Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Twelve more movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (dir. Bryan Forbes, 1964). Myra (Kim Stanley) is a medium; Billy (Richard Attenborough) is a husband who does what he’s told. On Billy’s to-do list: kidnapping a child from a wealthy family so that Myra can make a show of her psychic powers and solve the crime. And then there’s the couple’s backstory. Utterly unnerving. ★★★★

*

Fräulein Else (dir. Paul Czinner, 1929). An adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s novella, in which a young woman seeks to keep her debtor father from prison by approaching an old family friend for money. Alas, the power of the novella, which takes the form of a desperate interior monologue interrupted by conversation, is largely lost in a silent film. With Elisabeth Bergner as Else, and Albert Steinrück giving a great performance as Herr von Dorsday, the somber, lecherous family friend. Available restored, with a brilliant new score (by whom?), at YouTube. ★★★

*

The Kindergarten Teacher (dir. Nadav Lapid, 2014). For once the remake wins: Sara Colangelo’s 2018 version (same title) is a far better film, offering a far better sense of why a teacher might become obsessed with a poetry-composing pupil. In the remake, teacher Lisa (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lives with cultural dissatisfactions and family tensions that fuel her fascination with her pupil Jimmy (Parker Sevak). In the original, teacher Nira (Sarit Larry) is thinly drawn, her obsession more difficult to fathom. There’s little here to suggest why Nira is so crazy-scary in the cause of poetry. ★★

*

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962). Speaking of crazy-scary: this film satisfies in every respect. A star in childhood, Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) now lives as caretaker to her older paraplegic sister Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford), an actress whose stardom eclipsed Jane’s earlier fame. Enmity, madness, sadistic torments, and a strong dash of Sunset Boulevard. With Maidie Norman and Victor Buono as outsiders attempting to do the right thing, the latter also providing comic relief. ★★★★

*

Boy Erased (dir. Joel Edgerton, 2018). Adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir, tracing the nightmare of his time in “conversion therapy,” with flashbacks to his life in college and a brief look at his life four years after the “therapy.” For young LGBTQ people struggling with their identity and their family relationships, this film offers hope that things can get better. For parents coming to terms with a child’s sexuality, this film emphasizes the importance of acceptance and unconditional love (which in a better world would be givens). For any viewer, this film has pedagogical value: it shows conversion therapy (still permitted to be practiced on minors in thirty-six states) to be cruel and unusual punishment — torture, really. ★★★★

*

The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow, 1948). George Stroud (Ray Milland), editor of a crime magazine, is assigned to locate a man said to be involved in deep political intrigue, but who is in fact the sole witness who can implicate Stroud’s boss (an ultra-creepy Charles Laughton) in a murder. That witness: Stroud himself, and only he knows who is he hunting and why. Fine performances all around: Milland, Laughton, Lloyd Corrigan, Elsa Lanchester (looking like Helena Bonham Carter), George Macready, Henry Morgan, and Maureen O’Sullivan. But this adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s novel adds too much comic relief and removes too much of the noir. ★★★

*

Undercover (dir. John Ford, 1944). A training film for the Office of Strategic Services, showing how agents prepare for their work in “Enemy Area.” One trainee follows the rules; the other, arrogant and overconfident, makes a mess of things. With uncredited appearances by the director (as a pipe-smoking lawyer) and Peter Lorre, and a slow pace that must have been meant to assure good learning. Netflix has the same lousy print as YouTube. ★★★

*

The Assistant (dir. Christophe Ali and Nicolas Bonilauri, 2015). A man (Malik Zidi) driving to the hospital with his pregant wife hits and kills a pedestrian; nine years later, that pedestrian’s mother (Nathalie Baye) takes slow-moving revenge. This film doesn’t wear its influences on its sleeve, because the influences, most notably Vertigo and Fatal Attraction, need the whole shirt. Derivative, for sure, but worth watching for Baye’s performance and the suspense. Enigma: what happened to the secretary on leave? ★★★

*

When Harry Met Sally . . . (dir. Rob Reiner, 1989). It’s charming, sometimes too much so, offering not the Lubitsch touch but a Lubitsch punch in the face. And plenty of Woody Allen, which results in something like Annie Hall with a happy ending (that’s no spoiler). Plenty of laughs, plenty of time-capsule, plenty of weird chemistry between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. And Sally Albright’s habit of peeking to make sure the mail went into the mailbox is adorable, yes, but is Sally anything more than just adorable? ★★★

