Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Watched Pensionat Paradiset, a Swedish slapstick comedy from 1937 about the goings-on at the titular boarding house, including an expected visit from a famous Argentinian opera singer (where of course somebody else is mistaken for the opera singer) and a fake baron trying to find some wealthy woman to con out of her fortune. I found it mildly amusing. It felt kind of like a precursor to Mr. Hulot's Holiday.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Rewatched The Maltese Falcon the other day, and I found something I hadn't noticed before. In the scene where Spade stashes the newspaper-wrapped Falcon at the bus terminal, as he enters and crosses to the check desk he passes a well-dressed African-American couple. Now, in a perfect world, that shouldn't stand out, but it does to me. They're not servants, they're not there for comic relief, they're just people in the bus station. I tried to think of other films from the era that included minorities just as people who were present, and I couldn't think of any. I'm probably making too much of it.

It's very rare to see positive or non-stereotypical depictions of people of colour in films from the golden age, so when you see something small like that, it really stands out.

I think the fact that it's Warner Bros is an important factor as well; they're the studio with "gritty/realistic" style. Although not inclusive, they at least acknowledged the existence of people of colour. I can think of another film, In This Our Life that deals with racism head-on but that film is super White Saviour nonsense at times.

Then you have MGM which I have mixed feelings about. Their films follow the entertainers of the day which I find enjoyable because they're awesome, but I guess the roles can be on the verge of stereotypical. See Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. I think the former is where I'm mixed. But regardless, they're important films.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Jun 11th 2020 at 11:49:57 AM

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

I had a similar reaction when watching the 80's Disney film Oliver and Company (a likeable but minor effort from them as they were approaching their renaissance; it was their last film before The Little Mermaid). It has a modern urban setting, and in one of the initial scenes you see an African-American fellow walking down the street listening to a boom box.. When I first noticed it, I was stuck for trying to think of any other appearances by un-caricatured African Americans in a Disney animated feature (this was long before the John Henry short or The Princess and the Frog—the brief appearance of the zebra-centaurs in Fantasia didn't occur to me at the time). It's one thing (and an important one) for minorities to appear in central or starring roles, but it's a bit of another (probably just as important) for them to just be part of the atmosphere. I liken it a little to changing up the pronouns in an academic textbook. I didn't think it was that big a deal until I encountered a "she" in a sociology textbook; the degree to which it stood out to me made me think it was a more important thing than I previously thought.

Edited by Robbery on Jun 11th 2020 at 3:56:41 AM

Watched Senso, a 1954 film directed by Luchino Visconti about an Italian countess who initiates a romantic affair with an Austrian lieutenant right before war breaks out between the two countries. The movie is pretty good, but the love affair seemed pretty shallow so I didn't see any reason to root for it to work out, and the two lead characters aren't all that sympathetic so I didn't root for them individually, either.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Louisiana Story, a 1948 film about a young boy who lives in Louisiana and how it affects him when an oil well starts drilling near his home. It's a nice, kind of cozy little film without much in the way of a plot. There is not much dialogue, and instead the film makes heavy use of some really beautiful instrumental music. The main thing I didn't like about the film is that the message seemed to be "Oil drilling near your home is great, actually", which was kind of weird.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I know that I am being a bit off-topic but I don't know where to ask this and I suppose you guys won't mind.

I re-watched Kelly's Heroes lately and spotted this Byrrh ad◊. Do you think the Suze ads in Saving Private Ryan are a Shout-Out, or is this just super common in ww2 films.

No idea.

