Gaily, Gaily (1969)

Gaily, Gaily is an innocuous period comedy set in the early 20th century. It's a bit of a shame, because this could have had something to say about government corruption and 1969 and young people rebelling and finding solace in art, but Norman Jewison's film settles for easy laughs and broad comedy. One can't complain too much, though. It's rather a pleasurable romp. The costumes are great, Melina Mercouri is quite fun, and the whole thing is filmed with a kind of madcap glee.

The Thomas Crown Affair (the Original)

What sexy fun! I loved The Thomas Crown Affair. It's superbly directed, delightfully performed, with the perfect light touch by both Dunaway and McQueen, and it's just so pleasurable! It's also brilliantly scripted. Structurally, Alan Trustman (who also wrote Bullitt) has put the big set piece in the opening twenty minutes. It's a brilliant move that is so surprising and challenging, and it cleverly lets the rest of the film be about something else. So smart.

Sallah Shabati

I am watching a lot of obscure stuff at the moment. This is because I am leaving Dartmouth College after this term and I am trying to watch the most difficult-to-find films that are in the library here but available in few other places. (Last time I was at Dartmouth this meant a lot of 1980s Soviet films. All of which were good!) In any case, I am trying to record these films here so that I remember them.

This morning I screened Ephraim Kishon's Sallah Shabati (סאלח שבתי‎‎) from 1964. This is a really funny satire about Israeli bureaucracy, the kind of hilarity that Kishon will continue to create in his films (especially his great movie The Policeman).

Sallah Shabati, though, stars the amazing Chaim Topol, who will go on to play Tevye the Milkman in Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof. Gila Almagor is also absolutely hilarious in this picture.

There isn't much to say about this movie, but it works really well; it is very funny, and became a huge international hit.

Three with Goldie Hawn

I don't know what's been happening, but I've recently been catching a movie with an actor and then, without really intending to, watching a second (or third) movie with that actor.

Butterflies Are Free is mostly a silly little drama, and is obviously adapted (and not very much) from a play by the same name. There isn't much to say about this film except that Goldie Hawn is a delightful little nymph in it, the main actor (Edward Albert) is very attractive, and Eileen Heckart is pretty well near brilliant as the young man's mother. I should note, too, that the main character is blind, but that this disability is mainly understood through the (typical and tiresome) lens of metaphor. His blindness is a way of talking about living in the world on our own, without the supervision of parents, lovers, etc. Can you make it on your own? Yes. Yes, you can. As long as you don't freak out too much, and as long as you find a very cute white girl to love you. I am being dismissive. But it is easy to be dismissive about something so slight. In any case, if there is a reason to watch Butterflies Are Free, Eileen Heckart is that reason. Her performance is beautifully nuanced. She is initially a kind of stuffy, Helen Mirren type, who Heckart humanizes into a fascinatingly strong, compassionate character. It's enchanting to watch.

Best Friends is a rom-com with Hawn and Burt Reynolds that is completely and totally enjoyable. This comedy was written by Barry Levinson & Valerie Curtin and directed by Norman Jewison. I basically loved it, and in the processed remembered how much I love both of these actors. Reynolds gets a lot of flack for his off-screen behavior – frankly, I am taking him to task for a couple of things in my book manuscript – but as a performer, I just love him. He is so much fun, and plays the frustrated, exasperated straight man figure just perfectly, with a careful eye on how silly he knows he looks. He's delightful. This comedy, too, is really funny. A couple of Hollywood screenwriters, who have a great relationship, decide to get married and then to visit each of their parents' families in turn. Both interactions are hilarious, and as you can imagine, the relationship is tested by this return home to the nonsense from which each of them originally came. This is a complete farce, with a few sentimental messages about marriage and commitment thrown in, but it's never preachy, and even the girlfriend-with-the-baby character (who usually preaches wisdom and freaks the heroine out in these kinds of movies) gets drunk in the afternoon with Hawn's character and gives wise counsel rather than inciting terror.

And then there's Swing Shift, which is a Kurt Russell / Goldie Hawn feature about the Rosie-the-Riveter types who went to work during the Second World War. The film is a nostalgic piece of fluff for the most part, presenting the past in a kind of Barry Levinson-esque candied haze. But this film, too, has things to recommend it. Aside from the obvious hotness of Russell (as well as the sexy Ed Harris), this is a movie about cheating on your husband that doesn't spend a lot of time moralizing about how awful the cheating wife is. The cheating wife in this case (Hawn) figures out who she is by herself while her husband is away, and the film is much more interested in this discovery of subjectivity itself than it is in punishing or scolding the woman for her discoveries. Swing Shift was directed by Jonathan Demme, and it also possesses the particular brand of quirkiness that Demme was working on in the 1980s. I'm thinking of films like Married to the Mob and Melvin and Howard, that take a humorous perspective on human nature, while also understanding the difficulties and violences that daily life entails. Swing Shift is one of these 1980s Demme films that makes fun of its characters in a gentle, empathetic way, while also spending just a little more time than it knows it should focusing on how silly everything is. His films from this time period focus almost guiltily on the pleasure everyone is experiencing, even though they are well aware that we are talking about serious things. This makes the director's movies into the quirky, seemingly disjointed narratives that they are. But his movies are not disjointed at all. His films are of a piece, in fact. This quirky, nostalgic style runs through all of Demme's movies in the 1980s.

