Tonight I went to the Alex Theatre in Glendale to see Hilary Hahn perform with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in a program entitled "Hilary Hahn Plays Bach". She has a new album of the same title coming out next week, consisting of two violin sonatas and the sections from Partita # 1 that she did not cover on her 1997 debut album, which - for the trifecta - was also called "Hilary Hahn Plays Bach". So that makes two albums and one concert with the same title, and it's a good one because while HH can play anything, including uber-difficult pieces like the Schoenberg Concerto or the Bernstein, her specialty is Bach. Listen to her version of the Chaconne from Partita #1, recorded on her debut when she was 18 years old, and become an instant fan. It may still be the most perfect thing she's ever recorded.
The evening program began with a 15 minute piece played by about a dozen members of the chamber orchestra, conducted with flair by a young woman from New Zealand named Gemma New. Her name was appropriate because the piece was brand new, composed by LACO's artist-in-residence Andrew Norman. It was called "Try", and while I am up for basically anything in classical music, this one might have "Try"ed some of the concertgoers' patience. It was a composition of what you call Modern Classical, and it sounded like Frank Zappa cartoon music, but on steroids, with lots of percussive stops and starts of brief cacophonus flourishes. Really, it sounded like fifteen minutes worth of musical sound effects, though to be fair there were snippets of melody. The piece would have worked well as a soundtrack for a Buster Keaton film, and it was technically challenging, no doubt. You would have to have one hell of a group of musicians to pull it off, but it may be fair to ask the question, "Would you want to"? The piece did end with a very nice and solemn sequence of solo piano notes, playing a descending and beautiful melody. Composer Norman has talent, but except for the elegiac ending, his piece "Try" was a bit trying and just plain weird.
Then came Hilary's featured segment of the concert. She played two JSB violin concerti, the first being BMV 1043 for two violins. The other was played by LACO concertmaster Margaret Batjer, who held her own trading "riffs" with Hilary, though this is a whole different ballgame than twin rock guitars. Bach is like clockwork, but with the musical affektenlahre that we talked about in August. It's on another level from any other music, really, which is why Bach is considered by many to be the greatest composer of all time. He wrote in the early 18th century but his music sounds like the future. The second concerto was BMV 1042, which Hilary played alone with the orchestra. Both pieces are ones you would recognise, even if you don't listen to classical music. You cannot help but have heard the melodies in your lifetime.
I had not heard the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra before tonight, and really I don't think I've ever been to a full chamber music concert before (though I've seen a piece played here and there, mostly at CSUN I think). But anyway, man they are good, which is what you would expect nowdays and especially in a big city. The chamber orchestra has a more compact sound than the big, sweeping Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has 80 pieces and sometimes more. They have a smooth blanket of sound with a full range of dynamics, like you are riding waves in the ocean. Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra is smaller and punchier but no less proficient. Chamber music takes you back to the Baroque period; you feel as if you are listening in some King's palace. Bach transports you to the time in which the music was first heard. Hilary's playing is never less than perfect. I'm sure that some classical music critics, who like some movie critics utilize Thesaurus jargon that is intended to serve the twofold purpose of making his reviews seem brilliant to his peers, and beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, could find something to nit-pick, but really anyone doing so would be left in the cold. Hil is tops, the best violinist in a hundred years.
The orchestra finished with another new "modern" piece, almost as weird as "Try", and then finished up with a high energy half hour of Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony #4, written in 1833. Again, you would know the melody to this one, and like Bach, Mendelssohn was a musical genius.
The Alex Theatre is well known in Glendale, and has the same type of reputation as old Los Angeles theatres like The Orpheum or The Wiltern. It has great sound. The sightlines are good. My seat was in the mezzanine, third row so I was close.
The concert was awesome, the "getting there" part less so. The freeway wasn't too bad, but downtown Glendale is jam packed with traffic and the parking situation is horrible, one of the worst I've experienced. I don't think I would go back to the Alex Theatre for that reason, unless Hilary Hahn was playing Bach.
Then I would go for sure.
See you in the morn in church. Good singing will be expected. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Saturday, September 29, 2018
"Comrade X" with Hedy Lamarr + Kavanaugh Is Toast
Tonight I watched a classic farce in the best Hollywood tradition of "To Be Or Not To Be", which we saw and reviewed recently. In that movie, the Nazis were the target of the humor, this time it was the Communist system in the Soviet Union. The leaders of both regimes in both movies were portrayed as bumbling, albeit murderous, fools : pompous to the hilt but easily taken in by wise-cracking Americans. The truth is a lot more brutal of course, but the whole idea of farce comedy as it relates to politics or regimes is to take away the power of dictators and totalitarians by mocking them, and no one did it better than Hollywood in the '30s and '40s.
The title of this evening's film was "Comrade X" (1940). I had seen it on the shelf at the Central Library during my trip Downtown two weeks ago. I already had chosen the limit of 4 dvds to check out, but I made a mental note of "X" and placed a hold on it when I got home. I thought it was a thriller, an espionage movie, and it is, in spirit at least, but it's really an out-and-out comedy and I wasn't aware of that when I reserved it. But man, did they knock it out of the park.
Clark Gable stars as an American reporter stationed in Moscow. He lives in a comically shabby hotel with other reporters from other nations. Doors fall off their hinges, beds disappear, anything that can go wrong does. This was a 1940 critique of the Soviet system, very apt in retrospect. In the movie, all such criticism is done in lighthearted fashion, a signature of the farce technique. Trouble first arises when Gable and a self-righteous German reporter (also subject to farcical portrayal) are both suspected of being spies, of being the mysterious "Comrade X", who is sending coded messages about the secretive Soviet system in his newspaper articles, which are subject to censors. Comrade X is bypassing the censors with his codes, but now he has been discovered, except the Russian bosses aren't sure who he is.
One man knows, however, a bumbling slow witted valet who works at the hotel. He is played to perfection by a character actor named Felix Bressart, who has to be seen to be appreciated. The valet seems like a dumbell, but he doubles as the hotel maid and handyman, and he has seen the special "mask" that Comrade X uses to codify his newspaper articles. It is a handkerchief with special rectangles cut out of it to reveal certain words, and it belongs to Clark Gable. Bressart confronts Gable and threatens to turn him over to the Commissar unless Gable will cooperate with him. He doesn't want money, but he does want Clark to rescue his daughter and take her out of Russia and back to America. This is part of the "West Is Best" plot point that is put forth in the amusing dialogue over the course of the film. The Russians have soul and a "logical" system they believe in with every fiber of their being, but we can see first hand that it doesn't work. Gable sees that he has no choice but to help the valet, so he ventures out one night to meet the man's daughter, who drives a streetcar.
She turns out to be Hedy Lamarr, who was considered by many to be the most beautiful actress in the movies. We've seen a lot of famous stars in our reviews here at the blog, handsome men and stunning women. Good looks have almost always been part of the requirement for leading roles. I had not personally seen much of Hedy Lamarr because she was not in too many well known films, and even though I seek out obscure films as well, she never turned up in any of those either. As I now see on IMDB, she only had 35 credits, and many of them were in movies I have not heard of. She was a big star, and also a brilliant inventor (as seen in the recent documentary "Bombshell"), but it seems that in the final analysis she had somewhat of a tragic life, related to her own reaction to being beheld as beautiful. She felt her looks were also her curse, and this is true because as a young starlet she bought into the idea of celebrity.
But in "Comrade X", she tears it up in every way. She enters the movie at about the 30 minute mark and from then on, we are in full Soviet comedic mode. Lamarr dominates as a true believer in the system. She loves Russia, loves Communism, and even loves her name, "Theodor", given to her by her goofy father (the valet) so that she would be able to get a decent job when she came of age, as all good jobs were reserved for men under Communism.
Lamarr plays it straight and also farcical. She talks fast and without humor, advocating for her beloved Russia, but once Gable gets to her we can see there are embers smoldering under the surface. Now she is trading barbs with him, and she even takes charge and as the night progresses, she demands he marry her. Such is the depiction of the self-sure Soviet Woman, equal to men under the System of Comrade Karl Marx. The difference is that Lamarr really likes making out with Gable. That aspect is emphasized. Suddenly, the stereotype of the sexless, purely ideological Soviet Woman is broken, and good old fashioned romance takes over.
Lamarr and Gable are expert farceurs, and the supporting cast provide the foundation that make the whole thing work. I found myself laughing throughout, and even thinking that this is the kind of movie that could have been remade in the 80s as a John Belushi spectacular, only because of the final 20 minutes, in which the story takes a major left turn. Suddenly the lead characters are escaping in tanks, and things get Mel Brooks crazy.
Having seen the film, I have ordered the documentary "Bonbshell", the story of Hedy Lamarr, who also helped to develop a torpedo guidance system for the Navy in WW2. The tale of her contribution is shrouded in apocryphal lore. "She really didn't know electronics", or "she only invented as a hobby".
Very likely, whatever she contributed is classified. She comes across as highly intelligent onscreen. She apparently knew a lot about radio signals, and whatever she helped to invent, it became a standard in the electronics industry. They say that today her invention would be worth 30 billion dollars. Again, who knows exactly how much is true because not enough information is provided in online accounts.
But it is clear that she contributed something very important to the military in WW2, and that her contribution has had a lasting effect on electronics and computers to this day.
In the movie, though, she's just plain funny and fun. A perfect match to fluster the self-assured but comical Clark Gable, who was a very talented comedian himself.
Two very big Thumbs Up for "Comrade X", a farce as only MGM could do 'em. ////
In other news, it looks like there is still hope for denying Kavanaugh his self-entitled post on the Supreme Court, thanks to those ladies who confronted Senator Jeff Flake in the elevator. Flake did the right thing in calling for an FBI investigation, and now that belligerent jerk really will be toast.
Trump will be gone before too much longer, just as long as we all do the right thing and reject his persona and everything he is projecting at us. And when he goes down, he will go down in flames, and it will be the greatest day in recent American history.
Stay strong. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The title of this evening's film was "Comrade X" (1940). I had seen it on the shelf at the Central Library during my trip Downtown two weeks ago. I already had chosen the limit of 4 dvds to check out, but I made a mental note of "X" and placed a hold on it when I got home. I thought it was a thriller, an espionage movie, and it is, in spirit at least, but it's really an out-and-out comedy and I wasn't aware of that when I reserved it. But man, did they knock it out of the park.
Clark Gable stars as an American reporter stationed in Moscow. He lives in a comically shabby hotel with other reporters from other nations. Doors fall off their hinges, beds disappear, anything that can go wrong does. This was a 1940 critique of the Soviet system, very apt in retrospect. In the movie, all such criticism is done in lighthearted fashion, a signature of the farce technique. Trouble first arises when Gable and a self-righteous German reporter (also subject to farcical portrayal) are both suspected of being spies, of being the mysterious "Comrade X", who is sending coded messages about the secretive Soviet system in his newspaper articles, which are subject to censors. Comrade X is bypassing the censors with his codes, but now he has been discovered, except the Russian bosses aren't sure who he is.
One man knows, however, a bumbling slow witted valet who works at the hotel. He is played to perfection by a character actor named Felix Bressart, who has to be seen to be appreciated. The valet seems like a dumbell, but he doubles as the hotel maid and handyman, and he has seen the special "mask" that Comrade X uses to codify his newspaper articles. It is a handkerchief with special rectangles cut out of it to reveal certain words, and it belongs to Clark Gable. Bressart confronts Gable and threatens to turn him over to the Commissar unless Gable will cooperate with him. He doesn't want money, but he does want Clark to rescue his daughter and take her out of Russia and back to America. This is part of the "West Is Best" plot point that is put forth in the amusing dialogue over the course of the film. The Russians have soul and a "logical" system they believe in with every fiber of their being, but we can see first hand that it doesn't work. Gable sees that he has no choice but to help the valet, so he ventures out one night to meet the man's daughter, who drives a streetcar.
She turns out to be Hedy Lamarr, who was considered by many to be the most beautiful actress in the movies. We've seen a lot of famous stars in our reviews here at the blog, handsome men and stunning women. Good looks have almost always been part of the requirement for leading roles. I had not personally seen much of Hedy Lamarr because she was not in too many well known films, and even though I seek out obscure films as well, she never turned up in any of those either. As I now see on IMDB, she only had 35 credits, and many of them were in movies I have not heard of. She was a big star, and also a brilliant inventor (as seen in the recent documentary "Bombshell"), but it seems that in the final analysis she had somewhat of a tragic life, related to her own reaction to being beheld as beautiful. She felt her looks were also her curse, and this is true because as a young starlet she bought into the idea of celebrity.
But in "Comrade X", she tears it up in every way. She enters the movie at about the 30 minute mark and from then on, we are in full Soviet comedic mode. Lamarr dominates as a true believer in the system. She loves Russia, loves Communism, and even loves her name, "Theodor", given to her by her goofy father (the valet) so that she would be able to get a decent job when she came of age, as all good jobs were reserved for men under Communism.
Lamarr plays it straight and also farcical. She talks fast and without humor, advocating for her beloved Russia, but once Gable gets to her we can see there are embers smoldering under the surface. Now she is trading barbs with him, and she even takes charge and as the night progresses, she demands he marry her. Such is the depiction of the self-sure Soviet Woman, equal to men under the System of Comrade Karl Marx. The difference is that Lamarr really likes making out with Gable. That aspect is emphasized. Suddenly, the stereotype of the sexless, purely ideological Soviet Woman is broken, and good old fashioned romance takes over.
Lamarr and Gable are expert farceurs, and the supporting cast provide the foundation that make the whole thing work. I found myself laughing throughout, and even thinking that this is the kind of movie that could have been remade in the 80s as a John Belushi spectacular, only because of the final 20 minutes, in which the story takes a major left turn. Suddenly the lead characters are escaping in tanks, and things get Mel Brooks crazy.
Having seen the film, I have ordered the documentary "Bonbshell", the story of Hedy Lamarr, who also helped to develop a torpedo guidance system for the Navy in WW2. The tale of her contribution is shrouded in apocryphal lore. "She really didn't know electronics", or "she only invented as a hobby".
Very likely, whatever she contributed is classified. She comes across as highly intelligent onscreen. She apparently knew a lot about radio signals, and whatever she helped to invent, it became a standard in the electronics industry. They say that today her invention would be worth 30 billion dollars. Again, who knows exactly how much is true because not enough information is provided in online accounts.
But it is clear that she contributed something very important to the military in WW2, and that her contribution has had a lasting effect on electronics and computers to this day.
In the movie, though, she's just plain funny and fun. A perfect match to fluster the self-assured but comical Clark Gable, who was a very talented comedian himself.
Two very big Thumbs Up for "Comrade X", a farce as only MGM could do 'em. ////
In other news, it looks like there is still hope for denying Kavanaugh his self-entitled post on the Supreme Court, thanks to those ladies who confronted Senator Jeff Flake in the elevator. Flake did the right thing in calling for an FBI investigation, and now that belligerent jerk really will be toast.
Trump will be gone before too much longer, just as long as we all do the right thing and reject his persona and everything he is projecting at us. And when he goes down, he will go down in flames, and it will be the greatest day in recent American history.
Stay strong. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, September 28, 2018
Kavanaugh Is Pure Scum And So Are The Senators Who Support Him + "Street Of Shame" by Mizoguchi
I am gonna try to resist the urge to go on a tirade, but we all saw the same thing today, so what did you think? I am disgusted of course. I think this guy is a loudmouth punk; pure scum. I don't care if he coaches his daughters' basketball team or whatever else. He's an a-hole of the first order. Yesterday I called him a liar, and he is that - in spades - but he's also far worse. As you saw, he has a belligerent temperament, often a characteristic of an abusive drunk, as demonstrated when he sarcastically asked the female Senator if she ever blacked-out on alcohol.
We talked about body language last night. What did you think of all the tongue pushes he made into his cheek? It was similar to when a person blinks rapidly when they are obfuscating. This guy lies through his teeth; he has Senators like Lindsey Graham - pure rotten scum - who back him up even though they know for certain he is lying.
Even though they know for certain he is lying.
Because though Lindsey Graham may be a rotten politician, he isn't stupid. None of those Republican Senators are stupid, and they know exactly what they are doing. They are gonna put this bastard on the court, no matter what kind of guy he is, because he is 1000% on their team, as evidenced by the preamble he gave in which he outed his partisanship by blaming his troubles on, among other things, "revenge of the Clintons".
Hey ladies and gentlemen, should we have a Supreme Court Judge who shouts and blames and loses his formidable temper, who won't answer questions about an FBI investigation, who clearly has a history of alcohol abuse?
I will end my tirade here, but I have one final thing to say. Brett Kavanaugh went to Georgetown Prep and has been a Catholic all his life. Despite the fact that the horrible pedophile scandals and crimes of certain Priests and the resultant coverup by the Catholic hierarchy at the turn of the millenium destroyed the image of the Church in many people's eyes, I have a lot of respect for Catholicism even though I am not a member of the Catholic Church. My Mom was, however, and over the years I have studied the works, positions and foundations of the church throughout it's near 2000 year history, and the good works outweigh the misdeeds by an enormous margin. And it's not just that, because the church is a body, founded in the beginning by the Disciples when it was still One Body, united with the Eastern Orthodox Church. The church was and is a body, based on the teachings and instructions of Christ. The scandals that have plagued it recently, that have destroyed lives, have been instigated and committed by individuals. Individual priests, and the bishops who engaged in the coverup. Not the Church itself, which is made up of millions of worldwide members of good faith.
So I just wanted to clear that up, because Brett Kavanaugh today declared his faith, which under ordinary circumstances would be a wonderful thing. But then he swore, not just to the Senators and to our country, but also to God, that he did not commit these crimes.
He is a lifelong Catholic, and he swore, on worldwide television, he swore before God that he is innocent.
Man, that is some serious business to do that, to declare your faith in Christ and then to swear to Him that you are telling the truth, that you are innocent of the accusations against you.
That is not a situation in which you should be lying.
So what do you think? Should we put this bad tempered man on the Supreme Court, to decide cases of the highest importance? And what are we to do with these unrepentant Republican politicians who support him?
I know what I think, but I wanna know what you think. And please say a prayer for the United States of America if you are so inclined, and even if you are not religious, because we need all the help we can get. That's all I have to say on the subject for tonight. /////
I watched another Mizoguchi film this evening, in my continuing but informal Cinematheque At The Tiny Apartment. Tonight's movie was called "Street Of Shame" (1956), and was the director's final picture. His themes were often about women in distress, and many times he turned to stories of geishas or prostitutes to convey his message about the subjugation of women in Japan. "Street Of Shame" is in the same vein as his earlier film "Sisters Of The Gion" in that it is a story of the lives of prostitutes working in a brothel in Tokyo in the aftermath of WW2, when the country was devastated and it's economy in a shambles. In "Sisters of The Gion", the story was about Geishas, and in my review I had pondered the difference between geishas and prostitutes. Geishas, as far as I can see, are more like "paid" or "substitute" wives, and prostitutes are as you would think. But really, as Mizoguchi depicts, there is little difference in the end result.
