This Day and Age: Cecil B. DeMille's Solution for a Broken System

This Day and Age, by Cecil B. DeMille, 1933


While best known for the historical epics that the latter part of his career focused on, Cecil B. DeMille was actually a quite versatile director. This last sentence makes me sound like an authority on Cecil B. DeMille, which I'm totally not. I haven't even seen The Ten Commandments. Cut me some slack, OK? It's four hours long. In fact, This Day and Age is the first of DeMille's films I've ever seen.

This fact is especially odd when you consider that This Day and Age is one of the director's only films not made readily available on DVD or some other format. Not 100% sure why, either due to mild racism or political wrongheadedness, you take your pick. You see, America was well into the Great Depression at the time of its release, and people were looking for solutions. This was DeMille's proposal. By the way, I'm going to be SPOILER-iffic this time around, because this is one of those movies you might not get many chances to see, and it's just too weird to not talk about.

This Day and Age is about a group of high school seniors at the top of their class, selected to take part in "Boys Week" (girls aren't qualified, I guess), where they shadow the men who hold high city positions. One boy goes with the Chief of Police, one with the District Attorney, one with the Judge. When the friendly local Jewish stereotype is gunned down by the local gangster stereotype for not paying for protection, the boys witness firsthand just how broken the system is. The gangster gets off because none of the evidence can prove conclusively that he did what they all know he did. The boys decide to investigate on their own, and the gangster ends up killing one of them and pinning it on another. Disenfranchised at the way the institution handles things, the remaining boys hatch a plan to bring this gangster to justice: mob justice!

Yes, DeMille was proposing that if the system can't do things right, let's form a mob and do it ourselves. The boys mobilize and form a secret army of all the high school boys in the entire area. They whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy as their secret code. Their plan to get the gangster alone to kidnap him, yes kidnap him, is to have one of their girlfriends seduce his righthand man, who really wants to have sex with a high school girl. Oh, and did I mention that when the boys get the gangster, they hold a trial themselves, and torture a confession out of him by lowering him into a pit of live rats? Then they carry him back to the judge and the judge commends them for doing the right thing! Yes, this movie is crazy!

I mentioned above that This Day and Age is also mildly racist. It's not really so bad. Though the Jewish characters were broad stereotypes, the movie was really standing up for them. The worst part is when the Jewish tailor's shop is blown up as a threat, and the tailor, lying in a pile of rubble, goes "Oy, this damage is going to cost me $432...", then a bit of plaster breaks over his head and he goes, "...and 64 cents!" Yeah. But there was actually a really cool line, involving a black student. The boys need a black person to pretend to be a shoeshine (yeah, I know) for the plan to work. They go up to a boy and say "hey, do you shine shoes?", and he looks at them and says "I shine my own shoes". So I don't think the racism was necessarily coming from bad intentions, just, you know, ignorance.

Despite the fact that this film is a political minefield (I heard it was banned in Holland for being too fascist!), it's actually insanely well directed. Cecil B. DeMille totally knew his stuff. The performances, cinematography and production values are exceptional. There's a fantastic sequence between the creepy second-in-command mobster and the girlfriend of the valedictorian boy. It's played entirely in closeups on their hands while they talk to each other. He's locking the hotel room door and she's sliding a knife into her purse. Really cool stuff.

As outdated and messed up as This Day and Age is, it's still an extremely watchable film. I would recommend it as both an entertaining movie and a historical curiosity. If you hear of it playing near you, or if it is made available to you somehow, you should definitely check it out.

Sowing My "Wilder" Oats: The Worst Possible Title For This Entry: The Seven Year Itch and Sabrina

Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, right up there with Hitchcock and Kurosawa, but there are still a bunch of his movies that I haven't seen yet. Yes, I've seen The Apartment and Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole and Some Like it Hot, but there are still some big ones (and little ones too) that I never got around to. In the last month or so I began to notice how many Billy Wilder movies were piling up in my Netflix Instant queue, so I decided to make up for lost time and watch them. Here are the first couple.

The Seven Year Itch, 1955

Part of the fun of watching a Billy Wilder comedy is seeing how much he can get away with, in the context of the time the movie came out. Even his raunchiest comedies had a smartness and sophistication to them, though he wasn't afraid to go low-brow for a laugh. Of course, today most of these raunchy comedies seem positively chaste, but at the time, he was getting some pretty shocking stuff through the system.

The Seven Year Itch is one of Wilder's dirtiest movies. It stars Tom Ewell as Richard Sherman, a man with a wife, a kid, and an overactive imagination. He sends the wife and kid away on vacation while he stays behind to keep working, promising his wife he won't get wild while they're gone. He really means it to, but as he settles down at home for a quiet night in, he meets the new upstairs neighbor: Marilyn Monroe. Well, not really Marilyn Monroe, but they never say her character's name, and she's even jokingly compared to Marilyn Monroe at one point.

Richard now must resist the temptation of cheating on his wife of seven years with the woman who is generally considered the sexiest of all time. He talks to directly to the audience when he's alone, and through this and cutaways to his imagination, we see that he believes himself irresistible to women (his wife correctly laughs this idea off), and we see all his neuroses and fears that maybe his wife is cheating too. Will schlubby Richard sleep with Marilyn Monroe, or will he resist his urges and stay true to his wife?

Marilyn Monroe is actually really funny in The Seven Year Itch. She is basically playing the broadest possible version of her on-screen persona. There's some self awareness in her performance, though her character is always oblivious to the fact that she's radiating sexuality. Pretty much everything she says and does has some sort of sexual implication and she's completely unaware of it. Like that famous scene where she walks over the grating in the city and the wind blows her dress up. The only Marilyn Monroe movies I've seen so far have been this and Some Like it Hot, and you know, I totally get why she's a sex symbol and everything, but I'm always kind of grossed out by that baby talk thing she does. I don't really know what to call it, but you probably know what I mean.

The Seven Year Itch is a very funny 50's sex comedy, but it's too bad they couldn't push things further. I know Wilder wanted things to go past where they ended up, but was restricted by the Hays Code that still had a stranglehold on Hollywood. Still, it's a testament to his talents that he could turn in such a good product even when he's being held back. It's also fun to watch his movies get more and more daring as the years go on and the Code's hold on things starts to crumble. This movie surely played some small part in chipping away at it.

Sabrina, 1954

Of course, Billy Wilder didn't just make boundary-pushing sex comedies. He had a rich and varied career, and made all sorts of movies. Sabrina is a simple, charming, romantic comedy. In fact, it's one of the best ever made. I can't believe I didn't watch this sooner.

Sabrina stars Audrey Hepburn in the title role, the daughter of a chauffeur for the extremely wealthy Larrabee family. Hopelessly in love with the playboy son of the family, David (William Holden), a despairing Sabrina attempts suicide. Her concerned father sends her away to a culinary school in Paris to help her get over her troubles. She never gets over her infatuation with David, though, and instead hatches a plan to return from France the most sophisticated beauty she can be, with the hopes that he'll finally notice her.

