Amateur Film Studies

I hope to see you there...

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:15:00 +0000

Hi readers!

I have decided to stop blogging on Amateur Film Studies because my interest in media is wider than "just" film. I'm still very active on line, so I'd like to invite you to visit my new blogs:

Wasteland Observer is a blog about television, movies, and anything else that is often referred to as popular culture. The blog is generally academic in tone but never dry and, I hope, often entertaining (after all, the blog is about entertainment).

Dtelenovelas is a blog in Spanish where I explore telenovelas. I grew up watching Spanish-language serials and they are still a very important part of my media consumption, and the object of my research. If you're a fan of this wonderful television genre, or are intrigued by it, and you're able to read in Spanish, take a look around.

On James Cameron's 'Titanic'

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:09:00 +0000

There could be no doubt that Titanic is of great importance to the economic film historian. This is because of two main reasons: its unprecedented high budget, and its (unexpected) success at the box office. The main concern of economic film history is not individual films like Titanic but, rather, the commercial enterprise involved in making and selling movies[1]. Titanic is a prime illustration of the blockbuster phenomenon of Hollywood movies in the 1990s. However, if film historians are to fully understand the significance of Titanic, and the reasons behind its success, they would do well to include in their analyses an array of approaches beyond the merely economic. I shall be looking at Titanic from four different perspectives: the economic, the social, the aesthetic and the technological in an attempt to show how they all would enrich the historian’s study. These approaches are particularly useful if taken in conjunction rather than in isolation.

Titanic was the first film to gross more than $1 billion at the box office[2]. Even when its number of paid admissions is adjusted for inflation, the film features in the list of the top twenty-five box-office hits in North America[3]. With a budget over $200 million, it is also one of the most expensive movies ever made[4]. In 1997, expensive Hollywood films were nothing new; one of the original moguls, David O. Selznick – best known as the producer of one of the most expensive and the most commercially successful film ever made, Gone With the Wind (1939) – is said to have believed that ‘only two kinds of movies make money – the very cheap and the very expensive.[5]’ Its big budget secures Titanic an important place in the history of Hollywood, among other extremely expensive films such as Foolish Wives (1922), which was the first picture to cost more than $1 million[6]; Ben-Hur (1925); The Ten Commandments (1923, 1956); Cleopatra (1963) or two films which James Cameron directed before Titanic, True Lies (1994) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). However, not all big-budget films are as successful as Titanic; logically big budgets make potential profits harder to achieve. Cleopatra only turned a profit in 1966, three years after its theatrical release, when Twentieth Century Fox sold the television rights to ABC for $5 million. Unlike Cleopatra, which eventually was successful, a more recent big-budget film, Heaven’s Gate (1980), notoriously flopped and its director, Michael Cimino, was castigated by both the industry and the media for his creative and budgetary excesses[7]. It is important to place Titanic in this historical context because while the film was still in production many commentators expected it to fail and were ready to blame James Cameron for this.

Titanic’s escalating costs meant that two major studios had to be involved in financing it. Twentieth Century Fox was responsible for providing much of the budget and it secured the international distribution rights while Paramount invested $65 million in the production, and a further $50 million to be spent on US marketing costs. Although, this kind of arrangement was not unique to Titanic, the exaggerated budget and the delays in production caused much concern to the American film industry[8].

Concerns that the film was likely to fail to recoup its massive investment were drown out by very aggressive international marketing campaigns (including a top-ranking song by Céline Dion) which created anticipation worldwide. Titanic was originally intended to open in the summer of 1997 but there were several delays for which James Cameron was largely held to be responsible. Following its international premiere in Tokyo, Titanic finally opened in the USA on 19 December 1997. Peter Kramer has explained how much of the film’s publicity centred on James Cameron’s involvement in the project and portrayed the director as a ‘crazy, dictatorial and supermacho guy obsessed with realism.[9]’ The film’s huge expense and delayed release were seen as testament to James Cameron’s perfectionism and tenaciousness. These claims are probably not of much use to economic film historians, but there will be important when we take an aesthetic approach to Titanic. They also suggest to whom the marketing campaigns intended this film to appeal.

Apart from the publicity focusing on Cameron’s ‘obsession’ with technology and faithful reproduction of the original ship sunk in 1912, much of the marketing strategy focused on the love story which develops in approximately the first 100 minutes of the film. Emphasising the romance between the lower-class Jack Dawson (played by the then teen idol, Leonardo DiCaprio) and well-heeled yet rebellious Rose DeWitt Bukater (played by the then lesser known actor Kate Winslet), proved an effective marketing technique to drive young heterosexual women to the cinema. These women were, as we will see, the key to Titanic box-office success.

These issues specific to Titanic, of no interest to economic film historians, are central to the analyses made by social film historians. Such historians would be interested, among other things, in the reception and interpretation of Titanic.

It is important to notice that Titanic was a ‘sleeper’ blockbuster. Week after week, it continued climbing in popularity until finally becoming the top grossing film in North America five weeks after its release[10]. In the USA, the majority of the audience was female (60%) and, among them, a sizable amount were under the age of 25 (63%). 45% of female spectators under 25 went to see the movie more than once.[11]. Positive reviews certainly contributed to the popularity of the film and its repeat viewing and the fandom generated suggest that this was a film which, despite its pretended historical setting, spoke to an audience that is more often than not neglected by Hollywood. It is part of the industry’s received wisdom that its main audience is young heterosexual men. As Richard Maltby has explained, this was not always the case. Indeed in Classical Hollywood (before the 1960s) women were the main target of the industry[12]. Titanic harks back to Classical Hollywood narratives addressed mainly at women. At least the first 100 minutes of the movie I alluded to before are concerned with the romance between the protagonists. This leaves us, however, with a remaining 94 minutes which have been described as ‘a self-contained, one-and-half hour action film.[13]’ In other words, what, by the 1990s, we had come to expect from a blockbuster.

All the considerations presented so far would be of no interest to aesthetic film historians who are solely concerned with the history of film as an art form[14]. They are, like social film historians, interested in individual films but for very different reasons. The aesthetic approach has more in common with art history than with any of the other approaches to film history. As such, its proponents have a narrow focus limited to a few exceptional films which, according to different aesthetic criteria, they consider works of art. If we study Titanic as a work of art, we would not be interested in why it was made, who watched it, how much money it cost or whether it was commercially successful. As a work of art, we would be interested in the artist who directed the film, who we would consider its author (or auteur). Also, we would find it useful to study the director’s other works in an attempt to better understand his oeuvre or even discover his worldview.

By the time he directed Titanic, James Cameron was already an established director in Hollywood. He was best known for making expensive and high grossing films. Aesthetic film historians would perhaps neglect to include the commercial success of Cameron’s films in their analyses, but they would not fail to notice that, before Titanic, he made action science-fiction films. Cursorily, Titanic appears to be a great departure for Cameron because it has a love story at its core. Also, while his previous films are set in a dystopian future or a version of the present most audiences would not recognise, Titanic, which is of course set in 1912, sticks out as a period film based on a real event.

A more in-depth look into Cameron’s films will reveal his choice in making Titanic is more congruous than its differing setting and central romance may suggest. Alexandra Keller argues that James Cameron’s films can be recognised by a certain ideology and its expression which is always consistent and which is not limited to any particular genre[15]. According to Keller, Cameron is a blockbuster auteur. The inclusion of a film as expensive and as commercially successful as Titanic into the Cameron canon is more than justifiable because, as indicated earlier, it contains the elements 1990s audiences associated with blockbusters. Another strong link between Titanic and many of Cameron’s previous pictures is the inclusion of an exceptionally strong (both physically and psychologically) and determined female character. Regardless of her period costumes, Rose is made of the same material as Ellen Ripley from Aliens or Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies. Not only does she rescue her lover, Jack, with an axe but she survives him after the sinking of the ship.

