Wild Is the Wind

George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind is a pulpy melodrama that is wonderfully enjoyable, honestly. Anna Magnani and Anthony Quinn are what you’d expect. They give fire and fire. They fight and yell and chew the scenery like method actors in the 1950s ought to do. Anthony Franciosa is honestly even more wonderful in this. He is a sort of villain here who gives a nuanced, delicate performance that I loved. But of course Magnani and Quinn are the stars and they’re absolutely magnetic. Cukor’s direction leans full into the melodrama. And that song. It’s haunting and great, and there’s a reason it’s still a favorite.

Let's Make Love (1960)

Let's Make Love is a sexy comedy starring Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, whose English dialogue was learned phonetically – I had to put on the subtitles in order to get it.

This feels like pretty typical 1960s musical fare. Almost all of the songs are diegetic because we're in some kind of off-Broadway revue. The funniest bits in this film might be the sections in which Milton Berle teaches Montand to be funny, Bing Crosby teaches him to sing, and Gene Kelly appears to teach him to dance. 

Much of this film is charming, and some of it is actually quite funny. For me the weirdest part of Let's Make Love is British singer Frankie Vaughan, who is very handsome but who seems to me constantly flat in every one of his songs. I can definitely see why he didn't catch on with USAmerican audiences.

I watched this on DVD, but I'm pretty sure it's also on VOD.

It Should Happen to You

This is a clever, unassuming script with many funny scenarios. It's filled with the kind of comic bits for which Doris Day would become known. Jack Lemmon makes his first appearance here in his usual impish way, although slightly toned down. But the real deal here is Judy Holliday. She's just a brilliant comedienne. There's no way around it. If people thought Born Yesterday was a fluke, this movie and The Solid Gold Cadillac certainly prove that she's a superb actress with perfect comic instincts and timing. She's just amazing here and completely lovable.

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

Much has been said about Katharine Hepburn's triumphant return to stardom in 1940's The Philadelphia Story – her great bounce back from being "box office poison". This story has been repeated so frequently that one begins to believe that she never was box office poison in the first place and that everyone had been wrong.

Well Sylvia Scarlett is one of the reasons Hepburn was given that moniker, and I'm here to tell you, she earned it. This movie is absolutely ridiculous; it jumps from character to character without any focus; and it stars an absurd-looking Katharine Hepburn as a boy called Sylvester who couldn't have fooled a ten-year-old child, much less a world-wise hustler and a Russian socialite.

Why Miss Sylvia Scarlett is dressed like a boy in the first place is completely unclear, and let me just say that it doesn't matter a bit, and it is totally unnecessary.

I watched Sylvia Scarlett as part of a series of early queer films that was playing on the Criterion Channel. Tales of this film's queerness have been wildly exaggerated. Hepburn does kiss a woman – or rather, the woman kisses her – a couple of times, but this is a film deeply invested in the character's "correct" gender performance, to which she duly returns by act three.

I did like Cary Grant in this, I must confess, and though his accent is abysmal, he is charming and his character has real depth.

But this movie is terrible.

Adam's Rib (1949)

Adam's Rib is mostly charming and mostly politically intriguing. Katharine Hepburn is very, very good. But the movie falls apart by the end. It ties itself up in just a few too many knots and it doesn't know how to pull itself loose reasonably. 

I also feel like it attempted to undermine its own political positions – it didn't manage this successfully, but it sure felt like it made an effort.

I watched this on HBOmax.

Les Girls (1957)

I loved Kay Kendall in this, and I don't recall ever having seen her in anything before, but this movie as a whole is rather lackluster. I wanted more musical numbers and more Gene Kelly.

Holiday (1938)

I honestly had no idea at all that this 1938 Holiday was a remake of the 1930 Holiday, written by Philip Barry and Horace Jackson and directed by Edward H. Griffith. But it's the same movie, just 8 years later. It even has Edward Everett Horton in the same role he played in the original! The script is a little better this time, and I think it resonates more with contemporary politics. And this one, of course, has Cary Grant, who is much much much funnier than Robert Ames. In fact, the whole movie is funnier than the 1930 version, especially Lew Ayres, who plays the brother of the family. He's delightful! But... the 1930 version has Mary Astor where the 1938 version has Doris Nolan (who?), and the original has that brilliant performance by Ann Harding. Katherine Hepburn is fine in that role in 1938, but it is impossible to do what Ann Harding does in the original. Anyway, this is fun. But it doesn't have Ann Harding and I missed her the entire time.