And notice her he does. David flips for Sabrina the moment he sees her. The problem is, he's been promised to the daughter of another corporate head, in order to cement a merger between to companies that would earn everyone millions. To make sure the merger happens, the elder brother, career-minded Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart), attempts to sweep Sabrina off her feet and keep her away from David. Of course, Linus, too, falls for Sabrina.

While this movie isn't all sex jokes like The Seven Year Itch, Billy Wilder still touches upon some taboo topics. Suicide, for instance. Even though it's made clear that Sabrina's suicide attempt is more a teenager's cry for help than a serious suicide, Wilder still treats it with compassion. He would explore suicide more in depth six years later in his Oscar-Winning (and my favorite) The Apartment.

As with Marilyn Monroe above, I haven't seen too many Audrey Hepburn movies. Just this one now and the one where she's a blind lady being terrorized by Alan Arkin (Wait Until Dark, which is AWESOME). I think I like her more than Marilyn, she was classier and a better actress, though I don't think that has ever really been up for debate.

One thing I'm noticing more and more when I watch these old movies is how the leading men get older and older, but the women keep getting replaced with young ones. I was a little weirded out by the fact that a 20-ish Sabrina was so in love with 37-year-old David, but then when 50-something Humphrey Bogart is thrown into the mix, and is validated, that's just crazy! Not that Holden and Bogart weren't great in their roles, but the movie would have been more believable and less creepy if these guys were no older than 30.

What a fun movie. It's so smart and genuinely romantic, but also instilled with a healthy dose of Wilder's trademark cynicism. I really wish they still made romantic comedies like this, instead of the formulaic, machine-made "chick-flicks" we've been getting for the last 25 years or so. Romantic comedies used to be date movies, and told stories that both women AND men could enjoy together. If they were still that way, they might actually be my favorite genre.

Hey, everybody, check out the Polish poster!!!

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That's all for now, everyone! I've got more Billy Wilder movies to review in the coming days, and even more still to watch when I get the chance, so expect me to sow more of my "Wilder" oats (UGH) in the near future.

Also, if you're interested, follow these links for previously written reviews of Wilder's Ace in the Hole and The Front Page.

Pygmalion, Detour, A Hen in the Wind

Pygmalion, by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, 1938

I haven't seen My Fair Lady, and while I probably still should, I instead decided to go straight back to the source. This is a wonderful adaptation of the famous George Bernard Shaw play, largely written by Shaw himself.

For those who might be unfamiliar with it, Pygmalion is a witty and observant takedown of class disparity in England about Henry Higgins, a wealthy dialect specialist who, on a bet, takes in Eliza Doolittle, a girl from the lowest walks of London society, and teaches her to pass herself off as a noblewoman. As his instruction begins to take hold, the two opposites, both equally headstrong, become enmeshed in a stubborn battle of wills.

The dialogue in Pygmalion holds up amazingly well, just as sharp today as it was in 1938 (and presumably in the 1912 play as well). The performances are great too. I loved Henry Higgins' character, played by co-director Leslie Howard, the way he was so sure of his high place in society, oblivious to his own lapses into bad language and slobbish behavior. He's definitely kind of a selfish jerk, but you come to actually like his company in the end, just as he and Eliza grow on each other. Wendy Hiller is also wonderful as Eliza Doolittle, not only playing a thick cockney accent, but convincingly evolving it into a posh English over the course of her training. What's really great about her performance are the subtleties in her pronunciations. Certain Cockneyisms stay with her, and sometimes sneak out, all the way to the end. She always has difficulty with the letter "H" and often puts a noticeable effort into hitting it, which proves Shaw's choosing of the name "Henry Higgins" a brilliant little metaphor for the distance between the two of them.

I'm sure I'll enjoy My Fair Lady too, whenever I see it, but I'm not sure I'll like it as much as I did Pygmalion. It's a true classic, often overshadowed by its flashier counterpart.

Detour, by Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945

It's weird to think that there were a bunch of different tiers in the early days of Hollywood filmmaking. Unlike today, where a movie is either HUGE and Hollywood or tiny and independent, with nothing in between, they used to have movies that ranged from the big Hollywood pictures with all the big stars, all the way down from the movies made on Poverty Row, for dirt cheap and with no-name actors. Not many of those dirt cheap movies are remembered too favorably these days, but Edgar G. Ulmer's film noir Detour is consistently listed as an important American film.

Detour is the story of Al (Tom Neal), a struggling pianist, who sets out on a hitchhiking journey from New York to Los Angeles to reunite with his girlfriend who left him to become an actress. Along the way, he accidentally kills a man and covers it up, and is then blackmailed by a woman who had encountered that man before. There are several interesting twists and turns in the story, especially considering that the movie is only just over an hour long.

The tone of Detour is actually very dark and haunting, even for a film noir. My favorite shot was early in the movie, as we see a close-up of Al's hands playing a jaunty song at the club he's employed at. We then see his face as he's playing the song, and it's just about the most unhappy face you'll ever see. I also like that the scheme that drives the main characters in the second half of the film is just as low-rent and sleazy as the movie itself. There's no Maltese Falcon or other such Hollywood film noir MacGuffin. The characters are doing what they're doing to sell a dead man's car and keep the money. When the opportunity for a bigger piece of the pie comes along, the movie stops short of exploring it.

Detour is definitely worth a watch, and since it's in the public domain, it's very easy to come across. A very cool way to spend a mere hour of your time.

A Hen in the Wind, by Yasujiro Ozu, 1948

I'm still quite new to the films of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, but so far, I'm pretty well blown away. The only film I had seen of his was Good Morning, his gentle and loving tale of two little boys who refuse to speak until their dad buys them a TV. A Hen in the Wind is a very different film from the rest of his body of work, but no less powerful.

Kinuyo Tanaka plays Tokiko, a housewife left alone with her son while her husband fights in the second World War. Japan's economy is in a deep wartime depression, and Tokiko's resources have dried up. When her son falls ill, she makes a difficult decision to save him: Selling herself as a prostitute in order to pay for his medical costs. Soon, when the war ends and her husband Shuichi (Shuji Sano) returns home, Tokiko confesses to him, unable to lie, which causes a seemingly insurmountable rift in their loving marriage.

Many have criticized A Hen in the Wind for being so much darker than a typical Ozu film. It even has one of, if not the, only act of violence in one of his films. It's not like a guy getting chopped in half or anything, or even someone getting killed. The act is relatively small in terms of movie violence, but it still feels pretty real and brutal in the context of this story. Despite the realness and brutality, I found the film to be very uplifting and beautiful in the end. Ozu doesn't demonize Tokiko for doing what she did. In fact, it seemed like the only decision available to her. Nor does he make Shuichi out to be in the wrong for his inability to process this. In fact, he does his best to try to understand her, and even forgive her, but still is unable to get her transgression out of his mind. Japan was in a dark place after the war, and the film reflects that, but also looks to the future with a message of forgiveness and new beginnings.

