Category Archives: classic movies

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Labeling Tragic Masterpieces Correctly

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613I think we should start calling sad movies something else if they’re good enough.

It’s really a misnomer. The greatest films—even those surrounding the most tragic subjects–are elating, not painful. They don’t make me unhappy. They make me glad.

That’s how I felt after watching Satyajit Ray’s masterful Pather Panchali on TCM last night. It was the second time I’ve seen it, and despite the harrowing story—which concerns the struggles of an impoverished Bengali family as they try to make ends meet—I wasn’t upset by the time the devastating end came. Instead, I was ecstatic, overjoyed that I could watch such a film and immerse myself in it.

The pleasures were myriad: a hypnotic, wistful score by Ravi Shankar; superb cinematography that made me feel like I was living in an Indian village along with everyone else; terrific acting by a magnificent cast (I dare you not to be moved at the end); and a simple yet profound script providing astute social commentary without belaboring the viewer.

No, these are qualities to revel in, not be sad about. And I reveled in them accordingly, all the while wondering if there’s another name we can give this kind of film—a name that conveys its subject matter concisely while suggesting there’s no need to mourn the protagonists … just its ending, which warrants tears only because there’s no more movie left.

Skip’s Quips: Paris, Je T’Aime … Uh, Most of the Time

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Blog Sketch 082813One of my fondest cinematic memories is seeing a line outside a Paris movie theater for a Marx Brothers flick.

The Marx Brothers. A line. For a film that was, at the time, at least 60 years old.

See why I love France so much?

OK, perhaps the infatuation with Jerry Lewis–one of the silver screen’s least funny performers–doesn’t make sense, though I have to admit liking his Gallic equivalent, Louis de Funès, quite a bit. (Watch The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob and see if you agree.) Yet the truth is, there’s a film culture there that pervades the national fabric. Why? More than a century of cinematic prowess is one reason, but I think another is the notion that people just like movies there. Good movies. Old movies. And often new movies.

Many years ago, as I attempted to coordinate a showing of the original 1968 version of The Producers in my college dorm, a friend of mine pooh-poohed the idea, decrying the film’s “old humor.” True, not everyone shares those sentiments, but I wondered then–as I do now–why some feel nothing that’s been around more than 10 minutes has any value cinematically. Doesn’t quality last longer than novelty … at least, in most cases?

I’m not deluding myself: There’s no way every person in France likes the Marx Brothers or, for that matter, any old movie because of its age. Bad taste is everywhere–the admiration of les films de M. Lewis offers evidence of that–yet I think there’s a sensibility in France that suggests its inhabitants often understand what it takes to make a good movie … and why it should be valued regardless of the years behind it. Again, I’m not sure why this is, and I’m not saying one country’s better than another.

But when I summon up remembrance of movies past, I think of the line outside that French theater to see a Marx Brothers comedy. And I can’t help but find a love in my heart for Paree.

 

Setter’s ‘Spectives: A Modest Small-Screen Proposal

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Any reason why we can’t have the all-Kurosawa channel?

We have action on demand. Drama on call.

Well, I want to snap my fingers and have The Seven Samurai appear on my TV instantly.

I get hankerings all the time for this glorious, seminal movie. And it seems to be rarely on. When it is, it’s often at a time when I’m not available–like at three in the morning or 18 billion, trillion o’clock in the afternoon.

Why don’t I just get the DVD and stop complaining? OK, I’ll tell you. There’s something really organic about turning on the telly and finding a movie you like. It’s satisfying.

Satisfying in the way that getting up to put a DVD in the player isn’t.

Fine, I’m lazy. But it doesn’t change the fact that I adore this Kurosawa classic. Which means I also scoff at the 1960 American remake, a poor imitation that removes the vital class distinctions pervading the original (samurai versus farmers) while adding more guns–weapons that make such a difference in its Japanese progenitor–and subtracting most of the character development.

If I could have The Seven Samurai broadcast to my brain personally on a 24-hour basis, I’d do it.

An all-Kurosawa channel, admittedly, might not make financial sense. But maybe … an all-jidai geki station? Bring me the popcorn.

I know I wouldn’t be the only audience member.

A Skip and Setter Q&A: The Ancient Art of Swearing

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Skip and Setter QandA Sketch 092213At a recent imaginary panel that didn’t happen at any industry conference we know of, Skip and Setter locked horns on the topic of profanity and why it’s so prevalent in movies today. The following is an excerpt from their overlong, admittedly tiresome debate.

Skip: You’ve said in the past that you like seeing profanity in movies because it calls attention to the need to upgrade the English language. Are you deliberately ignoring the fact that many venerated writers–from Ben Jonson to e.e. cummings–have used vulgarity in their works? English doesn’t need upgrading!

Setter: You’re so misinformed. I’m talking about profanity when it’s used to replace inspired dialogue. As in every flick these days that tries to emulate Pulp Fiction. I’m not talking about profanity with a purpose.

Skip: Well, don’t you think all profanity has a purpose–as long as it’s in character?

Setter: No. Read my latest book.