‘Technology-obsessed’ James Cameron often uses innovative special effects. In Titanic’s case, he innovated in the use of underwater filming, which he had explored in his earlier work The Abyss, and computer-generated imagery or CGI which he has continued to use to even more spectacular effect in his most recent venture Avatar (2009). There is an obvious link between Cameron’s films being both expensive and commercially successful, and the technology he uses in making them. Cameron’s films tend to be very expensive mainly because of the technology used in creating special effects, and they are commercially successful because audiences find those effects attractive. Although technology film history, like economic film history, does not tend to focus on individual films but on the significance of technology in the development of cinema[16], I would suggest that in talking about Cameron’s films there is a link as well with the aesthetic and social approaches. Richard Maltby’s concept of the ‘commercial aesthetic’ (contemporary Hollywood films’ aesthetic is mainly characterised by its necessity to appeal to the widest possible audience by providing them ‘with a range of aesthetic satisfactions’)[17] seems very apt here. Cameron, as a commercial auteur, created in Titanic a film of almost unprecedented appeal because of its masterful combination of expensive technology, a classic Hollywood romance, and the inclusion of elements belonging to the action and science-fiction genres.

Titanic is more than ‘an economic triumph’. Privileging a reading of Titanic based purely on economic terms indicates that the film itself has not artistic value or any social or technological interest. While the role of the film historian should not be to evaluate films, I have shown that studying Titanic as a work of art can be fruitful. In fact, each of the four approaches I have discussed is useful for the film historian. It is difficult, however, to arrive at a satisfactory analysis of Titanic’s importance in film history when we privilege a certain approach to the total exclusion of all others. The social film historian’s approach can yield very interesting results but only if, as I hope to have demonstrated, combined with aesthetic, economic and technological considerations.

Bibliography

Chapman, James, ‘Aesthetic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Chapman, James, ‘Economic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Coyne, Michael, ‘Technological film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Keller, Alexandra, ‘Size does matter: Notes on Titanic and James Cameron as blockbuster auteur’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999.

Kramer, Peter, ‘Women first: Titanic (1997), action-adventure films and Hollywood’s female audience’ in AA310 Resource Book 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Lubin, David M., Titanic, London, British Film Institute, 1999.

Maltby, Richard, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, 2^nd edn, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003.

Morden, Ethan, The Hollywood Studios: Their Unique Styles During the Golden Age of Movies, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989.

Wyatt, Justin and Vlemas, Katherine, ‘The drama of recoupment in the mass media negotiation of Titanic’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999.

[1] James Chapman, ‘Economic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.63.

[2] Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, 2^nd edn, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003, p.10.

[3] Quoted in Chapman, ‘Economic film history’, p.72.

[4] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first: Titanic (1997), action-adventure films and Hollywood’s female audience’ in AA310 Resource Book 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.37.

[5] Ethan Morden, The Hollywood Studios: Their Unique Styles During the Golden Age of Movies, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989, p.11.

[6] Justin Wyatt and Katherine Vlemas, ‘The drama of recoupment in the mass media negotiation of Titanic’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999, p.30.

[7] Wyatt and Vlemas, ‘The drama of recoupment...’, p.31.

[8] Wyatt and Vlemas, ‘The drama of recoupment...’, pp.32-33.

[9] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first...’, p.37.

[10] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first...’, p.33.

[11] Quoted in David M. Lubin, Titanic, London, British Film Institute, 1999, p.10.

[12] Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema..., p.20.

[13] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first...’, p.37.

[14] James Chapman, ‘Aesthetic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.3.

[15] Alexandra Keller, ‘Size does matter: Notes on Titanic and James Cameron as blockbuster auteur’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999, p.142.

[16] Michael Coyne, ‘Technological film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.93.

[17] Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema..., p.14.

CMBA Blogathon - Movies of 1939: 'Dark Victory'

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sun, 15 May 2011 10:36:00 +0000

Judith Traherne is a young socialite whose life involves horse racing and parties. Although she has been feeling unwell for a while she refuses to see a doctor until she has a horse riding accident and, shortly after, falls down the stairs. Specialist Dr. Frederick Steele suggests brain surgery. The operation is a failure and Judith will die in a matter of months. Dr. Steele decides to hide the truth from his patient but confides on her best friend, Ann King.

Like most Classical Hollywood melodramas, Dark Victory relies on narration that is unrestricted in range (Bordwell, 70). This means that we, the spectators, know everything there is to know, there is no mystery to resolve. We know that Judith is terminally ill and her death at the end of the film is expected almost from the very beginning. Our pleasure in watching this film resides in how the characters will react to the truth. We look forward to Ann's reaction to the news of her friend's fatal condition or, after Judith finds out she is not cured, we cannot wait for her to confront Dr. Steele. Although, of course, she does not find out until the film is very advanced. This further enhances our pleasure. In fact, "Viewer interest is maintained by retardation and carefully timed coincidences that produce surprise" (Bordwell, 70).

Another, perhaps even greater, pleasure is Bette Davis's performance. Dark Victory is a must-see for any fans of Davis and a good introduction to her unique style. Her hands and, more crucially, her eyes are central to Davis's performance. Her eyes are expressive as ever in this film and with good reason. Judith's first symptoms have to do with her eyes. "Do you use your eyes a lot?" asks her Dr. Steele during their first consultation. In the final scene, she goes blind (her blindness is a sign of her imminent death) but she successfully pretends to be able to see while Dr. Steele, who is now her husband, leaves for New York. Although she keeps up the pretence for her husband's sake, we, the spectators, are painfully aware that she cannot see. It is true that she verbalises this to Ann but we can also "see" it in her eyes.

Bette Davis was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress but 1939 was a difficult year to be nominated and Davis lost out to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Dark Victory was also nominated for Best Original Score (Max Steiner) and Best Picture, awards gone to The Wizard of Oz (Herbert Stothart) and Gone With the Wind (David O. Selznick) respectively.

Dark Victory is a film melodrama directed by Edmund Goulding for Warner Bros. The film stars Bette Davis, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan.

References:

Bordwell, D. Narration in the Fiction Film, Routledge: New York, 1985.

The Classic Movies of 1939 Blogathon is coming

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:10:00 +0000

As all classic movie fans know, 1939 is considered by many 'Hollywood's greatest year'. I have written about it here. The Classic Movie Blog Association will be holding a blogathon on May 15, 16 and 17. There will be posts about great movies like Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, and many others. You can check the full list with links on the Association's blog.

My own entry will be on Dark Victory, starring Bette Davies, and it will be published on Sunday, May 15. I hope you all will take some time to read this and the posts by my fellow classic movie bloggers!

A new breed of telenovela: La Reina del Sur

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 12:46:00 +0000

Telenovelas are Spanish-language daily serials originally from Latin America but now popular around the world. Although the genre shares its origins with the American soap opera, it is unhelpful to think of telenovelas merely as "Spanish-language soaps". For one thing, while soap operas have always been daytime products created to last forever, most telenovelas are shown, at least on first-run in their respective countries of origin, on prime-time and are always made to last only for a number of months. Their length can vary from around 60 to over 200 episodes (sometimes, if they are exceptionally successful, they can have sequels). To put all of this into perspective, US soap As the World Turns, which ended in September 2010 after 54 years on CBS, had a whopping 13,858 episodes while hospital drama ER had 331 episodes. This would place the telenovela closer to series than soaps. More importantly than that, telenovelas have always had story arcs which are resolved in the final weeks in the same satisfying way that premium cable English-language series (and very few broadcast ones) can afford to.

I am not arguing that telenovelas are as good as HBO dramas. But what I would say is that, like any other television genre, there are good, not-so-good, so-so and terrible telenovelas. There are also massive differences between telenovelas made in different countries; Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas could not be more different, for example. Also there are many different sub-genres often aimed at very different audiences. Telenovelas continue to grow in popularity around the world and recently the USA is becoming one of the biggest markets for them.

One of the most recent successes has been the exceptional La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South) which tells the compelling story of a Mexican woman (played by Kate del Castillo) who raises to be a powerful drug lord following her husband's murder. This telenovela's complex narrative structure, superb acting and action-packed episodes have made it a ratings hit in America. Made by RTI for the NBC-owned Telemundo, this telenovela was the number one show on its slot (10 pm/9c) recently. This is enormous news as Telemundo not only beat the biggest Spanish-language network in the US, Univisión (which shows local news on that slot), but also CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX and the CW. Significantly, it attracted more viewers than the critically-acclaimed CBS legal drama The Good Wife.

