"Accomplishments"
At home: Palm Springs is a perfectly pleasant time loop movie that distinguishes itself thanks to its stars - nobody needs to twist my arm to watch Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti or J.K. Simmons, and together they're great - and with a couple of twists on the formula. Chief among these is that they are trapped in the time loop together, which gives the film the chance to explore what it means to be facing eternity with someone else, and further what dynamic would be created if one of the people were responsible for giving the other that kind of immortality. It certainly sparks discussion, and not just of the metaphysical sort, as there are a couple of ambiguous moments that will have some spinning theories (which I think is usually a good thing for SF movies, though I'm not sure the paradoxes actually make sense if you look at them too hard). The important thing is whether it's funny - yes, it is - romantic - yes, that too - and has something to say about the human condition - in Simmons' character perhaps more than the others, but sure.
Antoine Doinel, Truffaut's alter ego from The 400 Blows, returns for a third engagement in Baisers volés (Stolen Kisses), getting drummed out of his military service and attempting a number of different jobs, all of which he is pretty terrible at. Now in his mid-20s (and still being played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who became quite a good improviser, which you can see here), Antoine is nevertheless the same truant kid from the first movie, but his story has moved into the comical realm. So it's with amusing pathos that we watch him go from job to job, and from woman to woman (including the wonderful Delphine Seyrig), unable to ever commit to anything. He can't even commit to which prostitute he's going to sleep with after he gets cashiered. A key scene for me is one in which he repeats the names of two women, and his own, in the mirror. It's real theater of the absurd, never explained, and makes me giggle, but the more you repeat a word, the less sense it makes, and Antoine deconstructing his love triangle this way has lyrical value. I know it's usual to say none of the follow-ups have the power of The 400 Blows, but I, for one, do enjoy catching up with a character at different stages of his life (just like I like the Linklater's Before series, or his Boyhood, which must take inspiration from Truffaut), and I do believe the progression.
Part 4 of the Antoine Doinel cycle, Domicile conjugal (Bed and Board) catches up to Antoine only a couple years after Stolen Kisses, and is even MORE of a comedy, filled with entertaining zanies. It's happened, Antoine has settled down. Not saying there won't be setbacks (the key image of a flower that won't change its tint in a dyed flower pot hints at it), but he commits to Claude Jade's character, starts a family, even gets a steady job (albeit a completely absurd one). Despite the cozy happiness - and Antoine and Christine really do click in the best sense of the term - he is still haunted by the older woman from Kisses, which makes the casting of Hiroko Matsumoto as his would-be mistress particularly brilliant, as she vaguely resembles Delphine Seyrig (something in the mouth area). The haunting also manifests in more outrageous ways, as one of several call-backs to Stolen Kisses has her dialog come out of another character's mouth. There are several filmic flights of fancy in this, including some stop-motion. Truffaut's alter ego is moving more and more into the realm of the fictional as he distances himself from his real-world self. One thing I can't decide is if Claude Jade is made up to look like Catherine Deneuve as a direct reference, or if it was just the style, but it's so striking, it really feels like it was done on purpose (Truffaut had worked with Deneuve just the year before in Mississippi Mermaid). Who knows.
L'amour en fuite (Love on the Run) is the fifth and final Antoine Doinel film, and I was all ready to lament how it was too bad Truffaut died 5 years later or perhaps we could have checked on this character a few more decades, and while it's still sad Truffaut died so young, Love on the Run really isn't calling for more in the series. This is a glorified clip show. I understand the idea. A mid-life crisis (way too early for that, but Truffaut, a decade ahead in age, possibly was) brings on cause for examining memories, and if Doinel is partly Truffaut, then he's examining those memories as they've been fictionalized (Doinel does the same because he put them in a novel, which almost makes you wonder about the relationship between the films and objective reality, but only almost), and so on. Well, a good third of the run time is devoted to footage from the first four films, giving short shrift to the new story being told. Along the way, we revisit other characters from the cycle, to find out what happened to Antoine's mother, or to Colette, or Christine. And you may want that closure, it's not uninteresting. If 9 years had passed for me since the last one, maybe I would have grokked the nostalgia (you can only say grok if you're being nostalgic), but I saw them all over the past two years, and the last three, inclusively, over the past two days. So I felt impatient and frustrated through most of the experience.