The prostitute is under no illusions, however. In this group, they are all in it to make money so that they can get out. They support each other to an extent, though the older ones resent the young ones, and the brothel owner and his wife tell the women that prostitution is their only hope for support, because the government doesn't care about them. He buys them lavish dinners, loans them money and tells them that they'd be on the street if not for him and his wife. The owners are not bad people, they treat the women as family, but they want to keep them as prostitutes if possible.
Some of the women want to break out. One has a son she wants to live with, but he is ashamed of her. Another plans to get married, but when she does it falls apart because the man didn't respect her as a person. Only the youngest and most popular girl is successful in getting away, because she has the most customers. Therefore, she is able to save money and even swindle enough in loans from wealthy johns to finally leave the whole ugly enterprise behind. At the end of the film she has bought up a clothing and fabric shop next door, with her savings, and has set an example for the other women, an example of escape and independence.
The ending of the film suggests otherwise, not for the successful young woman but for the future of her former profession. I'll not describe it, but I am discovering that Kenji Mizoguchi is a director on the same level as Ozu. Mizoguchi tackles his topics in a more open fashion, head on and with less dramatic style and more blunt force, as if you were watching reality, but he is every bit as great as the legendary and poetic Ozu, who told his tales with understated flair.
Like all of the Mizoguchi films we have seen so far, I give "Street Of Shame" my highest recommendation and urge you to see it. Take a chance and watch some foreign films, watch older movies instead of just going to see the latest flick that everyone is talking about.
I can promise you will be rewarded, if you are a person who likes to think about things, and who appreciates great art.
Two Huge Thumbs Up. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
We talked about body language last night. What did you think of all the tongue pushes he made into his cheek? It was similar to when a person blinks rapidly when they are obfuscating. This guy lies through his teeth; he has Senators like Lindsey Graham - pure rotten scum - who back him up even though they know for certain he is lying.
Even though they know for certain he is lying.
Because though Lindsey Graham may be a rotten politician, he isn't stupid. None of those Republican Senators are stupid, and they know exactly what they are doing. They are gonna put this bastard on the court, no matter what kind of guy he is, because he is 1000% on their team, as evidenced by the preamble he gave in which he outed his partisanship by blaming his troubles on, among other things, "revenge of the Clintons".
Hey ladies and gentlemen, should we have a Supreme Court Judge who shouts and blames and loses his formidable temper, who won't answer questions about an FBI investigation, who clearly has a history of alcohol abuse?
I will end my tirade here, but I have one final thing to say. Brett Kavanaugh went to Georgetown Prep and has been a Catholic all his life. Despite the fact that the horrible pedophile scandals and crimes of certain Priests and the resultant coverup by the Catholic hierarchy at the turn of the millenium destroyed the image of the Church in many people's eyes, I have a lot of respect for Catholicism even though I am not a member of the Catholic Church. My Mom was, however, and over the years I have studied the works, positions and foundations of the church throughout it's near 2000 year history, and the good works outweigh the misdeeds by an enormous margin. And it's not just that, because the church is a body, founded in the beginning by the Disciples when it was still One Body, united with the Eastern Orthodox Church. The church was and is a body, based on the teachings and instructions of Christ. The scandals that have plagued it recently, that have destroyed lives, have been instigated and committed by individuals. Individual priests, and the bishops who engaged in the coverup. Not the Church itself, which is made up of millions of worldwide members of good faith.
So I just wanted to clear that up, because Brett Kavanaugh today declared his faith, which under ordinary circumstances would be a wonderful thing. But then he swore, not just to the Senators and to our country, but also to God, that he did not commit these crimes.
He is a lifelong Catholic, and he swore, on worldwide television, he swore before God that he is innocent.
Man, that is some serious business to do that, to declare your faith in Christ and then to swear to Him that you are telling the truth, that you are innocent of the accusations against you.
That is not a situation in which you should be lying.
So what do you think? Should we put this bad tempered man on the Supreme Court, to decide cases of the highest importance? And what are we to do with these unrepentant Republican politicians who support him?
I know what I think, but I wanna know what you think. And please say a prayer for the United States of America if you are so inclined, and even if you are not religious, because we need all the help we can get. That's all I have to say on the subject for tonight. /////
I watched another Mizoguchi film this evening, in my continuing but informal Cinematheque At The Tiny Apartment. Tonight's movie was called "Street Of Shame" (1956), and was the director's final picture. His themes were often about women in distress, and many times he turned to stories of geishas or prostitutes to convey his message about the subjugation of women in Japan. "Street Of Shame" is in the same vein as his earlier film "Sisters Of The Gion" in that it is a story of the lives of prostitutes working in a brothel in Tokyo in the aftermath of WW2, when the country was devastated and it's economy in a shambles. In "Sisters of The Gion", the story was about Geishas, and in my review I had pondered the difference between geishas and prostitutes. Geishas, as far as I can see, are more like "paid" or "substitute" wives, and prostitutes are as you would think. But really, as Mizoguchi depicts, there is little difference in the end result.
The prostitute is under no illusions, however. In this group, they are all in it to make money so that they can get out. They support each other to an extent, though the older ones resent the young ones, and the brothel owner and his wife tell the women that prostitution is their only hope for support, because the government doesn't care about them. He buys them lavish dinners, loans them money and tells them that they'd be on the street if not for him and his wife. The owners are not bad people, they treat the women as family, but they want to keep them as prostitutes if possible.
Some of the women want to break out. One has a son she wants to live with, but he is ashamed of her. Another plans to get married, but when she does it falls apart because the man didn't respect her as a person. Only the youngest and most popular girl is successful in getting away, because she has the most customers. Therefore, she is able to save money and even swindle enough in loans from wealthy johns to finally leave the whole ugly enterprise behind. At the end of the film she has bought up a clothing and fabric shop next door, with her savings, and has set an example for the other women, an example of escape and independence.
The ending of the film suggests otherwise, not for the successful young woman but for the future of her former profession. I'll not describe it, but I am discovering that Kenji Mizoguchi is a director on the same level as Ozu. Mizoguchi tackles his topics in a more open fashion, head on and with less dramatic style and more blunt force, as if you were watching reality, but he is every bit as great as the legendary and poetic Ozu, who told his tales with understated flair.
Like all of the Mizoguchi films we have seen so far, I give "Street Of Shame" my highest recommendation and urge you to see it. Take a chance and watch some foreign films, watch older movies instead of just going to see the latest flick that everyone is talking about.
I can promise you will be rewarded, if you are a person who likes to think about things, and who appreciates great art.
Two Huge Thumbs Up. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, September 27, 2018
"Man In The Saddle" + Westerns In General + Kavanaugh's Voice
Tonight we were back up at the Alabama Hills for "Man In The Saddle" (1951) with Randolph Scott. I am trusting you to do an honorary "Blazing Saddles" Randolph Scott Chorus, so I won't instruct or double check you. I know you've got it covered. :)
I've been watching a boatload of Westerns lately and most of 'em have been pretty good. A few were even great, for B-Movies, and as we have discussed, there are many "B" grade films of all genres that surpass major A-List releases in quality. Usually you'd be able to count on Randolph Scott every time down the pike, but I suppose no actor has a perfect track record. "Man In The Saddle" isn't horrible, just a bit of a misfire for Scott. It has the feel of "going through the motions", and though the cast is competent enough, the end result is tossed off, so to speak, as if everyone wanted to finish the movie and go home, but being professionals, they wanted to make everything presentable.
That's about what you have here, a presentable Western in gorgeous Technicolor, with interiors (and the exterior Western Town set) shot at the Columbia Pictures ranch out in Burbank. If you watch enough B-Westerns you will see the same buildings from the same set used again and again, just with different signs in front of the various stores and offices. You've gotta figure that motion pictures were still a developing commodity in 1951, the sound era was only 22 years old at that point, and though the technical capabilities of movies had improved by leaps and bounds, the subject matter still relied on the tried and true, and Westerns were a huge part of the financial success of Hollywood from Day One.
So, they made a ton of Westerns. There is even a major thoroughfare in Hollywood called "Western Avenue", one of the main streets in town. I didn't always love 'em. When I was a little kid I loved Big Spectacle movies like "The Sound Of Music" or "Dr. Doolittle" or "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", or of course "Mary Poppins" (and I am willing to give the remake a chance, since you asked).
I didn't become a huge fan of Westerns until I was well into adulthood, maybe in my late 30s or thereabouts, but once I got a feel for them I was hooked. When you watch a Western, it's more than just a movie because you are living in that period, with that ethos. There was no modern technology, but the Gun Fascination was just as bad as it is today. But in Westerns, the Good Guys always win, and I guess that's why I really came to be a big fan. And also because, when there is a romance, it always ends up happily ever after. So there is a format to Westerns for sure, involving several classic dramatic scenarios, but the emphasis is on the positive, and good always winning out over evil.
Movie Stars always figured in the success of failure of a Western, and you could always count on actors like Joel McCrea or George Montgomery or even John Freakin' Wayne, though he often overtook the movies he was in by sheer force of personality. But he made a bunch of good ones. Randolph Scott, however, was the Go To Guy. He was Mr. Western Movie Star and nine times out of ten he gave you a picture that was exciting and didn't lag. When you go to the movies for entertainment, any slowdown in that aim is the mark of a badly directed picture.
Unfortunately, that was the case tonight with "Man In The Saddle". Scott plays a Texas rancher (actually Alabama Hills in the Mojave Desert) who is being slowly squeezed out by a wealthy and obdurate landowner who has also married Scott's woman, a motif that seems to crop up regularly in these plots, so as to encourage emotional rivalry as opposed to fighting over mere business interests, which would be a "dry" premise.
The romantic leads in this case are Joan Leslie and Ellen Drew, beautiful ladies both, but again, none of this is really developed, to the detriment of the story. Maybe the problem is in the editing, I don't know, but if they spent half the time developing the romantic angles as they did on showing the mano-a-mano punch outs, then they might have had a movie here.
They should let me direct, I think. ////
Tomorrow I will be watching the news along with most everyone else. We all know that this is going to be a scripted and phoney-baloney show on the part of the Republicans. I should note that, even as Democrat, when they first nominated this guy Kavanaugh, I thought, "well, he's a far right winger and he's going to be confirmed, but something seems off". It was his voice, when he gave his first "thank you" speech to Trump. His voice had an adenoidal quality to it that sounded forced. Elizabeth, who is a linguistics expert, might understand what I am talking about. I operate almost entirely on intuition in my life, but I am an expert myself on reading people. I can tell you where somebody is coming from, from a mile away, and Kavanaugh struck me as a phoney-baloney (and not just a typical right winger) from the moment he began to speak.
Beyond that, look at his face. Watch his body language. This guy is a f-kin liar, 100%.
So I hope to God these hearings go well tomorrow, because this particular group of Republican Senators and Congresspeople, headed up by Mitch McConnell, is the worst bunch in American history.
They know that because they have backed Donald Trump, that their whole party is about to go down the tubes, and so they are sticking with this total asshole Brett Kavanaugh, who lies and lies, and who was a privileged frat boy who advanced because of his stature in the Georgetown hierarchal scene.
I get really upset, because I dealt with my own experience with Jared Rappaport, a psychopath who lived next door to me, who posed - as all psychopaths do - as a "normal" accomplished person, in his case as a college professor at CSUN. And like Brett Kavanaugh, his bugaboo, his perversion, was sexual and violent.
These kinds of men are pure garbage and evil.
Listen to Brett Kavanaugh's voice as he speaks tomorrow. I will never forget Jared Rappoport's high pitched whine, which sounded just as unnatural.
May the truth come out about both men.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I've been watching a boatload of Westerns lately and most of 'em have been pretty good. A few were even great, for B-Movies, and as we have discussed, there are many "B" grade films of all genres that surpass major A-List releases in quality. Usually you'd be able to count on Randolph Scott every time down the pike, but I suppose no actor has a perfect track record. "Man In The Saddle" isn't horrible, just a bit of a misfire for Scott. It has the feel of "going through the motions", and though the cast is competent enough, the end result is tossed off, so to speak, as if everyone wanted to finish the movie and go home, but being professionals, they wanted to make everything presentable.
That's about what you have here, a presentable Western in gorgeous Technicolor, with interiors (and the exterior Western Town set) shot at the Columbia Pictures ranch out in Burbank. If you watch enough B-Westerns you will see the same buildings from the same set used again and again, just with different signs in front of the various stores and offices. You've gotta figure that motion pictures were still a developing commodity in 1951, the sound era was only 22 years old at that point, and though the technical capabilities of movies had improved by leaps and bounds, the subject matter still relied on the tried and true, and Westerns were a huge part of the financial success of Hollywood from Day One.
So, they made a ton of Westerns. There is even a major thoroughfare in Hollywood called "Western Avenue", one of the main streets in town. I didn't always love 'em. When I was a little kid I loved Big Spectacle movies like "The Sound Of Music" or "Dr. Doolittle" or "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", or of course "Mary Poppins" (and I am willing to give the remake a chance, since you asked).
I didn't become a huge fan of Westerns until I was well into adulthood, maybe in my late 30s or thereabouts, but once I got a feel for them I was hooked. When you watch a Western, it's more than just a movie because you are living in that period, with that ethos. There was no modern technology, but the Gun Fascination was just as bad as it is today. But in Westerns, the Good Guys always win, and I guess that's why I really came to be a big fan. And also because, when there is a romance, it always ends up happily ever after. So there is a format to Westerns for sure, involving several classic dramatic scenarios, but the emphasis is on the positive, and good always winning out over evil.
Movie Stars always figured in the success of failure of a Western, and you could always count on actors like Joel McCrea or George Montgomery or even John Freakin' Wayne, though he often overtook the movies he was in by sheer force of personality. But he made a bunch of good ones. Randolph Scott, however, was the Go To Guy. He was Mr. Western Movie Star and nine times out of ten he gave you a picture that was exciting and didn't lag. When you go to the movies for entertainment, any slowdown in that aim is the mark of a badly directed picture.
Unfortunately, that was the case tonight with "Man In The Saddle". Scott plays a Texas rancher (actually Alabama Hills in the Mojave Desert) who is being slowly squeezed out by a wealthy and obdurate landowner who has also married Scott's woman, a motif that seems to crop up regularly in these plots, so as to encourage emotional rivalry as opposed to fighting over mere business interests, which would be a "dry" premise.
The romantic leads in this case are Joan Leslie and Ellen Drew, beautiful ladies both, but again, none of this is really developed, to the detriment of the story. Maybe the problem is in the editing, I don't know, but if they spent half the time developing the romantic angles as they did on showing the mano-a-mano punch outs, then they might have had a movie here.
They should let me direct, I think. ////
Tomorrow I will be watching the news along with most everyone else. We all know that this is going to be a scripted and phoney-baloney show on the part of the Republicans. I should note that, even as Democrat, when they first nominated this guy Kavanaugh, I thought, "well, he's a far right winger and he's going to be confirmed, but something seems off". It was his voice, when he gave his first "thank you" speech to Trump. His voice had an adenoidal quality to it that sounded forced. Elizabeth, who is a linguistics expert, might understand what I am talking about. I operate almost entirely on intuition in my life, but I am an expert myself on reading people. I can tell you where somebody is coming from, from a mile away, and Kavanaugh struck me as a phoney-baloney (and not just a typical right winger) from the moment he began to speak.
Beyond that, look at his face. Watch his body language. This guy is a f-kin liar, 100%.
So I hope to God these hearings go well tomorrow, because this particular group of Republican Senators and Congresspeople, headed up by Mitch McConnell, is the worst bunch in American history.
They know that because they have backed Donald Trump, that their whole party is about to go down the tubes, and so they are sticking with this total asshole Brett Kavanaugh, who lies and lies, and who was a privileged frat boy who advanced because of his stature in the Georgetown hierarchal scene.
I get really upset, because I dealt with my own experience with Jared Rappaport, a psychopath who lived next door to me, who posed - as all psychopaths do - as a "normal" accomplished person, in his case as a college professor at CSUN. And like Brett Kavanaugh, his bugaboo, his perversion, was sexual and violent.
These kinds of men are pure garbage and evil.
Listen to Brett Kavanaugh's voice as he speaks tomorrow. I will never forget Jared Rappoport's high pitched whine, which sounded just as unnatural.
May the truth come out about both men.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
"Uranium Boom" starring Dennis Morgan and William Talman + Combination Celebrities
Tonight I dove back into my William Castle collection for another Western. I figured that whichever of the seven remaining movies I chose would likely be better than last night's Single Thumber, "Jesse James vs. The Daltons", which didn't even have Jesse James.
"Uranium Boom" (1956) sounded like a good title, so I popped it in the player and sat down to give Castle a second chance as a director of Westerns. Right from the get go, he didn't disappoint.
A car drives down a two lane road lined with eucalyptus trees and turns onto a boulevard that appears to be the center of town. The driver pulls over and parks. The town isn't big, there is only a cafe, a hotel a barbershop and an assessors' office. This is a mining town, we are in the flats of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and........wait a minute.
No we aren't. Lemme rewind to the beginning.....
Okay, I just rewound the dvd. I think about a minute and a half had elapsed, but let's look at it again, because the setting looked familiar. Okay, here again is the car driving down the eucalyptus lined road. Here he is turning and parking. The camera is panning across the intersection as the driver crosses the street, and.......there it is! A brief shot of the old Chatsworth Elementary School sign. We have seen that sign, and this location - complete with the same cafe - in an episode of "Highway Patrol", starring Broderick Crawford. If you were to take his name and play it in a round of "Combination Celebrities", a game I invented many years ago, you would wind up with Matthew Broderick Crawford. But he would make a wimpy star for "Highway Patrol", so forget it.