A Hen in the Wind is a beautiful film by one of the true masters, which is all the more surprising that this hasn't found its way onto DVD in the states. I think the Criterion Collection owns the rights, and they've released a lot of Ozu's other films, so it's probably only a matter of time. I had the wonderful opportunity to see it projected on film, and I'm glad that I did. It's definitely a film worth seeking out, should the opportunity arise.

The Great Escape

The Great Escape, by John Sturges, 1963

I have a long history with not seeing John Sturges' The Great Escape. It has been sitting unwatched in my DVD collection for over a decade now. I bought it as a gift for my dad, maybe in 2000 or so, and sometime after that, he died, and I absorbed it back into my own collection. I never watched it, at first because it made me think of him, but as years passed and the pain dulled, it was really just because it was hidden away in a book of old caseless DVDs and when I did notice it, I didn't have the time or patience for a three hour movie.

Well, I finally watched The Great Escape, and as I expected, it's kind of the ultimate watch-with-your-dad movie. For those few of you who may not have already watched it, it's about a bunch of tough-guy P.O.W.s in Poland in World War II, who hatch an elaborate plan to dig a tunnel right under the Nazis' eyes and burrow out of their prison camp. Steve McQueen leads the team, in the role that made him a star. James Garner, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn are there. Donald Pleasance is there, but true to form, he's not a tough guy, he's an expert forger losing his eyesight.

The movie is great fun, though it's perfectly comfortable being serious when the story demands it too. The three hour running time rolls by unnoticed. The score is another classic by Elmer Bernstein (whether you've seen the movie or not, you definitely know this score), who also wrote the influential score for Sturges' The Magnificent Seven, among many others. Those are the only two John Sturges films I've seen so far, but that guy knew his stuff, didn't he? Both are great, large-scale stories with tons of action, drama, and comedy, and huge ensemble casts playing great, memorable characters. I never liked war movies or westerns when I was young, but now I totally enjoy them, and Sturges made movies that are among the very best of those genres.

My dad wasn't a big movie guy, really. He liked a lot of great movies, but that was a side effect of growing up in the 60's and 70's when great movies were coming out left and right. He had some amazing stuff taped off HBO when I was a kid, and that's what opened the doors for me to love movies in the first place. So I guess what I'm saying is, you should totally watch The Great Escape, or The Magnificent Seven, or The Godfather, or even The Lord of the Rings, or anything else, especially if it's something he likes, with your dad. I didn't get to do much of that, and I regret it.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and The Naked City

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, by Russ Meyer, 1965

In the heyday of exploitation movies, one of the most important factors in getting butts in movie theater seats was to have a tantalizing title. I doubt there's ever been a title that piques curiosity more than Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Russ Meyer struck gold with that one, I must say. The real challenge is making a movie that lives up to that title.

Well, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a true classic, at least as far as trashy movies go. Look, it's not Gone with the Wind, but it does have a certain quality. It's the story of three badass go-go dancers, Billie, Rosie, and their leader, Varla (Tura Satana). While road racing in the desert, they come across a couple of goofy teenagers. Varla kills the boy and they end up kidnapping the girl. They then find themselves scheming to rob an old man in a wheelchair and his two sons (including a dumb, muscular one named The Vegetable), while their teenage hostage tries to get away.

That's basically the story. It almost felt like Meyer and his cowriter Jack Moran were just going "and then this happens", "and then this happens", when they were writing the screenplay, because I don't know how else you would make the leap from "road-racing go-go dancers kill a teen" to "then they end up on a ranch". Not that I'm complaining, though. The movie is weird and plenty of fun. I was amused by how un-trashy this trashy movie seemed. There's not even nudity or anything in it, the violence is tame, it's just, you know, titillation. There's almost an innocence to it. A few years later, this movie would have been wayyyy more exploitative.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a fun and memorable B-movie, but I'm not sure if it would have endured the way it has if it didn't have that crazy title. I'm glad that weird stuff like this exists, though.

The Naked City, by Jules Dassin, 1948

If you traced the police procedural drama genre all the way back to its roots, Jules Dassin's 1948 Film Noir, The Naked City, might have been the starting point. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing it was at least the beginning of the modern era. The Naked City plays like the original Law & Order episode.

It begins with the murder of a model. Two police detectives, Muldoon and Halloran (Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor) begin their investigation. We then see the entire investigative process play out, interviewing witnesses, looking for clues, and following leads, until ultimately, they find their man. I know I'm being vague, but look, it's a really successful formula that we all know by heart by now, don't we?

I don't mean to say that The Naked City is formulaic. I don't believe it was at the time. I think it might be a big reason the formula is so prevalent today. It's a great movie, it even won a couple Oscars. The mystery is very well constructed and richly layered. The cinematography, on location in New York City, is fantastic. The characters, including the investigators, suspects, witnesses, and even the murderer are all given depth and dimension. There's a great scene where Halloran goes home to his wife, who begs him to discipline their son, which he doesn't believe in. We learn a lot about his nature in that one scene. He's not going to hit his kid, which says a lot about a man in 1948.

The Naked City is a classic, and a very influential film. Jules Dassin made some pretty groundbreaking movies. In addition to revolutionizing the police procedural with this, he practically invented the heist genre too, with 1955's Rififi (more on that whenever I actually see it). The only other film I've seen by him is Topkapi, which is another fun and influential heist movie.

Cul-de-sac, Reds, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Since these multiple review columns that I was originally doing to play catch up have become the norm, I've decided to drop the dumb "Grab Bag" title. I'm sure everyone will miss it.

Cul-de-sac, by Roman Polanski, 1966

I haven't seen many of the old Roman Polanski films, but I hold Chinatown in very high regard (as one should), so I thought I'd take a look at something else. Cul-de-sac is Polanski's third film, a home invasion thriller-comedy of sorts, about a married couple who live in a castle on an island taken hostage by a fugitive criminal stranded there by the high tides. Donald Pleasance stars as the timid, emasculated husband.

I don't know, there was some interesting stuff in the film, but I have to say, I didn't really care for it. I had a hard time liking, or even sympathizing with any of the characters. Donald Pleasance built a career out of playing pushovers and weak men like this, but I've liked him more in other movies. I did like the setup of the criminal's car breaking down in the middle of a rising tide, forcing him to abandon his accomplice, dying of a gunshot wound, but the story gets more and more improbable and labored as it continues. It gets to the point where company comes to visit and the criminal pretends to be their butler. If it were just a wacky comedy, that might work, but the movie presents it semi-seriously, and it didn't work for me.

I'm not giving up on Polanski just yet. There are still a couple of big ones I should look into. I haven't even seen Rosemary's Baby! But Cul-de-sac just didn't cut it for me.