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Watched The Cool World, a 1963 film about a youth gang in Harlem. The film is told from the perspective of one of the gang members, the only one who seems to have any kind of aspirations (though I'm not sure if that's the intended reading or if the others just didn't get as fleshed out as characters): he wants a gun for the power and status it would provide him, he wants to supplant the leader of the gang, and he wants to fight against a rival gang. The story is not particularly engaging, but as a character study it's pretty interesting. In a way, it is reminiscent of the parts of The Wire that focus on the drug dealers, though the writing is of course nowhere near as sharp.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched You Only Live Once, a 1937 film directed by Fritz Lang. Henry Fonda stars as an ex-convict who tries to turn his life around. The story took a lot of turns I didn't expect, some of which I liked and some I didn't. As a result, it feels like three to five films contained in one. Unfortunately, the one it ended with was one I wasn't crazy about. I thought the film was fine, but I don't think it's one of Fritz Lang's best.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I started trying to watch Gone with the Wind and made it just past an hour in when I had to turn it off. I find Scarlett O'Hara to be completely unsympathetic, shrill and downright hateful. I find it hard to be sympathetic to the south given the historical context. So should I give this another try? Does Scarlett become less of a hate sink? Does Butler become less of a douchebag?

When I watched it, I unplugged the mouse and keyboard from my computer so I wouldn't be able to pause it if I got bored. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't have been able to get through it without pausing if I had had the option to pause it. This was years ago, and I barely remember what happens in the movie, but I do remember that I wasn't particularly impressed by it. The only reason I can see to watch that film is to cross it off a list of movies to watch (which is the reason I did).

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Both of the characters change - whether they improve is a matter of opinion. Rhett gets a little more noble, Scarlett becomes more independent and ruthless, there's a lot of bickering and tragedy, and both have moments of self-realization. But if you're already uncomfortable with the setting, I don't think it's going to get any better.

Oh, and for possibly the first time ever, I'm not saying, "Go read the book, it's better." It's not.

Edited by Tarlonniel on Jun 28th 2020 at 8:16:00 AM

The famous Clark Gable line really kind of says it all about the film.

But think what would have happened if it didn't exist - we never would have had that Carol Burnett sketch.

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

I watch it for the soundtrack. That theme song, man.

And the cinematography and the other performances. Not for Scarlett, though.

Edited by Tarlonniel on Jun 28th 2020 at 8:31:40 AM

Scarlett is one of the few literary and film anti-heroines, and I think people forget that at times.

She's not your hero.

I think, personally, that's the only reason this film matters (also one of the biggest hits ever). I mean, costume design, cinematography are great but that is standard fair from big MGM stuff from 1939. Go watch the Wizard of Oz for that without the racist subject matter.

Whenever this debate comes up, my stance is always the same: we shouldn't erase our history, but know the context of films and point out that they were and are racist.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Jun 28th 2020 at 12:26:59 PM

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

Watched Black God White Devil, a 1964 Brazilian film directed by Glauber Rocha, wherein a man kills his boss and then joins what I can only describe as a cult. I'm afraid I don't see the appeal of this film. The acting is pretty bad, as is the editing, and the pacing is extremely uneven. I'm also not a huge fan of the story. I don't know, maybe there's something I'm missing.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I watched Yankee Doodle Dandy tonight because TCM was running it and I had never seen it before.

I loved it, of course. Cagney's great as Cohan - few people would know it today, but he imitates the way Cohan sang and danced pretty well - the songs are great, even if the historical chronology - as standard for biopics then - was scrambled up.

But more than that, I felt actually moved by the film. Partly it's bias - Cohan was born in my hometown, Providence, R.I., and there's a statue of him not far from Brown and RISD. But now, in this day when America seems like a third-world country, something in the film made me proud to be American. Probably the music. Cohan was one of the great flag-waving songwriters.

(We used to have Sousa and Cohan as our patriotic music. Now we have Lee fucking Greenwood. How far we've come.)

Edited by Aldo930 on Jul 4th 2020 at 6:13:19 AM

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

I love that movie, but I tuned in too late today and missed it. Drat. Cagney looks like he's having so much fun in the role.