Just for the record, though, the best Combo Celeb I ever came up with was Bob Dylan McDermot Mulroney. Yeah, I know there's two "T"s for Dylan McDermott and only one in Dermot Mulroney, but I think you can cut me some slack there. Right? The game began in the late 1980s, partially out of an obscuration and resultant blending of two popular television actors, due mainly to corresponding looks and hairstyles but also because of a similarity in names. First there was a guy named Jameson Parker, who co-starred in "Simon And Simon", and then there was his "co-opposite", Parker Stevenson, who didn't have a hit show per se, but was all over the place on network TV at the time. Jameson Parker had good looks, blond blow dried hair in a shag cut, and was of medium stature. Parker Stevenson on the other hand had good looks, brown blow dried hair in the same shag cut, and was of taller stature. They looked the same, in contrasting ways, but the important point was that they shared the name "Parker" as a connector. Thus the first Combination Celebrity was born, circa 1988 : "Jameson Parker Stevenson".
It was no joke, because these two guys were interchangeable, even though one was tall and dark, the other short and blonde. Over the years I occasionally tried to create other Combo Celebs, though none were ever again so indistinguishable from one another as the original. I then went by names alone, and Bob Dylan McDermot Mulroney was the largest element I was able to complete, as long as you are willing to spot me that extra "T" we talked about earlier. Anyhow, try to do some Combination Celebrities if you have the time, because it could be important in the future.
And now back to "Uranium Boom".
As the driver steps onto the sidewalk, the camera finishes it's pan and we see another brief shot of a street sign in the background. Press "pause"! Now get up close to the screen and look closely to make sure. Yep, it says "Devonshire St". We are not in Colorado but in Chatsworth, California, at the intersection of Devonshire and Topanga Canyon, just a couple hundred yards from where the entrance to Chatsworth Park is now located. The elementary school sign is a marker, because though the frame is now slightly different, it still looks basically the same and is set in it's original angle. And Devonshire St., now a major business and residential thoroughfare, was once a country road lined with eucalyptus trees. Man, I love to see how things looked in the old days, so in "Uranium Boom" William Castle has me hooked from the opening scene. :)
This time we have recognizable actors, too. Dennis Morgan and William Talman ("The Hitch Hiker"!) co-star as two hopefuls who have arrived at the uranium boomtown simultaneously. Hotel rooms are in short supply at Devonshire and Topanga, so they fist fight it out to see who gets the one available room, which, as the script would have it, they end up sharing as pals and mining partners.
The movie takes place in the present time of 1956, when the development of atomic energy systems was at a high point. Uranium was the "gold" of the moment. Lots of men set out to stake claims, at least according to the movie. At any rate, the partnership of Morgan and Talman sets out to find a mother lode of yellow dirt. Along the highway they pick up an Indian who swears he knows where the Uranium vein is located. The trio has to fend off other miners to claim it, but they eventually do after some mishaps.
Soon they are all very rich. But something happens while Dennis Morgan (the handsome one) is down at the assessor's office establishing their claim. He meets Talman's girl, the beautiful Patricia Medina, and before you know it he has married her. There goes the mining partnership. Now the men are enemies.
Fast forward a few months and Dennis Morgan is filthy rich, living in an amazing wood and glass rectangular Mid Century Modern with his stolen wife. He now runs all of the mines on the mountainside and is looking to expand.
But soon his karma will kick in, and that is all I will tell you.
At a mere 68 minutes, "Uranium Boom" has all the story that last night's movie lacked. It also has great locations. Besides the central Chatsworth town, you also have a desert mountain campground in Cantil, California doubling as the Rocky Mountains. I had never heard of Cantil, so I Googled it and it is located just north of Edwards Air Force Base, off the 14 Highway. Man, I would love to drive up there and will do so one day.
All in all, a very solid effort from William Castle on the second try. You can only consider it a Western in the modern sense because it takes place in 1956 and has Jeeps instead of horses and uranium instead of gold, but it does have a lot of great desert scenery that looks great in black and white.
Two Thumbs Up this time, with extra special bonus points for using the Devonshire/Topanga location.
Man I wish the Valley was still semi-rural. It hasn't been for about 50 years now, I know, but it sure was awesome when it was. You can still see small pockets of the past if you look hard enough, though, mostly by paying attention to the older trees you notice as you drive around.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
"Uranium Boom" (1956) sounded like a good title, so I popped it in the player and sat down to give Castle a second chance as a director of Westerns. Right from the get go, he didn't disappoint.
A car drives down a two lane road lined with eucalyptus trees and turns onto a boulevard that appears to be the center of town. The driver pulls over and parks. The town isn't big, there is only a cafe, a hotel a barbershop and an assessors' office. This is a mining town, we are in the flats of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and........wait a minute.
No we aren't. Lemme rewind to the beginning.....
Okay, I just rewound the dvd. I think about a minute and a half had elapsed, but let's look at it again, because the setting looked familiar. Okay, here again is the car driving down the eucalyptus lined road. Here he is turning and parking. The camera is panning across the intersection as the driver crosses the street, and.......there it is! A brief shot of the old Chatsworth Elementary School sign. We have seen that sign, and this location - complete with the same cafe - in an episode of "Highway Patrol", starring Broderick Crawford. If you were to take his name and play it in a round of "Combination Celebrities", a game I invented many years ago, you would wind up with Matthew Broderick Crawford. But he would make a wimpy star for "Highway Patrol", so forget it.
Just for the record, though, the best Combo Celeb I ever came up with was Bob Dylan McDermot Mulroney. Yeah, I know there's two "T"s for Dylan McDermott and only one in Dermot Mulroney, but I think you can cut me some slack there. Right? The game began in the late 1980s, partially out of an obscuration and resultant blending of two popular television actors, due mainly to corresponding looks and hairstyles but also because of a similarity in names. First there was a guy named Jameson Parker, who co-starred in "Simon And Simon", and then there was his "co-opposite", Parker Stevenson, who didn't have a hit show per se, but was all over the place on network TV at the time. Jameson Parker had good looks, blond blow dried hair in a shag cut, and was of medium stature. Parker Stevenson on the other hand had good looks, brown blow dried hair in the same shag cut, and was of taller stature. They looked the same, in contrasting ways, but the important point was that they shared the name "Parker" as a connector. Thus the first Combination Celebrity was born, circa 1988 : "Jameson Parker Stevenson".
It was no joke, because these two guys were interchangeable, even though one was tall and dark, the other short and blonde. Over the years I occasionally tried to create other Combo Celebs, though none were ever again so indistinguishable from one another as the original. I then went by names alone, and Bob Dylan McDermot Mulroney was the largest element I was able to complete, as long as you are willing to spot me that extra "T" we talked about earlier. Anyhow, try to do some Combination Celebrities if you have the time, because it could be important in the future.
And now back to "Uranium Boom".
As the driver steps onto the sidewalk, the camera finishes it's pan and we see another brief shot of a street sign in the background. Press "pause"! Now get up close to the screen and look closely to make sure. Yep, it says "Devonshire St". We are not in Colorado but in Chatsworth, California, at the intersection of Devonshire and Topanga Canyon, just a couple hundred yards from where the entrance to Chatsworth Park is now located. The elementary school sign is a marker, because though the frame is now slightly different, it still looks basically the same and is set in it's original angle. And Devonshire St., now a major business and residential thoroughfare, was once a country road lined with eucalyptus trees. Man, I love to see how things looked in the old days, so in "Uranium Boom" William Castle has me hooked from the opening scene. :)
This time we have recognizable actors, too. Dennis Morgan and William Talman ("The Hitch Hiker"!) co-star as two hopefuls who have arrived at the uranium boomtown simultaneously. Hotel rooms are in short supply at Devonshire and Topanga, so they fist fight it out to see who gets the one available room, which, as the script would have it, they end up sharing as pals and mining partners.
The movie takes place in the present time of 1956, when the development of atomic energy systems was at a high point. Uranium was the "gold" of the moment. Lots of men set out to stake claims, at least according to the movie. At any rate, the partnership of Morgan and Talman sets out to find a mother lode of yellow dirt. Along the highway they pick up an Indian who swears he knows where the Uranium vein is located. The trio has to fend off other miners to claim it, but they eventually do after some mishaps.
Soon they are all very rich. But something happens while Dennis Morgan (the handsome one) is down at the assessor's office establishing their claim. He meets Talman's girl, the beautiful Patricia Medina, and before you know it he has married her. There goes the mining partnership. Now the men are enemies.
Fast forward a few months and Dennis Morgan is filthy rich, living in an amazing wood and glass rectangular Mid Century Modern with his stolen wife. He now runs all of the mines on the mountainside and is looking to expand.
But soon his karma will kick in, and that is all I will tell you.
At a mere 68 minutes, "Uranium Boom" has all the story that last night's movie lacked. It also has great locations. Besides the central Chatsworth town, you also have a desert mountain campground in Cantil, California doubling as the Rocky Mountains. I had never heard of Cantil, so I Googled it and it is located just north of Edwards Air Force Base, off the 14 Highway. Man, I would love to drive up there and will do so one day.
All in all, a very solid effort from William Castle on the second try. You can only consider it a Western in the modern sense because it takes place in 1956 and has Jeeps instead of horses and uranium instead of gold, but it does have a lot of great desert scenery that looks great in black and white.
Two Thumbs Up this time, with extra special bonus points for using the Devonshire/Topanga location.
Man I wish the Valley was still semi-rural. It hasn't been for about 50 years now, I know, but it sure was awesome when it was. You can still see small pockets of the past if you look hard enough, though, mostly by paying attention to the older trees you notice as you drive around.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
"Jesse James vs. The Daltons", directed by William Castle
Tonight's movie was called "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" (1954). It was directed by Horrormeister William Castle, who branched out to helm enough Westerns that they were compiled in an 8 Pack dvd set, which I recently acquired from Amazon. Castle, you will remember, was responsible for last week's teenaged cult classic, the proto-slasher flick "I Saw What You Did". I saw what Castle did in that movie, and he did it very well. C'mon, you know you liked that pun....or was it a segue?
Well anyhow (turn off the italics, Ad), Castle was known for his horror movies, but the reviewers at Amazon gave lots of stars to his Western work too, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Gotta keep a healthy supply of Westerns on hand, and the dvd set was only eight bucks. A dollar a movie.
If "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" was any indication, I got just about my money's worth.
I mean, it wasn't that bad, and in fact it wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't that good. I think that Castle did as much as he could with a very thin story, but even so, he must have had an even lower budget than usual because, for instance, he would show The Dalton Gang riding hell bent for leather down a trail and around a bend, and then a few minutes later, in what was supposed to be a different setting, he would have them ride around the same bend, just photographed at another angle. It's like my Dad used to say about the early days of movie making, when a lot of the films were Westerns : "First they'd have all the actors in white hats (i.e. The Good Guys) ride in one direction, and then they'd have the same actors put on black hats (The Bad Guys) and ride in the other direction". Dad's description may have been apocryphal, but he was on to something. When you don't have much of a budget, you've gotta use whatever you can to make your film. Castle, being a total pro, was able to do this pretty well. If nothing else, his movies will entertain you.
Part of the problem here is the title, for two reasons. The first reason is that there is another B movie (or even C or D) called "Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter". Now, I am not sure I wanna know how Frankenstein came to have a daughter in the first place, and I suppose that if she ended up going on a rampage, I'd probably want Jesse James to be the guy to stop her. So I can't argue with the filmmakers there. It's just that......well, with a title like that......well you get the idea. We aren't talking "Citizen Kane". So that's the first reason, that the title of "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" lumps it in with "Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter", even though the latter film was made twelve years later.
The second reason the title is a problem is because it is misleading, or flat out untrue.
Don't wanna spoil the proceedings for you, but Jesse James does not appear in the movie. Instead, we have a young man named "Joe Branch", played by 50's character actor Brett King. Branch is supposed to be Jesse James' son. He believes he is; it's what he was told as a child. History tells that Jesse is dead, shot in the back by Bob Ford, as all Western fans know. But in the movie, Joe Branch, from rumor, believes he is alive. Joe has been outcast his whole life, tormented for being Jesse's son, but he's never been sure if it was true. All he wants to do is find out. To do so, he plans to enlist the notorious Dalton Gang. The Daltons were associated with Jesse James and would know if he was dead or alive. Also, there is a lot of money involved, for another rumor believed by Joe Branch is that Jesse hid a hundred grand in cash, somewhere in the vicinity of Coffeyville, Kansas.
It sounds like a pretty good plot, and it is. It's taken from real life, though some of the details are likely distorted or fictionalised. The main problem is that Brett King in the lead role just seems to be going through the motions. He played short roles as a "heavy" at the time (he was in "The Racket", reviewed a month ago"), but although he is competent here, a leading man he is not. As the movie starts, he rides to the rescue of Barbara Lawrence, who is about to be lynched (!) Trump must have been the Mayor of Coffeyville at the time, but anyway, she has been accused of a murder that was actually a justifiable homicide, probably because Brett Kavanaugh was offscreen somewhere assaulting her.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. I cannot stand these people and I wish they would go away.
But anyhow, "Joe Branch", the supposed son of Jesse James, rescues Barbara Lawrence, a more talented actor than he, and he does so because her father also knew Jesse James. A romance eventually develops, though it is hard to accept because it seems uninspired.
There are train robberies, an authentic period railroad look, a lot of satisfactory Western Movie Set interaction among traditional Western townspeople. Interesting is the fact that this is the first B-Western, and maybe the first B-Movie overall, in which no recognizable stars appear. Barbara Lawrence was a good actress who was in a few really notable films, such as "A Letter To Three Wives", but she is about the only recognisable face in this one, besides the main Dalton, a tall and skinny cowboy actor with a handsome but craggy face who you can IMDB because I am too tired to do so right now.
Other than those two, every actor in the movie was unknown to me. I guess most of the budget went into the Technicolor, which was excellent as always.
As said, not a bad movie at all. And, at 65 minutes, the story was succinct, an attribute we have come to appreciate. In the end, this was a rare case of a thin screenplay in the era of great ones, and a wooden performance by King, in a role he wasn't really suited for.
One single Thumb Up, then. No thumbs down.
Call it Half Good. Watch it when you are running low on Westerns and need a fix until your next Amazon order arrives, or your next hold from The Library.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Well anyhow (turn off the italics, Ad), Castle was known for his horror movies, but the reviewers at Amazon gave lots of stars to his Western work too, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Gotta keep a healthy supply of Westerns on hand, and the dvd set was only eight bucks. A dollar a movie.
If "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" was any indication, I got just about my money's worth.
I mean, it wasn't that bad, and in fact it wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't that good. I think that Castle did as much as he could with a very thin story, but even so, he must have had an even lower budget than usual because, for instance, he would show The Dalton Gang riding hell bent for leather down a trail and around a bend, and then a few minutes later, in what was supposed to be a different setting, he would have them ride around the same bend, just photographed at another angle. It's like my Dad used to say about the early days of movie making, when a lot of the films were Westerns : "First they'd have all the actors in white hats (i.e. The Good Guys) ride in one direction, and then they'd have the same actors put on black hats (The Bad Guys) and ride in the other direction". Dad's description may have been apocryphal, but he was on to something. When you don't have much of a budget, you've gotta use whatever you can to make your film. Castle, being a total pro, was able to do this pretty well. If nothing else, his movies will entertain you.
Part of the problem here is the title, for two reasons. The first reason is that there is another B movie (or even C or D) called "Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter". Now, I am not sure I wanna know how Frankenstein came to have a daughter in the first place, and I suppose that if she ended up going on a rampage, I'd probably want Jesse James to be the guy to stop her. So I can't argue with the filmmakers there. It's just that......well, with a title like that......well you get the idea. We aren't talking "Citizen Kane". So that's the first reason, that the title of "Jesse James vs. The Daltons" lumps it in with "Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Daughter", even though the latter film was made twelve years later.
The second reason the title is a problem is because it is misleading, or flat out untrue.
Don't wanna spoil the proceedings for you, but Jesse James does not appear in the movie. Instead, we have a young man named "Joe Branch", played by 50's character actor Brett King. Branch is supposed to be Jesse James' son. He believes he is; it's what he was told as a child. History tells that Jesse is dead, shot in the back by Bob Ford, as all Western fans know. But in the movie, Joe Branch, from rumor, believes he is alive. Joe has been outcast his whole life, tormented for being Jesse's son, but he's never been sure if it was true. All he wants to do is find out. To do so, he plans to enlist the notorious Dalton Gang. The Daltons were associated with Jesse James and would know if he was dead or alive. Also, there is a lot of money involved, for another rumor believed by Joe Branch is that Jesse hid a hundred grand in cash, somewhere in the vicinity of Coffeyville, Kansas.
It sounds like a pretty good plot, and it is. It's taken from real life, though some of the details are likely distorted or fictionalised. The main problem is that Brett King in the lead role just seems to be going through the motions. He played short roles as a "heavy" at the time (he was in "The Racket", reviewed a month ago"), but although he is competent here, a leading man he is not. As the movie starts, he rides to the rescue of Barbara Lawrence, who is about to be lynched (!) Trump must have been the Mayor of Coffeyville at the time, but anyway, she has been accused of a murder that was actually a justifiable homicide, probably because Brett Kavanaugh was offscreen somewhere assaulting her.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. I cannot stand these people and I wish they would go away.
But anyhow, "Joe Branch", the supposed son of Jesse James, rescues Barbara Lawrence, a more talented actor than he, and he does so because her father also knew Jesse James. A romance eventually develops, though it is hard to accept because it seems uninspired.
There are train robberies, an authentic period railroad look, a lot of satisfactory Western Movie Set interaction among traditional Western townspeople. Interesting is the fact that this is the first B-Western, and maybe the first B-Movie overall, in which no recognizable stars appear. Barbara Lawrence was a good actress who was in a few really notable films, such as "A Letter To Three Wives", but she is about the only recognisable face in this one, besides the main Dalton, a tall and skinny cowboy actor with a handsome but craggy face who you can IMDB because I am too tired to do so right now.
Other than those two, every actor in the movie was unknown to me. I guess most of the budget went into the Technicolor, which was excellent as always.
As said, not a bad movie at all. And, at 65 minutes, the story was succinct, an attribute we have come to appreciate. In the end, this was a rare case of a thin screenplay in the era of great ones, and a wooden performance by King, in a role he wasn't really suited for.
One single Thumb Up, then. No thumbs down.
Call it Half Good. Watch it when you are running low on Westerns and need a fix until your next Amazon order arrives, or your next hold from The Library.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, September 24, 2018
"Ladies In Retirement" : a 5 Star Gothic Thriller starring Ida Lupino + Good Singin'
Tonight's movie was so good that it was one of those rare cases where you are left wondering, "why isn't this movie well-known"? Usually if a movie is great, it has a cult following at the very least, or word of mouth. But I had never even heard of this one until about a week ago, when I did a Library database search for Evelyn Keyes after seeing her in "Johnny O'Clock". Only a few titles came back, but one of them was "Ladies In Retirement" (1941). 'That's a strange title', I thought. But the listing referred to it as a thriller. "Gothic" and "Noir" were hashtagged keywords in the heading. I am always up for an unseen film, as you know. I checked IMDB and the rating was 7.1. So I reserved it and had a copy sent to the Northridge libe. Man, they've got that IMDB rating all wrong. It should be a 10.
