The 39 Steps

Well, another largely wasted day - although, I did find out that the Pitt library has all of David Lean's feature films on DVD! This Dedicated Leaniac will have to get on that ASAP.

Tonight's feature is The 39 Steps (1935), one of Alfred Hitchcock's first "classics". It is very interesting to view it as a predecessor to pretty much of all his subsequent works. The plot, in a nutshell, involves a man (Robert Donat) who finds himself accidentally caught up in a tangled web of espionage and intrigue beyond his comprehension - all the while, being hunted by sinister spies and unknowing authoritarians. While it bares an obvious resemblance to North by Northwest, Hitchcock's later (and much better) prototypical spy thriller/action film, one can see echoes of nearly all of Hitchcock's later works here - distrust of police/authority, the wrong man accused of a crime and damned by insurmountable circumstantial evidence, dubious spies and elaborate, creatively-staged set-pieces.

You know, I've always found it very hard to actually write about Hitchcock. Maybe there's some Freudian-Jungian subconscious thing about my not wanting to deal with sexual and violent themes explored in his works (I highly doubt that), maybe it's just because Hitch's films are largely visual, with very lightweight plots and characters that don't hold up to any real scrutiny. The 39 Steps is a case in point. In the last analysis, it's a rather banal Hitchcock - as mentioned above, Hitchcock would deal with these themes many, many times in the future and much better. And this movie also features one of my least favorite Hitchcock touches - the maddening vagueness as to what exactly is going on, and what the stakes are (like, who are the spies working for? What are they doing? Why should we care, if you won't let us know?). I know that's the concept of the Macguffin, and I know it ultimately doesn't matter a great deal, but dammit, the way Hitchcock used it on occasion (and uses it here) is just aggravating.

All things considered, though, The 39 Steps isn't a bad watch. It's fast-moving, with nice cinematography and editing, good performances and snappy banter by Robert Donat and Madeline Carroll, and at a mere 86 minutes it doesn't even have. But really, it's best seen as a stepping stone - and foundation - for Hitchcock's later, better works. 7/10 seems a fair rating.

Anyway, classes start tomorrow, though, so we won't have this much time for that much longer. I have an intro to Film Genres class, which will hopefully be interesting. At least it will give me the opportunity to write (a lot more than I'd like to, I'm sure) and check off some films on those 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die books. I'll admit it; I'm a listomaniac.

The Passionate Friends

My first day of college didn't end until about 4 o'clock this morning, because TCM was showing for the first time one of David Lean's most obscure and forgotten movies: The Passionate Friends. Although my lethargy prevented me from getting 100% experience, I still enjoyed the film a good deal, enough to provide you with a review.

The best way to describe the film? You've seen Brief Encounter, right? (If you haven't, you'd better get on that, Mr. Wannabe Film Buff.) Well, start with Brief Encounter. Replace Ceilia Johnson with Ann Todd (Lean's then-wife and one of England's biggest movie stars). Shift the focus from Laura and Alec to Laura and her husband. Add Claude Rains, some fine location shooting (in the French Alps) and crowd scenes. Lather, rinse, repeat. Voila. After about 91 minutes, you have The Passionate Friends.

Based on a novel by H.G. Wells (?), The Passionate Friends is very much a David Lean film. It deals with Lean's usual themes of infidelity and its consequences on individual people. Lean is one of the most human of directors, in this writer's estimation; he doesn't shy away from depicting his protagonists as flawed human beings, and his refusal to glamorize adultery and romantic entanglements (in and of themselves) shows a degree of sophistication and maturity beyond most directors. The film treats our protagonists, Mary and Steven, as two lovers who missed an opportunity as young people - Mary refused Steven's proposal because she "didn't want to belong to anyone". Now, she realizes that she made a mistake, but by now she's comfortably married to a successful businessman, Howard Justin (Rains), who looks upon romantic love as something to be, if not feared, than avoided for its unpredictability. Mary is forced to make an impossible choice between two men she loves, albeit in different ways, and who each love her. This is a theme Lean often worked with, and would explore in more depth in Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. The course of true love never did run smooth, least of all in a David Lean movie, where the choice isn't simply between the usual bad or at least unsatisfying husband and the dashing lover. Things just aren't that simple.

The cinematography (by Guy Green) is another remarkable aspect. Lean's later epics are of course astonishing visual spectacles, but his early films show a mastery of black-and-white cinematography with few peers in the annals of cinema. This has to be one of Lean's biggest films up to this point, making extensive use of beautiful Alpine scenery, showing that even this early in his career, Lean had an eye for the beautiful and picturesque. But he maintains the gorgeous use of expressionist lighting and angles which mark the best of his early work (Brief Encounter, Oliver Twist), keeping the focus entirely on the characters, and it's this aspect that impresses more than the pretty scenery and location work.

