Some Recent Viewings

It has become a struggle to come up with anything for this blog. Very odd. It's true I have done some traveling lately - have started a class - and back to work, after some time off, always a challenge... an "opportunity"... my movie going has been light, and I haven't done much with the films I've been seeing... but things are starting to get back in the groove...

There is this, notable - James Whale films at the HFA. This is a treat - the horror films are familiar, but the melodramas and comedies are not - they hold up well to the rest. Remember Last Night? is a rather Thin Man-nish production - a pair of drunken upper class twits celebrate their 6 month anniversary with their even more appalling (and drunk) friends - all of whom are cheating on their spouses, borrowing and stealing money from one another, and getting in dutch with the mob... booze flows, glassware breaks, the help is insulted and at the end of it, someone turns up shot in his bed and no one remembers what they did the night before,. Edward Arnold is called in, a cop, someone's friend, who charges around noisily accusing everyone at random, while the bodies (and plot twists) continue to pile up... When the running time is up, Arnold randomly solves the case, and everyone has a drink. All this plays like a very nasty parody of a thin man film (full of utterly horrible characters and endless misbehavior and a ridiculous plot), disguised as an homage. It is, however, gorgeous looking, all those big white sets and evening gowns and Whales characteristic camerawork - there's one magnificent shot in the middle of the film, a long snaky tracking crane shot through the house as the "heroes" rush to help one of their friends, who may have taken poison... Nonsense, but lovely nonsense.

Waterloo Bridge is better -Whale's breakthrough film, a WWI melodrama with Mae Clarke as an American chorus girl in wartime London, sunk to a more basic profession. She picks up a naive young soldier in the Canadian army - takes him home - and he proves such a dear she sends him on his way not only unkissed (etc.), but without taking any money from him. He does not get the hint and is back in the morning asking her to marry him (as men did in old films - though in a wartime setting, this is a bit less far-fetched.) She won't - but he's persistent and she ends up in the country with his family - she keeps trying to get away, but he keeps coming for her... Anyway: a fine film. The soggy plot is more than redeemed by the cast and Whale's direction - Mae Clark is particularly fine - a poor man's Barbara Stanwyck, all twitchy, fast movement, buzzing with energy - she doesn't have Stanwyck's control, but she has a nice edge to her. The film as a whole is stagy, but Whale gives it a nice sense of space and shoots it with grace - lots of long takes, a fluid camera, fairly sophisticated sound - it's a neat little film. Even manages to fight off most of the sentimentality - balances it with a fairly clear eyed view of war and sex and money.

And finally - Impatient Maiden also played - another nifty little film, again with Mae Clarke, this time as the secretary to a divorce attorney, a job which has taught her cynicism. She rescues a neighbor from suicide - and falls for Lew Ayres as the doctor who answers the call (while her roomie, Una Merkel, falls for Andy Devine, as a "gentleman nurse" - both laying on the cornpone charm)... Love blooms, but there is no money, so they are impatient - then - he grows moral, while she is more than willing to screw around like it's 2009. So they break up, and things get complicated as the divorce lawyer takes a turn... Anyway - films like this are why I adore the early 30s - it's got a lot in common with the Capra films of the period - a blend of comedy and romance, a few melodramatic twists, though not too sappy. (It lacks the hard edges of Warner Brother's films of this sort - or the desperation that turns up in most Capra films.) They all mix modes, mix moods, they rip along at a ferocious pace, a good number of them treat women as conscious agents in their fate - it's a lovely period. Impatient Maiden is a joy - breezy, modern, and though a few sentimentalities emerge about sex, they are as much about money as sex - our leads can't marry for they have no money... Money being deeply ingrained in this story. It's got a nice sense of place as well - old LA - the girls live on Bunker Hill, ride the Angel's Flight, live in a nest of rooms in a tenement.... Whale loves the space - tracks through it, through walls, showing all the rooms, the tight quarters and inconvenient telephones... And again - Clarke is wonderful - playing who girl who, basically, simply seems to have been born 70 years too soon. Though frankly, I'm not sure how likely a woman like this - who has nothing against love and sex, but finds marriage overrated to the point of irrelevancy - is to show up on screen in 2009...

And finally - since I'm here - the one new film I've seen: Extract is the latest from Mike Judge. Too bad James Whale isn't around to direct it... Judge is no director - he can be a scattershot writer as well, but he's still as sharp an observer as you can ask. There is a plot - a bottling plant for food flavor extracts - a worker is hurt in a freak accident - a con lady induces him to hire a lawyer; meanwhile, the owner has marriage trouble, and listens to Ben Affleck's advice on how to fix it - hire a gigolo? This business proceeds in fits and starts, though the pleasure is in the scenes, the interactions, the character sketches, the little caricatures... The cast is a treat - Affleck is marvellous, a dude dude, dumb as a board, selfish and lazy and irresponsible, and still acting like a manipulator; Clifton Collins as the unfortunate Step, JK Simmons as the #2 guy at the plant, who can't bother to learn anyone's name... even Gene Simmons, perfectly cast as an ambulance chaser... Jason Bateman anchors it, an ideal straight man, just a little bit smarter and better than anyone else, though still stupid - or really, selfish and innattentive... It's not a great film - but it's a sweet and generous one, as Judge's work usually is...