The year is 1885, the setting an old mansion in England, way out in the marshes, far from London and disconnected from the local town. The house is owned by a wealthy ex-chorus girl, now in late middle age. Ida Lupino (who we just saw as the director of "The Hitch Hiker" a few days ago at CSUN) stars as a prim young assistant to the woman of the house. A maid also works there (Evelyn Keyes), so Ida Lupino's duties are mostly administrative : keeping books, paying bills, the like. Part of her job is simply to be a companion to the owner, who treats her almost as a daughter.
Lupino has two sisters of her own, who live in a boardinghouse in London. As the movie opens, she has just received a letter from the proprietor of that facility, who states that her sisters have become unmanageable. He requests Lupino to remove them immediately, lest he be forced to relocate them to a state-run asylum.
Lupino's sisters are quite insane, you see. The movie takes place in Victorian England, where such people were often locked away or put up in the family attic. Nowdays we have specific diagnoses for different categories of mental illness or sub-normal intelligence. As for Lupino's sisters, I'd say one is paranoid schizophrenic (Elsa Lanchester) and the other (stage actress Edith Barrett) is just plain daffy and either retarded (an outmoded yet still clinical term), or autistic. Together, Lanchester and Barrett steal the show as the two sisters. Each should have been given an Oscar for their performances.
Okay, so Lupino has two supremely goofy sisters, but she is loyal to them and will not let them be put away by the state. She asks her employer, the Lady of the Mansion, if her sisters might stay there for a few days while she tries to relocate them. She downplays their peculiarities and promises they'll be no trouble. With that assurance, her landlady agrees to take them in.....but only for a few days.
When the sisters arrive, however, their personality tics are blatantly apparent. The landlady is overwhelmed and annoyed, but because she values Ida Lupino, she sticks to her original agreement. Soon, though, the few days are up and she asks Lupino to move the sisters back to London, or anywhere away from her house. But Lupino has made a promise to her sisters, who we see are really very fragile creatures, that she will never send them to an asylum.
"Ladies In Retirement" was originally a Broadway play, and the plot is so good and so tightly woven as to be worthy of Hitchcock, though the setting is too Victorian for Hitch. If you've seen the horror movie "Night Must Fall" starring Robert Montgomery, you'll have an idea of the type of house I am talking about, and also the kinds of English personalities of the era, when a Cockney aspired to have class, despite his or her station.
In the movie, there is a knock at the door. The maid opens it to find a man standing there, young and handsome, nicely dressed. But it is clear that he isn't on the up-and-up. He is a cousin of Ida Lupino, a "Smilin' Jack" who wants to worm his way into the good fortune of her hard work. He has stolen funds from the bank at which he was employed and needs a place to hide out, just until the heat cools off.
As if Miss Lupino didn't have enough problems......
I think I really shouldn't tell you any more, because things are gonna wind up into a coil from this point.
There will be secrets and attempted blackmail. The crazy sisters will influence what is told to whom. Two nuns from a local priory will visit the house at the most inopportune times. And Albert, the dapper, snide cousin, will try to take control of the situation in the house, but he hasn't reckoned with the steely resolve of Ida Lupino, who carries this picture even as the two actresses who play her sisters add most of the spice. Louis Hayward as "Albert" is great, too. He is just enough of a punk to think he's gonna get away with his plan, and he has the cute maid on his side, but........
Just see this movie, if you can find it, because from me it gets 5 Stars and my highest rating. I think it should be ranked right up there with "Rebecca" and psychological thrillers of that nature.
Shot in foggy nighttime black and white, with great, twisted old trees set into the background before the matte painted skies. You can't beat the atmosphere, and the actors take full advantage of it.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, a must see. //////
This morning we had good singing in church. I finished the Bill Clinton/James Patterson book "The President Is Missing". Though the story is different, I still highly recommend it to anyone who was involved in 1989, simply because there are traits and instances of the Real Bill that you will recognize. Also, it's a damn good book, a page turner if ever there was one.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The year is 1885, the setting an old mansion in England, way out in the marshes, far from London and disconnected from the local town. The house is owned by a wealthy ex-chorus girl, now in late middle age. Ida Lupino (who we just saw as the director of "The Hitch Hiker" a few days ago at CSUN) stars as a prim young assistant to the woman of the house. A maid also works there (Evelyn Keyes), so Ida Lupino's duties are mostly administrative : keeping books, paying bills, the like. Part of her job is simply to be a companion to the owner, who treats her almost as a daughter.
Lupino has two sisters of her own, who live in a boardinghouse in London. As the movie opens, she has just received a letter from the proprietor of that facility, who states that her sisters have become unmanageable. He requests Lupino to remove them immediately, lest he be forced to relocate them to a state-run asylum.
Lupino's sisters are quite insane, you see. The movie takes place in Victorian England, where such people were often locked away or put up in the family attic. Nowdays we have specific diagnoses for different categories of mental illness or sub-normal intelligence. As for Lupino's sisters, I'd say one is paranoid schizophrenic (Elsa Lanchester) and the other (stage actress Edith Barrett) is just plain daffy and either retarded (an outmoded yet still clinical term), or autistic. Together, Lanchester and Barrett steal the show as the two sisters. Each should have been given an Oscar for their performances.
Okay, so Lupino has two supremely goofy sisters, but she is loyal to them and will not let them be put away by the state. She asks her employer, the Lady of the Mansion, if her sisters might stay there for a few days while she tries to relocate them. She downplays their peculiarities and promises they'll be no trouble. With that assurance, her landlady agrees to take them in.....but only for a few days.
When the sisters arrive, however, their personality tics are blatantly apparent. The landlady is overwhelmed and annoyed, but because she values Ida Lupino, she sticks to her original agreement. Soon, though, the few days are up and she asks Lupino to move the sisters back to London, or anywhere away from her house. But Lupino has made a promise to her sisters, who we see are really very fragile creatures, that she will never send them to an asylum.
"Ladies In Retirement" was originally a Broadway play, and the plot is so good and so tightly woven as to be worthy of Hitchcock, though the setting is too Victorian for Hitch. If you've seen the horror movie "Night Must Fall" starring Robert Montgomery, you'll have an idea of the type of house I am talking about, and also the kinds of English personalities of the era, when a Cockney aspired to have class, despite his or her station.
In the movie, there is a knock at the door. The maid opens it to find a man standing there, young and handsome, nicely dressed. But it is clear that he isn't on the up-and-up. He is a cousin of Ida Lupino, a "Smilin' Jack" who wants to worm his way into the good fortune of her hard work. He has stolen funds from the bank at which he was employed and needs a place to hide out, just until the heat cools off.
As if Miss Lupino didn't have enough problems......
I think I really shouldn't tell you any more, because things are gonna wind up into a coil from this point.
There will be secrets and attempted blackmail. The crazy sisters will influence what is told to whom. Two nuns from a local priory will visit the house at the most inopportune times. And Albert, the dapper, snide cousin, will try to take control of the situation in the house, but he hasn't reckoned with the steely resolve of Ida Lupino, who carries this picture even as the two actresses who play her sisters add most of the spice. Louis Hayward as "Albert" is great, too. He is just enough of a punk to think he's gonna get away with his plan, and he has the cute maid on his side, but........
Just see this movie, if you can find it, because from me it gets 5 Stars and my highest rating. I think it should be ranked right up there with "Rebecca" and psychological thrillers of that nature.
Shot in foggy nighttime black and white, with great, twisted old trees set into the background before the matte painted skies. You can't beat the atmosphere, and the actors take full advantage of it.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, a must see. //////
This morning we had good singing in church. I finished the Bill Clinton/James Patterson book "The President Is Missing". Though the story is different, I still highly recommend it to anyone who was involved in 1989, simply because there are traits and instances of the Real Bill that you will recognize. Also, it's a damn good book, a page turner if ever there was one.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, September 23, 2018
"Party Girl" starring Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse
I'm back. You know the drill for when I miss a post; no movie generally equals no post nowdays, cause all I do is work otherwise, and I don't wanna just bitch about politics or whine about other stuff, though I don't rule out doing those things on occasion, lol. Anyway, I didn't watch a movie last night but I did tonight : "Party Girl" (1958) starring two of my favorites, Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse. Taylor plays an attorney who works exclusively for brutish mobster Lee J. Cobb, in one of his most loudmouthed and boorish roles, which is saying something. Taylor specializes in gaining the sympathies of a jury, which is why he can secure "not guity" verdicts for even the most heinous of Cobb's henchmen. However, he is quietly ashamed of his work. He only does it because it pays well, he is good at it, and because Lee J. Cobb won't like it if he tries to quit.
Cyd Charisse is a showgirl, a dancer in a Vegas-type revue at a club owned by Cobb. As the movie opens, she has just finished work for the night and along with the other dancers is offered one hundred bucks to attend a party being thrown by Cobb. It is attended by the kind of Crumb Bums you can imagine, hoodlums in pinstripe suits (and I forgot to mention that the setting is Chicago in the 1930s). Cyd doesn't want to go to the party because she knows what the hundred bucks entails, but the other girls tell her not to say no to Cobb. The showgirls know their way around. Most of them can get through the night with just some flirting and conversation with the drunken mobsters, and then they can go home. But Charisse is like Robert Taylor, silently ashamed that she works for Cobb, with enough fortitude to resist the excesses of her employment. There are lines she won't cross.
But she takes the hundred bucks this time, and one of the first persons she meets at the party is Robert Taylor. There is a thug in attendance, a hitman (John Ireland, who we just saw as The Psycho in "I Saw What You Did"), who has the hots for Cyd and puts his paws on her, but as it turns out, this guy is beholden to Taylor, who is about to defend him on a murder charge. Taylor is a gentleman among apes, and he shuts the thug down. Cyd Charisse is grateful, and a relationship begins to form, though it takes time to develop because Robert Taylor is not enamored of showgirls, having previously married one with less than outstanding results. He dislikes the whole scene; the nightclubs, the gladhanding hoodlums, it's all so lowbrow.
Slowly but surely, he comes to see that Charisse wants out too. She clearly has feelings for Taylor but he doesn't trust her judgement because he is also partially disabled. He walks with a cane due to a shattered hip that never healed properly. His first wife, the other showgirl, eventually left him because he was a "cripple" in her eyes (a horrible word that used to be the common description for a disabled person), Taylor feels certain that Charisse will eventually feel the same about him and desert him, too, but here's where the movie takes a detour into medical drama. Taylor is told by his doctor about a new surgical procedure available in Sweden to reconstruct his hip. Suddenly, we are there for ten or fifteen minutes. Taylor is re-Alice Cooperating in the Swedish facility; Cyd Charisse comes to visit, and now we are in Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn territory, with the couple gaily driving the mountain roads, top down, hair in the breeze, falling in love.
The director of "Party Girl" is Nicholas Ray, who like Douglas Sirk knew his way around a melodrama. So all of a sudden you go from Chicago to Sweden, from thugs to a European love affair, but then Ray drags you right back again. In Sweden, Robert Taylor gets a call from Cobb, who is about to be indicted by the Illinois Attorney General.
Shades of Trump once again, and I love it. So do you.
By now, Taylor and Charisse are rock steady and plan to be married eventually, if Taylor's first wife, to whom he is still legally wed, will give him a divorce.
This is another movie in which so much stuff happens in 99 minutes, that you feel as if you are watching an Epic. The last 40 minutes of the film becomes a thickening of the Chicago mobster plot that would not be out of place in "The Godfather", and I think once again - because of the detailed art direction and period photography, and the impending threat of graphic violence, that this movie may have been an influence on filmmakers to come, like Coppola and Scorsese. Lee J. Cobb's disgusting portrayal in particular, and his willingness to use the most cruel measures to threaten Taylor when the going gets rough, was surely a measuring stick for future motion picture Mob leaders. You just know that other actors and directors saw this film and were influenced by it.
The storyline is slightly oddball, turning from Mob politics and a budding romance, to a courtroom drama, and then to the medical/romantic interlude in Sweden. Only Nicholas Ray or Douglas Sirk would go there and do all that in one film, so it's an odd script in that sense. But it works because of Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse. They have the Star Power Charisma to pull it off in spades, in dramatic conflict against the amoral Cobb and his psychopathic sidekick Ireland.
I found "Party Girl" in a search of the name "John Ireland" in the Library database. I was so impressed with his performance in "I Saw What You Did", that I wanted to see more of his work. So I got a special bonus because the movie I found starred Taylor and Charisse. And as an extra perk, you get two Cyd Charisse mega-MGM dance numbers as well, right out of the blue.
It's a weird picture because of the combination of elements, but they all come together in the end to make "Party Girl" a great Mafia Crime story set against a romance in Depression-era Chicago.
Two Thumbs Up, then. See all the Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse movies you can.
A nice hike at Aliso this afternoon, in 96 degree weather.
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Cyd Charisse is a showgirl, a dancer in a Vegas-type revue at a club owned by Cobb. As the movie opens, she has just finished work for the night and along with the other dancers is offered one hundred bucks to attend a party being thrown by Cobb. It is attended by the kind of Crumb Bums you can imagine, hoodlums in pinstripe suits (and I forgot to mention that the setting is Chicago in the 1930s). Cyd doesn't want to go to the party because she knows what the hundred bucks entails, but the other girls tell her not to say no to Cobb. The showgirls know their way around. Most of them can get through the night with just some flirting and conversation with the drunken mobsters, and then they can go home. But Charisse is like Robert Taylor, silently ashamed that she works for Cobb, with enough fortitude to resist the excesses of her employment. There are lines she won't cross.
But she takes the hundred bucks this time, and one of the first persons she meets at the party is Robert Taylor. There is a thug in attendance, a hitman (John Ireland, who we just saw as The Psycho in "I Saw What You Did"), who has the hots for Cyd and puts his paws on her, but as it turns out, this guy is beholden to Taylor, who is about to defend him on a murder charge. Taylor is a gentleman among apes, and he shuts the thug down. Cyd Charisse is grateful, and a relationship begins to form, though it takes time to develop because Robert Taylor is not enamored of showgirls, having previously married one with less than outstanding results. He dislikes the whole scene; the nightclubs, the gladhanding hoodlums, it's all so lowbrow.
Slowly but surely, he comes to see that Charisse wants out too. She clearly has feelings for Taylor but he doesn't trust her judgement because he is also partially disabled. He walks with a cane due to a shattered hip that never healed properly. His first wife, the other showgirl, eventually left him because he was a "cripple" in her eyes (a horrible word that used to be the common description for a disabled person), Taylor feels certain that Charisse will eventually feel the same about him and desert him, too, but here's where the movie takes a detour into medical drama. Taylor is told by his doctor about a new surgical procedure available in Sweden to reconstruct his hip. Suddenly, we are there for ten or fifteen minutes. Taylor is re-Alice Cooperating in the Swedish facility; Cyd Charisse comes to visit, and now we are in Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn territory, with the couple gaily driving the mountain roads, top down, hair in the breeze, falling in love.
The director of "Party Girl" is Nicholas Ray, who like Douglas Sirk knew his way around a melodrama. So all of a sudden you go from Chicago to Sweden, from thugs to a European love affair, but then Ray drags you right back again. In Sweden, Robert Taylor gets a call from Cobb, who is about to be indicted by the Illinois Attorney General.
Shades of Trump once again, and I love it. So do you.
By now, Taylor and Charisse are rock steady and plan to be married eventually, if Taylor's first wife, to whom he is still legally wed, will give him a divorce.
This is another movie in which so much stuff happens in 99 minutes, that you feel as if you are watching an Epic. The last 40 minutes of the film becomes a thickening of the Chicago mobster plot that would not be out of place in "The Godfather", and I think once again - because of the detailed art direction and period photography, and the impending threat of graphic violence, that this movie may have been an influence on filmmakers to come, like Coppola and Scorsese. Lee J. Cobb's disgusting portrayal in particular, and his willingness to use the most cruel measures to threaten Taylor when the going gets rough, was surely a measuring stick for future motion picture Mob leaders. You just know that other actors and directors saw this film and were influenced by it.
The storyline is slightly oddball, turning from Mob politics and a budding romance, to a courtroom drama, and then to the medical/romantic interlude in Sweden. Only Nicholas Ray or Douglas Sirk would go there and do all that in one film, so it's an odd script in that sense. But it works because of Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse. They have the Star Power Charisma to pull it off in spades, in dramatic conflict against the amoral Cobb and his psychopathic sidekick Ireland.
I found "Party Girl" in a search of the name "John Ireland" in the Library database. I was so impressed with his performance in "I Saw What You Did", that I wanted to see more of his work. So I got a special bonus because the movie I found starred Taylor and Charisse. And as an extra perk, you get two Cyd Charisse mega-MGM dance numbers as well, right out of the blue.
It's a weird picture because of the combination of elements, but they all come together in the end to make "Party Girl" a great Mafia Crime story set against a romance in Depression-era Chicago.
Two Thumbs Up, then. See all the Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse movies you can.
A nice hike at Aliso this afternoon, in 96 degree weather.
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, September 21, 2018
Improv + Big Orange And Grey Kitty + "Ugetsu"
Elizabeth, that was a lovely piano improv this afternoon. Very nice chord phrasing, too. You could write a piece around it, and maybe you are doing that anyway. :) I also liked the photo you posted in FB Stories, especially the geometric light patterns on the wall and shelf above the piano. It looks great!
Well, before I tell you about the movie tonight, I have to briefly mention a cat. Not The Black Kitty, the semi-feral stray who's been living at Pearl's since 2010, but another cat I call The Big Orange And Grey Kitty. She lives across the street, but she's never there because she's always here. I think I've mentioned The Lunch Club, which consists of The Black Kitty, The Big Orange And Grey Kitty, and White Paw, a male black cat with - you guessed it - white paws. I don't know where White Paw lives, but he's always here, too, so it doesn't matter. Both he and Big Orange are here at Pearl's all the time, morning noon and night (probably cause I feed 'em, ahem...).