Skip: I’m not reading your book, dude. I hate your writing.

Setter: Well, I outline my “Theory of Profanity” there. It basically states that it’s cooler to say a swear word in a movie than to get a “G” rating.

Skip: So you’re against overusing profanity.

Setter: Sure. Unless it concerns your reviews.

Skip: I love you, too. Now, why don’t you think the vulgarity-filled sports film has survived? Slap Shot, Major League? Seems like more folks want to do a film about profane, hipper-than-thou mobsters than they do locker-room sagas.

Setter: They’ll be back. I think people are afraid of seeing depictions of the way hallowed sports figures really talk. But they’re generally more credible than watching the story of a hired assassin who likes Schubert.

Skip: Sounds like a double standard. As long as it’s not believable, it’s OK to use profanity.

Setter: Maybe. Read my latest book.

Skip: No thanks. Anyway, profanity’s part of our lexicon. It’s been around for centuries.

Setter: Doesn’t mean we should use it. Look at the Hays Code era. Lots of great movies were made without profanity.

Skip: And lots of junk came out, too. Ever see Turnabout? Blecch.

Setter: For every one of those, there’s a Casablanca. See my point? You don’t need a swear word to make a good movie.

Skip: It might sell more tickets.

Setter: It might. Read my latest book.

Skip: To channel e.e. cummings: “I will not read your CENSORED book.”

Setter: Pompous CENSORED.

Please, Hollywood, Never Rerelease These Movies in 3D

Skip’s Quips: Slamming the State of Serious ’70s Sci-Fi

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Blog Sketch 082813Gosh, Rollerball is a mediocre movie.

I came to this realization after giving the Norman Jewison-helmed sci-fi flick yet another chance on Turner Classic Movies last night. It confirmed all my previous assessments: that it’s pretentious, tiresome and not as introspective as it thinks it is. The blame can partly fall on the script–which documents a future society in which corporations rule the world and sanction the violent, eponymous arena game–but it also features a lethargic performance by the usually reliable James Caan, slow-paced direction by Jewison (no, shots of people turning their heads to stare at the protagonist menacingly are not a substitute for character development) and dubious social commentary … most lamentably evidenced by a scene in which a posse of doltish partygoers representing, I assume, our worst inner voices, commit arboricide with the help of a rather powerful gun.

OK, I get it. Humans are bad. We like wars and killing trees. Fine.

We also like quality filmmaking–and Rollerball doesn’t cut it. The main problem, however, is that it could’ve been so much better, like so many other serious 1970s sci-fi flicks. Logan’s Run, A Boy and His Dog, Soylent Green … science fiction really had a lot to say in that era, but a scarce few films then aced the sniff test. I wish the folks behind them had taken the time to streamline the scripts, make the messaging less heavy-handed, kept the preaching to a minimum. Forbidden Planet‘s a benchmark. So is Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall. Spare, concise screenplays, quick-flowing dialogue, tense direction. That’s all you want in a good sci-fi movie, and you don’t find that a lot in the “golden” age of the 1970s. Ideas are almost commonplace. Execution isn’t.

So why is that? I know that period heralded an age of cinematic risks, and many of the non-sci-fi films then exemplified that. Yet with the exception of pictures such as Fantastic Planet and A Clockwork Orange, many of these flicks don’t live up to their expectations. Yes, I know the 1970s also saw the debuts of Alien and Star Wars, but those are less like “message” movies than old-fashioned, leave-your-thinking-at-the-door entertainment.

Rollerball, at its core, is a message movie. And it doesn’t work. Does that mean sci-fi should be devoid of messages altogether–that it should stick to what it does best? (Read: lasers.)

I don’t think so. But it’s something I’ll ponder next time I watch one of these futuristic “man-must” movies. Man must do this, man must do that.

Man must make better science fiction films, methinks.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Let’s Put On a Movie-Inspired Show!

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Do you remember the (sometimes) good old days when Hollywood turned Broadway musicals into motion pictures?

Yes, we still get that to some extent with Chicago, Phantom and others of their ilk. But, uh …

Well, but. It’s not the same, is it?

Definitely not the same is the trend to turn motion pictures into Broadway musicals. The Lion King is one example. Another’s Newsies. Even My Favorite Year got into the stagebound act (terribly, I might add).

What are we going to say about the cinema 20 years from now? “Hey, where were you when the film of the musical based on the movie The Producers came out?”

I know how I’d respond: “Me? I was watching the film of the opera based on the Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro at the Met. After that, we ate at the restaurant spun off the novel based on the  video game inspired by … ”

Blah, blah, blah.

There’s something truly uninspired about creating a play or musical based on a movie–especially if the original’s a good one. Film’s not like theater; it’s permanent, constant. Actors don’t flub lines one night and get them perfectly the next. You’ve got a completed work.

So if the source movie’s good–as is the case with My Favorite Year and The Producers–why bother translating it for the stage? Shouldn’t we consider ourselves lucky that we have a film we can always return to, laugh at, quote the lines from? And isn’t that one of the main reasons why we can watch great movies over and over again … because we know them like we know our significant others, our families, our friends?