Unlike its main competitor, Univisión, which sources its prime-time telenovelas from the Mexican Televisa, Telemundo invests heavily on their own productions which are normally the result of a very fruitful partnership with the Colombian company RTI. Telemundo's telenovelas are first shown in the USA and then exported to Latin America, Spain and other markets. Often, these telenovelas are set in the USA and offer an aspirational alternative to Latinos which they are regular denied on English-language television. La Reina del Sur is much grittier than most telenovelas and it boasts many international locations (Mexico, USA, Spain and Colombia). Telemundo has three telenovela prime-time slots: 8pm/7c, 9pm/8c and 10pm/9c. The last two slots are the most prestigious and tend to be the home of the best telenovelas. Because La Reina del Sur deals with adult themes, it is only suitable to the last slot of the evening. Also, like most Telemundo programming, it is close-captioned in both English and Spanish which makes it accessible to most Americans.

The series has also already premièred in Spain and it is about to be shown in Mexico. Interestingly, in Spain, where telenovelas (even Spanish ones) are traditionally daytime products, La Reina del Sur is being shown on weekly prime-time episodes every Wednesday at 10pm on Antena 3.

La Reina del Sur is exceptional for being the first Spanish-language TV show which has managed to beat mainstream English-language programming in the USA and the first telenovela to be shown on prime time by a major network in Spain. It is really that good.

If you like telenovelas, and can read Spanish, you might like my blog devoted to of the most popular TV genres in the world: Telenovelas USA.

'Black Swan', commercial success, aesthetic failure

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 10:51:00 +0000

International movie poster for Black Swan

Few recent films have incited more visceral responses than Black Swan (2010). Amanda Klein has rightly pointed out that the film employs some of the cinematic conventions of art cinema, horror, melodrama, and pornography. She, unlike some of the critics she cites, seems to consider this film aesthetically successful. I would suggest that, whereas the mélange of generic conventions furnishes the film with enough wide appeal that even the most negative reviews could not stop it from being a commercial success, the specific use of these conventions affects the film's aesthetics negatively.

Paraphrasing David Bordwell, Klein says that 'art films define themselves against the classical Hollywood paradigm of linear cause and effect narratives, strong, logical character motivations, and conclusive endings'. All of which is true about Black Swan. Art films, however, do not tend to enjoy great commercial success -- they certainly do not achieve the top position that Black Swan holds at the time of writing. From this we can perhaps infer that the art film elements are not behind the film's success, but we need to look closely at how the film uses the different generic conventions Klein mentions before we come to a satisfactory answer. Richard Maltby has spoken of the 'commercial aesthetic' Hollywood movies attempt to achieve: 'Hollywood relies for much of its aesthetic effect on its affective qualities, on the emotional engagement of its audience with the text - on the tears, laughter, fear, and erotic arousal it provokes in its viewers' (54). For a number of viewers (Klein amongst them) Black Swan does all of these.

I want to move away from the unquestionable box office success and popular appeal that Black Swan enjoys to focus on how its hybrid-like use of genres does not work as well aesthetically as it does commercially. I shall do this by individually looking at each of the genres which inform the movie.

Let us start then with the art film. As its commercial success suggests, Black Swan cannot be fully considered an art film. Art film is just one of the genres its director, Aaron Aronofsky, draws on to create his film. I would argue that the use of art film conventions is what has most upset the critics who have reviewed it negatively. This has motivated some reviewers' claims about the film being 'high art trash'. However, for the general public (who, unlike film critics, do not watch many art films, if any) the art film elements in an otherwise, as we will see, very familiar and accessible movie, perhaps create the satisfying effect of having watched something 'intelligent' and 'worthy'. For the public this view is also validated by the awards garnered by the film.

A genre that continues to be popular, and familiar, to most cinema-goers is horror. Black Swan mixes both psychological and body horror. Nina's doppelgängers or her controlling mother are firmly rooted in psychological horror, whereas the stabbings, and bodily injuries, as the result of Nina's psychosis are both. For contemporary standards, the film's use of horror conventions is quite mild although in the context of the other genres informing it, they can become truly shocking.

I am less sure about the pertinence of the term melodrama when discussing Black Swan. This is partly because I think the melodrama is one of the hardest genres to define, and partly because I think it is too often used derisively. When applied to Black Swan I think Klein and others are referring to the film's emotional excesses. As such, the melodramatic elements are related to, or sometimes overlap with, the horror ones (e.g. Nina's mother). This is, rather, an attempt at conscious camp. The problem is that because the attempt is conscious, the film cannot truly be camp. In other words, there is nothing queer about Black Swan because the potentially camp elements (lesbian sex, ballet, overbearing mother, ageing diva, etc.) are consciously exploited as part of its 'commercial aesthetic'. The use of these elements is purely exploitative. For example, there is no narrative function for the lesbian sex scene. Its inclusion pushes the boundaries of mainstream cinema into the realm of pornography. It is true that the film's depiction of sex is never as graphic as its depiction of body horror. However, for an American film on general release, the film contains as much sex as is permissible. The film's depiction of lesbian sex is reminiscent of pornography aimed at heterosexual men. This is not necessarily surprising since Aronofsky is a heterosexual man, but disappointing in a film with such interesting themes as dealing psychologically with sex and ageing.

All the overlapping excesses affect the film's coherence negatively. Black Swan offers its viewers an easy to follow plot of a ballerina who, in order to play the main role in Swan Lake needs to inhabit both a white and a black swan. Her problem is that she is 100% white swan. The film charts her painful transformation into black swan which some of the horror conventions clearly aid. The melodramatic and pornographic elements, however, only detract from the film's narrative which is disrupted in a way reminiscent to art film but which, in reality, only add to the film's commercial appeal by exploiting tried and tested elements from 'lesser' genres.

Black Swan cannot properly be considered an art film because it is too commercially successful and accessible. The film's use of generic conventions (including the art film) are part of the film's 'commercial aesthetic' which makes it a box office triumph.

Sources:

- Klein, Amanda, "Black Swan, Cinematic Excesses and the Full Body Experience". Flow 11 February 2011. 28 February 2011.
http://flowtv.org/2011/02/black-swan/
- Maltby, Richard, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
- Segers, Frank, "Black Swan leads foreign box office for 3rd weekend". Reuters 28 February 2011. 1 March 2011.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/28/uk-boxoffice-overseas-idUKTRE71R0C920110228

All cats are grey at night: Rohmer's 'Full Moon in Paris'

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 13:21:00 +0000

"Qui a deux femmes perd son âme, qui a deux maisons perd sa raison" (He who has two wives loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind).

Part of the "comedies et proverbes" series, the plot of Les nuits de la pleine lune (1984) takes place during three months (November, December and January) between Paris and the new town Marne-la-Vallée. Louise lives with her boyfriend Rémi in the suburbs but longs to spend her evenings in the city with her friend Octave (who is unreciprocatedly attracted to her).

This post is not a full analysis of the film; I will only try to draw your attention to some noteworthy elements of it.


Marne-la-Vallée

The first establishing shot shows us a deserted bluey/grey early morning Marne-la-Vallée. This contrasts with a later establishing shot of the Paris neighbourhood where Louise used to live and still has an apartment.

Paris

The colours are much warmer and the place is buzzing with human activity.

Going back to the first scene, Rémi and Louise argue because she wants to go out in Paris that evening but he doesn't like going out. Their livestyles are incompatible: he's a daytime person who enjoys playing tennis on Saturday morning while she prefers partying all night and sleeping all day. Louise prefers spending time in Paris, where she also works but Rémi is happy with his life in the new town.

Rémi and Louise often argue about their different needs

Fans of films by Éric Rohmer will be familiar with his interest in showing us the banal act of commuting. We follow Louise all the way to work. Firstly we watch her walking alone to the station which, as we will see, foreshadows the ending of the movie. Then she's on the train and, finally, walks to the design studio where she works.

Louise goes to work

By now, you'll have probably noticed the prevalence of the colour red. Louise's scarf, Rémi's towel, cars in Paris and the Mondrian print on the wall in Rémi's apartment. Costumes and sets are key in the mise-en-scene of any film by Rohmer was particularly careful about those elements and often personally decorated the sets (in this film, he let the actress who played Louise, Pascale Ogier, decorate "her" apartment). Les nuits, like most films by Rohmer, was filmed entirely on location. This makes the mise-en-scene, and particularly, Rohmer's intention of sticking to a particular colour scheme for each of his films (in this case blue/grey and red/orange) very challenging, specially with a limited budget. This is why, in this film, red or blue towels or sheets cover pieces of furniture.