Well anyway, what I wanted to mention is that, for about the last week, Big Orange And Grey has been sitting in the driveway waiting for me when I return to Pearl's after my evening break. And when I drive up, she won't move. So for five nights in a row now, I have had to pull about halfway into the driveway, and then open my driver's side door and say, "C'mon, Kitty, move"! And some nights it has taken more than one command. Finally she gets up and lumbers away, just far enough so that I have a foot or two to spare. It's annoying that she won't budge, but I have also found it humorous and so I had to mention it, just because I have to stop the car, open the door, and tell her to move her Big Orange And Grey self out of the doggone way so I can park. :)
Tonight I watched another film by Kenji Mizoguchi, the fourth in my own personal retrospective at The Tiny Apartment, entitled "Ugetsu" (1953). This one was not from my four-pack of early Mizoguchi movies on the Eclipse label, but instead was from the Libe. Though it was out of chronological order as far as his filmography is concerned, I had to watch it this week because of the Library due date. "Ugetsu" is regarded as one of the director's greatest works, attested to by the 8.2 rating it has garnered at IMDB. I'd seen it once before, about ten years ago before I knew much about Mizoguchi. I think I found it on VHS at another Libe and gave it a shot, and though I had forgotten much of the story, once it got going and the central character appeared, I remembered.
"Ugetsu" takes place in 17th century Japan, in the countryside. A civil war is brewing. Two men live with their wives in shacks near the fighting. One man is a farmer by profession who also owns a kiln. He is a talented potter who is just discovering how much money he can make from his wares. He and his wife have a child, a small boy, and he believes the war will make him rich, that he will be able to sell a lot of crockery to people who need to restock their shelves. The other man and his wife are childless, and he is something of a buffoon, a macho wannabe who fancies himself a Samurai. His wife knows him better, she calls him a fool when he chases after the invading soldiers, seeking to be one of their elite. Both men seek to use the war to enrich themselves. The first man, by money alone. The second man, by his ego. Their wives are an afterthought, though both men promise to return to them once the war is over.
The story is part fable and part fantasy. If I tell you it is part ghost story I hope that will not be a spoiler. I guess it won't if I reveal no more of the plot. From what I have discovered on IMDB and Google, the Ghost Story or legend has an important place in Japanese culture. The Spirit World has a lot to convey to folks on Earth who are tempted by greed or ego or any number of things, and that is the real message of this movie. Mizoguchi has advanced quite a bit as a technical filmmaker from the early works we have seen so far. He has moved on from a stationary camera inside cramped interiors to complex tracking shots and wide outdoor vistas. This is a Japanese film, so 96 minutes feels like two hours, but the reward for your patience is a work of art, a story that veers from war to profiteering, to escape into a new life.......and then into a dreamworld, one in which lessons are learned.
"Ugetsu" is not the quick and easy viewing of early Mizoguchi, which plays like Film Noir, but instead it is his development into a cinematic artist of the highest order. The early movies are like a police report, just the facts, but "Ugetsu" is philosophical, and it takes into account the ill thought out and rationalised material and egotistical desires of men and how those desires fare in the long run, when they run up against genuine affairs of the heart that have been pushed aside for quick gains.
Two Big Thumbs Up, this movie will leave you blown away, with acting of the highest order.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Well, before I tell you about the movie tonight, I have to briefly mention a cat. Not The Black Kitty, the semi-feral stray who's been living at Pearl's since 2010, but another cat I call The Big Orange And Grey Kitty. She lives across the street, but she's never there because she's always here. I think I've mentioned The Lunch Club, which consists of The Black Kitty, The Big Orange And Grey Kitty, and White Paw, a male black cat with - you guessed it - white paws. I don't know where White Paw lives, but he's always here, too, so it doesn't matter. Both he and Big Orange are here at Pearl's all the time, morning noon and night (probably cause I feed 'em, ahem...).
Well anyway, what I wanted to mention is that, for about the last week, Big Orange And Grey has been sitting in the driveway waiting for me when I return to Pearl's after my evening break. And when I drive up, she won't move. So for five nights in a row now, I have had to pull about halfway into the driveway, and then open my driver's side door and say, "C'mon, Kitty, move"! And some nights it has taken more than one command. Finally she gets up and lumbers away, just far enough so that I have a foot or two to spare. It's annoying that she won't budge, but I have also found it humorous and so I had to mention it, just because I have to stop the car, open the door, and tell her to move her Big Orange And Grey self out of the doggone way so I can park. :)
Tonight I watched another film by Kenji Mizoguchi, the fourth in my own personal retrospective at The Tiny Apartment, entitled "Ugetsu" (1953). This one was not from my four-pack of early Mizoguchi movies on the Eclipse label, but instead was from the Libe. Though it was out of chronological order as far as his filmography is concerned, I had to watch it this week because of the Library due date. "Ugetsu" is regarded as one of the director's greatest works, attested to by the 8.2 rating it has garnered at IMDB. I'd seen it once before, about ten years ago before I knew much about Mizoguchi. I think I found it on VHS at another Libe and gave it a shot, and though I had forgotten much of the story, once it got going and the central character appeared, I remembered.
"Ugetsu" takes place in 17th century Japan, in the countryside. A civil war is brewing. Two men live with their wives in shacks near the fighting. One man is a farmer by profession who also owns a kiln. He is a talented potter who is just discovering how much money he can make from his wares. He and his wife have a child, a small boy, and he believes the war will make him rich, that he will be able to sell a lot of crockery to people who need to restock their shelves. The other man and his wife are childless, and he is something of a buffoon, a macho wannabe who fancies himself a Samurai. His wife knows him better, she calls him a fool when he chases after the invading soldiers, seeking to be one of their elite. Both men seek to use the war to enrich themselves. The first man, by money alone. The second man, by his ego. Their wives are an afterthought, though both men promise to return to them once the war is over.
The story is part fable and part fantasy. If I tell you it is part ghost story I hope that will not be a spoiler. I guess it won't if I reveal no more of the plot. From what I have discovered on IMDB and Google, the Ghost Story or legend has an important place in Japanese culture. The Spirit World has a lot to convey to folks on Earth who are tempted by greed or ego or any number of things, and that is the real message of this movie. Mizoguchi has advanced quite a bit as a technical filmmaker from the early works we have seen so far. He has moved on from a stationary camera inside cramped interiors to complex tracking shots and wide outdoor vistas. This is a Japanese film, so 96 minutes feels like two hours, but the reward for your patience is a work of art, a story that veers from war to profiteering, to escape into a new life.......and then into a dreamworld, one in which lessons are learned.
"Ugetsu" is not the quick and easy viewing of early Mizoguchi, which plays like Film Noir, but instead it is his development into a cinematic artist of the highest order. The early movies are like a police report, just the facts, but "Ugetsu" is philosophical, and it takes into account the ill thought out and rationalised material and egotistical desires of men and how those desires fare in the long run, when they run up against genuine affairs of the heart that have been pushed aside for quick gains.
Two Big Thumbs Up, this movie will leave you blown away, with acting of the highest order.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Return To The Armer Theater for "The Hitch Hiker"
Guess what I did tonight? I went back to the Armer Theater at CSUN, for the first time since May, when our last Andrzej Wajda film was screened and the Cinematheque program as hosted by Professor Tim came to an end. All of us "regulars" were pretty upset about that, as I detailed at the time, and I figured that I was more or less done attending. When the new schedule was announced, I didn't see much that interested me, and besides, along with everybody else I thought Professor Tim got a raw deal. I figured "screw the new Cinematheque, I'll just watch my Mizoguchi movies at home".
But tonight they were showing a classic Film Noir called "The Hitch Hiker" (1953), because it was directed by Ida Lupino, a well-known actress from the '40s who redefined herself as one of the first female directors in Hollywood. She went on to have a prolific career as a director, in movies and tv, and because the new Cinematheque retrospective is all about women in film, Lupino's effort was included in the schedule. I knew I had to go see it because I love this movie, I own it on dvd, and I'd never seen it on the big screen.
William Talman stars - and terrifies! - as The Hitch Hiker. It was a defining role for Talman, one of those actors who pops up in various Westerns and crime films of the era. He was also a regular on the tv series "Perry Mason", according to IMDB, and he has a memorable face. In this movie, he created a psycho for the ages, a truly bad guy with his thumb out on the side of the road. He has already done away with several motorists who made the mistake of picking him up, and now comes along another Noir Star, Edmund O'Brien, here in an Everyday Joe role, who is driving down the lonesome highway with his friend Frank Lovejoy. They have told their wives they were going fishing but really they were headed to Mexico to enjoy the....ahem....nightlife.
They stop for Talman because he is standing next to a car with his thumb out and holding a gas can. The car isn't his but they don't know that. All they see is that he seems to be out of gas, and as he is stuck in the middle of nowhere, they agree to give him a ride to the nearest gas station, wherever that may be.
It's a huge mistake on their part, because he is The Hitch Hiker for crying out loud. To be fair, they don't know this. We do, but we can't tell them.
I need to butt in for just a second because something just occurred to me. I think it's time that someone installed a phone system inside theaters where calls could be placed to characters on screen who are in danger. Whataya think? I think it could prevent a hell of a lot of grief........but then....yeah, you're probably right. We wouldn't have much of a movie in most cases. Okay, so forget my in-theater phone idea.
But in "The Hitch Hiker", you really really feel like you want to warn these guys against stopping for William Talman. Especially if you've seen the movie several times, as I have, and you know what they are about to endure. First, he puts the kibosh on their Mexico plans, taking them on a detour instead into the Alabama Hills. He does this because he hears on the car radio that the police are hot on his trail and he needs a hideout, but he also does it because the Alabama Hills are a great movie location for films about desperadoes, and it's probably written in stone in one of the boulders there that you have to use the Hills if you are making this kind of picture. So by forcing his front seat captives to drive there, Talman has killed two birds with one stone.
The location photography is fantastic, as are director Lupino's choice of camera shots. You feel like you are watching from the side of the road, or from a car in another lane. Meanwhile, The Hitch Hiker sits in the back seat of O'Brien's car, directing every action and forcing the two pals into submission.
He constantly listens to the news on the car radio, and when the heat seems to be subsiding, he decides to have the men drive to Mexico after all. From there, he will make his escape deep into the country and disappear.
I'll tell you no more from this point, but as a further recommendation I can tell you something I did not know until tonight, that in 1998 "The Hitch Hiker" was selected for the National Registry of Films, a kind of museum of films selected for preservation based on cultural, historical or aesthetic significance. Only 25 films per year are selected, old or new, so it's quite an honor. Thus my Two Thumbs up has added prestige this time around.
The Cinematheque screenings this semester are being hosted by Professor Frances, who seems to know her stuff and was very friendly this evening. It was she who mentioned the National Registry for "The Hitch Hiker". The turnout for the movie was pretty good, and I saw three of the Regulars who for years attended Professor Tim's retrospectives, as I had since 2009. Most of the Regulars have deserted the ship, as I had planned to do, but I couldn't miss the chance to see this movie in a theater.
I had fun, and I sat in my usual front row seat. I felt like I was representing, for the patrons of the old Cinematheque, and for the new version, and just because I love movies. I don't know how often I'll be back, but the atmosphere was nice and I see another couple of movies on the schedule that seem intriguing. ////
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the Alabama Hills. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But tonight they were showing a classic Film Noir called "The Hitch Hiker" (1953), because it was directed by Ida Lupino, a well-known actress from the '40s who redefined herself as one of the first female directors in Hollywood. She went on to have a prolific career as a director, in movies and tv, and because the new Cinematheque retrospective is all about women in film, Lupino's effort was included in the schedule. I knew I had to go see it because I love this movie, I own it on dvd, and I'd never seen it on the big screen.
William Talman stars - and terrifies! - as The Hitch Hiker. It was a defining role for Talman, one of those actors who pops up in various Westerns and crime films of the era. He was also a regular on the tv series "Perry Mason", according to IMDB, and he has a memorable face. In this movie, he created a psycho for the ages, a truly bad guy with his thumb out on the side of the road. He has already done away with several motorists who made the mistake of picking him up, and now comes along another Noir Star, Edmund O'Brien, here in an Everyday Joe role, who is driving down the lonesome highway with his friend Frank Lovejoy. They have told their wives they were going fishing but really they were headed to Mexico to enjoy the....ahem....nightlife.
They stop for Talman because he is standing next to a car with his thumb out and holding a gas can. The car isn't his but they don't know that. All they see is that he seems to be out of gas, and as he is stuck in the middle of nowhere, they agree to give him a ride to the nearest gas station, wherever that may be.
It's a huge mistake on their part, because he is The Hitch Hiker for crying out loud. To be fair, they don't know this. We do, but we can't tell them.
I need to butt in for just a second because something just occurred to me. I think it's time that someone installed a phone system inside theaters where calls could be placed to characters on screen who are in danger. Whataya think? I think it could prevent a hell of a lot of grief........but then....yeah, you're probably right. We wouldn't have much of a movie in most cases. Okay, so forget my in-theater phone idea.
But in "The Hitch Hiker", you really really feel like you want to warn these guys against stopping for William Talman. Especially if you've seen the movie several times, as I have, and you know what they are about to endure. First, he puts the kibosh on their Mexico plans, taking them on a detour instead into the Alabama Hills. He does this because he hears on the car radio that the police are hot on his trail and he needs a hideout, but he also does it because the Alabama Hills are a great movie location for films about desperadoes, and it's probably written in stone in one of the boulders there that you have to use the Hills if you are making this kind of picture. So by forcing his front seat captives to drive there, Talman has killed two birds with one stone.
The location photography is fantastic, as are director Lupino's choice of camera shots. You feel like you are watching from the side of the road, or from a car in another lane. Meanwhile, The Hitch Hiker sits in the back seat of O'Brien's car, directing every action and forcing the two pals into submission.
He constantly listens to the news on the car radio, and when the heat seems to be subsiding, he decides to have the men drive to Mexico after all. From there, he will make his escape deep into the country and disappear.
I'll tell you no more from this point, but as a further recommendation I can tell you something I did not know until tonight, that in 1998 "The Hitch Hiker" was selected for the National Registry of Films, a kind of museum of films selected for preservation based on cultural, historical or aesthetic significance. Only 25 films per year are selected, old or new, so it's quite an honor. Thus my Two Thumbs up has added prestige this time around.
The Cinematheque screenings this semester are being hosted by Professor Frances, who seems to know her stuff and was very friendly this evening. It was she who mentioned the National Registry for "The Hitch Hiker". The turnout for the movie was pretty good, and I saw three of the Regulars who for years attended Professor Tim's retrospectives, as I had since 2009. Most of the Regulars have deserted the ship, as I had planned to do, but I couldn't miss the chance to see this movie in a theater.
I had fun, and I sat in my usual front row seat. I felt like I was representing, for the patrons of the old Cinematheque, and for the new version, and just because I love movies. I don't know how often I'll be back, but the atmosphere was nice and I see another couple of movies on the schedule that seem intriguing. ////
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the Alabama Hills. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
"I Saw What You Did" (1965)
Tonight's movie was a cult classic from producer/director William Castle, called "I Know What You Did" (1965). Castle was famous in the 1960s for his low budget but effective horror films and westerns. He make some schlock too, like "The Tingler", and he also produced big budget pictures like "Rosemary's Baby", but mostly he worked right down the middle on competent B-Movies like this one.
I have a vague memory of this title from when I was a five year old, and it may have been because my sister saw it. For me, the memory would have been generated because of her reaction to it, and also because of the catchy title, a finger-pointing accusation. If I remember correctly, this movie was heavily advertised toward teenagers and caused quite a splash at the time. In fact, it became a forerunner to the slasher/stalker pictures of the late 1970s through the 1980s, especially ones with provocative titles like "He Knows You're Alone". But even in watching a horror classic like "Halloween", you can still see traces of influence from "I Know What You Did". It's an innocent yet spooky film that is very well executed.
Newcomer actresses Andi Garrett and Sarah Lane play teenaged best friends, back when Teenagers ruled the cultural landscape with a capital T. The two girls like to talk on the phone a lot but don't get to see each other very often because Libby (Garrett) lives outside Los Angeles in a rural area while Kit (Lane) lives with her family in the suburbs. One night, though, they arrange for Kit to have dinner at Libby's house. Libby's parents will be away for the evening and they can have fun while babysitting Libby's little sister Tess.
The atmosphere outside Libby's house is dark and misty. The property has animals, a goat and a dog. Her family lives out in the country, basically, and there isn't much to do. So, once her parents have left, she and her small sister show Kit what they do for fun. They like to make prank phone calls.
Now, if you are my age, you certainly remember prank phone calls. In fact, you probably made a few of them yourself. I know I did. Something like "Is your refrigerator running"? would have been one of the milder questions my friends and I asked. More often the topics would tend toward the type of humor an 11 year old boy finds hilarious. :)
But in the movie, the two girls are older, at least 16 because Libby can drive a car. The phone pranks she prefers are a little more risque. At first, she calls men chosen at random from the phone book. If their wives answer, Libby lowers her young voice and breathlessly pretends to be "the other woman".
"Is John there"?, she intones, hoping to rile the wife and complete the prank. In doing so, she gets a laugh out of her little sister.
Her friend Kit is also amused, though she comes from a strict family and would never consider to pull such a prank on her own. She plays along, though, and now Libby ups the game. She starts calling randomly chosen men and telling them : "I saw what you did and I know who you are".
The psychological intentions and implications of such a statement, made to an unknown person, are worthy of a separate study, but this is the mind of a 16 year old girl feeling her oats, so you get the gist. She means no real harm, excitement and titillation are the goal, but she is getting in way over her head by making such a statement to anonymous males. In the course of a few more phone calls, her game will become deadly serious.
I can't tell you why, but surely you can guess. I will give you a hint in that, following the home run phone call, Libby convinces her little sister and her friend Kit to get into her parents' car so she can drive them to the house of the man she has just spoken to. The girls have just made a big mistake, and you will see why.
Joan Crawford, in one of her later weird and creepy roles, plays a neighbor woman in love with the pranked man. When the girls arrive at his house.......well, forget it. I can't tell you.
I haven't seen very many William Castle pictures, but the ones I have seen have all been high quality, even "The Tingler", haha. But with "I Saw What You Did", he created a picture of influence. It's a thriller rather than a horror movie, and yet it begat all the slasher movies of the 80s as I mentioned. What Castle did was to set up a double-edged plot. On one side you have the adults and their relationships, which seem to be concerned either with business or jealous romance. You know how in the "Peanuts" cartoons, the adult voices were provided by muted trombones? That's somewhat the case here. The adult world is real, but this was the era of the middle class boom in America, when businessmen were climbing high and concerned mostly with their careers. They trusted their children to be alone with each other in the immediate world around them. It was the era when five year olds could walk a half mile to school by themselves. In this parentless void, Teenagers blossomed also.
I mean, parents were there, and they loved their kids, but they also left them alone so that they could be kids. That's what we had in the baby boom years of the early 1960s, it was a World Of Kids. Parents let us play all day and didn't call us inside until dinnertime.