Because they never change?

That’s why I’m not interested in seeing any more Broadway shows based on films. The theater begs for interpretation, transformation; movies don’t. I’ll watch the motion picture version of Sunset Boulevard, not the musical, thank you very much. Because the latter, like so many of its kind, just isn’t ready for its close-up.

Skip’s Quips: The ‘Dog’ Fan Cometh

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Blog Sketch 082813Guess what Turner Classic Movies was showing on the tube late last night.

If you said Un Chien Andalou, you win an ant-covered hand.

That’s right. Luis Buñuel’s bizarre, seminal 1929 short was appearing on the cable channel that’s also featured flicks starring Joan Crawford, Robert Wagner and the like.

Variety’s the spice of life, it seems. Or in Chien‘s case, maybe the razor.

I’ve got to admit, though–TCM definitely doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the cinema. Its eclectic selection’s one of its hallmarks, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anything more eclectic than Buñuel’s Andalusian Dog.

I still remember hearing gasps during showings of this film at, I believe, New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The notorious scene where a man appears to slice a woman’s eyeball (it was actually a cow’s) still elicited a reaction after all these years.

I think the great Buñuel would’ve been tickled at that. He might even be amused that his Andalou was being showcased on a major cable channel.

And I can’t help but be pleased, too. This is a movie that everyone should see–a picture about nothing, filled with wild, nonsensical yet somehow connective images. It’s about filmmaking and the ability to tell a story without having one. It’s about art.

And art starred on TCM last night. Turner Classic Movies, I salute you.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: I Sing the Movie Romantic!

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Every so often, I start thinking about Odd Man Out and how romantic the film is.

Yes, I’m talking about Odd Man Out, Carol Reed’s elegiac 1947 masterpiece about the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. The one where James Mason’s dying gunman staggers from alley to alley after killing a man in a robbery. The one where Robert Newton plays a crazed painter aching to create a portrait of the doomed fellow. The one where Robert Krasker’s cinematography captures all of the shadows and snow cloaking Belfast’s forgotten corners.

That doesn’t sound romantic, you say. But it is, it truly is.

When you get to the end and watch Kathleen, the woman who loves Mason’s Johnny McQueen, make the decision to go with him on his predetermined journey, you might agree with me. Because they’re both incredibly flawed, often unlikable, even criminals–yet they overlook their faults for love.

By the way, I’m not advocating this behavior at all. As Sibella says in Kind Hearts and Coronets: “Not at all.” Johnny and Kathleen are just characters and not to be emulated–especially in light of the fact that they use violence to achieve their ends.

But their actions oddly remind me of another pair of I-don’t-care-about-anyone-else lovers, Heathcliff and Catherine in the towering novel Wuthering Heights. The idea that the connection between two people can be so strong that everyone else is immaterial is, to my mind, one of the most romantic and completely untenable notions around. That it exists, presumably, just in art is a blessing; anyone who apes Heathcliff in real life would be the most insufferable person around. Still, it informs the screen, with Johnny and Kathleen providing perfect examples of all-forgiving, all-consuming adoration.

And it makes a spellbinding story. Emily Brontë, I’m sure, knew that well.

I think about Odd Man Out most often when I’m mulling life beyond our own–not that on other planets, but on ours, in a movie that superficially is about political divisions yet really concerns people. It’s about humans’ insularity, how selfish we can be … and how personal our goals are. Maybe that’s what I like most about the film, that it shows us in all our disarray, in characters who are lost everywhere they go except together.

It doesn’t mean they’re right. It does, however, mean romance.

Skip’s Quips: Get Into the Groove, for You’ve Got to … Oh, Forget It

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Blog Sketch 082813I’m so happy the musical has evolved into the 3D song-and-dance epic.

I mean, we were really slumming with films like Top Hat and My Fair Lady, right? You don’t want to have a plot and witty dialogue messing up all those steps.

Or, for that matter, anything interfering with a story of competition so fierce that the toughs in West Side Story will want to jump ship into Mary Poppins.

Yes, I’m curmudgeonly. Sure, I’m old-fashioned. And I still grouse over the genre’s move into rock ‘n’ roll.

But I do think we’ve dropped some of the excitement that went into the great musicals of the past–excitement that can’t be replaced with legs flying out three-dimensionally from the screen.

Just look at what has come out recently. Some of these formulaic motion-filled pictures hearken back to the timelessly terrible let’s-save-the-theater yarns of yore. Aren’t there enough screenwriters out there to infuse a lackluster script with some originality?

At this rate, I’ll take even a sequel to Madonna’s best foray into cinema.

The fact is, a musical isn’t complete without something other than feet supporting it. Good writing. A smart storyline. And, of course, terrific music.

Tales of a flash mob just ain’t gonna cut it.

So for those who believe you just gotta have a gimmick, I put it to you that entertainment’s more important. It’s not just about jumping over cars and hoofing in public. Give me a screenplay with clever dialogue, and I’ll watch. Only then will I want to face the music and dance.