Proposing to tell the story of a gun, Winchester'73 plays Dead Man's Gun with the title rifle, showing it pass from hand to hand without losing sight of the characters that once held it. Anthony Mann's first collaboration with Jimmy Stewart, it uses its conceit to give you a whirlwind tour of the Western. You get a bit of everything: Bounty hunters, the showgirl with a heart of gold, gamblers, "Indians", the Cavalry, people talking about the Civil War, a bank robbery, saloon brawls, outlaws, the Earps, a shooting contest, and lots of gunfire. I think the only thing missing was a train. That's fine, save some stuff for Winchester'74. All kidding aside, Jimmy Stewart is great, and he's not alone (which is good because as we follow the rifle, we lose sight of him, but never for too long). Good turns by Shelley Winters, creepy Dan Duryea, hustler Millard Mitchell, grizzled Jay C. Flippen, fresh-faced Tony Curtis, and others. I do condemn the casting of Rock Hudson as the Natives' chief, however. I mean, c'mon. (Not that any Hollywood Western passes the litmus test on this point, but it feels kind of worse when the actor attains stardom later and you can recognize them.) In a way, doing ALL of Westerndom in one go might have pushed Mann to take Stewart very different places in later movies, as neither The Naked Spur nor The Far Country - to name the ones I've seen - are typical Westerns.
There is a lot of incident in Dumas' The Three Musketeers, granted, so it becomes a real juggling act to make a movie out of the material. 1948's effort doesn't really get the juggling right, running through story beats and treading over characterization to get to the exciting parts. D'Artagnan and Athos get all the love, Porthos and Aramis are more or less lost in the shuffle. As to why Richelieu isn't a cardinal, I can only imagine some kind of Catholic league trying to rewrite literature and history here, though I'm game for Vincent Price in the role. But when we do get to the exciting parts, they sure are exciting. I wasn't sure about Gene Kelly as D'Artagnan at first - he's too old here to be playing this fresh-faced rube from the country, and his early scenes are played as slapstick - but as a swashbuckler, he's incredibly fun and acrobatic, and it's those sequences that set this adaptation apart. I can almost forgive that some of them are obviously shot in California (unless France has desert terrain I don't know about). Armed with a fine cast and stellar action scenes, this version of the story amuses and entertains, but it's a product of Hollywood, not Dumas.
The third Zatoichi film, New Tale of Zatoichi (not a great title), trades black and white for color, and I do miss the silvery sheen of those two first films, but not too much. After all, Zatoichi's world is an earthen one, nearly as monochromatic, and there are flashes of the strong cinematography of the original. But we do notice the fact these are essentially bloodless films much more with the color. Where New Tale finds its groove is as a character piece. As Ichi returns to his sensei's school and perhaps falls for his master's sister, his gregarious veneer is scratched and his tragic self-loathing is exposed. There's something of the superhero Daredevil here (a natural comparison) as a man who suffers from hearing and sensing too much, never allowed to be oblivious to the injustice around him. With people after him for his righteous killing of the previous film's villain, and a scheme playing out in his master's school, can Ichi give up his sword for love? Would the cruel fates even allow it? Honor and treachery are themes that permeate the series to date, and Shintarō Katsu as the touching Ichi is perfect at navigating those currents.
I don't know if they can keep this up, but in Zatoichi the Fugitive, convoluted events lead the blind swordsman once again to a climax that feels very personal. If we're to keep caring for Ichi - and by this fourth film, we certainly do - he's got to have our sympathies. Katsu generates so much pathos, it's not hard, but the story gives him a heart-wrenching dilemma to accentuate that quality. While still being hounded by yakuza who want him dead (and how many films before there are no yakuza left in Japan, at this rate?), Ichi must figure out how not to kill the lovers of two women he cares about, even though they're on the other side. One of these is Otane, from the first two films, and we find out just what her fate is. The other is a similar innocent, Onobu (played by the very cute Miwa Takada here, she will return in other roles across the series), who wants to marry a boy who has inherited his boss father's territory, though he is ill-equipped to be a gangster. If by now you don't hear the sad Hulk music at the end of each movie...
In the 5th film of the series, Zatoichi on the Road, Ichi promises to escort a young woman under threat to her family home in Edo, even as yakuza gangs try to involve him in a gang war, whether he wants to or not. Both he and the girl become pawns in a dangerous and convoluted game, and for extra trouble, the wife of a man Ichi righteously killed tries to get her own revenge by meddling in his mission. This is the first of these movies not to fit the continuing narrative, and features no returning characters from previous chapters. As a one-off, it works fairly well, even if it sometimes remixes elements from the first couple films, and there color palette under director Kimiyoshi Yasuda is a touch more colorful. The director also manages to give us a strong impression of the blind swordsman's speed by matching it to a dragonfly's quick bounce. Ichi is pushed to the edge in some scenes, breaking his clownish facade more than is usual, but if we look at this as a continuum, it seems warranted. He's been through a lot and a lot of deaths weigh on his conscience. When he thinks he's found a port in the storm, he gets betrayed and pushed out to sea again. We can also see his reputation grow so that now he can play an intimidation game with the villains, and that's fun.