And so the older kids took on the more risky aspects of assumed adult behavior. Perhaps it was always this way to an extent, but the idea of The Teenager didn't become a cultural reality until the early 1960s, and that is kind of what this movie is about.
On the surface, it's a girls' get together where limits are pushed. But underneath, even though it's a B-movie, there is a lot going on. An actress named Andi Garrett carries the film as Libby. She had a very brief career and I was unable to find any information on her, but she was quite good and set the stage for later Scream Queens like Jamie Lee Curtis.
More than anything, "I Saw What You Did" captures the vibe of middle class America 1965, after the '50s layover look of the early 60s, but before the blown-out Hippie era late in the decade.
I have said that in the 1960s, every year had it's own character, as if every year was a decade in itself. That's what the '60s felt like, and 1965 was right down the middle, like William Castle's films, both innocent and dangerous, fun and foreboding of what was to come.
"I Saw What You Did" is just for fun, but there is an undercurrent present that could never be recreated because of the year in which it was made.
Two Thumbs Up, shot it nighttime black and white. ////
That's all for tonight, see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I have a vague memory of this title from when I was a five year old, and it may have been because my sister saw it. For me, the memory would have been generated because of her reaction to it, and also because of the catchy title, a finger-pointing accusation. If I remember correctly, this movie was heavily advertised toward teenagers and caused quite a splash at the time. In fact, it became a forerunner to the slasher/stalker pictures of the late 1970s through the 1980s, especially ones with provocative titles like "He Knows You're Alone". But even in watching a horror classic like "Halloween", you can still see traces of influence from "I Know What You Did". It's an innocent yet spooky film that is very well executed.
Newcomer actresses Andi Garrett and Sarah Lane play teenaged best friends, back when Teenagers ruled the cultural landscape with a capital T. The two girls like to talk on the phone a lot but don't get to see each other very often because Libby (Garrett) lives outside Los Angeles in a rural area while Kit (Lane) lives with her family in the suburbs. One night, though, they arrange for Kit to have dinner at Libby's house. Libby's parents will be away for the evening and they can have fun while babysitting Libby's little sister Tess.
The atmosphere outside Libby's house is dark and misty. The property has animals, a goat and a dog. Her family lives out in the country, basically, and there isn't much to do. So, once her parents have left, she and her small sister show Kit what they do for fun. They like to make prank phone calls.
Now, if you are my age, you certainly remember prank phone calls. In fact, you probably made a few of them yourself. I know I did. Something like "Is your refrigerator running"? would have been one of the milder questions my friends and I asked. More often the topics would tend toward the type of humor an 11 year old boy finds hilarious. :)
But in the movie, the two girls are older, at least 16 because Libby can drive a car. The phone pranks she prefers are a little more risque. At first, she calls men chosen at random from the phone book. If their wives answer, Libby lowers her young voice and breathlessly pretends to be "the other woman".
"Is John there"?, she intones, hoping to rile the wife and complete the prank. In doing so, she gets a laugh out of her little sister.
Her friend Kit is also amused, though she comes from a strict family and would never consider to pull such a prank on her own. She plays along, though, and now Libby ups the game. She starts calling randomly chosen men and telling them : "I saw what you did and I know who you are".
The psychological intentions and implications of such a statement, made to an unknown person, are worthy of a separate study, but this is the mind of a 16 year old girl feeling her oats, so you get the gist. She means no real harm, excitement and titillation are the goal, but she is getting in way over her head by making such a statement to anonymous males. In the course of a few more phone calls, her game will become deadly serious.
I can't tell you why, but surely you can guess. I will give you a hint in that, following the home run phone call, Libby convinces her little sister and her friend Kit to get into her parents' car so she can drive them to the house of the man she has just spoken to. The girls have just made a big mistake, and you will see why.
Joan Crawford, in one of her later weird and creepy roles, plays a neighbor woman in love with the pranked man. When the girls arrive at his house.......well, forget it. I can't tell you.
I haven't seen very many William Castle pictures, but the ones I have seen have all been high quality, even "The Tingler", haha. But with "I Saw What You Did", he created a picture of influence. It's a thriller rather than a horror movie, and yet it begat all the slasher movies of the 80s as I mentioned. What Castle did was to set up a double-edged plot. On one side you have the adults and their relationships, which seem to be concerned either with business or jealous romance. You know how in the "Peanuts" cartoons, the adult voices were provided by muted trombones? That's somewhat the case here. The adult world is real, but this was the era of the middle class boom in America, when businessmen were climbing high and concerned mostly with their careers. They trusted their children to be alone with each other in the immediate world around them. It was the era when five year olds could walk a half mile to school by themselves. In this parentless void, Teenagers blossomed also.
I mean, parents were there, and they loved their kids, but they also left them alone so that they could be kids. That's what we had in the baby boom years of the early 1960s, it was a World Of Kids. Parents let us play all day and didn't call us inside until dinnertime.
And so the older kids took on the more risky aspects of assumed adult behavior. Perhaps it was always this way to an extent, but the idea of The Teenager didn't become a cultural reality until the early 1960s, and that is kind of what this movie is about.
On the surface, it's a girls' get together where limits are pushed. But underneath, even though it's a B-movie, there is a lot going on. An actress named Andi Garrett carries the film as Libby. She had a very brief career and I was unable to find any information on her, but she was quite good and set the stage for later Scream Queens like Jamie Lee Curtis.
More than anything, "I Saw What You Did" captures the vibe of middle class America 1965, after the '50s layover look of the early 60s, but before the blown-out Hippie era late in the decade.
I have said that in the 1960s, every year had it's own character, as if every year was a decade in itself. That's what the '60s felt like, and 1965 was right down the middle, like William Castle's films, both innocent and dangerous, fun and foreboding of what was to come.
"I Saw What You Did" is just for fun, but there is an undercurrent present that could never be recreated because of the year in which it was made.
Two Thumbs Up, shot it nighttime black and white. ////
That's all for tonight, see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
"Johnny O' Clock"
Tonight I watched the fourth and final Noir acquired from the Central Libe last Friday : "Johnny O'Clock" (1947), starring Dick Powell and Evelyn Keyes. Powell, in the title role, plays a smartly dressed gambler with an unusual name. We learn that he has several aliases as well, but we are never told whether O'Clock is his real last name or one of the fakes. In any event, the screenwriter takes every opportunity to have the female characters in the movie use Johnny's full name in sentence after sentence, even when they are talking directly to him. I will conclude my preamble by saying that someone sure loves the name "Johnny O'Clock", because we hear it over and over again during the course of the film.
The story plays out slowly and diverts to romantic themes, just like last night's "Between Midnight And Dawn". Johnny sets up furtive, high stakes card games and hidden back room casinos with roulette wheels and blackjack tables. He has help from a bad cop, but even so, most of his efforts are short lived because the honest hard ass cop, Lee J. Cobb, is riding his tail, following Johnny everywhere he goes.
For his part, Johnny plays everything as safe as possible. He is not a risk taker, which sets him apart from the malevolent cop who is his partner. The bad cop seeks bigger game. He wants to team up with the corpulent local crime boss (Thomas Sanchez), who is a friend of Johnny's but whom Johnny keeps at arm's length because he is having an affair with Sanchez' wife, the insouciant Ellen Drew. As you can see, a three way conflict is created here, made worse by the murder of a naive hat check girl who works in one of the crime bosses' nightclubs. This girl had sought Johnny's advice on how to get rid of the bad cop, who had dated her and beat her up. This is some rough Noir stuff we are experiencing at this point. Johnny tries to help the kid out, but it's too late. She is killed (made to look like suicide), and suddenly her sister (Evelyn Keyes) flies from the East Coast to enter the picture, intent on exacting revenge on the person(s) responsible for her sister's death.
She finds Johnny and immediately falls for him, standard procedure for Film Noir, and that is when the plot gets diverted to a romantic interlude, just like last night, except this time the romance is tortured. Keyes' interest in finding her sister's killer declines as she discovers Johnny's association with the bad cop and the crime boss. Now she is worried about losing him, too, and she just wants him out of the whole situation. But it's not gonna be easy, because dapper Johnny, who has always played everything down the middle so as not to make enemies, is now smack in the middle of Bad Guys and Murder, and has the perpetually gruff Lee J. Cobb on his tail for good measure.
"Johnny O'Clock" has the tough-talking style of a Bogart/Bacall Noir, where everybody speaks in rapid back and forth wisecracks, and even the romantic dialogue is tough as nails. The women are coiffed and dressed to the 1940's hilt; the men are suit and tie on the surface, thugs underneath. Only Johnny is different, because he is neither straight nor crooked, yet he can talk the lingo better than any of them. This was Dick Powell's specialty as an actor, to be a regular seeming guy who is also badass, which made him an alternative to the darker Bogart for ambiguous Noir lead roles. With Powell, you never quite know whose side he is on. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? That is also his appeal to the dames of '40s crime dramas. Women are intuitive and can sense his heart, no matter how indifferent he plays himself toward them.
In the long run, at 96 minutes, "Johnny O' Clock" gets most of it's points for style, which it has in spades, and for the acting, especially by Evelyn Keyes as the distraught sister of the murder victim. Dick Powell is rock solid in the lead role (check him out in other Noirs, too), and Ellen Drew steals her scenes as the frustrated alcoholic wife of crime boss Sanchez. She is in love with Johnny too, and all of this can only lead to something that is decidedly not good.
The style outweighs the writing, however, and so the story meanders quite a bit in the middle. There isn't the direct scene after scene plot construction that builds to a climax with no excess, as we saw in "The Burglar" and "Drive A Crooked Road".
"Johnny O'Clock" is a movie that wants to be as Noir as it can be, and for that it gets Two Thumbs Up from me. I was surprised to see the fan reactions at Amazon and IMDB. People love this film, and that is good because it tries so hard to give fans everything they want. All I would have asked for is more cohesive plotting, or perhaps a directorial rein-in of the script to tighten things up a bit.
Good stuff at any rate, and that brings us to an end of our Noir Score from the Central Libe. That was an unexpected bonus of my trip Downtown, and I enjoyed all the films very much. :)
That was all the news for today, and I am back at work, writing from the kitchen table at Pearl's.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The story plays out slowly and diverts to romantic themes, just like last night's "Between Midnight And Dawn". Johnny sets up furtive, high stakes card games and hidden back room casinos with roulette wheels and blackjack tables. He has help from a bad cop, but even so, most of his efforts are short lived because the honest hard ass cop, Lee J. Cobb, is riding his tail, following Johnny everywhere he goes.
For his part, Johnny plays everything as safe as possible. He is not a risk taker, which sets him apart from the malevolent cop who is his partner. The bad cop seeks bigger game. He wants to team up with the corpulent local crime boss (Thomas Sanchez), who is a friend of Johnny's but whom Johnny keeps at arm's length because he is having an affair with Sanchez' wife, the insouciant Ellen Drew. As you can see, a three way conflict is created here, made worse by the murder of a naive hat check girl who works in one of the crime bosses' nightclubs. This girl had sought Johnny's advice on how to get rid of the bad cop, who had dated her and beat her up. This is some rough Noir stuff we are experiencing at this point. Johnny tries to help the kid out, but it's too late. She is killed (made to look like suicide), and suddenly her sister (Evelyn Keyes) flies from the East Coast to enter the picture, intent on exacting revenge on the person(s) responsible for her sister's death.
She finds Johnny and immediately falls for him, standard procedure for Film Noir, and that is when the plot gets diverted to a romantic interlude, just like last night, except this time the romance is tortured. Keyes' interest in finding her sister's killer declines as she discovers Johnny's association with the bad cop and the crime boss. Now she is worried about losing him, too, and she just wants him out of the whole situation. But it's not gonna be easy, because dapper Johnny, who has always played everything down the middle so as not to make enemies, is now smack in the middle of Bad Guys and Murder, and has the perpetually gruff Lee J. Cobb on his tail for good measure.
"Johnny O'Clock" has the tough-talking style of a Bogart/Bacall Noir, where everybody speaks in rapid back and forth wisecracks, and even the romantic dialogue is tough as nails. The women are coiffed and dressed to the 1940's hilt; the men are suit and tie on the surface, thugs underneath. Only Johnny is different, because he is neither straight nor crooked, yet he can talk the lingo better than any of them. This was Dick Powell's specialty as an actor, to be a regular seeming guy who is also badass, which made him an alternative to the darker Bogart for ambiguous Noir lead roles. With Powell, you never quite know whose side he is on. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? That is also his appeal to the dames of '40s crime dramas. Women are intuitive and can sense his heart, no matter how indifferent he plays himself toward them.
In the long run, at 96 minutes, "Johnny O' Clock" gets most of it's points for style, which it has in spades, and for the acting, especially by Evelyn Keyes as the distraught sister of the murder victim. Dick Powell is rock solid in the lead role (check him out in other Noirs, too), and Ellen Drew steals her scenes as the frustrated alcoholic wife of crime boss Sanchez. She is in love with Johnny too, and all of this can only lead to something that is decidedly not good.
The style outweighs the writing, however, and so the story meanders quite a bit in the middle. There isn't the direct scene after scene plot construction that builds to a climax with no excess, as we saw in "The Burglar" and "Drive A Crooked Road".
"Johnny O'Clock" is a movie that wants to be as Noir as it can be, and for that it gets Two Thumbs Up from me. I was surprised to see the fan reactions at Amazon and IMDB. People love this film, and that is good because it tries so hard to give fans everything they want. All I would have asked for is more cohesive plotting, or perhaps a directorial rein-in of the script to tighten things up a bit.
Good stuff at any rate, and that brings us to an end of our Noir Score from the Central Libe. That was an unexpected bonus of my trip Downtown, and I enjoyed all the films very much. :)
That was all the news for today, and I am back at work, writing from the kitchen table at Pearl's.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, September 17, 2018
"Between Midnight And Dawn" with Edmund O'Brien + Finished The Dirac
Tonight's Noir - the third of four from the Central Libe - was called "Between Midnight And Dawn" (1950), once again released as part of the TCM Vault Collection. Unlike "The Burglar" and "Drive A Crooked Road", "Between Midnight And Dawn" did not feature an introduction by Martin Scorcese, which may tip you off that it wasn't quite the classic that those two films are. However, it was still very good once it got going. Noir stalwart Edmund O'Brien stars as an LAPD patrol officer who works the nighttime beat (LAPD is not specified, but the locations are all L.A. so one can assume as much). His partner is the wisecracking Mark Stevens, who is more interested in tracking down the voice belonging to the female dispatcher than he is in responding to her radio calls. The serious O'Brien chides him to focus on the job, to make a real cop out of him, but that doesn't stop Stevens from searching the dispatch office whenever they are at the station. Soon of course, he discovers that the lovely voice belongs to Gale Storm.
The street action seen from the pov of the two cops in the patrol car, which takes up the first ten minutes and looks fantastic - real 1950s cop action - gives the impression that this movie is gonna be a super hard boiled crime classic. But then after ten minutes, the story veers off to focus on the development of the relationship between the young dispatcher Gale Storm and the two older police officers. The younger one, Mark Stevens, is in love with her, but he lives with his partner, the older O'Brien who keeps a close watch on him and doesn't want him taking undue advantage of Miss Storm, whose father was an officer killed in the line of duty. Ultimately, she ends up going on dinner dates with both cops, who treat her with deference. But Stevens keeps making his moves, little by little, until she falls for him.
The restaurant they regularly dine at belongs to a young hoodlum the two cops are looking to bust. The punk is a pseudo-stylish Mafiosi in a pinstripe suit with slicked back hair (no, not Trump Jr.) ; he hates that the coppers constantly dine at his establishment, where his girlfriend sings ballads with the piano man. They aren't there for the food, and the kid knows it. He feels empowered enough in his ego to threaten them to their faces. To him, they are just flatfoot cops and he is a Big Time Capo.
Other Capos, however - who are actually Big Time - are closing in on his turf. Now he has to defend himself not only against the cops but against rival mobsters. We are now at the halfway point in the 90 minute movie and this is where things start to roll. The relationship aspect between Storm and Stevens is set, O'Brien's focus on the young mobster has paid off. The cops are setting up to bust him.
So a lot of conflict will soon arrive. The plot, which had a breezy tone for the first half hour, is now going to turn very dark in the final 30 minutes. This is where the film earns it's points, in classic Noir territory.
I can't reveal any more, except to say that an actor named Donald Buka turns in an outstanding performance as the hoodlum restaurateur. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Coppola used him as an inspiration for characters and scenes in "The Godfather", or if Scorcese did too, for that matter.
While it's not a masterpiece of filmmaking as were the previous two movies, it's still a very good police procedural that begins by letting us ride along with two officers as they patrol the nighttime streets of greater L.A., answering calls both routine and dangerous. The story then diverts toward relationship for the second half hour, and into a dragnet during the third.
It's good stuff, and an extra bonus that you often get with Noirs is that there are some great locations, in this case of Los Angeles and environs circa 1950, shot at night in slick black and white.
Two Thumbs Up, then, for "Between Midnight And Dawn", which - come to think of it - describes my blogging schedule pretty well, haha. ////
The other Sunday news, in brief, included that there was good singin' in church, that the Rams won big and demonstrated Super Bowl potential, and that I finished the Dirac book.
That was the most important of the day's events to relate, because the book and Dirac's story had quite an effect on me. It was interesting the way in which I came to read it, as mentioned in a previous blog, like it was stuck in my mind : "you must read this book, if not now then one day". Three or four years passed from the time I saw it on the shelf until something reminded me to read it.
At the end of the book, the author throws a curveball nearly out of the blue, though in hindsight it makes sense and seems likely, as to the nature of Paul Dirac's unique genius.
This revelation blew me away and left me quite touched.
If you have an interest in physics or even just an overall interest in science, and want to read a great biography about one of the most important men of the 20th century, then I recommend this book very highly.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The street action seen from the pov of the two cops in the patrol car, which takes up the first ten minutes and looks fantastic - real 1950s cop action - gives the impression that this movie is gonna be a super hard boiled crime classic. But then after ten minutes, the story veers off to focus on the development of the relationship between the young dispatcher Gale Storm and the two older police officers. The younger one, Mark Stevens, is in love with her, but he lives with his partner, the older O'Brien who keeps a close watch on him and doesn't want him taking undue advantage of Miss Storm, whose father was an officer killed in the line of duty. Ultimately, she ends up going on dinner dates with both cops, who treat her with deference. But Stevens keeps making his moves, little by little, until she falls for him.