A red towel covers a white door

This particular colour schemes makes sense for a film which most scenes take place in autumn and either early in the morning or at night.

Octave's blue scarf

Going back to the plot, a key scene is when Louise and Octave attend a party together. As soon as they enter the party, there is a POV shot of Louise's acquaintance Camille and her roomate, Marianne. Camille immediately comes to say hello to Louise and Octave. Octave is visibly underwhelmed by Camille and goes mingling while the two friends talk. While they're talking, Rémi turns up which, interestingly, we can only infer initially from the dialogue and the girls' body language. Camille looks pleased while Louise's face shows disappointment, even perhaps annoyance, and she recoils away from him. This is shot with a static camera in medium shot, so Louise's act of moving away allows enough space for Rémi to enter the frame. She then leaves Camille and Rémi alone as she moves to the dance floor.

The next sequence is of Lousie dancing with Octave among other revellers. If you look at the next illustration, you will see a few characters which at this point are unknown, or only vaguely familiar, to us (and to Louise). They all serve an important function in the film. The girl in the white dress - crucially - in the middle of the frame is Camille's friend, Marianne; the girl to our left has already distracted Octave (who's now out of the frame) so that Louise can dance with Bastien (the only man in the frame), with whom Louise will eventually be unfaithful to Rémi much later in the film.

They don't know each other yet: Louise, Marianne and Bastien

What happens next in the scene is also very telling. Camille introduces Marienne to Rémi. First Camille talks to him about her friend (Marianne, like Rémi plays tennis and she and Camille live in the new town too) and, although he seems uninterested at first, his face lights up when Marianne comes over to say hello.

Louise by herself

Louise achieves her goal of having a pied-à-terre in Paris where she can crash when she's in town. This gives her the freedom to go out in Paris at night without worrying about getting back to the suburbs. Her first night in Paris turns out to be a lonely one because she can't find anyone to go out with. Far from being disappointed by this, she seems to really enjoy being by herself. In the dialogue (and by the way both Rémi and Octave treat her) it is apparent that men have always loved her too intensely and she tends to go from one relationship to the next. She's never had the chance to be truly alone.

Later in the film, as mentioned, Louise cheats on Rémi with Bastien, whom she meets again at another party. It's not really a spur-of-the moment fling since they go on a date the day after the party. Their date is conveyed by a montage set to the title song. That sequence sticks out because it is the only example of the use of non-diegetic music and montage in the film (Rohmer's use of such techniques is extremely rare in his filmography).

Louise and Bastien

Watching this film several times is very rewarding because of the mise-en-scene elements that contribute to its coherence but which could be hard to spot the first time around. I have indicated only a few here but there are many more. Restricted knowledge, as when Louise first encounters Bastien and Marianne at the first party, is key. Louise is the only character who is present in every scene whereas Rémi is largely absent. What he's been up to for almost three months becomes clear only in the final scene. Louise winds up alone because Rémi has fallen in love with Marianne. Before we get there, and because we share Louise's point of view, we are bound to make some wrong turns. However, all the elements are there all along so the ending makes perfect sense.

All I Desire (1953)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 18:08:00 +0000

Let me just say off the bat that I am a big fan of Douglas Sirk's films. I have written about his Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows. All I Desire (1953) is different from those two films because of its historical setting (1910) and its black and white cinematography. It shares with them (and other Sirk films) that it is what used to be dismissively known as a "woman's film" and what critics now refer to as a melodrama. To this genre belong films that mainly appealed to female viewers, like the Hollywood family sagas of the 1950s. Melodramas tended to promote domesticity and the "traditional" family as an ideal for American women.

Superficially, All I Desire seems to do exactly that. It tells the story of Naomi Murdoch (Barbara Stanwyck) who one day leaves her small town (Riverside, Wisconsin) abandoning her family (husband Henry, daughters Lily and Joyce, and son Ted) to pursue an acting career. She returns to see her daughter Lily at a school play and ends up staying after reconciling with her husband. It is suggested throughout the film that Naomi left town to avoid a scandal and gradually we find out that this involved an illicit liaison with a man called Dutch Heinemann. Naomi's youngest child Ted uncannily resembles Dutch and loves spending time with him. The possibility that Ted is Dutch's son is never directly addressed in the plot but there is a parallelism that strongly suggests this to be the case. Lily, the aspiring blonde actress, is just like her mother (at some point, she even says "I'm like her"). We first see her hanging out in the kitchen with the cook Lena. Later, when Naomi arrives, she also seems more at ease in the kitchen with Lena than anywhere else in the house; Joyce is like the female version of her father. They look alike and display the same behaviours. In fact, they always react in the exact same way to the same situations throughout the movie. Following that pattern, Ted would have to look and behave like one of his parents. I think he is fashioned after his father Dutch.

Naomi is an absent mother and wife for years. Her career hasn't amounted to much; she tried "legit" theatre but ended up being a mediocre vaudevillian. If she doesn't go back to Riverside with the idea of reconciling with her family and staying, very soon she must realise that this is preferable that returning to a life of cheap motels and provincial vaudeville theatres. When her erstwhile lover Dutch tries to reignite their relationship she rejects him by (accidentally) shooting him. She also confesses that she was never a successful actress, which earns her scorn from Lily but sympathy from Joyce and her husband. We are given a "happy ending" of conjugal reconciliation which reinforces the message of domesticity I mentioned earlier.

However, we need to ask ourselves how "happy" this ending really is and, also perhaps, how much of an ending it is. We leave Dutch hurt, but recovering, in hospital. Are we to believe that he will leave Naomi alone? Naomi seems happy to stay with her husband but how much of this has to do with love and how much with her failed attempt at an acting career. How about Lily who adored her mother, or rather the idea that she was a successful actress, but now hates her? How about Ted who never seemed to care much about her mother's return and spends all his time with (his real father) Dutch? In asking these questions we realise that the "close" ending is in fact very much "open". Sirk was an expert film maker. Was he subverting one of the most conservative genres in Hollywood at the time?

The Continuing Story of 'Peyton Place'

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:18:00 +0000

US television’s first prime-time soap opera was Peyton Place (1964-1969). Until its debut, the soap opera in America had been daytime television entertainment for busy housewives. Encouraged by the success of Coronation Street (1960- ) in Britain, television producer and writer Paul Monash created what he called a “television novel” offered in two weekly instalments. Scheduling a primetime series twice a week had never been done on American television before, but it seemed to work for British network ITV, with Coronation Street. ABC was right to risk trying this new approach in television scheduling; Peyton Place was so successful that it brought the fledging network to the number one spot in the ratings, overcoming the all-powerful CBS and NBC networks for the first time in its history.

Initially, Monash considered showing Coronation Street in the US but, afraid that American audiences might struggle to understand northern English accents, he decided to buy the rights of a bestselling novel by Grace Metalious set in a fictitious town in Massachusetts. Metalious’s book had been adapted as a film by director Mark Robson in 1957. Like the novel, the movie had been a hit. So by the time Peyton Place premiered on ABC on 15 September 1964, it already enjoyed a certain status in American popular culture.

To meet the requirements of network television, the series changed many elements of the plot of the novel and the movie (for example, there is no incest in the series). The cast is also completely different. The character of Constance Mackenzie, played by Lana Turner in the film, was portrayed by Dorothy Malone on television. Malone was a familiar presence for fans of 1950s melodrama because she had starred in two of the best films by Douglas Sirk: Written on the Wind (1956) and The Tarnished Angles (1957). The series also launched the careers of two then unknown young actors: Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neil. Farrow left the show in 1966 to marry Frank Sinatra and, after many successful years, the ratings suffered and the series was never quite the hit it used to be, although it continued to be popular for a number of seasons.

The initial success of the show meant that, from June 1965, ABC increased the number of weekly episodes from two to three. In September 1966, because of declining ratings caused by Farrow’s departure, the airings decreased to two episodes a week. The show’s final season, between February and June 1969, was aired with a single weekly episode. After 514 episodes the series ended. In the 1970s ABC rehashed the show as a daytime serial for two years, and in 1985 some of the original cast members were reunited in a made-for-TV movie called Peyton Place: The Next Generation.