Ponyo is The Little Mermaid filtered through Miyazaki's amazing imagination, but also gets rid of the sexist elements of the original fairy tale by making it about a 5-year-old's pure platonic love, and not taking the fish girl's voice away. It would in fact be pretty easy to miss the connection between the two stories, as Ponyo reinvents even the image of the mermaid. It's a beautiful and charming film filled with magic, and its underwater world is entrancing, though Miyazaki never lets us forget how polluted we've made it (without beating the pulpit). And then there's the port town of the surface world, which is just as distinctive and memorable - is it me or did the bit where the mom races away from the the waves on a curving road inspire a similar sequence in the Aquaman movie? Irrepressibly cute, it's a feast for the eyes and for the soul. FAVORITE OF THE WEEK
It's very weird to me that Charlie Chaplin has a wife and a home in Pay Day (and of course, it has to be a matronly, disapproving one wielding a +1 rolling pin - where do these clichés come from? comic strips?), but as the Tramp, he's blowing his money and making sure he'll eventually end up on the street without either. Is there a Chaplin Extended Universe where all the Tramp movies can be inserted in a credible timeline? Asking for a friend. So half of this 22-minute short has Charlie working construction and showing off impeccable timing in the slapstick. The other half has him spending his pay check (less interesting), then coming home. In that last part, shrewish wife trope aside, there's a lot to like, but my favorite bit is the cat that steals a whole freaking salami right off the table. The shenanigans where he tries to go to bed at dawn are also funny. This is fairly slight, overall, but I'm always impressed with Chaplin who not only writes, produces and directs himself, but also composes the scores. Man is a... quintuple(?) threat!
You could see Charlie Chaplin's dual role in The Idle Class as a precursor to The Great Dictator, a strategy that gives a bit more heft to what is, as is usual for his shorts, a slim story. In one role, he's the idle rich, estranged from his wife because he's got a drinking problem. In the other, he's the idle poor, i.e. the Tramp, who sees that same wife from afar as falls in love. Well, you just know they'll have to be in the same space eventually to drive the film's comic misunderstandings. Until then, amuse yourself with some golfing shenanigans, and I don't rightly know why it's the Tramp that goes golfing rather than the rich guy (except the latter is too indolent to practice sports). Some good gags. On the other side of the street, there's some pantsless action where Chaplin can show off his flexibility. In the end though, we're in sitcom land, and there's no real point to be made. I wish there were more to this, and perhaps at feature length there could have been.
Ahead of its time in several ways, 1931's Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform) has a a female director, is based on a play written by a woman, and an all-female cast. And it is widely considered the first overt portrayal of a gay (lesbian) relationship in film, though what's remained controversial it's between a teacher and a 14-year-old girl (it doesn't go too, and focuses more on her "sinful" infatuation with the older woman, which is complicated by her search for a mother figure). But perhaps most prescient is its use of a boarding school to discuss and expose the practices of a fascist state. There are many rules and repressions in the film's school - heck, I went to a normal high school in the late 80s and still felt it was a fascist system - that prefigures the Nazi regime that would rise to power a couple years later (and send many of the people associated with this film on the run to other countries). If it still works today, it's that it makes you care about its characters, and not just the clearly endearing (and troubled) Manuela. It also has something to say about education, teacher-student relationships, and discipline, as much as any of the great class room dramas.
Ginger Rogers leads a strong cast in Tender Comrade, a mid-WWII movie that leans into audiences' reality by having five women pool their resources and co-habitate while they work at the plant and wait for the war to end and their husbands to come back. Rogers is definitely the star, and though each woman represents a specific circumstance, she's the only one who gets flashbacks to her rocky romance and marriage with Robert Ryan. Though a drama (give or take the sitcom amusement the premise naturally affords), Rogers will always be a comedy actress first, and she plays to type. She's a feisty, outspoken romcom character, even if the war might have other ideas. And yet, whenever she gets a teary or earnest, I'm right there with her and find her performance quite moving. Mady Christians as the German housekeeper also gave me the feels. Obviously, there's a patriotic streak in the film, and several uplifting speeches about sacrifice and the need to fight fascism. That's only natural. But it also has a feminist vibe I like. Trumbo-penned Communist propaganda as well? Sure, if you really think having room mates is a communist proposition. The title is really pulled from Robert Louis Stevenson, but have at it, Committee for Anti-American Activities. We'll just ignore how AMERICAN and PATRIOTIC the content actually is.
I'm sure The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is important to the history of dance, but - and I sound like a broken record by now - you really need to go the extra mile for me to enjoy a biopic. In this case, the grounded reality of the Irene Castle's memoir (and she did serve as consultant) doesn't allow for much pizazz in terms of musical numbers. Astaire and Rogers' talents are kind of wasted in that area, even if their innate chemistry serves the romance and partnership better. But overall I was more invested in Edna May Oliver's comic reactions as the famous dancing couple's manager/financier. Cute trained dogs too. Its comic moments are fun enough, its tragic ones effective. However, the best bit for me is the mid-film montage that shows how the Castles became a brand in the 1910s, fashion icons as much as performers (and eventually even war heroes). Didn't realize that could happen way back then. The montage ends on an impressive sequence where they dance on a giant map of the United States. Pretty cool.