Reds, by Warren Beatty, 1981

Now this, I liked. Reds is Warren Beatty's epic, about Jack Reed, an American communist journalist and writer who helped out with the Russian Revolution in the 1920's. The narrative is tied together through interviews with the actual surviving colleagues and contemporaries of Reed, at that point in their 80's and 90's. Beatty was always a smart and capable director and producer, and had a hand in the development of many of his most memorable starring roles, often nurturing them for years before they got made. Reds may be his crowning achievement.

With a cast including Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Gene Hackman, Reds feels like the dying breath of the stellar auteur-driven Hollywood of the 1970's, which had collapsed under the weight of bloated disasters such as Cimino's Heaven's Gate (which I haven't seen) and Altman's Popeye (which I love, warts and all), and the massive success of mainstream blockbusters like Star Wars and Jaws.
I love that Reds was about a group of American communists, which was very much a serious movement in the America of the early 20th Century, though it wasn't something anybody wanted to talk about after the 1950's. That this movie came out in the Reagan administration is a wonder unto itself.

The 3 hr 15 min run time is a bit of an obstacle, but I was never bored. The movie spans years, and is filled with action, drama, romance, and tragedy, like all good epics. It won Oscars for directing, cinematography, and supporting actress (Maureen Stapleton), and was nominated for many more, yet Reds isn't discussed much today, is it? It's strange how so many of the 1980's Oscar winners have been overshadowed by all the sci-fi/fantasy movies and comedies of the era that we grew up watching. Anyway, Reds is worth setting aside a sizeable chunk of your time for.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? by Robert Aldritch, 1962

I am so glad I have finally seen this crazy movie. An aging Bette Davis runs rampant as Baby Jane Hudson, an over-the-hill child star, driven mad by her jealousy over her sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), a beloved screen actress, now wheelchair-ridden from a car "accident" and held captive in her bedroom.

Director Robert Aldritch and screenwriter Lukas Heller give the film a noirish, stylized look and a macabre sense of humor, while Davis and Crawford act their hearts out. I should also mention Victor Buono's hilarious performance as Edwin, a piano player hired by Jane to help revive her "career".

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is a true classic movie that has all the markings of a cult classic. The movie is so dark, twisted, weird, and disturbing, by 1962 standards, that I'm surprised it ever made it into theaters, let alone to so much acclaim and success. Things were just starting to loosen up around then, so I guess Baby Jane made it through, and I'm glad that it did.

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So that's all for now. I'm very slowly catching up. It's my hope to be close to current by October, but I'm like 30 movies behind right now and I've been watching movies every day. Of the above three, I would most recommend Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, though Reds is great too. You can skip Cul-de-sac and watch Chinatown again instead.

Thanks, everyone!

Mon Oncle

Mon Oncle, by Jacques Tati, 1958

The word "delightful" is surely applied to a lot of films, but few embody delight as wholeheartedly as Jacques Tati's gently satirical comedy, Mon Oncle. I think I was probably smiling through the whole film. Winner of the 1958 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Mon Oncle is the story of, well, not so much a story as an episodic progression of events, of Monsieur Hulot, played by Tati himself, his signature character. He lives a relaxed life in an old building in a more traditional part of France. He is worshiped as a hero by his nephew, a little boy whose parents take great pride in their ultra-modern, high tech, comically unwelcoming, house of the future. There's a series of events, and a beginning and end, but that simple premise is pretty much the bulk of the story.

Mon Oncle is basically a silent film. There's dialogue, but it's mostly inconsequential. The narrative is carried by elaborate comedy set pieces and sight gags, commenting on, among other things the coldness and lack of function of modern 1950's design, as compared to the warmth and charming inefficiency of the old world. Monsieur Hulot's sister is obsessed with showing off all the pointless flourishes and gadgets of her home to all who visit, eager to impress them and be the envy of her neighborhood with her spitting fish statue, which she noisily turns on whenever somebody walks to the front gate. Her front yard is a labyrinthine series of stones, the lawn is off limits.

Hulot, on the other hand, fumbles through the modern world, never quite in step with it. This is demonstrated as his meddling sister tries to get him out of her son's life by getting him a job and setting him up with a lady. Tati plays Hulot much in the way Buster Keaton played his characters, with a cryptic expression that we the viewer can apply all sorts of emotions to. Is he annoyed or is he just baffled? Or is he amused? He quietly observes, and never seems to judge, or at least is too polite to do so openly.

The comedy set pieces are truly masterful. These aren't big pratfalls and stunts. Tati's physical comedy is much smaller in scale and more mundane. He sets up a plethora of motifs and recurring jokes and then builds them through repetition and slight variation, and they get funnier and funnier as they progress. The timing of the gags are some of the most intricate I've ever seen, and not just the comedic timing of the actors, but also of the world around them. It's like watching a symphony of comedy.

And speaking of music, the music and sound effects are just as important as the visuals. Tati does some truly incredible stuff with sound. Each location has a theme, and each recurring joke has its own recurring sound effects to go with it.

This is the first of Tati's scant six films I have seen, but I have a feeling I'll be seeking the rest out in the coming months. I think Tati is going to join the ranks of my favorite filmmakers.

Grab Bag: Children of Men, Topkapi, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Children of Men, by Alfonso Cuaron, 2006

OK, everyone! You can all rest easy. I have finally seen Children of Men. Alfonso Cuaron's dystopian masterpiece about a man (Clive Owen) who must find a way to save the first child to be born in eighteen years is every bit as breathtaking as I'd hoped. What I love most about Cuaron's work (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, among others) is his complete commitment to the believability of the worlds he creates. Even his most fantastical worlds are always jammed with small details, often down to the most mundane things, which contribute to making the movie feel utterly real. The war scenes in Children of Men almost feel like a documentary. As the first movie ever to make me cry with the line "Pull my finger", what choice do I but to name Children of Men one of the best movies of the last decade?

Topkapi, by Jules Dassin, 1964

This is one of those cool-as-hell 60's heist movies like The Italian Job or The Thomas Crown Affair, where a bunch of likeable crooks get together to steal something very valuable for the thrill of it all. It's funny, really smartly plotted, and the heist itself is a hoot to watch them pull off. Peter Ustinov won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a small time crook brought in as a patsy but later recruited as a full partner in the heist. I'm sure this is one of the movies Steven Soderbergh had in mind when he made Ocean's 11, and there's a wire acrobatics scene that I'm certain inspired the one in Mission: Impossible. Topkapi is definitely worth checking out.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010

I'll stand by those last two movies, but Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is definitely one of those films that falls into the "Not For Everyone" category. Winner of the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or award, Uncle Boonmee is the story of a terminally ill man in the last few days of his life, looking back at his past lives, and spending time with his family, including the ghost of his wife, and his son who went missing years before and has now returned as a human-ape hybrid creature. See? Not for everyone.

