Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Watching Sansho the Bailiff. Once again, am reminded of how getting older has reduced my tolerance for films that exist to rub the audience's face in human misery. Didn't care for The Life of Oharu, either.

You know, somewhere I have a copy of an animated film based off the same folktale as Sansho the Bailiff, made in the early 60s.

Even as a kid's film, it's still incredibly depressing.

Edited by Aldo930 on Sep 22nd 2018 at 11:16:09 AM

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Well, I finished reading the The Maltese Falcon, and the 1941 film follows the book pretty well. Of course, the book makes Spade's and Brigid's hookup more explicit. And the young gunman says "fuck you" to Spade. Well, not exactly: the book doesn't say the f-word but describes it as a "guttural verb" with the word "you" following it which is very amusing.

Yeah, they wouldn't put that in the movie, but it's a good adaptation. "I'm sending you to the gallows, baby."

Although Bogart didn't look like the Spade described in the book, I think he does a great job playing the hardboiled detective.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Sep 22nd 2018 at 9:05:40 AM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Watched Las Hurdes, a 1933 film by Luis Buñuel. It has variously been described as a documentary, a "documentary", a mockumentary, a Documentary of Lies, ethnofiction, and a parody. I once accused Michael Moore of trying to pass of satire as documentary, and perhaps that is the best description of this movie as well.

It ends with a massive "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: a text says that Francisco Franco will be defeated and peace will take the place of civil war with the help of anti-fascists worldwide. That... didn't really turn out that way.

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Watched Before The Revolution, a 1964 Italian film by Bernardo Bertolucci. I'm not sure what it is about the Italian films from this era that doesn't work for me, but of all those films I've seen (quite a few, by Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti...) the only one I've really liked is Umberto D (and The Battle of Algiers if it counts, but I'm not sure it should).

Edited by TompaDompa on Sep 23rd 2018 at 2:01:11 PM

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Try Big Deal on Madonna Street. It's a comedy!

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Watching Too Much Too Soon. Dunno if I'll make a page for it or not, but man—Errol Flynn's melted face. Dude was 49 and looked 20 years older.

The irony of the title!

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

I'm about halfway through it and Flynn is terrific. In fact, I'm wishing that they had made a movie about the sad end of John Barrymore instead.

EDIT: Finished. Yup, Flynn is terrific, but he dies halfway through and the film gets a lot less interesting in the second half. He really is amazing, though, and the parts with him are worth watching. Both powerfully acted and quite sad when one sees how old and haggard he looked and how he died barely a year later. If he had just taken care of himself a little bit better he could have had a great later career as a character actor. He even nails the hell out of a monologue from Henry IV—John Barrymore being a famous Shakespearean actor of course.

Edited by jamespolk on Sep 28th 2018 at 9:35:04 AM

Watched The Naked Spur, a 1953 Western directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart. It's okay, but I think their two other collaborations that I've seen, The Man from Laramie and Winchester '73, are better.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I think I liked The Naked Spur better than Winchester '73 because Janet Leigh actually had a reason to be in the movie. Shelley Winters was just eye candy in Winchester '73. Both good movies, though. Still haven't seen The Man from Laramie.

Watched Dance, Girl, Dance, and absorbed a little lesson in how gender really does affect how one appreciates movies.

Also, Lucille Ball shouldn't have had to wait until TV to be a big star. She was awesome and sexy and talented and should have been an A-lister in the movies.

Anyway...gender and the movies.

The setup is that Ball and Maureen O'Hara are in a dancing troupe. They're doing nightclub leg-kicking numbers which are somewhat unfulfilling for O'Hara as she wants to be a professional ballerina. Ball on the other hand is a born burlesque performer who kind of resents O'Hara for her artistic pretentions.

Now the reason this movie drew my attention is that it was on the National Film Registry, the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and the Danny Peary Cult Movies list. So I found it posted illicitly somewhere and watched it. It didn't really seem that exceptional to me, just one of those singing and dancing movies that they made so many of in that era. So I was puzzled, and I looked it up, and apparently the reason it's held in such high regard is a "The Reason You Suck" Speech that O'Hara gives near the end. In the movie Ball has become a big star with her own burlesque show. O'Hara has been hired as basically a Butt-Monkey comic relief to perform between acts—while Ball is taking a break between burlesque numbers O'Hara comes out and dances ballet, and, by design, the men hoot and catcall because they want Lucille Ball to come back out and be sexy again.

Anyway, eventually O'Hara gets pissed at this and goes on a The Reason You Suck harangue where she basically says all the men in the audience are weaklings and they suck and the performers despise them, I quote it on the work page. It was interesting. But then I look it up and I find out that the movie later became iconic in feminist circles, basically for that speech, in a movie by Dorothy Arzner who was the only woman director in Hollywood at that time.