Peyton Place occupies an important position in the history of US television for several reasons: its bold scheduling, its role in turning ABC into a successful network capable of competing in the ratings with CBS and NBC, and for paving the way for the big prime-time soaps Dallas (1978-91), Dynasty (1981-89), Falcon Crest (1981-1990) and Knots Landing (1979-1993).

CMBA Hitchcock blogathon: Why 'Rear Window' is my favourite Hitchcock film

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 07:52:00 +0000

Alfred Hitchcock withdrew his 1954 film Rear Window from circulation during the 1960s. His contract with Paramount gave him control over the films he made at the studio, including also To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo (1958). Rear Window was finally re-released in 1983, to new critical acclaim. No doubt, the years of unavailability contributed to the film’s increased appeal because it was never out of critical discourse during those decades.

Of course, I came to it much later when it had long been available for domestic viewing. I don’t remember when I first saw it, but it was, no doubt, on television. I keep going back to it and not only because, possibly, Rear Window, Psycho (1960) and reruns of his TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents were my introduction to the director’s work. I have now seen most of his films and I admire and enjoy many of them; Rear Window continues to be my favourite Hitchcock movie.

There is a distinction between recognising that a film is good and 'liking' it (we all like to watch bad films from time to time). For me, Rear Window is one of those films, which is truly great but also hugely enjoyable. I’m going to try to summarise some of the reasons why I like it so much:

First of all, there’s Hitchcock’s signature visual narrative style, or the camera as narrator. An example of this is how Hitchcock establishes that L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is a photojournalist who broke his leg in car crash and is, therefore, confined to his small Manhattan apartment visually without having to rely on dialogue or voice over. Other Hitchcock films with the action restricted to small physical spaces, such as Rope (1948) and Dial ‘M’ for Murder (1954), good as they are, do use more dialogue to indicate to the viewer ‘what is going on’ than Rear Window had to.

Then, and related to my previous point, is the tension and suspense that Hitchcock creates so successfully. I’m not going to go into how he does it as that could be the subject of a whole book but, for me, Rear Window is one of the most tense films I’ve ever seen. It is testament to Hitchcock’s talent that the tension doesn’t decrease with repeat viewing.

Not to say that there is no humour in the movie; there is plenty and mostly courtesy of the great character actress Thelma Ritter who plays Jeffries’s nurse, Stella. In a world inhabited by journalists and models, and where Grace Kelly in evening gowns represents femininity, Ritter’s character and her no nonsense approach to life are welcome additions.

The whole cast is just perfect for the movie, from the main stars and Ritter to Raymond Burr who plays the killer Lars Thorwald. Burr’s resemblance to the producer who ‘brought’ Hitchcock to Hollywood, David O. Selznick, opens the field for very amusing speculations on the director’s intentions in casting him as the villain.

And, talking of speculation, the final reason why I enjoy Rear Window is that it is open to many different and interesting interpretations. I am familiar with many of them but don’t have a favourite one; every new viewing brings out new and exciting possibilities so why spoil the fun?

Of course, all the things I’ve mentioned could be applied, at least individually, to almost any film by Hitchcock but, to my mind, Rear Window perfectly showcases all of them (and many more I don’t have space for). The main thing, though, is that the film is really great fun to watch. So, enjoy!

Classic movie review: 'Splendor in the Grass' (1961)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 20:03:00 +0000

Premarital sex could ruin a girl’s chances of marriage. Or, it could actually precipitate marriage if the girl finds herself ‘in trouble’. In 1928 rural Kansas, both contradictory messages still had currency. Wilma Dean ‘Deanie’ Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) are high school sweethearts whose romance is mired by both sexual repression and oppression.

Deanie’s mother, Mrs. Loomis (Audrey Christie), advises her daughter not to give in to Bud’s advances because, according to her, ‘boys don’t respect girls who go all the way with them’. Mrs. Loomis believes she’s raising a nice girl who one day will marry Bud Stamper. Bud’s a catch because his father, Ace Stamper (Pat Hingle), is in the oil business. If Deanie’s mother is the dominant parent at the Loomis household (her husband Del, played by Fred Stewart, has hardly any lines in the film), Bud’s father never listens to what anybody else has to say and has clear plans for his son. These don’t include his marrying Deanie, at least not yet. Both parents advise their children against having sex for the different reasons I’ve highlighted.

It is not just Deanie’s mother who thinks that she should stay celibate. At school she is taught that it is desirable that women be ‘put on a pedestal’. Ace Stamper’s anxieties about his son’s sex life lie elsewhere. He believes that there are only two kinds of girls. Bud is encouraged to have fun with girls belonging to one kind, as long as he eventually marries one of the other kind. The two kinds are represented in the film by Deanie and Bud’s sister Ginny (Barbara Loden), respectively.

Bud, whether for love or lust, appears almost desperate to marry Deanie. Of course, they never get married. Their paths diverge when he has a stint at Yale and marries someone else, while she is institutionalised following a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt.

Apart from sex, religion and death are the other main themes of Splendor in the Grass. Deanie is portrayed as a genuinely straight laced girl, the kind who doesn’t go to bed without first saying her prayers. There is also something of a religious fervour in her love for Bud. She worships him and keeps almost too many photographs of him in her bedroom. She also tells Bud several times that she would do anything for him. There are quite a few deaths in the movie, mostly suicides which is not surprising considering the action is set against the backdrop of the ‘Great Depression’.

Splendor in the Grass was Warren Beatty’s first screen appearance and it rebounded Natalie Wood’s career as her first major adult role (she is a high school senior at the start of the film but quickly progresses into adulthood). Elia Kazan made the film in New York with cinematographer Boris Kaufman who shot it in Technicolor. Kazan and Kaufman had previously collaborated in, for example, 12 Angry Men (1956), and On the Waterfront (1953) but before moving to Hollywood Kaufman had to his credits several French films including L’Atalante (1933) or Zéro de conduit (1933) under the direction of Jean Vigo. The script of this fraught melodrama was written by William Inge, earning him an Academy Award. Inge was a gay playwright and novelist from the Midwest who, no doubt, had some personal experience in sexual repression and impossible relationships.

Although ultimately not a tragedy, I hope that the impossible love between Bud and Deanie will ring less true to us now that it would have done upon its original release.

Hitchcock in VistaVision: 'To Catch a Thief' (1955)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 12:59:00 +0000

Making the most of wide-screen even before the film starts. Notice how the titles are aligned with the travel shop window.

Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955) sees American expatriate and former resistance hero, John Robie (Cary Grant), fall in love with the impossibly beautiful Jessie Stevens (Grace Kelly) in the French Riviera. Robie is a reformed burglar who is being suspected of a new wave of jewellery thefts in the South of France.

Both Grant and Kelly manage to fit into the frame despite the distance between them.

In the 1950s, film executives saw their revenues being threatened by television’s growing popularity. Increasingly, more Americans were choosing to stay at home rather than visit their local movie theatre. Films simply had to become more spectacular. There is an increase in colour films at the time (although colour had been a feature since the 1930s) but, more importantly, the studios started using different versions of wide-screen. While some studios went in for more radical departures such as Cinerama or CinemaScope, the makers of To Catch a Thief, Paramount, decided to adopt a system which was seen as more flexible and, also, compatible with more traditional modes of production and exhibition: VistaVision.

To Catch a Thief was made using VistaVision and, originally, its aspect ratio would have been 1.85:1. Hitchcock embraced the possibilities of wide-screen with panoramic aerial shots of the French Riviera or with the mise-en-scène, for example having the actors lounge across the full width of the frame.

The other wide-screen systems used by Paramount’s competitors also enabled film makers to create similar kinds of compositions. VistaVision, however, had a smaller width than CinemaScope but more height. Hitchcock and other directors who worked with VistaVision often showed their actors standing up so that their whole bodies were visible within the frame, something that couldn't be achieved to the same effect with the other wide-screen systems.

At an uncertain time following the end of the Hollywood Studio System and the advent of television, wide-screen, in its many different guises, revitalised cinema for a time until it became the industry’s standard and, therefore, stopped being an added production value. Now, even television has adopted wide-screen formats. The new perceived ‘threat’ to cinema is possibly piracy and internet downloads (legal and illegal). The industry’s way of dealing with this is to promote another 1950s technical development: 3D.