A late-career Ginger Rogers movie, and a late-era RKO picture, The First Traveling Saleslady is a bit slap-dash, but Rogers has still got it despite putting on a voice at times. I've always thought her best roles were those where she had to con her way through situations, and that applies here. This perky emancipation comedy about a corset/barbed wire saleswoman eventually explores an untold tale of the West, in which Texan land cattle barons lobbied against fencing so their animals could free-graze on other people's lands, which I find interesting, and racist use of Natives, which is not. Every guy wants Ginger in this, but you basically know who she's gonna end up with, and sad to say, the existing print of the film has very bad color timing, with shots not at all matching, or else flaring and shifting. But if Rogers and RKO were on their way out, some are on their way in. It's amusing to see young Clint Eastwood suddenly show up to make goo-goo eyes at Carol Channing in her first movie role. The two ladies make this worth watching despite the problems.
In Person kind of starts with a classic Ginger Rogers plot - she's an actress suffering from a nervous breakdown who goes incognito as a much less glamorous girl (the movie would say unattractive) and invites herself to a man's cabin for some rest. He thought she was attractive under a veil, but not so much when he sees her oops-face. The stage is set for an admittedly dated romcom. In many of her comedies, Ginger is desperate to keep up appearances, but not here, and this soon becomes a sort of Taming of the Shrew (that's not generally good) to get the spoiled actress to act like a normal woman (i.e. cook, clean and want to get married). Don't get me wrong, Rogers is a lively presence, as usual the kind of character who'll fall in love while complaining about it, and there are some good gags here and there. But I've already forgotten her co-star George Brent, so it's not exactly like sparks fly off him.
Given the mild roughhousing between William Powell and Ginger Rogers in Star of Midnight, a light and convoluted mystery starring the pair, I have to wonder if they were trying to recapture Powell's relationship with Myrna Loy in The Thin Man movies. Well, for me, while there's nothing that can touch the Powell-Loy chemistry, Rogers is a very good substitute. She's more sophisticated and witty than Myrna, but Ginger is nevertheless great at cracking wise and not taking any guff from men. Gal Friday though she is, it's really Powell's movie, and as usual, he's great as the suave amateur detective. In this case, he's slightly slow on the uptake, by which I really mean there is a way to figure this thing out as you go along, and you may indeed think you've solved it a few scenes before he does. Full points for his humiliating one of the police detectives in the grand tradition of sleuthing, and some nice comedy from his manservant too. I'm a sucker for the actors and witty banter here, but I think the mystery actually works, biased or not.
What is the point of Chance at Heaven? Gas station guy Joel McCrea leaves girl-next-door Ginger Rogers for boring high society debutante Marian Nixon?! Really?! And of course he'll learn his lesson about dating above his level as Pulp's "Common People" plays in the background. But here's the thing. There's absolutely no conflict in this thing. McCrea and Nixon both try hard and are happy with their circumstances. Ginger doesn't bat an eye when she loses her beau and even tries to help the couple get along. I mean, there's the meddling mother-in-law, but even then, no character really fights her. There's even a last minute twist that is an outrageous cheat to resolve what MIGHT have caused conflict in the epilogue. I couldn't help but let out a loud exclamation. And then the happy ending no one ever fought for and which seems like a complete fantasy or, in golf terms, cinematic Mulligan. It seems I will watch Ginger Rogers in anything, but movies need more drama than this.
Ginger Rogers and Doris Day are sisters in Storm Warning, and Ginger will regret forever visiting her sister in a small town controlled by the KKK. Within minutes of getting off a bus, she witnesses a murder committed by the Klan, and her brother-in-law is part of the pack! Will fear and family obligation prevent her from helping gosh-darn-it D.A. Ronald Reagan? (Really? This guy? An acting career?) The direction is very strong on atmosphere, starting (and for that matter, ending) on a great shot. There's menace everywhere. Small town slick streets, lights shutting off around her, unfriendly folk, and a monstrous family situation... Lots of tension, often resolved in shocking violence. It's not going where you think it's going. But here's the thing. Like Black Legion, which also made the Klan (under a different name) about defrauding its members more than anything else (which I'm sure is a thing, but it's not THE thing), this picture has been completely white-washed. There are no black people around at all, and the murder is of a white journalist, and under threat is one of Hollywood's most melanin-deficient stars! Kind of burying the lede, aren't you?
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