So basically, if you find the Male Gaze inherently offensive and Burlesque inherently demeaning then Dance, Girl, Dance is the movie for you. If you're a guy, like me, who actually does like to look at sexy women (seriously, young Lucille Ball) and does not find burlesque inherently demeaning, well, it may not speak to you the same way.

Watched The Golden Coach, a 1952 film directed by Jean Renoir about an actress in 18th century Peru who has three suitors – a viceroy, a bullfighter, and a soldier. I liked it. It had a lot of dry wit and some interesting things to say about performers and their audience's relationship with them.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

The Golden Coach has been sitting on my Film Struck watchlist for a while now.

Now that it's October I think it's time to start talking horror films to watch this month...

TCM is showing a ton of great stuff this month. The high-quality stuff like the classic Universal monster films, the low-quality, MST 3 K B-movie stuff by the likes of Ed Wood, Coleman Francis and Ray Dennis Steckler...

Needless to say, this is going to be a great month for recording stuff if you get TCM.

(For a while now they've been showing old MGM and Popeye cartoons on Saturday mornings too and I had no idea.)

Edited by Aldo930 on Oct 4th 2018 at 3:22:21 AM

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Ed Wood? They've got Ed Wood on this month? Sweet.

Watched Our Blushing Brides, a 1930 film starring Joan Crawford. Third in a Thematic Series of Crawford playing young single girls looking for love. It was...ok. I do like pre-Code Crawford, though. Such energy she had.

The likes of. I didn't find anything by him on the schedule, but I did see a few movies that appeared on MST 3 K. The Robot Vs The Aztec Mummy, for instance. (Sunday nights will be filled with mummy-related films this year.)

Last night they played the Lon Chaney The Phantom Of The Opera, undoubtedly the best version of the book.

Here's the full schedule if you want it: https://bloody-disgusting.com/tv/3521003/heres-turner-classic-movies-halloween-programming-schedule-october-2018/

Edited by Aldo930 on Oct 4th 2018 at 4:13:38 AM

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

It is shocking how well the Dramatic Unmask in the Chaney Phantom of the Opera still works.

So I've read Myrna Loy's autobiography, Being and Becoming. This woman was a class act. Like old-fashioned class act. And progressive and highly political. She hated Reagan's guts (can you tell this was written in the '80s? And it had a strange resonance to today's world, ugh.)

I think the most heartwarming was, not only how much she cared about the world, but also her friendships. Her friendship with William Powell was just wonderful.

I always found it horrifying that these wonderful women would marry awful men. One of her husbands was Gene Mackey...who was also married to Joan Bennett and Hedy Lamarr...and he'd constantly cheat on Myrna. Ye, gods.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Oct 5th 2018 at 10:34:03 AM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Wait. Wait.

Are we to understand that there was a person who was married to Myrna Loy, Joan Bennett, and Hedy Lamarr?

Did he have a magic ring?

Apparently. I can attest that personality can go a long way. Loy described him as endlessly charming, treating women like queens.

Except for the whole cheating thing.

Some guys get all the luck and squander it.

EDIT: his name is Gene Markey.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Oct 5th 2018 at 12:46:48 PM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Watched La Souriante Madame Beudet, a 1922 film that appears in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, apparently because it is one of the earliest examples of feminist cinema. In it, an unhappily married woman decides that Murder Is the Best Solution.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I'm not sure anyone who married Myrna Loy, Joan Bennett, and Hedy Lamarr can be said to have squandered their luck. That sounds more like living life to the max.

And a work page made by me! It's certainly a startling piece of work, that film, and a grim one. Reminds me of Erich von Stroheim's movies in that it seems more contemporary than most silent cinema.

Watched Akira Kurosawa's version of The Idiot.

From what I read it's viewed as a disappointment but I quite liked it. I think it was for the Playing Against Type roles. Setsuko Hara usually played Yamato Nadeshiko but in this movie she's The Mistress and one with a fiery temper to boot. Lots of Death Glares which she didn't do in her Ozu movies.

But better, it had Toshiro Mifune, the manly, square-jawed hero, as a murderous psycho. Watching a bug-eyed Mifune ranting about how he stayed up all night with the corpse of the person he killed was pretty amazing.

I saw a youtube video that showed the 1906 earthquake scene in San Francisco (1936). I have to say, the effects are incredible and still hold up today. However, what really got to me was the effective use of montage. It was reminding me of Battleship Potemkin. I don’t think Golden Age Hollywood was known for doing that kind of editing but it certainly made the scene even better.

Edited by DS9guy on Oct 9th 2018 at 2:35:44 PM

Ah yes...the majority of the movie is actually quite a drag, but I absolutely dig it for the earth quake and the totally over the top scene at the very end when the citizens of San Francisco march back to the city.