Watching 'Oz' on the big screen

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:42:00 +0000

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch The Wizard of Oz at my local cinema, The Duke of York’s in Brighton, England. Of course, I’d seen the film many times but never before on the big screen. I know that some people will find it unusual to go to a movie theatre to watch something that not only is readily available on DVD but also regularly shown on television. I, for one, don’t go to the cinema very often and watch most films on DVD. There are two main reasons for this: 1) I can’t abide multiplexes and 2) I am generally, let’s say, underwhelmed by most contemporary cinematic fare.

When I found out that The Wizard of Oz was playing at one of the oldest cinemas in the world (opened in September 1910) and the most charming one I’ve ever attended, I had really no excuse. I also had another pretty powerful reason to go: my boyfriend. He is, without exaggeration, one of the biggest fans of the movie and is currently working on making awesome replicas of Dorothy’s ruby slippers (you can follow his progress on his blog The Ruby Slippers Project). He grew up watching The Wizard of Oz but, like most of us, only on television. Even though he’s seen it more times than I have, he admitted that, by watching it on the cinema screen, he noticed things that had previously passed him by. We both had a great time enjoying one of our all-time favourite movies as US and UK audiences would have done in 1939/1940. What a treat!

This experience left me wanting to see more classic films at the cinema.

Citizen Kane and the masterpiece tradition

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:16:00 +0000

There are certain films which are almost universally praised by critics. Sometimes, even people who haven’t seen them would consider these films masterpieces. Although still a comparatively very young art form, cinema has already produced scores of films considered canonical by some and, generally, accepted as so by most people. This is what is sometimes called the masterpiece tradition because its proponents are mainly preoccupied with creating a canon of films that are worth seeing and studying.

How this canon is arrived at is not without controversy. Generally, critics and film historians (professional and amateur) will base this on the artistic merits of individual films. The central question that must be answered is “which films are art?” Authors who favour a 'formative' approach appreciate sophisticated filming and editing techniques, such as montage, which can convey subjectivity. These critics tend to admire the work of Soviet directors from the 1920s and 30s or the German expressionists. Others tend to prefer long takes and static cameras; we call this aesthetic approach 'realist'.

Undoubtedly, at least for Western critics, Citizen Kane (USA, Welles, 1941) heads the cinematic masterpiece canon. This is obvious to anyone who consults the lists compiled by the AFI, the BFI or any of the many “must-see-movies” book guides. Because this film contains aesthetic elements admired by both the approaches I’ve described, it is not surprising that it has been hailed as a masterpiece since the 1950s. Some even consider it the greatest movie ever made.

As a result, many people who are not critics or film historians may feel inadequate if they watch it and they don’t like it. I suspect that some viewers might avoid it altogether because they probably regard movies as merely entertainment, and would be put off by all this critical and academic attention (in a manner similar to those readers who avoid any novel labelled as a “classic”). Indeed, Citizen Kane is not the most entertaining movie ever made (I’ve never heard, or read, anybody claiming that) and, depending on taste (or mood), viewers may choose to spend their time watching, say, a gangster movie, a western or a “weepie”, instead.

One of the reasons Citizen Kane is revered: Greg Toland's masterful cinematography

The main shortcoming to this approach to film history is that is neglects most movies but focusing only on a few masterpieces. Films can be interesting for many different reasons but I don't see any cause for privileging aesthetic considerations above all else.

I write about films that interest me and about which I feel I have something to say. Looking back on the films I've written about on this blog, I think I have managed to include a good variety of films and to discuss them from different perspectives. I don't get particularly bogged down on which films can be considered art. I referred to the medium as an art form at the beginning of this post so this is my a priori assumption whenever I watch (and write about) movies; whatever their age, nationality, genre, etc. Aesthetic considerations are important and interesting but so are social, economic and technological concerns.

What chance did poor Shelley Winters stand?

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:53:00 +0000

In A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951), George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), schemes to kill his pregnant girlfriend, Alice Tipp (Shelley Winters), so that he can marry socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). At the time when the movie was released, Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters were both 31 while Elizabeth Taylor was only 18.

When George arrives in town, he finds employment in his uncle's factory. Initially, George is attracted to fellow factory worker Alice and they date for a while. Shortly after Alice becomes pregnant, George's wealthy relatives invite him to a party where he meets Angela; his social ascendency and his gradual distancing from Alice begin then. It does not take long for George and Angela to fall in love and for tragedy to ensue.

George/Montgomery and Angela/Elizabeth are a sexy couple. Notice in the screen capture (left) how she holds the bottle and how he looks at it with his lips parted.

If Montgomery/George and Elizabeth/Angela represent sex in its more carefree and fun incarnation, Shelly/Alice is the one suffering the consequences by becoming pregnant.

When he is with Alice/Shelley, George/Montgomery looks almost just as pedestrian as she does (almost, because he is still Monty Clift!).

Shelley Winters could do sexy, too, but only in a voluptuously vulgar way. This may appeal to some but we get none of that in A Place in the Sun.

Elizabeth Taylor could be sultry but always with class.

Hollywood movies have always had the same tendency to make things as obvious to their audience as possible. Of course, George is going to choose Angela over poor dowdy Alice. There is just no competition!

When he is with Alice, George is almost always confined to the factory, the tiny room she rents or the movie theatre; George and Angela, however, that pair of healthy kids, go to parties and enjoy the Great American Outdoors. Alice brings George down and reminds him too much of where he comes from; Angela rejuvenates him and helps him dream of where he'd like to get to. George and Alice are tragic characters, both destined to die: he on the electric chair accused of the murder he had planned to carry out, and she (always a pathetic figure) accidentally falling off a boat. Who knows what future awaits the beautiful Angela? Will her life be ruined by all this? Somehow, I think she'll be fine.

Five reasons why I love Warner Bros.

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:04:00 +0000

It has been said that, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, Warner Bros. was a major studio which was run like one of the minors: its honcho, Jack L. Warner, believed in making movies as cheaply as possible.

Warner Bros. might have not had Paramount's Continental sophistication or MGM's glamour and lavishness and, yet, its artistic and commercial achievements are, if not sometimes higher, at least on a par with the other majors'.

Here is the list of the five reasons why I love this studio:

1. Bette Davis:

Unquestionably the Queen of the Warner Bros. backlot, the studio did not find any suitable vehicles for the star until she made Of Human Bondage ('34) at RKO, while on loan. Back at her home studio she starred in classics such as Marked Woman (1937), Jezebel ('39), Dark Victory ('39), The Old Maid ('39), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex ('39), Juarez ('39), All This and Heaven Too ('40) or The Letter ('40).

Although she tried to leave Warner Bros. as early as in 1936, I, for one, am happy she didn't actually go at that time. In fairness, two of her best performances (to my mind, at least) were in films she made at other studios: The Little Foxes ('41) at Samuel Goldwyn and All About Eve ('50) and 20th Century Fox.

Her star persona, in contrast with other stars of her time, was based on her ability to act. That is not to say that she was necessarily a better actress than, say, Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck. While other Hollywood star personae were constructed around glamour, or being the girl next door, Bette Davis's appeal as a star was that the audience could watch her "act": those eyes, the hand gestures, the smoking,.. She seems to have been particularly popular with women, who, perhaps, aspired to be like her; and gay men, who lacking any openly gay male stars to follow, saw in her a toughness and independence they wished they could have.

2. Depression-era musicals:

Films like: 42nd Street ('33), Footlight Parade ('33), Gold Diggers of 1933 ('33) are good examples that not all musicals have to be cheesy. With the Great Depression as their backdrop, these musicals are as energetic and fun to watch as they are an interesting social commentary of their time. Without a doubt, some of the "authenticity" we get is to do with their pre-dating the enforcement of the Production Code but dealing with social issues in a frank manner is one of the main characteristics of Warner Bros. movies of the Golden Age before and after July 1934 (when the Code started to be observed by the studios).

3. Swashbucklers with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland:

Without a doubt Flynn and de Havilland are one of Hollywood's hottest screen couples of all time - I'm sure it helped that they were actually friends. If Jack L. Warner was tight-fisted, certainly Flynn-de Havilland swashbucklers look everything but cheap! The couple starred in eight films together: Captain Blood ('35), The Charge of the Light Brigade ('36), The Adventures of Robin Hood and Four's a Crowd ('38), Dodge City and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex ('39), Santa Fe Trail ('40) and They Died with Their Boots On ('41).