I can't say I loved it, but I found it strange and fascinating and inscrutable, and I would be interested in watching it again to see if I could decipher it a little more. The highlight for me was the scene at the dinner table where Boonmee's entire family is reunited for the first time in 19 years. The movie is rich with Thai, (or rather a specific region of Thailand) folklore and spirituality, with strong themes of death, change, and rebirth at the forefront. Again, I must stress, this movie is probably not for everyone, but if you ever wanted to see a romance between a woman and a catfish, this movie might be the one for you.

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All three of these movies are worth your time, but Children of Men is essential viewing. I can't believe it took me six years to get around to it. Don't be like me!

Grab Bag: Peeping Tom, Hopscotch, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Three more movie reviews coming your way. No theme today, just some good old movies that I think are all worth your time. Enjoy!

Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, 1960

Mere months before Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was released here in the states, a somewhat similar film was released in England, to much less acclaim: Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. The story of a cameraman who kills women in order to preserve the look in their eyes at the moment of their death, Peeping Tom is a bit edgier than Psycho, focusing less on the Hollywood thrills and twists and turns that Hitchcock preferred and instead takes a more subdued, realistic, and well, British approach.

I actually may have liked Peeping Tom better than Psycho, if that's possible. Mark Lewis, the killer character played by Carl Boehm, is a more realistic portrayal of the psychology of a serial killer than Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. He is less charming than Perkins, and is more of the quiet, strange man who lives upstairs. As a child, his psychologist father filmed him at every moment of the day, often intentionally scaring him to record his reaction. There's a very unsettling sexual subtext to the footage and Mark's reaction while watching it. There's a lot of sexual subtext throughout.

Upon release, Peeping Tom tanked, but over the years, the critical reception for it has completely turned around. Now regarded by many as a masterpiece, it was a bit ahead of its time, I think, and people didn't know what to make of it. Anyhow, this movie is a must. Check it out, if you haven't. It would make a perfect double feature with Psycho.

Hopscotch by Ronald Neame, 1980
Whew, look at that poster. That is not a movie I would want to see. Perhaps not the ideal marketing campaign for Hopscotch, but then again, what do I know?

Hopscotch is the story of Miles Kendig (Walter Matthau), an experienced CIA field agent who is punished for no good reason by his superior, and put on a desk job. To get back at them, Kendig runs off, goes into hiding, writes a tell-all book exposing all of his dirty laundry, as well as the CIA's and the KGB's, and threatens to publish.

The movie is a smart, funny, and spirited chase movie, as Kendig leads his CIA superior (Ned Beatty) and replacement (Sam Waterston) on just to mess with them. It's unpredictable, since Kendig keeps his plan under wraps, even to the audience. I like the low tech, analog aspect. Spy movies with crazy technology are cool, but there's something really fun about it all being done the old fashioned way. It's sort of like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in that way, but, you know, funny. Walter Matthau is great here as always.

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Otto Preminger, 1950

This has nothing to do with the Shel Silverstein book. It's a film noir, and a good one, at that.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is about Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews), a hotheaded detective, recently demoted for his violent impulses. When investigating a murder at an underground gambling house, Dixon is sent to question a possible but unlikely suspect, one that he shouldn't have much problem with. Well, Dixon ends up accidentally killing the guy.

He attempts to cover it up, but things only get worse from there, as he takes a liking to his victim's estranged wife and father-in-law, a cab driver prone to exaggerating stories. How far can Dixon carry his guilt? When will the lies pile up too high?

Where the Sidewalk Ends is a satisfying film noir, though in the end, it's a lot less nihilistic than some of its peers. I always wonder when I see a film noir end with anything but the darkest of outcomes if this was a compromise with someone at the studio. Not necessarily, I know, but I bet there are many cases where it is.

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That's all for today. I've got a lot more stuff to review, so I'll try to have three more tomorrow.

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven, in addition to being a rollicking good adventure, holds a place of importance in the landscape of world cinema. Or at least, I think it does. In 1954, with his Seven Samurai, director Akira Kurosawa redefined the samurai movie genre by infusing it with the visual style and values of a John Ford western. Six years later, in 1960, Hollywood would come full circle by remaking a Japanese Western into a Western Western.

The world of cinema was getting increasingly smaller, as international films had an increasing influence on filmmakers of the time. The directors of the French New Wave looked to Hollywood auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock for inspiration. Not long after, the next generation of Hollywood directors, (Coppola, Malick, Scorsese, Lucas, etc.) would look to Kurosawa and the French New Wave. Nowadays, directors draw their influences from around the world and throughout the last century.

Directed by John Sturges, The Magnificent Seven follows the structure of Seven Samurai fairly closely, though in a faster paced, more truncated way. While Seven Samurai is an epic, The Magnificent Seven is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of popcorn entertainment. Sturges clearly has a lot of reverence for Kurosawa, and shows it in his work, with many direct nods or homages to his source material throughout the movie.

The seven in question are led by Yul Brynner, probably cast just as much for his bald head as for his screen presence (the character in the Japanese version shaves his head). He is recruited by a farming village in Mexico to form a posse to help rid them of an army of 40 bandits bent on stealing their crops. Rounding out the posse are such icons of manliness as Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson (the youngest I've ever seen him, still looks 70), and James Coburn.

The movie doesn't try to mimic Seven Samurai entirely. The seven don't all have the same motivations and personalities as their counterparts, for example. Also, the bandits are given more of a presence; rather than just being faceless bad guys, they are led by Eli Wallach.

Two of the samurai are sort of collapsed into one, in the case of Chico, played by Horst Buchholz. He takes both the role of the eager, hotheaded drifter who shoehorns his way into the group, and the young, naive kid learning the ropes who finds love with a peasant girl. I didn't really care for this. Buchholz would have worked fine as the kid, but he wasn't fit to fill the shoes of the great Toshiro Mifune, in what was possibly his most memorable and iconic role. They should have looked at that character as just as important a role as the Yul Brynner character, and found an appropriate actor.

The Magnificent Seven is as enjoyable as a streamlined remake of a longer, better foreign film can be. It's fun to watch so many superstars sharing the screen together. The score by Elmer Bernstein is tremendous and memorable, and is still referenced in Western movie scores. Also, I was glad to hear that Akira Kurosawa was a fan of the movie.

Jane Eyre (1943)

I only have a passing familiarity with the story of Jane Eyre. My wife is a fan of Charlotte Bronte's* novel, though I've never read it myself. I wanted to see the movie version that came out recently, and I heard was pretty good, but I haven't had that chance yet. So that all means that this, Robert Stevenson's 1943 adaptation of the novel, starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, is my first real introduction to Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester.

Jane Eyre is the story of a girl who, after a difficult, loveless youth, finds love in the shape of a stern, grouchy, rich man with a secret. Her journey is full of hardships and heartbreaks, and all of those things that made a good novel in the 19th century.