The film contains a trio of top-notch stars. Ann Todd was one of England's biggest stars of the time, and she gives a knock-out performance. She's more glamorous and perhaps less down-to-earth than Ceilia Johnson in Brief Encounter, but that comes with the territory of casting a star - and certainly she has the talent to pull her character off. Trevor Howard, on the other hand, pretty much sleepwalks through his role; his character is basically a retread of Alec Harvey (even being a medical professor), only with much less focus on him, which definitely has an adverse impact on his performance. However, the film is quite easily stolen by Claude Rains, as Todd's conflicted husband who isn't sure how to deal with the situation; Rains pulls off all of the character's emotions regarding the situation, making him believable as a tortured husband in a near-impossible situation. In fact, I might even be so bold as to say that this is Rains' best performance.

Although not one of Lean's best works, The Passionate Friends is still a highly entertaining film. I certainly recommend it for romance fans, and anyone who likes David Lean. It gets an 8/10 from me.

Back at Pitt

I'm back at school, putting an end to this excrutiating summer. I'm settling into my solo dorm, which. Last film of the summer was (what else?) Leprechaun in the Hood.

TCM had a Trevor Howard day today, which unfortunately I've missed most of. The very obscure David Lean film The Passionate Friends (also starring) is on - at 2 AM. I'll have to see if I'm up for staying up that late.

I want to write something Zulu-related before it slips my mind, so stay tuned for that. School starts on Monday, but I've got most of the weekend free, so I'll try and write something in that time.

Aaron Sorkin Article

Well, I watched Zulu Dawn yesterday, and to be short, it wasn't that good. Not bad enough to warrant writing off its potential as an essay subject (although that will have to wait), but it came off basically as a TV movie with a great cast. Even better is that Netflix sent me two copies at once... Which means we might not get Leprechaun 3 before I go back to school.

Anyway, I read this excellent interview with Aaron Sorkin - up there with Robert Bolt as my favorite screenwriter ever - today. I particularly like this statement:

"The Internet... (is) a bronchial infection on the First Amendment. Nothing has done more to make us dumber or meaner than the anonymity of the Internet."

I feel like I should be offended, but I'm not sure I would disagree.

I'm going to be posting lightly, if at all, until I move back to Pitt on Friday, where I'll have unfettered Internet access and MY OWN DORM! In the meantime, perhaps one of my prospective contributors would care to lend a hand...

Mad Love by Analee Harriman

(My first column by a guest contributor, Ms. Analee Harriman. Hopefully she'll become a regular. - Groggy)

I’m not a big fan of horror movies. Well, wait, that’s not exactly true. I’m not a fan of TODAY’S horror movies. Blood, guts, and gore have never really interested me, and I see no real reason for a horror movie to need an excess of any of the three to even be considered a horror movie. I’d much rather watch one of the classics. By classics, I mean a horror movie that doesn’t throw buckets of fake blood everywhere, has a slightly odd storyline, and is most likely in black and white. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have a name like Karloff, Lugosi, or Price attached to it either. Most of the time, that’s an added bonus. Give me a good old-fashioned horror movie that relies on the creepiness of the actors, sets, costumes, and lighting involved ANY day.

One of the unquestionably creepiest (and best, in my opinion) horror movie actors of all time is Peter Lorre. The first time I saw a Peter Lorre film, I was 17 years old. It was a Friday night in October of 2005. To be precise, it was the 28th of October, and I remember this because it was the same night that my neighborhood had its Trick-or-Treat night. Now, at 17, I was too old to trick-or-treat properly, but not too old to get candy from any neighbor who saw me taking my little sister and her friend around and decided to reward me for being such a good teenager. Anyways, that’s beside the point.

When we got home (and after my little sister’s friend had left), I threw my candy in my room (so my dad couldn’t steal any of it) and flopped into our big green recliner with the remote control, hell-bent on catching a good horror movie. At the time, AMC was having a marathon of the old horror movies, and while they weren’t showing Frankenstein until the next morning, I figured I could still catch something worthwhile that I hadn’t seen. I changed the channel to AMC, and discovered to my delight that we had arrived home a mere 5 minutes before the start of the movie Mad Love, a movie I had been dying to see that movie since I was in 5th grade and read about it in a horror movie book. I watched the movie with my parents and little sister, and I was not disappointed. It was amazing.

