GONE WITH THE WIND

GONE WITH THE WIND

This was on TMC last night and it's coincidentally Tricia's favorite movie so we watched it until Trish keeled over from fatigue. I stuck around and watched the whole thing again forgetting that it's a surprisingly effective movie despite the length. It has a modern feel that few classic movies have and it's not just the color photography. Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is color and feels as old as any other Errol Flynn film. I credit production values. The burning and escape from Atlanta, the crane scene showing all the wounded men, the largeness of the sets set it apart from it's time. It also helps that Vivian Leigh had a natural acting style and Clark Gable was one of the great rogues of the day. What a travesty he lost Best Actor to Robert Donat. Donat got the award for playing a teacher that ages through the years. It's not bad acting, but seems like acting. Gable shows strength, humor, determination and they all feel natural. The wrong actor in that role could have sabotaged the movie. How many people have seen GOODBYE MR CHIPS?

I've only seen a few Leslie Howard movies, but his character here seems the same as the other Leslie Howard movie that I know well, THE PETRIFIED FORREST. In both movies he seems like a man of speeches rather than a man of action. Howard is the weakest link in the movie. How much better it would have been had Errol Flynn or Gary Cooper or even Robert Taylor played Ashley. Olivier could have been an interesting choice.

Olivia DeHavilland, on the other hand, is great as Melanie. She looks nothing like the DeHavilannd in Errol Flynn movies and she probably would have won the Oscar had Hattie McDaniel not been in the same movie. McDaniel is gone for long stretches, but you don't forget her and when she's on screen she can be commanding.

My favorite scene in the movie is not one often mentioned. The night that Ashley and some others go off to clean up the shanty town where Scarlett was attacked and Rhett Butler comes to the rescue. The traditional approach to such a scene would be the action at the shanty town, but Fleming (or which ever one of the directors did the scene) focuses on the ladies tense and waiting for an outcome. It helps that the Yankee captain coming to arrest them is Ward Bond, one of my favorite character actors. And using Belle Watley's bordello as their alibi is a nice dramatic choice that makes the Yankee captain blush in front of the ladies present. BOND: Rhett, do I have your word as a gentleman?
GABLE: As a gentleman, Tom, of course.

Rhett's language in the last scene crossed a barrier in movies, but almost as surprising is how the love story resolves itself. Movies trying to be big box office have rarely made the same choice.

Neither the movie nor book were created to be historically accurate, but they succeed because they are great examples of romantic literature. What Rhett and Scarlett get away with due to their brains and beauty allows the audience a guilty thrill of living it through them.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

I saw this in the theatre so many years ago, I believe Kevin Seeger was along. We must have been some of the few who saw it then because it didn't make much money. I have seen it 3 or 4 times since, the most recent being Sunday. One thing that strikes me is how young everyone looks. I think that reaction comes from how current the movie still feels. The only loud giveaways are the style of the cars and how none of the salesman are using computers. I have the movie on before just to watch the Alec Baldwin speech and then couldn't help myself and watched it through to the end. I'm particularly impressed with what Jack Lemmon does because in my head he is still the guy in drag next to Marylin Monroe or he's loaning his apartment to Fred MacMurray or clearing his sinuses and embarrassing Walter Mathau. He's always this young comic actor in my head, naive and good-hearted. In the film he is con man with pathos and more believable than in anything that came before. Pacino was nominated for Best Supporting actor for this and Pacino is better here than in SCENT OF A WOMAN, the movie he won Best Actor for this same year. There are shades here of Pacino's overacting but they are forgivable compared to his cartoon performance in SCENT. 20 years hence I have to feel that Lemmon deserved it more and even Baldwin could be considered more worthy for his short yet iconic appearance.

I decided to watch it again after my praise for Mamet's THE VERDICT script and I really love how within all the profane language Mamet has Alec Baldwin wish them luck at the end and calls them gents. It's like a little wink that acting and selling are the same thing. The MacGuffin mystery within the film is less interesting and the solution to it seems a contrivance, but it's easy to forgive after watching Jack Lemmon standing in a phone booth on a rainy night pretending to talk to a secretary that doesn't exist all for the sake of a sale.