Our main reason for watching this version of Jane Eyre when we did was to see another movie starring Joan Fontaine, who my wife and I both loved in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. Fontaine makes a pretty great Jane Eyre (or so I'm told by my wife), which is no surprise, since Rebecca is kind of exactly the same story, but with a more modern, suspense thriller vibe. I liked her better in Rebecca, though, especially in the early parts of the movie, when she's all awkward and clumsy and timid.

Orson Welles is Orson Welles, which is great. This was made not long after Citizen Kane. I always kind of wondered if other directors felt weird directing the guy who blew the doors of possibility wide open on the way movies were made. The screenplay was based off a radio production that Welles performed with his theater troup. He makes a pretty believable Mr. Rochester, and is able to find and show us the humanity in such a grouch, allowing the viewer to understand what Jane Eyre might see in this guy.

The director, Robert Stevenson, is actually a very important movie director, though one many of us may not know by name. Starting in the 1950's, he became the Disney studio's go-to guy for their live action kids movies. He directed some true Disney classics, including Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Nutty Professor, The Shaggy Dog, and That Darn Cat. Jane Eyre is made long before any of those movies, and shows that earlier in his career, he could make mature and serious films just as well as he could make whimsical family movies.

Well, there you have it. I finally know what Jane Eyre is all about. Maybe someday I'll read the novel. I do enjoy reading the classics from time to time.

Oh hey, one more thing: Aldous Huxley worked on the script for this. Crazy, right?

*Apologies to die hard Bronte fans, (or Brontesauruses as I have just now decided to call them), I have no idea how to put the two little dots over the E in her name.

A Night in Casablanca

Are there people out there who don't find The Marx Brothers funny? I'm sure there must be, but I just don't understand how. Their brand of comedy is so chaotic and fast paced, blending superb physical humor and witty dialogue, that it's hard to imagine it not working for somebody.

A Night in Casablanca is kind of a spoof of Casablanca, but not really. It isn't copying the story outright, though there are some hints of it. There's a Nazi war criminal in hiding at Casablanca, on the search for hidden Nazi treasure. He has killed the last three manager of the hotel he is staying at, though he has finally met his match with Ronald Kornblow (Groucho Marx), the new manager. Chico plays an opportunistic camel rental owner who takes it upon himself to be Kornblow's bodyguard when he realizes Kornblow is in danger. And of course, Harpo plays the Nazi guy's mute valet, who infuriates him at every turn, seemingly both innocently and intentionally at the same time.

I love that the Marx Brothers could just be transplanted into any setting and there would be a million new opportunities for gags. Here we see Harpo Marx's amazing physical skills in the form of a hilarious sword duel, and Chico's ability to even make the act of piano playing look funny (while actually playing a song, at that!) Groucho does his thing too, usually making snappy jokes at the expense of stuffy, upper class hotel guests and the like. No matter where these guys go, they bring anarchy with them. It's a shame they never did a movie called "A Night on the Moon". Or maybe it isn't.

A Night in Casablanca is actually one of The Marx Brothers' later films, made long after Zeppo Marx left the group. The Marx Brothers are maybe a little past their prime, but they still manage to bring the laughs. Their comedy is timeless.

Bambi

Bambi is another one of those Disney movies that I can't accurately remember if I've ever seen all the way through or not. We had Bambi on VHS when I was a kid, but as hard as I tried, I just couldn't recall any scenes that weren't about Bambi as a fawn. I had the vague memory that he grew up at some point, and of course, I know what happened to his mother. I think a lot of kids might only remember the first portion of the movie, and like I did as a child, lose interest once the young animals grow up.

Bambi is Disney's ode to the circle of life (before The Lion King, I suppose). At the opening of the movie, all the woodland critters are abuzz with the news that the new Prince has been born. They gather around the mother deer and we meet Bambi. We then follow Bambi and his best friend and guide, the rabbit Thumper, as he learns to walk and talk, experiences his first rainstorm, learns the boundaries between nature and Man's World, struggles with mortality, falls in love, and ultimately, has a family of his own.

As a child, I didn't really appreciate Bambi on the level it deserved. It's not really anything like any other Disney film. The closest comparison would probably be Fantasia, Disney's other symphonic ode to nature. I am continually in awe of the way Disney's animators brought life to animals, humanizing them while keeping their behavior recognizable as their species. There are multiple different animation styles utilized throughout Bambi, ranging from the cute, big eyed designs we all know and recognize, to the amazing impressionistic style employed later, during the forest fire. The backgrounds are ridiculously lush. One of the best sequences in the movie is a musical diversion from the main story, the ridiculously earwormy April Showers song, a vignette showing all the wildlife reacting to a rainstorm.

I can see why kids latch onto the early part of the film, and not so much onto the later. It's beautifully done, and I appreciate it now, but there's little to no dialogue at the end, and the characters are no longer relatable to a child. Still, the level of quality maintained by these early Disney features is pretty unbelievable.

For my other reviews of classic Disney movies, follow these links:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Sleeping Beauty

Revenge (Adauchi)

Here's the thing: this is the last samurai movie that I can find on Netflix Instant that I haven't already seen. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need samurai movies to survive!

Tadashi Imai's Adauchi (Revenge, in English) is an effective movie that covers ground well traveled in the samurai genre: You guessed it. Revenge. You know, how revenge only leads to madness and destruction, and the undoing of not only you, but your loved ones, etc. To seek revenge is a hollow endeavor.

Revenge is the story of Shinpachi Ezaki, a young samurai at the very bottom of the military ranks of his clan. When approached and dressed down by a man from another family, higher in the social strata, he stands up for himself, and is challenged to an illegal duel to the death. His brother tries to stop it from going down, but arrives too late. Shinpachi has won the duel.

Shinpachi's family, fearing the consequences his victory will bring, argue with the clan leader that both men broke into a temporary fit of insanity when the duel broke out, and rather than have him executed, Shinpachi is exiled to a monastery.

At the monastery, Shinpachi grows paranoid and unstable, without purpose or direction. His situation only worsens when the younger brother of the man he killed seeks him out for his own revenge, and he kills him too. The only way to peacefully solve this whole ordeal and maintain his own honor and that of both families is for Shinpachi to face the third brother of his rival in a duel and allow him to win.

Wow, hey, revenge is exhausting.

Revenge is a really well done samurai movie, made in a period where, as far as I can tell, every samurai movie was really well done. I have not been let down by a samurai movie from the 50's or 60's yet. I always kind of wondered what the other studios besides Toho were up to at this time. I don't think I've seen many. Most samurai movies that get released in America begin with that Toho Studios logo. I know there were other studios in Japan, and it was nice to see that they were making quality films too during Japan's most creatively fertile cinematic period.

My review probably didn't do it much justice, but the characters in Revenge had a lot of depth and subtlety, and the story was filled with tension. I really liked the lead guy's performance and also the old man who played the monk he befriends. I don't think I ruined too much of the story, even though I went kind of deep into it. I promise you I didn't spoil the ending. Check it out.

