viewed several of these films and will continue to do so throughout 2010.  The second project, which is still in the research/planning phase is to see more films directed by women (a project similar to the one Joe Valdez seems to be working on right now).  This idea began after realizing how few of these films I had seen, despite the increased profile of women in the field over the last 25-30 years.  As 2010 gets underway, expect more coverage of these projects, along with the usual bits & bobs.

Now it’s time for my 2009 Top 10 Movies.  Let me make clear that this is my top 10 movies viewed, not new releases in 2009 (though there is one on this list).  Honestly, this year was tougher than last; even though I saw more movies, the ratio of good/great to OK/mediocre was surprisingly low.  Of the good/great films, I prefer choosing the stuff I felt more strongly about, rather than attempting any sort of objective measure (which is not to say that some level of formal objectivity doesn’t come into play).

So, without further ado, here’s the final list of films, in alphabetical order…

1.  All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930)
In college I saw about half of this film, so it’s somewhat a re-watch, but seeing the whole thing really illuminates the power of the images and storytelling.  The unheroic anti-war story was not entirely new–even when the novel was first published.  Yet the story sidesteps cliche by focusing on the experience of war on the human level, especially the relationships between the soldiers and the world around them. Not only that, it is a visually beautiful and sometimes visceral film full of memorable and haunting moments that are hard to shake.

2.  Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2000)
Back in June, I sang praises for Inarritu’s memorable first film, and it still sticks out as one of the best movies I saw in 2009.  What ultimately works for me is the handling of the 3-part narrative and the stylishly visceral editing.  Even if it is sometimes too sprawling, it still works, and I will definitely be seeing the rest of this director’s work.

3.  Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)
I can add little not already mentioned in my entry on the film.  Bright Star is just a beautiful film about the pleasures and risks of first love, of deeply connecting with someone, infused with the poetry of John Keats without exactly being about John Keats.

4.  Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
When I was compiling my top 10, I nearly forgot this film, which I saw about a year ago while it was playing at the local art house.  Without a doubt, it was one of the best horror films I’ve seen in a long time, one that places most of the emphasis on the psychology of the characters and the relationships between them.  Vampires remain truly dangerous and, as with all the best horror films, empty spaces are left for the sake of atmosphere and ambiguity.

5. Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926)
The only short film on my Top 10, Ménilmontant verges on melodrama, but the visceral scene at the beginning, the often impressionistic visual style, and the authentic performance by its lead, make for a truly touching, memorable experience.

6.  The Ruling Class (Peter Medak, 1972)
A wonderfully weird satire of British values and society, The Ruling Class speaks to the social concerns of the 60’s and 70’s while still being relevant to concerns of today (even in America).  While the visuals aren’t quite able to meet its ambitions, Peter O’Toole’s performance stands as one of his most brilliantly eccentric and insane.

7.  Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
Originally, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include this film, but it stood out against the other nominees, so here it is.  To some extent, it’s flawed by the fact that it does, in the end, precisely what it is satirizing–that is, comedies or primarily comedic directors who attempt to tackle serious themes.  Yet the serious portions of the film feel earned.  The scenes that play as straight comedy in the first half of the film are among the best of the era, more appealing to me personally than Hawks.

8.  Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
One of the most beautiful and ambitious silent films ever made, Sunrise lived up to my expectations and now ranks as one of my favorites of the period.  The story is not a new one, which gives the film an archetypal quality fitting with the Expressionist desire to make work that dealt with the elemental human condition.  As with Nosferatu, Murnau masterfully manipulates shadow and light for the sake of atmosphere and creates an internal fairytale-like reality.  It’s a remarkable film through and through.

9.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
I really don’t know why it took me so long to see this movie, but I finally did in 2009 and enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed all of John Huston’s films.  Perhaps what appeals to is the core humanity of his flawed characters; much like The Asphalt Jungle, this is a movie about failure and the desire for greater simplicity.  Otherwise, Huston has an eye for composition, without ever allowing his visual style to dominate.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre also features a terrific performance by Humphrey Bogart, whose sanity gradually crumbles as his greed takes over.

WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
Since I missed this film in theatres and really wanted to see it, I couldn’t pass up the chance to watch it on cable at my parents’ house a week before Christmas.  Generally, I hold a pretty high opinion of PIXAR; they’ve got a strong understanding of characters and story and never condescend to their audience.  I’ve liked every PIXAR movie I’ve seen, but I would place WALL-E as their greatest artistic achievement.  The first half plays almost like a silent movie, and while the second half of the film suffers a bit from the shift in tone, it nonetheless fits.  It’s a beautiful, sweet science fiction film that’s thoughtfully written and designed and speaks to power of love and art to enrich our lives.

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