Amour (2012)

AMOUR is what you do with all that youthful love after the youthful part is no more. Brought to you by Michael Haneke, a director that seems to court controversy as much as pursue art, as if in his mind they were both one in the same. His most violent expression thus far was in the enigmatic FUNNY GAMES (1997, remade by Haneke in English in 2007) a movie designed almost so that you would hate something about it. I say that because I enjoyed his CODE UNKNOWN (2000) and I think his film CACHE (2005) is one of the top ten films on the first decade of this century. CACHE is a straightforward film with intrigue, subtlety and even a little shock value, but all doled out in proportions that are digestible mind food. Haneke’s excuse for FUNNY GAMES was that his violence in the movie was a harsh commentary on violence, as if Jerry Falwell began making skin flicks to point out the immorality of skin flicks.

Haneke’s 2001 film, THE PIANO TEACHER got a lot of ink either because his subject matter of unhealthy sexual relationships was daring or that it struck a nerve with movie critics. I’m not one to think that every perverse human practice needs to be documented in art films, but for those that do Michael Haneke is here to oblige. His last two films have been a change of pace. 2009s THE WHITE RIBBON is an early 20th century period piece shot in black and white that would have been a comment on fascism had I finished it. I gave up on it after an hour because of fatigue, meaning to return but never finding the motivation.

And here is Amour (2012) nominated for Best Picture about an elderly couple trying to cope with aging. Realistic to the point that you get to read your own meaning into it. It can be a commentary on how money won’t buy immortality if you want it to be. It can also be a comment on how no one is prepared for the reality of human frailty or a comment about how adult children and adult parents grow apart. All of these themes have been mined to death in cinema, but as a change of pace for Haneke I can see why the Academy reacted as they did. Haneke’s not trying to shock them is a shock unto itself. Emmanuelle Riva is also nominated for Best Actress without any argument from me, but ignored is the actor that plays her husband, Jean-Louis Trintignant. Hers is a portrayal of a degenerative illness while his burden is the more difficult one, having to show the quiet angst of picking up the pieces. I’ve seen enough French films through the years to wonder why this one stands out in the minds of voters. It probably has more to do with 10 open slots than anything else, not a knock on it as much as a curiosity. If you are a person with the tolerance for foreign films you will most likely appreciate the execution, but I doubt you will want to hit the replay button.

The Girl On The Bridge (1999)

Of all the great injustices done by Johnny Depp in his lifetime none may ever match the treachery of plucking Vanessa Paradis out of films for five years after the completion of this quirky 1999 gem. Miss Paradis’s combination of vulnerability and pixie style charm is why we go to the movies and it’s seldom seen in popular American actresses anymore to the point that I just can’t see how this movie would work in our native tongue. Maybe it doesn’t work in French either if you speak French, but it works for me and I bet it will work for you too. You have to sort of buy that French men are such that they will throw out young ladies like Paradis as they would the trash and even older knife throwers are more interested in turning them into assistants than girlfriends. All the better because it gives that knife thrower 90 minutes of reflection time to think better of it by the denouement. Our knife thrower is Daniel Auteuil, an actor so French looking that that you can almost imagine his face on their national flag. He has that Gabriel Byrne demeanor that makes him perfect for roles that call for emotional indifference. I saw him first in the 1992s “Heart in Winter.” If you ever had the kind of girlfriend that was always asking you what you were thinking or feeling then Auteuil’s character in HEART IN WINTER would have just drove them nuts. The late career Cary Grant understood that it would be unseemly for him to chase young girls across the silver screen, but it was acceptable and even fun to watch the girls chase him. GIRL ON THE BRIDGE is that formula with a modern sensibility. If I have piqued your interest you can stream it on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

The Verdict (1982)

This movie is mostly known for Paul Newman's great performance. But equally important is the excellent script by David Mamet. Mamet is great at dialogue, but what makes this a cut above is how he takes genre material and finds the right structure to get optimal mileage out of the plot. Although I have seen it several times I still enjoy the little plot twists and the non-conventional conclusion.