I hope Netflix Instant puts out some more samurai stuff before I go into withdrawal and start watching Yojimbo on a permanent loop.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The last time I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was when I was 19, a freshman in college, in an Intro to Film class. It did not end well. I was having difficulty staying awake and would have fallen asleep if it weren't for Snow White's shrill, high pitched singing voice. When it was over and the class discussion began, I tore into it like a dumb teenager with something to prove.

Of course, I was wrong. Revisiting it now at the age of 30, I see now that it really is a landmark cinematic achievement. Every scene is animated with such care and craftsmanship. The amount of detail and humanity expressed in the characters is staggering. It's easy for us to take animated features for granted, but at the time Disney and Co. made Snow White, this was a huge gamble. It was unknown if audiences would be willing or able to emotionally invest in a cartoon. Nowadays, you are chided as inhuman if Up or Toy Story 3 didn't make you cry. This is all because of Snow White.

There were several sequences that struck me. Snow White fleeing into the harsh unfamiliarity of the forest, hysterically visualizing monsters in the trees where there are only gnarled branches and birds. The deep anguish of the scene of the dwarfs mourning her after being poisoned by the apple. The evil queen fleeing the dwarfs' vengeance and ultimately meeting her demise. I mean, holy crap, if falling off a cliff wasn't final enough, they really bring it home by dropping a boulder on top of her and sending a couple of vultures down to eat her remains! Disney uses the heightened world of animation to pull the audience in one direction or another, laughing one moment, crying the next, action and excitement after that.

So, I get it now. Snow White is truly a great film. It's still not my favorite Disney film. I'm still not a fan of that shrill singing voice, but I'm willing to overlook it as an artifact of the 1930's. Of the four classics I've revisited (or visited for the first time) in the last year or so, my favorite is still Sleeping Beauty. Fantasia is pretty incredible too. I plan on getting Bambi before it goes "back in the vault". It was another one I didn't much care for in my stupid days, so I'm curious to see where I stand on it.

Well, I've once again revealed myself as a complete dummy in my youth. If any of you readers have a time machine, could you travel back to that day in Film 101 and give me a swat in the back of the head, courtesy of my future self? Thanks.

Miracle on 34th Street

Every Christmas-celebrating household has their own set of traditional movies and TV specials that they watch over the holidays. The other day, I was treated for the first time to the Christmas classic, George Seaton's original 1947 film, Miracle on 34th Street, which was not one of those movies for my family. I'm sure that young, dumb me would have balked at the black and white and never even gave it a shot. I never even saw It's a Wonderful Life until a few years ago.

Just because I'd never seen it doesn't mean I hadn't absorbed the entire movie into my brain through cultural osmosis. I already knew all of the famous beats in the movie, since, well, I think everyone does. The rest of the movie was basically filling in the gaps.

As we all know, it's the story of Kris Kringle, a man who may or may not be the actual Santa Claus (SPOILER: he totally IS), who gets a job at Macy's and spreads the Christmas cheer to a cynical, capitalistic world. His biggest challenge is to instill a little magic into the life of a serious, skeptical little girl raised by her mother not to believe in Santa. It all comes down to a courtroom trial over the existence of Santa Claus.

It's all very sweet and charming and magical. Edmund Gwenn's Kris Kringle is probably the best Santa Claus the movies have ever provided. He embodies all the patience and kindness that the spirit of Christmas should. The scenes between him and little Natalie Wood are pretty great.

It's hard not to be cynical in the face of the crass commercialization of the modern day Christmas Machine. In fact, I was going to be all snarky about the movie just now, but I totally fought the urge because that's not what Christmas is about. As skeptical as we can often be, Miracle on 34th Street is there to remind us that it doesn't hurt to let a little bit of magic into our lives once a year or so.

Murders in the Zoo

I did a lot of reading over the month of October on movies made before the Hays Code went into effect. Hollywood movies were allowed to be a little more violent, or a little more sexually liberated, until the code was passed in the early 30's, which was filled with all sorts of ridiculous rules and limitations that haunted movies until the late 1960's. You know, how a man and woman weren't allowed to be seen in a bed together? Stuff like that.

Murders in the Zoo was made just before the time these rules started being enforced. It's a relatively minor film, but there is at least one scene that is one of the most messed up I've seen in a movie this old. It is the very first scene of the movie, where we are introduced to our villain, sewing a man's mouth shut and setting him loose in the jungle to fend for himself. The act of sewing is conveniently happening just below the frame, but you do see the results, and you know from the very beginning what this guy is capable of.

This villain is an explorer and zoo owner who is extremely jealous and vengeful when it comes to men making eyes at his wife. Which appears to happen quite a bit. His wife really wants out of this marriage. On the way home from the very expedition that he sewed a guy's mouth shut, another guy falls for her, against her warnings.

When they get back home to the zoo, the murders of the title start happening. The zoo guy has devised a murder weapon that can make the cause of death look like a snakebite. There are several other characters, some destined to be victims, some not. There isn't really a hero, everyone is pretty much a good guy compared to this monster. There's a scientist, and a jittery guy who is afraid of all the animals (rightly so in this movie). The fun of the movie isn't watching the good guys stop the bad guy, it's watching the bad guy bring about his own comeuppance.

Murders in the Zoo is only an hour long, which is actually pretty nice. It's a fun little horror movie that breezes right by. And by fun, I mean uncharacteristically dark and grisly for its time.

Dracula (1931)

Whaaaat? Dracula? But Halloween is over, you might say. And I might say you're right. I planned on watching Dracula in October, but I missed my arbitrary deadline by a week or so. I did, however, finish reading the book before Halloween, and holy crap, it was good.

As those scant few followers of this blog surely know, I've been watching all the Universal monster movies over the course of the year. I've enjoyed the lot of them, especially the James Whale ones, so I went into Tod Browning's Dracula with reasonably high expectations. Sadly, it was not able to live up to them.

The movie opens with Renfield visiting Dracula's castle in Transylvania, right away a huge departure from the novel, where it was Jonathan Harker's duty. Dracula uses his hypnotic powers on Renfield to turn him into his lacky. He comes along on the boat to England, where Dracula abandons him to be committed. While in England, Dracula uses his powers to seduce and transform Lucy Westenra and begin the same process on Mina (now Dr. Seward's daughter), while they try to hunt him down and prevent Mina's transformation.

There are some inspired scenes and moments that were sufficiently creepy. I loved the way the lights would only shine on Bela Lugosi's eyes when he was using his hypnotic power. And there was a great shot of the dead captain of the ship that brings Dracula to London. But despite the expressionistic style and moody atmosphere, I felt the movie suffered from being too cheap. Yes, I know all these Universal movies were made on a shoestring, but some were able to work around it and hide it more creatively than others. This movie has a scene where they're watching a wolf (Dracula in wolf form), and since they couldn't get a wolf, they just stand there and describe to the audience what the wolf is doing. I felt a little cheated.