The restaurant they regularly dine at belongs to a young hoodlum the two cops are looking to bust. The punk is a pseudo-stylish Mafiosi in a pinstripe suit with slicked back hair (no, not Trump Jr.) ; he hates that the coppers constantly dine at his establishment, where his girlfriend sings ballads with the piano man. They aren't there for the food, and the kid knows it. He feels empowered enough in his ego to threaten them to their faces. To him, they are just flatfoot cops and he is a Big Time Capo.
Other Capos, however - who are actually Big Time - are closing in on his turf. Now he has to defend himself not only against the cops but against rival mobsters. We are now at the halfway point in the 90 minute movie and this is where things start to roll. The relationship aspect between Storm and Stevens is set, O'Brien's focus on the young mobster has paid off. The cops are setting up to bust him.
So a lot of conflict will soon arrive. The plot, which had a breezy tone for the first half hour, is now going to turn very dark in the final 30 minutes. This is where the film earns it's points, in classic Noir territory.
I can't reveal any more, except to say that an actor named Donald Buka turns in an outstanding performance as the hoodlum restaurateur. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Coppola used him as an inspiration for characters and scenes in "The Godfather", or if Scorcese did too, for that matter.
While it's not a masterpiece of filmmaking as were the previous two movies, it's still a very good police procedural that begins by letting us ride along with two officers as they patrol the nighttime streets of greater L.A., answering calls both routine and dangerous. The story then diverts toward relationship for the second half hour, and into a dragnet during the third.
It's good stuff, and an extra bonus that you often get with Noirs is that there are some great locations, in this case of Los Angeles and environs circa 1950, shot at night in slick black and white.
Two Thumbs Up, then, for "Between Midnight And Dawn", which - come to think of it - describes my blogging schedule pretty well, haha. ////
The other Sunday news, in brief, included that there was good singin' in church, that the Rams won big and demonstrated Super Bowl potential, and that I finished the Dirac book.
That was the most important of the day's events to relate, because the book and Dirac's story had quite an effect on me. It was interesting the way in which I came to read it, as mentioned in a previous blog, like it was stuck in my mind : "you must read this book, if not now then one day". Three or four years passed from the time I saw it on the shelf until something reminded me to read it.
At the end of the book, the author throws a curveball nearly out of the blue, though in hindsight it makes sense and seems likely, as to the nature of Paul Dirac's unique genius.
This revelation blew me away and left me quite touched.
If you have an interest in physics or even just an overall interest in science, and want to read a great biography about one of the most important men of the 20th century, then I recommend this book very highly.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, September 16, 2018
"Drive A Crooked Road" starring MIckey Rooney, classic Noir as good as movies get
Tonight I watched another Noir from yesterday's jackpot at the Central Library : "Drive A Crooked Road" (1954), starring Mickey Rooney and Dianne Foster. The Mick flexes his dramatic muscles in this one, playing a timid auto mechanic who works at a high-end sports car dealership in Los Angeles. Rooney is an expert mechanic and even races cars occasionally as an amateur, out at March Field in Riverside. But his confidence extends only to automobiles. Otherwise he is shy and socially inept. On lunch breaks at the shop, his macho mechanic buddies ogle women walking by on the street. Rooney doesn't join in and is chided for his reticence.
But one day, the stunning Foster drives her ailing roadster into the dealership. "It keeps stalling", she tells the owner, and then she specifically requests the mechanical services of The Mick, who she says was recommended by a friend.
Something is up. We know this from previous information given in an early scene, but Mickey Rooney does not yet know it. Still, he wonders, "why is this woman flirting with me"? She looks like a fashion model and he is of small stature and covered in engine grease. Foster, who I have seen in only a couple of films, seems to have been a very good actress. She pulls off the flirtations in a realistic way that is not forced nor overly titillating, but instead seems to show real interest in the unassuming Rooney as a person. We the audience smell a rat, and Rooney is at first confused "This woman likes me"?) but after fixing her car he begins to respond to her advances incrementally. She mentions to him that now that her car is running again, she is going to spend the afternoon at Malibu beach. It is a clear invitation for him to join her when he gets off work, and despite the probability that he's never been on a date in his life, he cannot help but head for Pacific Coast Highway when his workday is done.
Soon he is on the sand with her.
It almost seems like a fantasy, but before long she has invited him back to her apartment. She isn't "easy". Nothing happens except conversation, but they become close, and then closer.
We in the audience are trying to warn The Mick : "Don't fall for it! She's not who you think".
But maybe she has a conscience after all.
Or maybe not.
Foster asks Rooney to escort her to a party, given by one of her wealthy Beach Dweller friends (played by the friendly but insidious Kevin McCarthy). This man is tall and handsome, and seems to know Foster pretty well. In fact, they seem to have a "thing" for each other, though they try not to show it.
Rooney can't figure out what is going on, but Foster soon returns her full attentions to him and all is once again well. After the party is over, she suggests to Rooney that he get to know McCarthy. He is wealthy, she tells The Mick, and might be able to help finance his hobby of race driving.
Rooney has a feeling about McCarthy, but he visits him anyway, just to please Dianne Foster.
That's when McCarthy (and his wise cracking buddy Jack Kelly) let Mickey in on the real deal :
They are planning to rob a bank in Palm Springs. They need a getaway driver to haul them through the desert after the job is over, at top speed on a bad road. They chose Mickey because they've seen him race. They offer him 15 grand for his participation. In 1954, fifteen thousand could buy you a house, or a nice race car and a trip to Le Mans to race it. Still, The Mick tells them no, flat out. "I am not a criminal", he says.
But there is Dianne Foster to think about. She was wormed her way into his heart, and she seems to think that the bank robbery is a good idea. Rooney still can't figure out what is plain as day to the rest of us : that in reality she is McCarthy's girlfriend. She has been playing Mick the whole time.
Now, this is me talking, your movie reviewer. I am breaking in here to ask you, "is that a great setup, or what"? I already know your answer.
Both "Drive A Crooked Road" and last night's "The Burglar" were released as part of TCM's Vault Collection, a series I was not aware of until I found these films at the Central Libe. Both movies feature introductions by Martin Scorcese, who is becoming known as much for his historical expertise as he is for his directing, so it tells you something when he champions both of these works as top-level classics in the Film Noir canon, though he is at a loss to explain their relatively unknown status. Everyone has heard of "Out Of The Past" or "Double Indemnity", or "Nightmare Alley".
But I consider myself a big Noir fan, enough so that I am always seeking out and Googling new titles, using every keyword combination I can think of. And yet, I had never heard of "The Burglar" or "Drive A Crooked Road" until yesterday. So I agree wholeheartedly with Martin Scorcese, who says that these films are some of the best of the genre and deserve to be well known.
But I will go Marty one better, and say that these were just flat out great movies, genre or otherwise. They were so good, in fact, that at the end of tonight's film, "Drive A Crooked Road", I was saying to myself and to the now dark TV screen, "They just don't make movies that good anymore; I don't know if it's even possible".
And even back then, these two would have been at the top of the heap.
Ten Stars, then, for "Drive A Crooked Road" and "The Burglar", and Four Thumbs Up as high as you can raise them. If you are a Noir fan, or if you simply wanna see great movies, I give these two my absolute highest recommendation. Extra plus marks for the 1950s Hollywood, Palm Springs and Malibu locations in "Crooked Road", just incredible stuff really, with Mickey Rooney going dark on you to top it all off. ////
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But one day, the stunning Foster drives her ailing roadster into the dealership. "It keeps stalling", she tells the owner, and then she specifically requests the mechanical services of The Mick, who she says was recommended by a friend.
Something is up. We know this from previous information given in an early scene, but Mickey Rooney does not yet know it. Still, he wonders, "why is this woman flirting with me"? She looks like a fashion model and he is of small stature and covered in engine grease. Foster, who I have seen in only a couple of films, seems to have been a very good actress. She pulls off the flirtations in a realistic way that is not forced nor overly titillating, but instead seems to show real interest in the unassuming Rooney as a person. We the audience smell a rat, and Rooney is at first confused "This woman likes me"?) but after fixing her car he begins to respond to her advances incrementally. She mentions to him that now that her car is running again, she is going to spend the afternoon at Malibu beach. It is a clear invitation for him to join her when he gets off work, and despite the probability that he's never been on a date in his life, he cannot help but head for Pacific Coast Highway when his workday is done.
Soon he is on the sand with her.
It almost seems like a fantasy, but before long she has invited him back to her apartment. She isn't "easy". Nothing happens except conversation, but they become close, and then closer.
We in the audience are trying to warn The Mick : "Don't fall for it! She's not who you think".
But maybe she has a conscience after all.
Or maybe not.
Foster asks Rooney to escort her to a party, given by one of her wealthy Beach Dweller friends (played by the friendly but insidious Kevin McCarthy). This man is tall and handsome, and seems to know Foster pretty well. In fact, they seem to have a "thing" for each other, though they try not to show it.
Rooney can't figure out what is going on, but Foster soon returns her full attentions to him and all is once again well. After the party is over, she suggests to Rooney that he get to know McCarthy. He is wealthy, she tells The Mick, and might be able to help finance his hobby of race driving.
Rooney has a feeling about McCarthy, but he visits him anyway, just to please Dianne Foster.
That's when McCarthy (and his wise cracking buddy Jack Kelly) let Mickey in on the real deal :
They are planning to rob a bank in Palm Springs. They need a getaway driver to haul them through the desert after the job is over, at top speed on a bad road. They chose Mickey because they've seen him race. They offer him 15 grand for his participation. In 1954, fifteen thousand could buy you a house, or a nice race car and a trip to Le Mans to race it. Still, The Mick tells them no, flat out. "I am not a criminal", he says.
But there is Dianne Foster to think about. She was wormed her way into his heart, and she seems to think that the bank robbery is a good idea. Rooney still can't figure out what is plain as day to the rest of us : that in reality she is McCarthy's girlfriend. She has been playing Mick the whole time.
Now, this is me talking, your movie reviewer. I am breaking in here to ask you, "is that a great setup, or what"? I already know your answer.
Both "Drive A Crooked Road" and last night's "The Burglar" were released as part of TCM's Vault Collection, a series I was not aware of until I found these films at the Central Libe. Both movies feature introductions by Martin Scorcese, who is becoming known as much for his historical expertise as he is for his directing, so it tells you something when he champions both of these works as top-level classics in the Film Noir canon, though he is at a loss to explain their relatively unknown status. Everyone has heard of "Out Of The Past" or "Double Indemnity", or "Nightmare Alley".
But I consider myself a big Noir fan, enough so that I am always seeking out and Googling new titles, using every keyword combination I can think of. And yet, I had never heard of "The Burglar" or "Drive A Crooked Road" until yesterday. So I agree wholeheartedly with Martin Scorcese, who says that these films are some of the best of the genre and deserve to be well known.
But I will go Marty one better, and say that these were just flat out great movies, genre or otherwise. They were so good, in fact, that at the end of tonight's film, "Drive A Crooked Road", I was saying to myself and to the now dark TV screen, "They just don't make movies that good anymore; I don't know if it's even possible".
And even back then, these two would have been at the top of the heap.
Ten Stars, then, for "Drive A Crooked Road" and "The Burglar", and Four Thumbs Up as high as you can raise them. If you are a Noir fan, or if you simply wanna see great movies, I give these two my absolute highest recommendation. Extra plus marks for the 1950s Hollywood, Palm Springs and Malibu locations in "Crooked Road", just incredible stuff really, with Mickey Rooney going dark on you to top it all off. ////
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, September 15, 2018
Downtown L.A. + "Elemental" on StandardVision + My Walking Tour
So today I went Downtown. Took the Red Line from the North Hollywood station. I chose the subway over the train because it stops at 7th street, which is quite a bit closer to L.A. Live than is Union Station. That would have been a three mile walk, and six round trip, which I can do no problem, but I wanted to enjoy my trip and not make it into a workout. I have hikes for that purpose. Anyhow, it was a gorgeous day, about 90 degrees Downtown (96 in the Valley), with the kind of dry air that signals the oncoming of Indian Summer. I walked down Flower Street toward 9th and then up 9th to Olympic. I passed The Original Pantry and knew L.A Live was next. That's my route from the Metro/7th Station when I go to concerts at Nokia or Staples.
Suddenly I looked up and saw the giant StandardVision screen on the side of the Marriott Hotel. I hadn't been aware of it until recently, and in Googling I see it has only been in place since 2014. I've only been to L.A. Live once since then, to see Judas Priest earlier this year and may have walked right past it with my mind intent on the concert, but anyhow - there it was, broadcasting in full color in broad daylight. I got there at about 1:45pm.
At first, the screen was showing nothing but commercials, for Verizon, T-Mobile and a promo for the upcoming Universal Studios Horror Nights. I stood in the shade of a tree just across a small side street from the screen, and I watched. Fifteen minutes went by, then twenty, and I was beginning to worry that I'd got the cutoff date wrong, which I had thought was September 19th. But then all of a sudden the screen said, "StandardVision Presents 'The Flower' (I think that was the title, but not 100% certain), and it appeared to be a short film. But it wasn't a dance film, and so I still wasn't sure what was happening. Before leaving, I had tried to Google links for StandardVision to find out a broadcast schedule but was unsuccessful in finding one. "The Flower" ended, and more Verizon commercials began, and I thought, "hmmm...was that film part of the artist's program or not"?
But then the next thing happened pretty quickly after only another minute or two of Verizon. Good thing I had my camera ready to go. Just when I was worried that I had missed the date, all of a sudden there was Solomon on the screen. The very next thing is that it said "Elemental by (last names of all three of you guys). Sorry but I don't put last names in the blog unless it's about bad guys. But yeah, all three of your names were up there. My intent had been to get a photo of the credits, because in the pics your friends had posted so far, nobody had captured your name yet. Unfortunately, it happened too suddenly after the uncertainty, and I was not able to get a shot of the names. But, I did get a few shots indeed. They aren't as clear as some of the ones your friends posted, but they came out okay, and I posted one on my FB this evening, in a set of pics from my overall walking tour. I don't post on your FB, just because that's the way it's been for a long time, but you can see the photo in my 2018 album.
Most importantly though, it was amazing to see! All of a sudden, there was Solomon, moving through the changing background scenery, and then - boom! - there was the title, "Elemental" and then your name, right there over L.A. Live on Olympic Boulevard.
It was cool to hear about when you first announced it a couple months ago, but today I got to see it in person, and so even more of the "projection of Intent" phenomenon was felt.
Not only that, but it looks great on the Big Screen. You guys did great! You played Downtown in the entertainment capital of the world. :)
Well, I was lucky to see it, and so after that I did my usual walking tour of Downtown, hitting some but not all of the usual stops on my way back to Union Station. I knew I would depart from there rather than the 7th/Metro Station where I'd arrived, because if I wanted to see the sights I knew I had to walk all the way back. Union Station is on the far east edge of Downtown, three miles from L.A. Live, but three is a piece of cake for me, and so I took my time and had fun hitting most of my favorite places.
First I walked back to 7th Street and up toward Olive, to get the obligatory photo of The Athletic Club. That is a "can't miss", partly in honor of Dad. Then I kept going down to 5th Street and up to Grand, where I stopped inside the Central Library, an enormous facility the size of ten local libes. There I scored four previously unseen Film Noirs, an added bonus to my trip. Then from Central Libe I went a fair distance North, past Disney Hall and The Music Center, and then up to one of my very favorite places, Our Lady Queen Of The Angels Cathedral, the main Catholic Church of Los Angeles. I stop there every time I go Downtown, and I am always humbled by the feeling inside. The way the light falls on the interior, and above on the organ pipes, feels very spiritual and never fails to bring a strong feeling.
From the Cathedral I walked further North. I could see the light posts from Dodger Stadium rising above the hill in which Chavez Ravine is held. I went past the old, architecturally important Department Of Water And Power building, and over the bridge across the freeway. Then I was in Chinatown, which looks and feels as it always has, and always will. Time stops in Chinatown.
At the corner on Alameda, I passed Philippe's, then walked a couple of blocks South again to Olvera Street. You can't go Downtown and not go to Olvera. It is sunnier at this end of DTLA because you are no longer in the shade of tall buildings (though we've got nothing on Manhattan on that score), and when you are on Alameda, you feel the "Southern California" mix with the Downtown, because of the sun. I did a quick walk through of Olvera Street to get to La Luz Del Dia restaurant at the west end. La Luz was where Dad would always take us before a Dodger Game, after a Saturday spent at The Athletic Club. To me, it is one of the iconic Mexican Restaurants in Los Angeles, just because of those nights in the 1970s, and also because the food is great and it really is a famous restaurant. But for me, the memories are the most important factor.
I made one final stop, at the old Pueblo Church across from Olvera Street, the oldest church in Los Angeles. It's been there since 1812, and though it has been refurbished probably several times, you can still feel The Presence of all those years inside, and of The Holy Spirit. You will see old ladies deep in meditation and prayer any time you go, and it's just the kind of place where you will Feel It Deeply. I am sure you know what I mean.
Union Station is right across Alameda Street from Olvera, so it was just a short walk back there, and then down an escalator or two to the Red Line subway platform. By 4:45pm, we were headed back to North Hollywood, and I was home by 6pm.
All told, it was an incredible day in DTLA, especially because of "Elemental". There's also something about all the old buildings from the late 1800s, and the way the sun shines in different places. I always make a point of looking for the Gargoyles on the facades. They have been standing guard all this time.
It's quite a place, with quite a lot to see. I should go down there more often; would you go with me?
This eve, I watched one of the classic Noirs I got at the Central Libe : "The Burglar" starring the always reliable Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield in her first role. I have written too much to fully describe it to you, but it was an involving psychological crime drama that gets Two Big Thumbs Up.
It was as Noir as they come, perfect after a day in the City. ////
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Suddenly I looked up and saw the giant StandardVision screen on the side of the Marriott Hotel. I hadn't been aware of it until recently, and in Googling I see it has only been in place since 2014. I've only been to L.A. Live once since then, to see Judas Priest earlier this year and may have walked right past it with my mind intent on the concert, but anyhow - there it was, broadcasting in full color in broad daylight. I got there at about 1:45pm.
At first, the screen was showing nothing but commercials, for Verizon, T-Mobile and a promo for the upcoming Universal Studios Horror Nights. I stood in the shade of a tree just across a small side street from the screen, and I watched. Fifteen minutes went by, then twenty, and I was beginning to worry that I'd got the cutoff date wrong, which I had thought was September 19th. But then all of a sudden the screen said, "StandardVision Presents 'The Flower' (I think that was the title, but not 100% certain), and it appeared to be a short film. But it wasn't a dance film, and so I still wasn't sure what was happening. Before leaving, I had tried to Google links for StandardVision to find out a broadcast schedule but was unsuccessful in finding one. "The Flower" ended, and more Verizon commercials began, and I thought, "hmmm...was that film part of the artist's program or not"?