I watched this classic on the Criterion Channel as part of their series of Cary Grant's comedy turns.

The Personal History of David Copperfield

It feels crazy for me to say that an adaptation of David Copperfield by Armando Iannucci is one of my favorite films of the year, but I loved this movie. It's so much fun. Dev Patel is so wonderful, and his joy is infectious. This is also gorgeously styled, so that the entire thing unfolds like a storybook. Some of the transitions actually took my breath away they're so clever and beautiful. It's also very, very funny, and the adaptation is very strong, mercifully avoiding the entire marriage between David and Dora as well as reducing the role of Uriah Heep (also a mercy). 

This David Copperfield isn't perfect: Tilda Swinton is no Edna May Oliver, and at times the usual Dickensian threads come to seem outlandish, but even this is dealt with by Iannucci in a clever way. 

I am comparing this film, by the way, to George Cukor's 1935 The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger, which I first watched about six months ago in anticipation of the 2020 adaptation. One intriguing point of comparison is that the star of the 1935 film is Freddie Bartholomew, who was about ten years old when the film was made, so that movie skews in a cutesy, childlike direction, and David's growth is delayed so the actor can keep playing the part. The 2020 adaptation is trying very hard to get us to Dev Patel as quickly as possible, so his time at school takes up a great deal more space. But this new film also has an excellent child actor in Ranveer Jaiswal, and Iannucci uses him beautifully, and his return at the film's end was perfect.

Either way, I had a blast watching this adaptation and really loved it.

David Copperfield (1935)

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger has a great cast, especially Freddie Bartholomew as young David. Edna May Oliver is her perfect self, as well.

But... well... this movie is a respectful series of events more than it is a meaningful adaptation of anything interesting. It has that standard saccharine 1930s Hollywood sensibility about it. I didn't hate it, of course, but this movie isn't serious about its Dickens except for a few sequences early on. Instead it's jokey and rather silly.

Also... that wife of David's. Woof. I had forgotten how awful she is. It really makes one question one's love for Copperfield in the first place. Like, bro, what are you doing chasing after this ninny?

I watched this because I thought I read that there would be a new Copperfield adaptation out in theatres this year. I am not sure if that is still true or not. I might have made it up.

Free Old Hollywood Cinema Online

I got in a mood for really old cinema last week, and I've been watching a lot of movies from the years 1927 to 1935. Many of these films are available on YouTube or somewhere else, and there are some great old films with excellent performances among this group. All of the ones I watched were nominated for Oscars, and sometimes I was baffled by the nominations (as indeed I often am now), but there were some very good movies, nonetheless.

Condemned! is a 1929 melodrama about a French thief, played by Ronald Colman, who is shipped off to a prison colony in an Africa jungle. He gets put to work as the warden's butler, however, and he and the warden's wife fall in love. So, naturally, he plans an escape. Ronald Colman is a great deal of fun in this, and he was nominated for Best Actor. This category, let me just say, from 1927 to 1935 at least was a bunch of nonsense. Not always, of course, but frequently. Some of the actors getting nominated for performances are doing fun work, but they're not really having to do much acting. Many of them aren't even carrying their films. What it looks like to me is that the studios wanted to push particular actors as important, as talented, as sexy, and so they put their weight behind particular performances.

In any case, Condemned! has its good elements. There is a pretty great swamp chase sequence and I really liked the stuff on the boat in the first five minutes of the movie. But the second act is all love and nonsense, and it doesn't focus nearly enough on the wife's terror and anguish to be actually affecting. The point of this movie, however, was to sell Colman as a leading man, and this works marvelously.