Watched Terra Em Transe, a 1967 Brazilian film directed by Glauber Rocha about the political machinations in the fictional country Eldorado. The story is kind of interesting, but I found it a bit difficult to follow. This was not helped by it being told in a bit of a roundabout way. I suspect that some of the nuance may have been lost on me for two reasons—I don't speak Portuguese and I'm not all that familiar with the Brazilian politics of the time. The main character is a poet who provides a lot of voiceover which is fairly poetical, and that may very well have been more interesting if it had been in a language I speak, but I mostly found that it extended the runtime and made the pacing drag because there is so much of it. From what I can gather, the film is fairly satirical of contemporary issues (such as the then-recently-installed military dictatorship), and some familiarity with the thing being satirized is usually necessary to really appreciate satire. I also found the sound design and editing very distracting—at times the soundtrack contains what one would assume is diegetic sounds (e.g. what sounds like gunfire) but isn't, and at times it doesn't contain sounds that one would assume would be present (in a kind of Moment of Silence way, but not quite), and the sound editing can be very abrupt. I thought the film was okay, but I think I would've liked it more if it had been a more straightforward political thriller with less of the artistic touches.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Mother India, an Indian film from 1957 that has been described as India's Gone with the Wind (in much the same way as Children of Paradise is considered France's Gone with the Wind). The film opens with a hammer and sickle (part of the production company's logo), so it should come as no surprise that it deals with the struggles of working-class people. The film is not as overt in its message as, say, Soviet propaganda, but it doesn't exactly hide its political leanings, either. For instance, the main antagonist, other than perhaps fate, is an usurer—the subtitles say "moneylender", but they make it clear that his interest rates are so high that the farmers who borrow from him never get out of debt. It reminded me of a quote from Timothy Zahn's The Thrawn Trilogy: "Permanent debt—the oldest form of covert slavery in the galaxy."

From what I can gather, in order to fully appreciate the film one needs to have a certain level of familiarity with Hindu mythology because characters in the film represent various Hindu deities and whatnot. I didn't pick up on any of that while watching the film, and I'm not familiar enough with Hindu mythology to be able to connect the dots know that I know about it, so I can't say how much better the film would have been if I had picked up on it.

There are some great silhouetted shots at sunrise or sunset, but most of the time the cinematography and editing is pretty poor. Mostly, the shots are simply fairly dull, but there is also some weird editing choices and I don't think the filmmakers were aware of the so-called 180-degree rule.

I couldn't help but notice that there are a lot of commonalities with the 1975 film Deewaar, such as being told in flashback, a father who leaves his family out of shame forcing the mother to raise the children alone, two brothers taking different paths in life with one of them turning to crime resulting in a clash between the two, and the film ending with the criminal brother being shot and dying in his mother's arms. Thematically, both films deal with the cycle of poverty, but while Mother India has a rural setting and the main characters are all farmers, Deewaar is set in Bombay and there are characters with various occupations such as dockworkers and police officers. I think Deewaar does pretty much everything better in this regard. In Mother India, the bad things that happen can pretty much all be blamed on the usurer (in combination with fate/bad luck—the things that the usurer doesn't cause still have way worse consequences because of him), but in Deewaar it's made clear that the cycle of poverty has plenty of systemic causes that go beyond the influence of individual people. So really, I'd suggest watching Deewaar instead of this film.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Fritz Lang's Human Desire, a 1954 Film Noir starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Broderick Crawford. Ford's character is a Korean War veteran who works for a railway company and Crawford's character is one of his coworkers who is married to Grahame's character. The story is nothing special (jealousy, murder, extortion—typical noir stuff) and also kind of drags, but the characters are what really make this movie worth watching. There is more focus on the character interplay than on the plot, making this almost more of a drama than a noir (though still unmistakably noir).

I really liked how nuanced the characters were—they are clearly influenced and affected by their previous experiences, but often not in the way that other characters expect those experiences to have affected them. There is also quite a bit of room for Alternative Character Interpretation, where you can't be sure if what they are saying is true or if they are just saying it because of how they think the person they are talking to will react (especially when they say mutually exclusive things to different people or to the same person at different times). We have discussed before how weird it was that Grahame won an Academy Award for her extremely small part in The Bad and the Beautiful, and I have to say that she really shines in this film where she has a leading role.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

As per the new collection on the Criterion Channel, I'm watching a bunch of Joan Blondell film I've never seen, Lawyer Man.

