Wednesday, March 29, 2017

"The Scarlett Empress" (1934)

The paper thin plot of this historic epic is beside the point. It's all about the sumptuous over-the-top visuals. And what visuals! Under the exacting eye of director Josef von Sternberg this eyecandy feast is unlike any other film from the golden era of the Hollywood studio system. Played almost like a silent film (there are numerous title cards detailing plot points), it's the story of Russia's Catherine the Great as played by von Sternberg's oft used muse, Marlene Dietrich. We see her from young womanhood as Germany's Princess Sophia, then as she's whisked away in an arranged marriage to be the wife of the Grand Duke of Russia, then as she ultimately becomes the famed Empress. Each scene, each frame, is chock-a-block full of detail, the beautiful and the profane. Given this was the Pre-Code era, there's a lot of sex and sexuality to go around, even the depraved. Scenes of Russian torture are hard to watch even today. Von Sternberg has a heyday with the layered, sometimes grotesque sets of the Russian palace, and he films Deitrich as if she was a goddess, and by gosh, with her unique beauty she was. Festooned in one Travis Banton creation after another she's the celluloid screen icon of your dreams. It's fascinating to see her transform from the innocent and wide-eyed  princess--not the usual way we see this actresss-- and bloom into the infamous manhandling czarina who uses her sex to conquer a country. This is one film that must be seen to be believed. Gorgeous indulgence.




Monday, March 27, 2017

Haiku review: "Kong: Skull Island" (2017)

Everyone's fave ape
performing better than his
real human co-stars.

"Gentlemen's Agreement" (1947)

A textbook case of noble Hollywood liberalism. The cause here was anti-Semitism. Gregory Peck is a successful magazine writer on his first big assignment for a new publication. His brainstorm (which takes a while to hit him) is to tell everyone he meets that he's Jewish, so that he can experience first-hand this nasty societal practice. Why the magazine couldn't get a real Jew to write a similar story is never really touched on, we're supposed to assume that Jews just weren't given those kinds of jobs? Nevertheless, experiece it he does, at work, at parties, at hotels, even his little boy (a very good Dean Stockwell) gets taunted in the schoolyard. You get walloped with the message--anti-Semitism, BAD!--over and over again. Concurrently, Peck falls in love with a beautiful socialite (a starchy Dorothy MacGuire) who claims to be open minded about Jews but it irks Peck that she too easily accepts the the social status quo, the unspoken rules about those people and their place in the world. It's all done with taste and decorum and that's probably why it feels so dated and preachy. But sometimes the reason to watch a film like this is for the time capsule aspect of understanding what times were like when the movie was made...to let us see how far we've come and how fare we've still to go (it's not like anti-Semitism has been banished for all time, hell, there's a white supremacist in the White House now!) The other reason is a fine generous performance by Celeste Holm who took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She's the fashion editor of the magazine who befriends Peck and almost, just almost, gets the guy. She's funny, self-effacing, witty, and smart. A nice depiction of a career woman which was a rarity in those days.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Hiaku review: "Weekend" (2011)

A gay one night stand
turns serious, maybe real?
Tender verité.

"Fort Apache" (1948)

This is essentially director John Ford's telling of Custer's Last Stand , with bits of dramedy and romance thrown in. It's the 1870's and a strict by-the-book captain (Henry Fonda) arrives to take command of a remote western army post with his teenage daughter in tow (Shirley Temple). He quickly alienates all the servicemen including the second in command, an easy-going John Wayne. His biggest mistake is underestimating the tribes of indians in the territory, one that brings about his doom (that's not a spoiler, if you don't know what happened at Little Big Horn then tough luck). Fonda plays against his good guy screen persona effectively here, he's a tight ass martinet that's really frustrating. Temple is around for the secondary story, a budding love angle between her and a young officer (John Agar). She's pretty but her acting abilities never really followed her into adulthood. The rest of the cast is filled out with Ford's recurring stock company (Ward Bond, Harry Carey, etc), and they provide some strained humor as the ragtag misfits trying to measure up to Fonda's strict standards. The real reason to see this picture are the action scenes with the calvary going at it full force with the injuns. There's something so Hollywood about all those whooping Indians on horseback in long tracking shots running smack dab into the cavalry with their bugler blaring away. And it's all set in Ford's beloved location, Monument Valley, with the odd mesa and rock formations dwarfing the men fighting below. The vistas he composed solidified to this day most Americans' mental image of what expansion into the West must've looked like.