* * *

The Affairs of Cellini is, if possible, an even sillier Best Actor nomination. Not that this film isn't delightful. It is! It is a farce set in the Cinquecento in Florence. In this fun film, Fredric March plays Benevenuto Cellini, the great Florentine goldsmith, as a kind of hot-tempered Casanova who is killing men who fight with him and seducing women whenever he can. The other main characters are the Duke and Duchess of Florence (Frank Morgan and Constance Bennett), who are both hilarious and delightful. The Duke and Duchess are each attempting to have affairs with different people (the Duchess with Cellini, of course), and so they try to trick and confuse one another by playing various pranks and making ridiculous decisions. It might seem crazy for a studio to spend all the money one needs for a 16th century set, costumes, and props just to do a film version of what is obviously a stage farce, but the whole thing worked splendidly.

What is sort of crazy is that when it was over, I thought: they nominated Fredric March for Best Actor for this!? But then I checked and they hadn't nominated March; they nominated Frank Morgan! Even crazier. Morgan was an excellent actor, but almost always worked as a supporting comedian. In 1933 and 1934, however, Morgan was playing leading men, and so perhaps the studio was interested in pushing him as a romantic lead at this point in his career. This is a nomination that honestly makes no sense without studio politics, but I am glad it happened, because The Affairs of Cellini is really fun stuff. Constance Bennett is perfect in this, and I've always thought of Fredric March as a very serious actor, but he is excellent in this farce and funny as hell.

 * * *

Combining my astonishment at both Fredric March and undeserved Best Actor nominations, March's first Best Actor nomination is for a film version of George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's The Royal Family re-titled as The Royal Family of Broadway. I saw this play many many years ago with Kate Mulgrew and the great Marian Seldes. It was a delight. There were live dogs onstage and the comedy was absurd and delightful. The part played by Fredric March is definitely a supporting part (this was before Best Supporting Actor existed as a category). March is fun, and he once again acquits himself well as a comedian in a great part, but his nomination really does surprise me.

It is even more surprising since The Royal Family of Broadway is not very funny. Ina Claire, who play's the film's lead, is far too serious in her part, and so the film feels far more sober than it is supposed to be, perhaps even tragic. This was probably what the filmmakers (George Cukor and Cyril Gardner) wanted, but it was not what I wanted from this old gem of a farce.

Fredric March is wondering why everyone else in the movie is so serious.

* * *

Alfred Werker's The House of Rothschild is a very interesting document from 1934. It stars George Arliss, whom I've really begun to love, and the film is about the rise of the Rothschild family of bankers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. What is most fascinating about the movie is that it is clearly a bit of pro-Jewish propaganda designed to combat 1930s anti-Semitism. This is explicitly its subject matter. It is also about the way that the Rothschilds helped England by funding its wars in Europe. In other words, the film is a kind of The London Merchant 200 years later.

I will confess to enjoying this film rather thoroughly. The final sequence of the movie is in color, which was a wonderful surprise, and as I say George Arliss is an actor whom I have begun to love. I had thought this movie was impossible to find for many years, so watching it recently was a real treat for me.

Movie Sum-up Post

I have seen about ten movies since I last wrote about one in this space. This sucks as a movie blog. I hope no one's here for that because I'm not very good at movie-blogging as it turns out. Nevertheless, I bring you reviews (albeit, short) of the ten films I've seen this year that I haven't written about.

This afternoon: Robert Altman's very musical extravaganza A Prairie Home Companion, which is full of lovely jokes, down-home humor and the brilliant non-sequitor-filled silliness of both Altman films and Garrison Keillor's weekly radio program. There are some really fun segments of the show absent from the film, but one cannot have everything and the movie is a delight from start to finish, featuring really wonderful performances from a whole cast of greats, but especially Meryl Streep & Lily Tomlin and Woody Harrelson & John C. Reilly as two singing duos. My favorite performance in the film is from Marylouise Burke, who plays the lunch lady.

Josef von Sternberg's Morocco starring the totally fabulous Marlene Dietrich in her only Oscar-nominated performance is fairly standard fare as films go... or so I thought for the first half hour or so. The film's plot is standard, but Dietrich herself is a force with which to be reckoned. The much-talked about scene with her performing a cabaret act in a tuxedo and kissing a woman full on the lips is in Morocco and I must confess that it took me completely by surprise and I was instantly in love. The movie is only okay, but Dietrich is incredible. I'm hooked.