4. Gangsters:

For many people the name Warner Bros. evokes gangster movies. As my list shows, the studio's output was varied but if there is one genre they excelled at is the gangster movie. They are all gritty but hugely enjoyable. Among the best: Little Caesar ('30), The Public Enemy ('31), and Scarface: The Shame of a Nation ('32).

5. Their many wonderful films:

Of course some of my favourite movies do not fit in any of the previous categories. Relatively low budgets don't necessarily mean poor quality as these films demonstrate: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang ('32), The Maltese Falcon ('41), Sergeant York ('41), High Sierra ('41), Yankee Doodle Dandy ('42), Casablanca ('42), Mildred Pierce ('45), The Treasure of Sierra Madre ('48), A Star is Born ('54), Rebel Without a Cause ('55).

Queens of the MGM backlot

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:47:00 +0000

In the 1930s and early 40s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had many stars. In fact, “more stars than there are in heaven”, if we are to believe the studio’s own publicity. Their biggest stars were female, sometimes earning MGM the unofficial tag of “the women’s studio”.

If Warner Bros. had Bette Davis and Paramount Gloria Swanson (at least in silent movies) as queens of their backlots, MGM, of course, didn’t have one but three queens during the Golden Age.

Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were all very different stars and each of them brought something unique to the films they made at the studio. Garbo was often a tragic heroine with Continental appeal; Shearer the glamorous housewife; and Crawford the most alluring shop girl in America, with a very tough interior.

Let’s look at their MGM careers individually:

Garbo

After a few successful films in Sweden and a major hit in Germany, Garbo was hired by Louis B. Mayer who bought her to Hollywood where she had a relatively short but intense career. She became a star immediately and remained very popular, particularly in the lucrative Western European market. She was one of the few stars to make an effortless transition from silent movies to “talkies”, always at MGM. Here’s a list of her movies:

Silent films:

The Torrent (1926)

The Temptress (1926)

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Love (1927)

The Divine Woman (1928)

The Mysterious Lady (1928)

Wild Orchids (1929)

The Single Standard (1929)

The Kiss (1929)

Sound films:

Anna Christie (1930)

Romance (1931)

Anna Christie (in German) (1931)

Inspiration (1931)

Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931)

Mata Hari (1931)

Grand Hotel (1932)

As You Desire Me (1932)

Queen Christina (1933)

The Painted Veil (1934)

Anna Karenina (1935)

Camille (1936)

Conquest (1937)

Ninotchka (1939)

Two-Faced Woman (1941)

Shearer

She was already a star at Metro when she married Irving Thalberg, who was the greatest creative force in the studio until his death in 1936. Here’s the list of her credited appearances in MGM movies:

Silent films:

Broken Barriers (1924)

Married Flirts (1924)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

The Snob (1924)

Excuse Me (1925)

Lady of the Night (1925)

Pretty Ladies (1925)

A Slave of Fashion (1925)

The Tower of Lies (1925)

The Devil’s Circus (1926)

The Waning Sex (1926)

Upstage (1926)

The Demi-Bride (1927)

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927)

The Latest from Paris (1928)

The Actress (1929)

A Lady of Chance (1929)

Sound films:

The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)

The Divorcee (1930)

Let Us Be Gay (1930)

Strangers May Kiss (1931)

A Free Soul (1931)

Private Lives (1931)

Smilin’ Through (1932)

Strange Interlude (1932)

Riptide (1934)

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Marie Antoinette (1938)

Idiot’s Delight (1939)

The Women (1939)

Escape (1940)

We Were Dancing (1942)

Her Cardboard Lover (1942)

Crawford

Her real name was Lucille Fay LeSueur. Her last name sounded too much like “le sewer” so it had to be changed to something less off-putting. She became a star at Metro but in her last few years chez L.B. Mayer her career went into decline.

When her contract with MGM was terminated by mutual consent in 1943, she moved over to Warner Bros. where she starred in one of her best films (and one of my all-time favourites) Mildred Pierce (1945). After her brief tenure at Warner Bros. she made many more films up to 1970 as an independent star with all major studios (including MGM and Warner Bros. - again) and some of the minors too, including Johnny Guitar (1954) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) with Bette Davis.

Here’s the list of her credited appearances in MGM movies when she was under contract with them:

Silent films:

Sally, Irene and Mary (1925)

The Boob (1926)

Paris (1926)

Winners of the Wilderness (1927)

The Taxi Dancer (1927)

The Understanding Heart (1927)

The Unknown (1927)

Twelve Miles Out (1927)

Spring Fever (1927)

West Point (1928)

The Law of the Range (1928)

Rose-Marie (1928)

Across to Singapore (1928)

Four Walls (1928)

Our Dancing Daughters (1928)

Dream of Love (1928)

The Duke Steps Out (1929)

Our Modern Maidens (1929)

Sound films:

Untamed (1929)

Montana Moon (1930)

Our Blushing Brides (1930)

Paid (1930)

Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

Complete Surrender (1931)

Laughing Sinners (1931)

This Modern Age (1931)

Possessed (1931)

Grand Hotel (1932)

Letty Lynton (1932)

Today We Live (1933)

Dancing Lady (1933)

Sadie McKee (1934)

Chained (1934)

Forsaking All Others (1934)

No More Ladies (1935)

I live My Life (1935)

The Gorgeous Hussy (1936)

Love on the Run (1936)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)

The Bride Wore Red (1937)

Mannequin (1938)

The Shining Hour (1938)

Ice Follies of 1939 (1939)

The Women (1939)

Strange Cargo (1940)

Susan and God (1940)

A Woman’s Face (1941)

When Ladies Meet (1941)

Reunion in France (1942)

Above Suspicion (1943)

Of course, I haven’t seen most of these movies. I suspect that many of them are probably rather bad but I’m still curious to watch them, if possible. Out of this fascinating trio, only Crawford seems to have enjoyed a lasting career beyond MGM. So, perhaps, I could substitute some of the weaker films of her tenure at Metro for her better post 1943 films on my list of films to watch.

Between men: 'Spartacus' (1960)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 10:32:00 +0000

Stanley Kubrick's film Spartacus (1960) was restored in 1991 by Robert A. Harris to include some violent battle scenes and a homoerotic bath scene which had been previously cut (including its 1962 rerelease). The bath scene is between Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis). Using a "snails and oysters" metaphor, Crassus admits he is bisexual and tries to find out if Antoninus is open to the idea of sex with another man. At the time of the restoration the original dialogue had been lost so the scene had to be dubbed. Tony Curtis rerecorded his lines but, because Laurence Olivier was already dead, Anthony Hopkins had to stand in by mimicking Olivier's voice.

Here's the dialogue from that scene:

Crassus: Do you steal?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus: Do you lie?

Antoninus: Not if I can avoid it.

Crassus: Have you... ever dishonored the gods?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus': Do you refrain from these vices out of respect for moral virtues?

Antoninus: Yes, master.

Crassus: Do you eat oysters?

Antoninus: When I have them, master.

Crassus: Do you eat snails?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral, and the eating of snails to be immoral?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus: Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?

Antoninus: Yes, master.

Crassus: And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals, hmm?

Antoninus: It could be argued so, master.

Crassus: My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters. [approaches a balcony] Antoninus, look, across the river. There is something you must see. [looking toward Rome, as the garrison sets out] There, boy, is Rome. The might, the majesty, the terror of Rome. There is the power that bestrides the known world like a colossus. No man can withstand Rome. No nation can withstand her. How much less... a boy! Hmm? [chuckles] There is one way to deal with Rome, Antoninus. You must serve her. You must abase yourself before her. You must grovel at her feet. You must... love her. Isn't that so, Antoninus? [turns around, and sees Antoninus gone] Antoninus? Antoninus?

Arena: The Private Dirk Bogarde, Part 2 (BBC, 2001)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 21:07:00 +0000

This is part two of two of the BBC 2001 documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde. To watch part one, click here.

Arena: The Private Dirk Bogarde, Part 1 (BBC, 2001)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 21:07:00 +0000

This is part one of two of the BBC 2001 documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde. To watch part two, click here.