Pacino

I have heard many people say that their favorite actor from the 1970s is Dustin Hoffman or Robert De Niro. There's also Jack Nicholson and Jack Lemmon and Roy Scheider and Gene Hackman and Warren Beatty. I like all these guys, but my favorite - that's my story and I'm sticking to it - is Al Pacino and has been for ages.

It's easy to say that he yells a lot in his performances these days. Fine. He has a lot to yell about. But, let's just go back a moment: Serpico and The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II and Dog Day Afternoon and ...And Justice for All. are really just the beginning of a career for a man who has continued to produced excellent, surprising performances for the three decades since ...And Justice for All. The man continues to choose difficult roles and is choosing, more often than not, excellent material as well. It seems unfair to compare Angels in America or The Merchant of Venice to, say, Meet the Fockers and Everybody's Fine, but... well, I just made the comparison. My point is that I think Pacino has continued to challenge himself and add to his own work with engrossing and powerful performances even though he is over seventy years old. It's a fine body of work, and I hope the fine performances keep coming.

Love him.

A Soldier's Story

Yesterday I finally watched Norman Jewison's film A Soldier's Story (1984), which is based on Charles Fuller's play A Soldier's Play. This is a really interesting film for many reasons. First off, I had forgotten all about Howard E. Rollins, Jr. He is the lead in this film and the guy on the poster.

Recognize him? He got an Oscar nomination for his role in Miloš Forman's Ragtime as Coalhouse Walker. He also played Virgil Tibbs in the long-running television series "In the Heat of the Night." That show was on when I was a kid and I don't really remember it, but evidently Rollins got kicked off the show after a couple of DUI incidents and other various disorderly conduct that got him in trouble with the law. As I was watching A Soldier's Story I kept wondering why I never see Rollins in films anymore. He was the iconic black actor of the early 1980s, starring as Medgar Evars in For Us, the Living on tv and in dozens of other tv movies, a presence on daytime soap "All My Children" and the star of two films nominated for Best Picture. Rollins obviously had many personal problems and his trouble with the law was a manifestation of that. He died in 1996 at the age of 46 (!) of complications from AIDS. I can't find anything out about his sexuality on the web, but that shouldn't come as a surprise.

A Soldier's Story was nominated for Best Picture, and it deserves its nomination. It's a total genre picture: military mystery film, but it's superbly directed by Norman Jewison. (Think In the Valley of Elah without the boredom.) It also boasts a great cast with some wonderful performances. Rollins wasn't nominated for an Oscar for this performance, but the mystery's dead man (Adolph Caesar) was. He's a scary, hateful old man, and it's an intriguing role. David Alan Grier, David Harris, William Allen Young and Denzel Washington (in one of his first films) are also in the cast. And Patti LaBelle stars as the owner of the local juke joint. And she sings. Twice! The music is by Herbie Hancock. My favorite performance is by Robert Townsend, who plays Rollins's driver throughout the movie. His excitement when he realizes the captain they sent down to investigate the murder is a black man is palpable and a lovely thing to watch. Townsend was the dad on the tv show "The Parent 'Hood" in the late 1990s. He's fantastic in this movie.

The film itself is a lot like Jewison's earlier In the Heat of the Night (1967) with Sidney Poitier and can't really escape comparison, but A Soldier's Story is further advanced than that movie, coming twenty years later. A Soldier's Story is about being black and how best to be black in the Army. The characters debate real issues of racism within the black community and systems of power that help some black people while keeping others down. It's fascinating and nuanced and makes for compelling drama. Recommended.

The Sounds of Construction

I woke up way to early again this morning because some cretin next door feels like doing construction beginning at 7am two days in a row. 

The elevator is broken in my building.  I was home for the whole night last night, which has been kinda rare, but I had chores to do... for instance, I did all of my laundry.  I meant to pay my bills, too, but that just didn't happen.  Perhaps I will do that this afternoon when I come home.  (Probably not.)  Isaac called me last night.  Isaac isn't actually attending Cal Poly.  He was a hired hand last quarter for Earnest.  Madison called, too. 

They said I should take my car to the mechanic, but instead, I purchased the headlight at Pep Boys (hate that fucking place) on Monday... and yesterday, in about a half hour, I took the housing mechanism for the headlight apart and replaced the passenger-side low beam myself.  I feel so... I don't know.  Adult, I suppose.

I watched In the Heat of the Night last night, which was surprisingly good.  My father has been recommending it to me for years.  It was not sentimental at all, and had a really roundabout way of dealing with racism, which I thought was not preachy.  Poitier is obviously the star of the movie, but I see why Steiger won the Oscar.  Poitier's part has no conflict.  He isn't anything but stern and way too good for everyone.  Steiger's part has all of this emotion and difficulty and bloat to it.  It's a really interesting role.

Headed out to AMPAS this evening with Sarah.  Yay.  I've never seen Sunrise.  I think it will be really cool.

What to wear today...