She's a sassy secretary and William Powell is a principled lawyer who then becomes a shyster lawyer to clear his name. It's fluffy but a lot of fun like most pre-codes.

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

Watched a few new films:

• Wait Until Dark: Audrey Hepburn is great in this! And it's a nice, tense thriller.

• Mystery of the Wax Museum: This was fun for its wise-cracks courtesy of Glenda Farell, but that's about it. The two-strip Technicolor is also cool just cause it looks weird in a talkie.

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

Watched Vidas Secas, a Brazilian film from 1963. It's basically the Brazilian The Grapes of Wrath (the book Vidas secas was published in 1938, one year before The Grapes of Wrath), being about a family living in poverty trying to improve their situation but facing systemic obstacles. It reminded me a bit of Bicycle Thieves as well, but unfortunately that's because both films gave me Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, or rather bleakness-induced ditto – the characters live in what is to them a Crapsack World and any efforts to make things better are at best futile and at worst backfire. Sometimes that works for me (Grave of the Fireflies and Requiem for a Dream come to mind, though the circumstances there are different since it isn't poverty causing all the hardships the characters face), but it didn't in either of these movies.

(I've since discovered that other people have made comparisons to The Grapes of Wrath and Ladri di biciclette before me, so great minds think alike, I guess?)

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Watched Luis Buñuel's The Young One from 1960. A black jazz musician named Traver (Bernie Hamilton) in the Southern United States is falsely accused of raping a white woman and has to escape a lynch mob. He arrives at a small island where he finds a white middle-aged man by the name of Miller (Zachary Scott) and a girl of… I don't know, 13? Miller is a racist jerk towards Traver and a creep towards the underage girl—and that's me being charitable on both counts. They are later joined by an additional two white people, a friend of Miller's and a preacher. With this setup, the film deals with a bunch of interesting themes such as racism, rape and sexualization of minors in ways that were both more insightful and more in-depth than I had expected from a movie made in 1960 (though I suppose it wasn't subject to The Hays Code as it was a Mexican production).

There was one thing that really bothered me, though. Miller rapes the underage girl offscreen, which to me is an inarguable crossing of the Moral Event Horizon. The preacher figures it out based on some things the girl says afterwards (and the other white guy seems to just kind of understand it based on a hunch and kind of teases Miller about it), and confronts Miller about it. Miller starts making excuses which the preacher dismisses immediately, but then Miller suggests that he could marry the girl and the preacher says that he'll have to consult his superiors? I still like the film, but that really rubbed me the wrong way. I suppose if I really wanted to give the film the benefit of the doubt I could interpret it as commentary on the clergy being hypocritical (or something), but that's not how the movie frames it – it frames it as a redemption arc. No really, Miller stops being such a terrible racist jerk towards Traver and helps him out (Traver is all the while unaware of the child rape), and it ends with them kind of being friends? I feel like it kind of tarnishes what is an otherwise good film.

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Watched Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse from 1933. It's a good film, but I couldn't help being constantly amused by recognizing things that were referenced (or outright lifted) in the Swedish 1992 comedy Jönssonligan & den svarta diamanten. Among (a lot of) other references, that film includes a character called Dr. M.A. Busé... it's not subtle, is what I'm saying. However, I was a child when I first watched the Jönssonligan film and had never even heard of Dr. Mabuse, so I obviously didn't pick up on the references back then. My enjoyment and appreciation—of both films, really—was greatly increased by this.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Hon Dansade En Sommar (English title: One Summer Of Happiness), a Swedish film from 1951 which is (in)famous for a nude scene, or rather a topless one (you know, "the Swedish sin" and all that). It is an otherwise rather unremarkable, though in my opinion pretty good film about young love. It reminded me a bit of Splendor in the Grass in the way it condemns the attitudes of the more... let's say old-fashioned members of the community. The preacher, in particular, is guilty of what would nowadays be classified as stochastic terrorism.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.