Falling in love again: 'The Blue Angel' (1931)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:58:00 +0000

The Blue Angel (1930) is the simultaneously-made English version of the first German "talkie", Der blaue Engel. Josef von Sternberg directed Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich in this film which charts the downfall of a man from upstanding professor to cabaret clown. Professor Rath (Jannings) starts frequenting the notorious club The Blue Angel after hearing about it from his male students. Soon he is mesmerised by showgirl Lola Lola (Dietrich). After a short love affair he asks her to marry him to which she revealingly responds by laughing. Despite Lola Lola’s reaction, they do get married. Rath quits teaching and, after his savings run out, he becomes a clown at The Blue Angel. The once dignified intellectual is now a pathetic figure to be laughed at. Only that the movie’s audience is most likely to pity him. I know I did. I find Rath’s downfall heartbreaking. This is a tragic story about the risk of letting us be consumed by unhealthy relationships which may even lead us to forget who we are.

The Blue Angel was the first in a very fruitful and interesting series of Hollywood films starring Dietrich under von Sternberg’s direction: Morocco (1930), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), etc. Von Sternberg established Dietrich as a vixen, the kind of woman over whom heterosexual men would lose their heads.

Movies for grown-ups: pre-Code Hollywood

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 21:19:00 +0000

Recently, I have been primarily watching films from the 1930s. That decade is key in the history of American cinema for finally establishing sound movies or ‘talkies’, which had started in the late 1920s. That decade also saw the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code or Hays Code, which provided censorship guidelines to films. I identify two main reasons for the introduction and enforcement of the code: firstly, in sound movies, dialogue had the potential to make them more explicit than before; and, secondly, the changes American society went through during the Depression years encouraged the studios to produce racier pictures.

The Production Code, which had been written by a Jesuit priest, was adopted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association in 1930; but it wasn’t enforced by the studios until 1934, following growing pressure from Christian groups. In doing so, Hollywood accepted to self-regulate (or censor itself) to being censored by federal, state or local government while also seeking to avoid boycots by conservative groups. Many of the films released before July 1934, would not have been made exactly as intended after that date because of the Code. In fact, films re-released afterwards had to be re-edited. Luckily, some have been restored to their original versions for our enjoyment. Pre-Code films of any genre can seem to us more modern and mature than anything produced between 1934 and 1968.

Some pre-Code movies I’ve recently watched and would recommend are The Public Enemy (1931), which had some of its violence edited out for re-release but which we can now enjoy in its full glory; the musical comedy Love Me Tonight (1932) with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, for which, sadly, no original prints exist; Marlene Dietrich’s American debut in Morocco (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932) both beautifully directed by Josef von Sternberg; She Done Him Wrong (1933) with naughty Mae West and a very young Cary Grant; the wonderful Warner Bros. Depression musicals 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers of 1933 all of which Busby Berkeley choreographed in 1933; the early Capra movie starring Barbara Stanwyck The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) and featuring an interracial romance; also starring Barbara Stanwyck is Baby Face (1933) about a woman who uses sex to manipulate men. These are all movies that do not seek to patronise or ‘protect’ their audience. In its history it has been very unusual for Hollywood to treat the public as adults (the current trend is to treat us like teenagers). What is now known as the pre-Code period is one of the rare instances when movies were truly made for adults.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:51:00 +0000

Director Frank Capra is best remembered for his Americana: films like It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 91936) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although these have their merits and remain relatively popular to this day, at present I want to write about an earlier, perhaps lesser-known, but really interesting movie he made before his career-long, patriotic idealised celebration of America. In 1933, his film The Bitter Tea of General Yen was the first ever movie to play at the Radio City Music Hall. Audiences largely stayed away and, instead of the programmed two-week run, the film closed on its eighth night. Reviews had been positive, however: The New York Times reviewer called it ‘a handsomely mounted affair’ although he also noticed that the story was ‘scarcely plausible but […] ha[d] the saving grace of being fairly entertaining’.

Capra’s early film is set in civil war torn China where a New England missionary, Megan Davis (Barbary Stanwyck) falls in love with the eponymous Chinese general (played by white actor Nils Asther). The Production Code, which forbade portrayals of miscegenation (inter-racial marriage and procreation), had not been enforced yet but public opinion in America was largely against these unions. The censorship guidelines in the Production Code, in the main, reflected the existing cultural and social anxieties present in America. This movie's portrayal of a white missionary’s increasing sexual attraction towards a Chinese man was intolerable to many viewers. This attraction is first revealed in a wonderful dream sequence in which both characters end up in bed (unthinkable in post Code movies, even with couples belonging to the same ethic group!).

If the film did poorly in the USA because of the portrayal of miscegenation, it was banned in many foreign markets for the same reason. The movie was never re-released, as other pre-Code films were, because no amount of editing could remove references to this taboo. It is an unusual work in Capra’s filmography which will surprise both those who can’t abide his later conformist movies and those who love them.

Sources:
The New York Times
The Guardian

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:17:00 +0000

Before the Production Code was enforced in 1934, Hollywood had the freedom to approach certain subjects which would later be barred, and to do so in a rather explicit way. Stories depicting crime were particularly affected by limitations imposed by the code. A great movie from the pre-code period is Warner‘s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) produced by Hal B. Wallis. It was one of the films directed by Mervyn LeRoy before his move to MGM as head of production in 1938 and it stars Paul Muni in a truly magnificent performance.

This controversial film criticises certain aspects of the United States legal system, particularly the harsh conditions chain gang prisoners had to endure. Former World War I soldier James Allen (Paul Muni) is sentenced to a Southern chain gang after being caught up in a small robbery. Eventually he manages to escape and go to Chicago where he develops an ascending career in the construction business. Unhappiness returns to his life when his lover, Marie Woods (Glenda Farrell), discovers he is a fugitive and blackmails him into marrying her. He doesn’t love his wife and when he asks her for a divorce, she refuses and turns him in. His return to the chain gang is even more sombre than before. When he escapes for the second time, he is forced into a life in the shadows with crime as his only option for surviving; the unjust legal system ruins Allen’s life, making a decent man into a criminal. No Hollywood happy ending.

Warner Bros. had a reputation for gritty and relatively dark movies. If this is true of their later movies, early 1930s products like I Am Fugitive could not have been as powerful once the Code was in place.

Top Hat (1935)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Ramos) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:07:00 +0000

Top Hat (RKO, 1935) is one of the most popular musicals (some say the best one) starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the 1930s they made nine films together at RKO: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), Roberta (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). After ten years of separate careers, they were reunited by Arthur Freed at MGM for The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).

By 1935 musicals had become very sophisticated products and RKO had in Astaire and Rogers two of the most bankable musical stars imaginable. Top Hat is a very good example of the popularity of these two stars and the genre in which they excelled. Because their star personae by then had been entrenched in the popular imagination, the movie introduces the stars with a shot of their dancing feet rather than of their faces.

This movie was incredibly successful at the box office: it made $1,782,000 in the USA alone, making it the second biggest earner in 1935 after MGM’s Mutiny on the Bounty with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable. Critics also garnered Top Hat and its stars with praise; Andre Sennwald from The New York Times, who had been unconvinced by Ginger Roger as the most suitable dancing partner for Fred Astaire, declared ‘Miss Rogers, improving magnificently from picture to picture, collaborates perfectly with Mr. Astaire in Top Hat and is entitled to keep the job for life.’

Although the plot of this comedy of errors is fairly unremarkable and it is based on the hardly original premise of a mistaken identity, there are a few genuinely funny moments in the film. Undoubtedly, what makes this movie great are its musical numbers. This is hardly surprising when the music and the lyrics were composed by Irving Berlin; the film was produced by Pandro S. Berman and directed by Mark Sandrich.

Unlike later popular films of its genre, Top Hat is neither a backstage nor a barn yard musical but a sophisticated urban movie. Musicals, even more so than other kinds of films, are supposed to be fantasies. This one is set in an Art Deco version of Europe (London and Venice) of marbled floors and impossibly spacious rooms. In this cinematic world people swim in canals among sailing gondolas and, when they are not swimming, all men wear tuxedos and women stylish evening gowns. This is European elegance made in Hollywood, USA.

Top Hat is an absolute delight.