A few nights ago, for some reason or another, they were showing quite a few Peter Lorre movies on Turner Classic Movies. One of the movies they were showing was Mad Love, and after a show of shoving my friend out of the apartment post-chicken nuggets and Velveeta Shells & Cheese dinner, I came back upstairs with a few minutes to spare before the movie. I had nothing else to watch that night, and as I had no homework to do and had done the dishes earlier, I felt I deserved a reward, and that reward was going to be Mad Love on Turner Classic Movies, by damn it!

Mad Love is actually a remake of a silent film from 1924 called The Hands of Orlac, which is a film version of the story with the same name. The premise of the film is thus: a pianist loses his hands in an accident, and a doctor attaches a new pair that just happened to come from a recently deceased convict who just happened to like to kill people by throwing knives at them. I think you see where this is going. Anyways, one of the biggest plot points is that Dr. Gogol (played by Mr. Lorre) is in love with a woman named Yvonne Orlac (played by Frances Drake), who is married to the protagonist and resident Unfortunate Piano Player Stephen Orlac (played
by Colin Clive).

There’s just one problem with the good doctor: the man is batshit insanely in love with Yvonne Orlac. He buys the wax figure of Madame Orlac from the theater where she works (as an actress who plays women who get tortured and killed in various ways…way to not be misogynistic there, Karl Freund!), then takes it home with him…and SERENADES IT. Later, at the climax of the movie, after Madame Orlac has snuck into his home, accidentally broken the statue, and takes its place, Gogol sees her move and thinks that the statue has come to life. So what does he do? He does what any self-respecting man who thinks the effigy of the love of his life has awakened like Galatea and come to him. Oh, wait, no he doesn’t.

Instead of having the decency to see whether or not this "wax figure come to life" is any different from the living breathing counterpart, he starts to strangle her! Because, in case you missed it at the beginning, when they stated it the first time, Dr. Gogol believes that each man should kill the thing he loves. Hence, instead of riding into the sunset with Waxy, he decides to start doing the Hitchcock movie Frenzy a few decades too early and without the proper strangulation tools. In case you missed it, by this time Dr. Gogol has gone completely batshit insane. Since it’s a 1930s horror movie, I don’t think I have to tell you how it ends. You’ve probably figured it out already.

Peter Lorre took what could have been a mildly unsettling character and turned him into the stalkery male admirer that makes all straight women cringe and all gay men run for cover. This is a man who could scare the living hell out of people in Germany just by whistling a cheery tune-you’ll understand why if you’ve seen the film M. I’ve seen him do other movies, some horror, others along the non-horror lines of The Maltese Falcon, even a comedy. The man was a brilliant actor. He took the character he was given and added an extra spark of creepy or pathos or whatever was needed to make his performance jump out at you without being over-the-top about it.

The gloomy sets, a well-written story, and the brilliance of Peter Lorre all combine to make a wonderfully creepy and unsettling piece of film that’s as timeless as it is entertaining. Feel free to disagree with me if you will, but for me, Mad Love is brilliant. Totally batshit insane, but brilliant. Mr. Lorre, you outdid yourself, and the world still hasn’t found a horror movie actor who can do it quite like you and your gang could do it back then.

Your Classic Movie SUCKS! #1: Amadeus

Hello all! Your humble blog master is bored for the moment, so what better way to alleviate said boredom than to pick on a classic, critically-acclaimed film?

This seems like a good candidate for a recurrng column. After all, who doesn't enjoy writing (or reading) a scathing review of a movie? And all of us enjoy occasionally being the odd man out, the iconoclast who hates the movie everybody else likes.

I'll make it clear: I am not taking on x-classic movie for the sake of being an iconoclast. I genuinely think any films listed in this series either suck, or are at least mediocre, which is a sin for an allegedly "classic" film. If you disagree, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine. In any case, I'm sure x-film's reputation will survive my dissent, no matter how scathing or mean-spirited it may turn out.

With that out of the way, let us proceed to our first victim: Milos Foreman's adaptation of Peter Schaffer's Amadeus.

Amadeus, Or: Poofy Wigs Do Not A Period Film Make

Ah, Amadeus. Perhaps the perfect candidate for this column, if for no other reason than it is flawed in so many ways that its classification as a classic boggles the mind. It's a film that suffers from a number of ailments, including Smugness, Annoying Anachronism, and Bad Casting Disease, among many others. Yes, it has lots of period detail and a decent score by a little-known composer named Mozart. Does that make it a good film? Or, even, a period film?