But then the next thing happened pretty quickly after only another minute or two of Verizon. Good thing I had my camera ready to go. Just when I was worried that I had missed the date, all of a sudden there was Solomon on the screen. The very next thing is that it said "Elemental by (last names of all three of you guys). Sorry but I don't put last names in the blog unless it's about bad guys. But yeah, all three of your names were up there. My intent had been to get a photo of the credits, because in the pics your friends had posted so far, nobody had captured your name yet. Unfortunately, it happened too suddenly after the uncertainty, and I was not able to get a shot of the names. But, I did get a few shots indeed. They aren't as clear as some of the ones your friends posted, but they came out okay, and I posted one on my FB this evening, in a set of pics from my overall walking tour. I don't post on your FB, just because that's the way it's been for a long time, but you can see the photo in my 2018 album.
Most importantly though, it was amazing to see! All of a sudden, there was Solomon, moving through the changing background scenery, and then - boom! - there was the title, "Elemental" and then your name, right there over L.A. Live on Olympic Boulevard.
It was cool to hear about when you first announced it a couple months ago, but today I got to see it in person, and so even more of the "projection of Intent" phenomenon was felt.
Not only that, but it looks great on the Big Screen. You guys did great! You played Downtown in the entertainment capital of the world. :)
Well, I was lucky to see it, and so after that I did my usual walking tour of Downtown, hitting some but not all of the usual stops on my way back to Union Station. I knew I would depart from there rather than the 7th/Metro Station where I'd arrived, because if I wanted to see the sights I knew I had to walk all the way back. Union Station is on the far east edge of Downtown, three miles from L.A. Live, but three is a piece of cake for me, and so I took my time and had fun hitting most of my favorite places.
First I walked back to 7th Street and up toward Olive, to get the obligatory photo of The Athletic Club. That is a "can't miss", partly in honor of Dad. Then I kept going down to 5th Street and up to Grand, where I stopped inside the Central Library, an enormous facility the size of ten local libes. There I scored four previously unseen Film Noirs, an added bonus to my trip. Then from Central Libe I went a fair distance North, past Disney Hall and The Music Center, and then up to one of my very favorite places, Our Lady Queen Of The Angels Cathedral, the main Catholic Church of Los Angeles. I stop there every time I go Downtown, and I am always humbled by the feeling inside. The way the light falls on the interior, and above on the organ pipes, feels very spiritual and never fails to bring a strong feeling.
From the Cathedral I walked further North. I could see the light posts from Dodger Stadium rising above the hill in which Chavez Ravine is held. I went past the old, architecturally important Department Of Water And Power building, and over the bridge across the freeway. Then I was in Chinatown, which looks and feels as it always has, and always will. Time stops in Chinatown.
At the corner on Alameda, I passed Philippe's, then walked a couple of blocks South again to Olvera Street. You can't go Downtown and not go to Olvera. It is sunnier at this end of DTLA because you are no longer in the shade of tall buildings (though we've got nothing on Manhattan on that score), and when you are on Alameda, you feel the "Southern California" mix with the Downtown, because of the sun. I did a quick walk through of Olvera Street to get to La Luz Del Dia restaurant at the west end. La Luz was where Dad would always take us before a Dodger Game, after a Saturday spent at The Athletic Club. To me, it is one of the iconic Mexican Restaurants in Los Angeles, just because of those nights in the 1970s, and also because the food is great and it really is a famous restaurant. But for me, the memories are the most important factor.
I made one final stop, at the old Pueblo Church across from Olvera Street, the oldest church in Los Angeles. It's been there since 1812, and though it has been refurbished probably several times, you can still feel The Presence of all those years inside, and of The Holy Spirit. You will see old ladies deep in meditation and prayer any time you go, and it's just the kind of place where you will Feel It Deeply. I am sure you know what I mean.
Union Station is right across Alameda Street from Olvera, so it was just a short walk back there, and then down an escalator or two to the Red Line subway platform. By 4:45pm, we were headed back to North Hollywood, and I was home by 6pm.
All told, it was an incredible day in DTLA, especially because of "Elemental". There's also something about all the old buildings from the late 1800s, and the way the sun shines in different places. I always make a point of looking for the Gargoyles on the facades. They have been standing guard all this time.
It's quite a place, with quite a lot to see. I should go down there more often; would you go with me?
This eve, I watched one of the classic Noirs I got at the Central Libe : "The Burglar" starring the always reliable Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield in her first role. I have written too much to fully describe it to you, but it was an involving psychological crime drama that gets Two Big Thumbs Up.
It was as Noir as they come, perfect after a day in the City. ////
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, September 14, 2018
Your Film Is Beautiful + Paul Dirac + Intuition
Elizabeth, I was just now watching your film again - after several views you can get a feel for the overall cohesiveness of a piece, just like with an album after several listens - and what stands out for me, in addition to the beauty of the location, is just how well matched your dancer is to the music. Every move of hers seems to flow with the melody, and both dancer and music convey the feeling of the poem you are portraying.
You know how sometimes I say of a movie that has a well-written script and good direction, that every scene moves the story forward, and that the movie has no excess, nothing extraneous? This is what you guys have done. You start with the recitation of the poem, matched onscreen by English text, and then you go directly into the dance interpretation matched with the music. So, the body of the film parallels the opening in that way, and every element fits in place. I am guessing (and it is probably obvious) that the music was written first, and that the dancer is interpreting it. She did an excellent job as you say, and your music is very expressive, in addition to being the basis for the dance, as also being an interpretation of both the landscape of flowers, and the subject material itself : the dream of being a butterfly.
So everything fits together exceptionally well! The narration into the dream and dance, and the rise and fall of the dancer at the beginning and end, signalling the duration of the dream. The beautiful music.
And the real live butterfly at the end.
How long did you have to wait to get that shot, and how many takes? Maybe there are lots of butterflies in that field, but if not, it may have been a stroke of real luck, and quick shooting skill, to get that final shot. A perfect ending. :)
What can I say but Great Job (as usual), and congratulations, but also that, after several views as I said earler, it is clear that the feeling of what you are conveying through poetry, dance, music and nature, really comes through, and I think it's because all three of you were in sync as to the artistic goal.
You guys (I mean gals, sorry) nailed it. I hope you get a chance once again to screen it for festivals because it's a knockout. ////
You know, one of the books I am currently reading is a biography of the physicist Paul Dirac ("The Strangest Man" by Graham Farmelo). Dirac was one of the originators of Quantum Mechanics and also the discoverer of anti-matter, among other things. In his time (and probably now as well), he was considered to be second only to Einstein, and perhaps his equal in a different way, because Relativity and Quantum Theory were two different things. Anyway, I am loving this book because Dirac was such a character, such a unique person, very withdrawn yet brilliant, and he is fun to read about, but I mention him because he spent time in Madison in the 1930s, just like another genius - David Lynch - would do five decades later. Paul Dirac won the Nobel Prize for his discoveries and became famous and was invited to lecture all over the world, which he did in spite of his extreme shyness. One of the places he lectured at was the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and while there, he became enamored of the landscape and took up hiking. Just like David Lynch, who took up boating around Lake Mendota.
I only had a vague awareness of Paul Dirac until a few years ago when I saw this biography on the shelf at Northridge Libe, probably 2014 or so. I knew his name and that he was a physicist but not much else. But something about his name, or the title of the book or it's cover struck me, and I thought, "I've got to read it someday". It took me about four years to get around to it, but it has turned out to be one of my favorite life stories of any that I've read.
Once again this points to connection and the use (and trust) of intuition.
Sometimes, something (a connection) just reaches out and grabs you. And if it stays with you over time, that is your intuition telling you that you need to investigate that connection.
It could be anything; a poem, a photograph, a phrase, a book title, a dream....
But your intuition knows, and you have to trust it. That is how you make your connections. ////
I am writing from home tonight, off work until Monday. See you in the morning.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
You know how sometimes I say of a movie that has a well-written script and good direction, that every scene moves the story forward, and that the movie has no excess, nothing extraneous? This is what you guys have done. You start with the recitation of the poem, matched onscreen by English text, and then you go directly into the dance interpretation matched with the music. So, the body of the film parallels the opening in that way, and every element fits in place. I am guessing (and it is probably obvious) that the music was written first, and that the dancer is interpreting it. She did an excellent job as you say, and your music is very expressive, in addition to being the basis for the dance, as also being an interpretation of both the landscape of flowers, and the subject material itself : the dream of being a butterfly.
So everything fits together exceptionally well! The narration into the dream and dance, and the rise and fall of the dancer at the beginning and end, signalling the duration of the dream. The beautiful music.
And the real live butterfly at the end.
How long did you have to wait to get that shot, and how many takes? Maybe there are lots of butterflies in that field, but if not, it may have been a stroke of real luck, and quick shooting skill, to get that final shot. A perfect ending. :)
What can I say but Great Job (as usual), and congratulations, but also that, after several views as I said earler, it is clear that the feeling of what you are conveying through poetry, dance, music and nature, really comes through, and I think it's because all three of you were in sync as to the artistic goal.
You guys (I mean gals, sorry) nailed it. I hope you get a chance once again to screen it for festivals because it's a knockout. ////
You know, one of the books I am currently reading is a biography of the physicist Paul Dirac ("The Strangest Man" by Graham Farmelo). Dirac was one of the originators of Quantum Mechanics and also the discoverer of anti-matter, among other things. In his time (and probably now as well), he was considered to be second only to Einstein, and perhaps his equal in a different way, because Relativity and Quantum Theory were two different things. Anyway, I am loving this book because Dirac was such a character, such a unique person, very withdrawn yet brilliant, and he is fun to read about, but I mention him because he spent time in Madison in the 1930s, just like another genius - David Lynch - would do five decades later. Paul Dirac won the Nobel Prize for his discoveries and became famous and was invited to lecture all over the world, which he did in spite of his extreme shyness. One of the places he lectured at was the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and while there, he became enamored of the landscape and took up hiking. Just like David Lynch, who took up boating around Lake Mendota.
I only had a vague awareness of Paul Dirac until a few years ago when I saw this biography on the shelf at Northridge Libe, probably 2014 or so. I knew his name and that he was a physicist but not much else. But something about his name, or the title of the book or it's cover struck me, and I thought, "I've got to read it someday". It took me about four years to get around to it, but it has turned out to be one of my favorite life stories of any that I've read.
Once again this points to connection and the use (and trust) of intuition.
Sometimes, something (a connection) just reaches out and grabs you. And if it stays with you over time, that is your intuition telling you that you need to investigate that connection.
It could be anything; a poem, a photograph, a phrase, a book title, a dream....
But your intuition knows, and you have to trust it. That is how you make your connections. ////
I am writing from home tonight, off work until Monday. See you in the morning.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Congrats & Best Wishes On Your Film + "Women Of The Night" by Mizoguchi
Elizabeth, congratulations and best wishes on your new film! From the looks of the stills you posted on FB, good results are already guaranteed. :) Then will follow more publicity and the continued establishing of your name in the independent filmmaking world. Things are going well, I'd say. :)
Tonight I held my Mizoguchi Retrospective a night early, because Grimsley is coming over tomorrow. I watched the third film in my Eclipse dvd four pack, this one called "Women Of The Night" (1948). With a title like that, you can guess the subject matter, but what really stands out is how forcefully Mizoguchi confronts the material. He was known as a feminist director - beginning way back in the 1930s - and by 1948 he was pretty much laying the facts bare : women were being exploited in the wide spread slums of post war Japan, and they were almost seen as second class citizens.
In the city of Osaka, which suffered devastating firebombing attacks in WW2, many homes were burned to the ground, leaving families displaced and separated. Women left on their own found themselves hungry and unable to pay bills if they still had a home.
The movie tells the story of three sisters (one a sister-in-law), all of whom have lost male family members. Their parents are dead as well, and they are left to fend for themselves. The eldest sister has a small child, so she starts to sell off clothing to a local merchant in order to feed him. But her sales return only a pittance and she soon becomes desperate. The woman who runs the clothing stall then tells her about a man who can help her. He has money. He owns a factory.
Of course, this man is at first a gentleman. But, as portrayed by the actor, you can see in his eyes and by his body language that he has no real compassion. Soon his true nature comes out. He is revealed as nothing more than a wealthy pimp who has weathered the war and come out intact. In addition to turning out women, he also distributed heroin. He is pure evil, but in his mind he is justified.
Because Japan was male dominated, and because it was reduced to survival of the fittest after the war, a man like this sees himself as a victor, entitled to do as he wishes.
He plays the eldest sister, the one with the child, against her more beautiful younger sister, who is not as tough. In this way he separates the sisters and drives them both into the depths of servitude. One walks the streets at night, the other is a "dance hostess". The profession is the same, to different degrees and clientele.
Then there is the third sister, the sister-in-law. She is the youngest of the three. When she sees her older sisters succumb to the monetary promises of the factory owner, she loses hope and runs away from home. In another town, fresh off the train, she falls for the romantic line of a young man posing as a student. In reality he is one of a gang of thugs comprised of rebellious young people, men and women, who seek to entrap homeless waifs like herself, and turn them into prostitutes. The phoney "student" steals all the young lady's money, and now she is on the street herself, in an unfamiliar place.
All three sisters are now separated. The eldest one had been a traditional Japanese wife as the movie opened, modest and awaiting word of her husband's fate following the end of the war.
Now she is tough as nails, a hard bitten streetwalker who hates men.
This has been a recurring theme in the three Mizoguchi movies we have seen so far at The Cinematheque at The Tiny Theater.
Mizoguchi was clearly decrying the treatment of women in his country, and in doing so he was ahead of the USA by about 70 years.
But as he shows, it is not enough to denounce the male aspect.
The long-term women in the story, the ones who have become accustomed to life on the streets, have long since given up on redemption and are inured to their fate. They are harder than the men who seek their services, and they will try to destroy any woman among their number who wishes to leave the street life and try to go straight. They feel that their only possible survival is solidarity and an acceptance of their fate. Their sexuality has been twisted to the point where some of the women feel a squalid gratification from their work, which gives them temporary power over a man.
Of the three Mizoguchi films I have seen, "Women Of The Night" is by far the most open and frank in it's treatment of the subjugated women in patriarchal Japan. This is not to say that the other two films (previously reviewed) downplayed the subject. Far from it. But "Women Of The Night" intensifies it to a cry for help in a country that had to start all over again after being bombed to near oblivion but was still unwilling to let go of it's old ways.
Which, to extend the metaphor, is why we've been there as a military presence since 1945.
Directors like Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu saw it coming. They were artistic giants whose work was far ahead of it's time.
"Women Of The Night" gets Two Thumbs Way Up, though it is not easy to watch.
Tomorrow night I will be writing from home, off work until next Monday.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight I held my Mizoguchi Retrospective a night early, because Grimsley is coming over tomorrow. I watched the third film in my Eclipse dvd four pack, this one called "Women Of The Night" (1948). With a title like that, you can guess the subject matter, but what really stands out is how forcefully Mizoguchi confronts the material. He was known as a feminist director - beginning way back in the 1930s - and by 1948 he was pretty much laying the facts bare : women were being exploited in the wide spread slums of post war Japan, and they were almost seen as second class citizens.
In the city of Osaka, which suffered devastating firebombing attacks in WW2, many homes were burned to the ground, leaving families displaced and separated. Women left on their own found themselves hungry and unable to pay bills if they still had a home.
The movie tells the story of three sisters (one a sister-in-law), all of whom have lost male family members. Their parents are dead as well, and they are left to fend for themselves. The eldest sister has a small child, so she starts to sell off clothing to a local merchant in order to feed him. But her sales return only a pittance and she soon becomes desperate. The woman who runs the clothing stall then tells her about a man who can help her. He has money. He owns a factory.
Of course, this man is at first a gentleman. But, as portrayed by the actor, you can see in his eyes and by his body language that he has no real compassion. Soon his true nature comes out. He is revealed as nothing more than a wealthy pimp who has weathered the war and come out intact. In addition to turning out women, he also distributed heroin. He is pure evil, but in his mind he is justified.
Because Japan was male dominated, and because it was reduced to survival of the fittest after the war, a man like this sees himself as a victor, entitled to do as he wishes.
He plays the eldest sister, the one with the child, against her more beautiful younger sister, who is not as tough. In this way he separates the sisters and drives them both into the depths of servitude. One walks the streets at night, the other is a "dance hostess". The profession is the same, to different degrees and clientele.
Then there is the third sister, the sister-in-law. She is the youngest of the three. When she sees her older sisters succumb to the monetary promises of the factory owner, she loses hope and runs away from home. In another town, fresh off the train, she falls for the romantic line of a young man posing as a student. In reality he is one of a gang of thugs comprised of rebellious young people, men and women, who seek to entrap homeless waifs like herself, and turn them into prostitutes. The phoney "student" steals all the young lady's money, and now she is on the street herself, in an unfamiliar place.
All three sisters are now separated. The eldest one had been a traditional Japanese wife as the movie opened, modest and awaiting word of her husband's fate following the end of the war.
Now she is tough as nails, a hard bitten streetwalker who hates men.
This has been a recurring theme in the three Mizoguchi movies we have seen so far at The Cinematheque at The Tiny Theater.
Mizoguchi was clearly decrying the treatment of women in his country, and in doing so he was ahead of the USA by about 70 years.
But as he shows, it is not enough to denounce the male aspect.
The long-term women in the story, the ones who have become accustomed to life on the streets, have long since given up on redemption and are inured to their fate. They are harder than the men who seek their services, and they will try to destroy any woman among their number who wishes to leave the street life and try to go straight. They feel that their only possible survival is solidarity and an acceptance of their fate. Their sexuality has been twisted to the point where some of the women feel a squalid gratification from their work, which gives them temporary power over a man.
Of the three Mizoguchi films I have seen, "Women Of The Night" is by far the most open and frank in it's treatment of the subjugated women in patriarchal Japan. This is not to say that the other two films (previously reviewed) downplayed the subject. Far from it. But "Women Of The Night" intensifies it to a cry for help in a country that had to start all over again after being bombed to near oblivion but was still unwilling to let go of it's old ways.
Which, to extend the metaphor, is why we've been there as a military presence since 1945.
Directors like Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu saw it coming. They were artistic giants whose work was far ahead of it's time.
"Women Of The Night" gets Two Thumbs Way Up, though it is not easy to watch.
Tomorrow night I will be writing from home, off work until next Monday.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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