Bela Lugosi, is of course, magnetic in the role. I can see why he is iconic. I think it's weird the way people paint such a pointy widow's peak on their forehead when they dress as Dracula, because his isn't that pronounced. I also liked Dwight Frye as the lunatic Renfield a lot. He was awesomely over the top and really fun to watch. I don't think the rest of the cast deserves much mention, though. They were for the most part forgettable, if not kind of bad. That's too bad, too, because in the book, Professor Van Helsing is every bit as iconic as Count Dracula and Renfield, and Mina Murray/Harker/Seward is a fantastic character, too.

Maybe it was because I had just read the book and they left out a lot of my favorite parts, I don't know. I thought Dracula was a pretty slow movie and was kind of bored. You know what? Besides Monster Squad, I'm pretty sure this was the first movie I've seen with Dracula in it. I would like to see other adaptations, but I hope some of them are more faithful to Bram Stoker's story. What's the best Dracula movie? Is the Coppola movie worth watching? Keanu Reeves as Harker worries me a bit. Hey, I like Keanu in things, and am willing to defend him, but even I have my limits.

I seem to be rambling, so I guess it's time to go. Final thought? Dracula has its moments, but if given the choice, watch Frankenstein or The Invisible Man instead. Blah!

Rope

One of the things I love most about Alfred Hitchcock is the way he would find ways to challenge himself. Sure, he mostly stayed within the thriller genre, so there was always the relative safety of knowing he's doing what he does best. But Hitchcock would sometimes find ways to intentionally restrict himself as a director, such as limiting his camera's perspective to only that which his protagonist could see, in Rear Window.

Rope is Hitchcock at his most experimental, taking away from his arsenal what is perhaps the most important tool a director has for building suspense: editing. Rope is a story told in (seemingly) a single shot. The limitations of the time, specifically the length of a reel, forced him to hide a cut in there every 10 minutes or so. What does Hitchcock do without editing? He finds a million other ways to increase tension.

The story follows two old prep school chums, Brandon and Phillip, who in the film's opening, have just finished strangling a man (David, a third "chum") to death. Brandon believes they have committed the perfect crime, Phillip is not so sure. All that's left to do is to wait until dark, and take the body out to the country to dispose of it.

It's not going to be that easy, though, is it? Brandon is so cocky and brazen, his head so full of philosophical justifications of his own intellectual superiority, that he can't help but see just how far he can dangle his accomplishment over everybody's heads without them catching on. The best way to do that? Throw a dinner party before they go, the guest list full of associates and loved ones of the victim himself.

Among the guests are their housekeeper, David's girlfriend, his father and aunt, the 4th chum in their Chummery, and Rupert, their old teacher, the one who filled Brandon's head with these philosophical notions (played by Jimmy Stewart). James Stewart is the biggest name in the movie, so you know he has a meaty role.

Brandon takes every chance he possibly can to drop little hints of what he and Phillip did in front of the guests. Phillip is just trying to keep it together. Rupert can see that something suspicious is going on, and is putting the pieces together. It's pretty much one of Hitchcock's "perfect murder" setups, where a character starts off thinking they're secure, and we get to watch as their schemes slowly crumble do to a missed detail here and there.

The fun of the movie is in Hitchcock's inventiveness in finding tension and suspense without edits. The camera swoops all around the apartment, following different conversations as they happen in real time, and panning in on objects, letting the audience in on details that the characters may not be aware of yet. The music is only source music, never soundtrack, and it is provided by the jittery Phillip, nervously fumbling through an off-kilter, lilting piano tune.

The lighting is pretty masterful, as well. Set in a New York high rise, the movie uses a phony backdrop of the New York skyline outside. The movie is set at dusk, though, so with some clever trickery, the backdrop is replaced with darker and darker ones as the sun sets. Things reach a crescendo when the blaring neon lights on the building across the street burst on, washing the room in anxious reds and greens.

Some of the edits in Rope are more subtle than others. Most of the time, Hitchcock just pushes in on the back of an actor's jacket and hides the cut there, where the screen is all black. There's a particularly seamless one early in the film, where he cleverly overlaps the sound of piano and dialogue from the next shot in with the previous.

Rope is more known for its gimmick than its content, but I found the story to be quite entertaining. Jimmy Stewart is always fun to watch, isn't he? Hitchcock was the master of pulling our strings, and there's a subtle psychology to the way he would put together a story, especially within his editing. It's interesting to see that he was just as able to mess around with us without the benefit of his greatest tool as he was with it.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

I would stay the night at a haunted house for $10,000.  The trick is this: Stay in one place for the whole night, and never separate from the group.  Why doesn't anybody ever do this?  Come on, losers!

House on Haunted Hill is a fun little chiller brought to us by the great P.T. Barnum of B-Movies, William Castle.  He added another layer of fun to his movies with his love of twists, gimmicks, and trickery.  Even though these gimmicks were primarily to put butts in seats, there was a real sense of showmanship behind them too. 

The characters in this movie are a lot like the audience of a William Castle movie.  They have been issued a challenge by a millionaire to stay the night in a haunted house.  If they stay all night, they get $10,000, no ifs, ands or buts.    The millionaire is played by Vincent Price, a man who is on his 5th unhappy marriage.  The other four wives have met unfortunate ends. 

One of the guys staying in the house is played by the jittery dude from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.  He's a bit of a drunk, but he knows the history of the house, and he explains to the others (and the audience) that there have been a lot of grisly goings on in there.  Bodies found with missing heads, a giant pit full of acid in the basement.  A question to all you homeowners: If you buy a house with a giant acid pit already installed in the dungeon, do you keep it?  Does that increase the property value? 

So the group gets locked in, and there are some ghost sightings, but to me they don't look like ghosts, they just look like an old lady on wheels.  But still, severed heads appear and disappear.  One particular lady appears to be seeing all these things.  Then somebody turns up dead, hanging from a rope.  Also, I don't know how far ahead Vincent Price planned for this, but he has a bunch of adorable little coffin shaped boxes containing a handgun for each of his guests, just in case.

Anyway, the plot makes little sense, and once the twists start adding up, one after the other, the house of haunted cards comes tumbling down with even a little bit of questioning.  Who is betraying who?  Is the house really haunted or not?  How long did they have that planned?  Not important.  What matters to Castle is that the shocks keep coming.  He surely knew if he kept surprising the audience, the logic of the surprises wouldn't really matter in the long run.

I've read that House on Haunted Hill played in theaters specially rigged to release skeletons upon the audience at certain times in the movie that might call for skeletons.  See?  That sounds like fun, doesn't it?  That's what William Castle's movies were all about.  Fun.  And as ridiculous and hilariously convoluted as House on Haunted Hill was, it was still a lot of fun.