Let's start with the biggest flaw. There is a class of movies (and plays) that fall under the self-contradictory category of "modern period piece" - a film which uses modern, and in many cases post-modern and (ugh!) self-aware. How one of these could exist is beyond me, but anyway... Amadeus is, along with The Lion in Winter (perhaps the perfect candidate for a future entry), one of the more obnoxious examples of this style of filmmaking. It can work - A Man for All Seasons being perhaps the greatest example of this sub-genre - but quite often it doesn't. In this instance, it's extraordinarily egregious, cloying, and irritating. The dialogue sounds like chit-chat amongst 20th Century New Yorkers, and is not convincing in even an abstract way as conversations of historical figures in 18th Century Austria. For this reason, and for all the great costumes, wigs, architecture and sets, the film isn't convincing for a second as a period piece, merely as a bit of anachronistic, self-aware pop art. The effect is rather disconcerting.

Some may find it a rather pednatic criticism, but hey, I wasn't the one who made the movie a period piece. Is it personal preference? You betcha. Of course I'm going to inject my opinion into an essay. Amadeus seems at times be trying on the airs of a black comedy; if there was anything funny in the movie, I might be willing to classify it as such. As it is, though, it's just obnoxious and annoying, "Oh-look-how-smart (and modern!) we-are!" story-telling. Someone pass me a barf bag.

The casting is really bizarre. Let's start with F. Murray Abraham. Abraham plays Salieri in an extremely subtle performance, with only a few glimmers of emotion. Subtlety can be a virtue. But here, Abraham is subtle to the point of being boring. Salieri is never a really compelling or interesting characer, his character development conveyed in trite, overwrought scenes such as his renouncing God by throwing a crucifix in the fire (YAWN!). This might be forgivable, if Abraham showed the slightest hint of emotion or feeling at any point in the film. Is this really one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema, as I've often heard it proclaimed? It would have been interesting to see the late great Paul Scofield, the original Salieri, play the part; now THERE was an actor who could be subtle without being boring and dull.

Let's proceed to Tom Hulce. Hulce is an extremely off-the-wall casting choice - his best-known part up to this time was in Animal House - and his portrayal of Mozart as an arrogant, air-headed, vulgar rock star is quite disconcerting. It's not necessarily inaccurate, and Hulce's actual performance is a lot more interesting and fun than the brooding boredom emanating from his co-star Abraham. But still, seeing Pinto as the greatest composer of all time is a sight beyond the comprehension of most mortal men. It's to Hulce's credit that he's able to do something with the role.

Let's deal then with the supporting cast. On paper, it's a very good cast - well, some of it - butthey are given the barest minimum of screen time in which to perform. Elizabeth Berridge is excrutiatingly flat, annoying, and out-of-place with a New York accent; she's not at all convincing as Mozart's wife, and one wishes to punch her every time she's on screen. Jeffrey Jones and Simon Callow (the original Mozart, interestingly enough) are the two best members of the supporting cast, but they have virtually nothing to do. The rest of the cast isn't really worth mentioning, save perhaps Christine Ebersole's small role as an actress who infatuates Salieri. Teensy-tiny parts, particularly in this film, would defeat even the best actors. And waddya know, that's what happens here.

From an entertainment point-of-view, Amadeus's biggest sin is that it's slow-paced, dull, and boring. I have no problems with a long or slow-paced film. What I do have problems with is a film that's slow-paced for little reason beyond self-indulgence, and when the time isn't filled up with things worth watching.

Here's the part where I'll have to no doubt part ways with many critics. At least a quarter of the movie seems to be made up of musical performances - orchestras, operas, piano playing, what have you. Instead of inducing an appreciation for Mozart and his works, it induces insomnia and sleep. Now, I recognize that, since we're dealing with Mozart, seeing at least some of his works is a good idea, and probably essential to the story. But do we really need never-ending passages of opera performances, again and again? Maybe I need to refine my taste in music so I could appreciate it more. Or maybe Messers Forman and Schaffer should have realized that this is a film, and putting in a never-ending series of stage performances-within-the-show only slows things to a deadening crawl. When your movie is already annoying, you definitely don't want to throw boring into the mix. Unless you're trying to make some sort of point. How post-modern.

So, in a nutshell: Amadeus sucks on toast. If I haven't persuaded you, then at least I had fun writing this article.

Friday

Watched The Bank Job today. It was a decent heist film without anything terribly original, entertaining without being really involving. Oh well, not a bad waste of 100 minutes, I suppose.



This is the last weekend of summer vacation, which is both good and bad so far as I'm concerned. Zulu Dawn probably won't be here until next week (thanks Netflix!), so scratch that article idea for the moment, and one of my contributors is dragging their feet with a promised (or offered, rather) review. But I'll have something for you tomorrow, although it may be something an eensy-weensy bit... controversial. (Well, to film geeks, at least.)