Weekly Movies

Been a couple weeks since my last movie review cattle call post... didn't see much over Christmas - have seen quite a haul over New Year's weekend. So here goes.

Lawrence of Arabia - **** - probably the best regarded film I had never seen... I had seen Dr. Zhivago, a dull costume drama of the worst kind, and feared the same from this. That, plus the more or less absolute necessity of seeing it in a theater in a decent print kept me away. But there it was, last week, playing at the local Landmark theater - so off I went. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a gorgeous piece of work, though the story is rather thin, even at 17 hours... That's not fair - the fact is, it rolls along quite well - the time does not weigh heavy upon you. This is perhaps a function of the grandeur - the vast spaces of the desert demand a pace that matches - that gives you time to take in all the vastness and grandeur. It feels full. I liked it, almost in spite of myself.

Shall We Dance (****) & Follow the Fleet (***) - Fred and Ginger in all their glories. Shall We Dance, especially, comes close to the glories of The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat, with first rate music and fine comic writing around their magnificent dancing. A story that makes emotional sense, if not much plot sense... Follow the Fleet on the other hand has some fine dancing, good music, clever enough writing - but a plot that passes over the line from silly to stupid, and a wretched performance by Randolph Scott, playing a nasty piece of work who somehow gets the girl in the end. Rather unpleasant, actually, though redeemed as much as it can be by Fred and Ginger.

Breakfast on Pluto *** - Neil Jordan has had his slips through the years, but he remains a pretty reliable filmmaker. This is no exception - an entertaining and occasionally serious film about a foundling looking for his mother, passing through many adventures and misadventures - comic and serious - before finding a measure of peace.

Cafe Lumiere - **** - Hou Hsiao Hsien's tribute to Ozu, filmed in Japan, for Ozu's 100th birthday.... Like Ozu, it concerns families, marriage, children - but with most of it, the drama and pressure, diffused into the background. On the other hand, Hou seems to have taken the opportunity to indulge his and Ozu's love of trains without restraint. There are trains everywhere, and unlike most of their films, here the trains take over the plot, the style, everything. Otherwise - Hou's films have always felt like Ozu's films, but they don't really look like Ozu. Other than his own films, this looks most like Tsai Ming-liang or maybe Kore-eda - long takes, usually long shots, of busy streets, with identifiable characters emerging from the crowd and disappearing into the crowd, usually en route to or from a train.... Inside, Hou's films look les like Ozu than like Naruse, or maybe Imamura without the abrasiveness - long static takes, deep, articulated spaces - de-emphasis on editing. Critics often claim that Ozu was not interesting in editing, but that is wrong - he is one of the most radical and fascinating editors in cinema history. Hou is not - he builds his films out of long shots, moving people or things in the shot (or even more, creating multiple planes in the shot, and shifting attention between those planes) - in a few of his films, he also moves the camera, though usually not.

Fun With Dick and Jane - one of those films I can't possibly rate. Why? Because it is probably crap, but I enjoyed it completely. Or - enjoyed it without apology - even though - it was probably crap. So what, though? You have a good time at the pictures, you have a good time. Sure, it'd be nice to be edified as well as entertained, but you take what you get.

Casanova - *** - same idea as Fun With Dick and Jane, though at a more sophisticated level. Handsome looking, funny and clever, maybe even significant in some way (all those shifting identities, all that role-playing - that stuff should be significant, but it is sometimes so obvious...) - and entertaining all around. So there.

Meatballs & Stripes: Bill Murray vehicles, the films that pout him in the movies... Silly and pleasant and fun, very funy. This is what holidays are for - sitting around, drinking beer, and watching Bill Murray and the Marx Brothers. Hooray!

A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup & Horsefeathers - oh look! You can do worse than watch the Marx brothers for hours at a time. Much worse. It's interesting to compare the Paramount and MGM films directly - Duck Soup, especially, comes off even better than I remembered. It seems to me that moving to MGM, adding production numbers and subplots and pacing the absurdity, makes the Marx brothers easier to take for novices - but turns the film as a whole into soup. I admit - the first time I saw these films, A Night at the Opera was my favorite - but rewatching them, it's the earlier films I prefer. Is there anyone alive who doesn't fast forward through all the Allan Jones songs, and most of the Allan Jones subplots? There's nothing to fast forward through in Duck Soup or Horsefeathers - even the music is funny and interesting. The plots date horribly - not the comedy. Part of the problem is that they were made at MGM - one wonders if they'd have fared better at RKO or Warners. Compare them to the Fred and Ginger films - the idea is similar. Fairly conventional romantic comedy plots provide a ground for the music and dancing (roughly analogous to the Marx brothers' routines) - but those Fred and Ginger films don't have much more filler than Duck Soup. There were reasons for this - one being that the love stories were continuous with the song and dance in ways the love stories could never be continuous with the Marx Brothers' nonsense... another, that they are so well written - the stories may not make sense, but the dialogue is magnificent - and of course the cast, from Fred and Ginger down, are superb. Edward Everett Horton is a different kind of foil altogether from Margaret Dumont or Sig Ruman - he's not just the butt of the jokes - he's an active, if secondary character. A film like A Night at the Opera forces you to leave the Marx brothers for scenes at a time, and what you get, however likable the leads might be, is distinctly less interesting. Their Paramount films never did that - the brothers are always on screen, something is always happening. The Fred and Ginger films avoid the problem in two ways - by keeping Fred and Ginger at the center of the films, as romantic leads as well as musical leads (most of the time - when they are not, as in Follow the Fleet, the film suffers significantly), and by making the supporting characters funny in their own right. If someone wanted to open the Marx Brothers up, from the concentrated absurdity of Duck Soup, they should have given the subplots to Margaret Dumont and Sig Ruman - given them more business. It worked with Edward Everette Horton - it probably would have worked with Margaret Dumont.