Sudden Fear is a later Joan Crawford vehicle starring a past-her-prime Crawford and a supposedly charismatic and charming Jack Palance (!). For me the film failed on all counts, except that it features the compelling-yet-irritating Gloria Grahame (who I grudgingly love). I don't like Joan Crawford; I've decided. I know it's, like, sacrilege, or something. ...And here's the thing: I don't think it's a rational dislike of Crawford. I think I dislike her because Bette Davis so disliked her. As one of my co-workers said, I should start to hate half of old-Hollywood if my loyalty runs so deep: Ms. Davis could've paved a street with the names of people she despised, but I really think that's it. Still it isn't rational. I love Celeste Holm and Ms. Davis loathed her, so... I have no explanation other than I think Ms. Crawford can't act for shit, doesn't particularly have nice legs (a feature with which Sudden Fear seemed obsessed) and isn't particularly pretty--by any yardstick. Sue me in gay court later.

I really liked Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking. I thought it was very, very funny in an offbeat, irreverent, punishing sort of way and the script is really clever. The acting is good, for the most part, with some excellent performances from Robert Duvall and Maria Bello, especially. I loved the kid, too: Cameron Bright (from the lackluster Birth). Mostly this is just a funny, funny movie. Three things, though: 1) Katie Holmes looks like a little kid. I cannot believe her in any role. I couldn't believe her as a lawyer in Batman Begins, and I didn't buy her for a second as a reporter in Thank You for Smoking. She looks like she couldn't even buy a pack of smokes if she wanted to. 2) My boy Aaron Eckhart's hair. Couldn't they have hired someone to fix it. It looked awful throughout and he tried, like, three different styles. The last thing 3) is my favorite performance in the film: Adam Brody as Rob Lowe's assistant. He plays the role perfectly, with excellent timing and an excitement I am unused to seeing.

George Cukor's Born Yesterday features the performance that beat both Bette Davis's All About Eve turn as Margo Channing and Gloria Swanson's genius turn as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. I have generally avoided Born Yesterday for this reason (more solidarity with Ms. Davis: see above). But I was mistaken. This one's a crowd pleaser. The script is wonderful and Judy Holliday is absolutely wonderful. I adored her character and fell in love with her. It's a great star turn and worthy of all its accolades.

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge is the epitome of cool. I liked it even better than Le Samouraï. It's not quite as good as Army of Shadows, but, then, few films are. I find Melville's ideas about the prices men have to pay for the things they do slightly objectionable. I prefer Woody Allen's ideas about men (i.e. I like them to get away with things.) The films are so cool, though, that Melville has to be forgiven. Watch Le Cercle Rouge and your teeth will hurt the movie is so fucking cool. I swear to god.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a sort-of remake of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, the film on which Todd Haynes based his gorgeous Far from Heaven. Fassbinder's film is beautiful and ugly, harsh, soft, shocking, horrifying, sad and dificult all at the same time. I became connected to the characters instantly and the emotional work that Fassbinder is doing is undeniable, but his filmmaking skill is so pronounced, his language so stark and stunning and his references to Sirk so clear, that it's hard not to pay attention to the look of the film and let go of the matter of the film. To do so would be to miss so much, though. Ali is a fascinating, subtle tale with much to say about German xenophobia and fear of "the other" in general.

I'm not sure why everyone is so apeshit about Jean-Luc Godard's À Bout de Souffle (Breathless). It's good, sure, and it's cool. Maybe I'm too old. The only thing I really loved about it was the ending, which is really quiet and subtle... I think that's what I don't love about the film: I feel like it isn't doing anything very subtle, or perhaps the legacy it has left has so overwhelmed the context of the film that I can't see the forest for the trees. Maybe it's been copied so frequently and so poorly that even the original lacks luster for me.

Okay... last one:

Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential is stupid. I may have laughed a couple of times. When it is exploring the nature of art and asking us what is good and what isn't, I found the film really interesting, but all of the silliness and its ludicrous cast of characters (every single stereotype imaginable) had no charm for me. I have a lot of bad things to say about this movie: almost nothing good in fact, so I'll shut up now. Suffice to say that I didn't like the film at all. Max Minghella is a cutie, but I hope he sticks to better stuff than this in future. And I so liked Ghost World...