*

The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967). Always worth seeing again. Something I’d never noticed before: none of the parents have first names, not even in conversation with one another. Something I’ve thought of many times: Ben’s pursuit of Elaine Robinson is really Huck and Jim all over again. But where, in 1967, was the Territory — San Francisco? ★★★★

*

The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May, 1972). Fresca suggested this movie, which I’d never heard of. It’s like a much darker version of The Graduate. Lenny and Lila (Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin) have traveled from New York to Miami for their honeymoon. Barely married, Lenny begins to feel trapped, “for the next forty or fifty years,” with a woman he barely knows. Then, still on his honeymoon, he meets Kelly, a true-life white goddess (Cybill Shepherd), and complications ensue. ★★★★

*

Sólo con tu pareja (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 1991). A serendipitous followup to The Heartbreak Kid, with a feckless, duplicitous advertising man (Daniel Giménez Cacho) getting his comeuppance at the hands of a vengeful partner (Dobrina Liubomirova). Cuarón puts the comedy into sex comedy: linguistic pratfalls, physical pratfalls, mad naked dashes to retrieve the morning paper, and an exceedingly dangerous variation on the two-dates-at-once trope. But there’s also a consideration of freedom and responsibility that made me think of Rilke’s line: “You must change your life.” Beautifully filmed in fifty shades of green by Emmanuel Lubezki. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

comments: 11

Fresca said...

I always enjoy your movie round-ups!

This idea totally intrigues me, but I can't see it:
"Ben’s pursuit of Elaine Robinson is really Huck and Jim all over again."
(Rescuing her from a kind of slavery of social convention is his ticket out?)
Can you say more about that?

Glad you could watch The Heartbreak Kid. A real pair of bookends, Nichols & May...
You've seen Elaine May salute Mike Nichols at the AFI?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgjBxiDmJyU

In her speech (which is masterful), she says Ben & Elaine won't be happy--
after watching Heartbreak Kid, I thought, this is her skewering anything feel-good in that story or any delusional self-congratulations on the part of the viewer.
Merciless!

You can see why Nichol's movie is a lasting hit,
and May's is out of print.
I wish we had 100 movies directed by her, and not just the four.

Oh--and I'm curious: Kindergarten Teacher?
You made it sound good--better than the book, but only two stars? What's wrong with the movie?

Fresca said...

P.S. Never mind! My sloppy reading--you watched the ORIGINAL K.T., which gets two stars, not the remake, which is better. I got that turned around.

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, I think the Ben-Elaine scenario is all too much like Huck stealing Jim out of slavery. The one person becomes the other’s daring, rebellious purpose. (What would Huck do or be without Jim?)

Funny — I just saw The Player (dir. Robert Altman), which I’d never heard of before noticing it in the library. It’s a meta-Hollywood movie. Buck Henry is in at the start pitching a sequel to The Graduate, in which Ben and Elaine are still together, and Mrs. Robinson, who’s had a stroke and can’t speak, lives with them. So much for lighting out for the Territory.

I’ve never seen the AFI tribute — thanks for the link.

Fresca said...

Ah, yes, I see. The Other Person is made to serve as a vehicle and a mirror.

Michael Leddy said...

Something like that, I’d say. There’s a lot of Huck too in the idea of freedom as an escape from restraint and responsibility — Ben even has a raft, though it holds only one, and it’s in his parents’ pool. :)

zzi said...

Seance is great. This can't be a spoiler because you included in your summary. It wouldn't be as affected if the execution of the kidnapping wasn't brillant. Baby Jane isn't so bad either and to think, directed by the same guy who did "The Dirty Dozen."

Michael Leddy said...

That’s quite a range.

shallnot said...

I saw “The Big Clock” last night at the Vancouver Cinemateque as part of their August noir festival. Who’d have believed that Ray Milland and Harry Morgan were ever, sort of, that young?

After the film some folks were talking about the appearance of “Henry” Morgan as they and you above named him. I wonder if the name confusion is because on M*A*S*H he played a character who replaced a character whose name was “Henry Blake”?

Michael Leddy said...

He was born Harry, was billed as Henry, but went back to Harry to avoid being confused with the Henry Morgan who was in radio and, later, TV. That Henry was a humorist, or something like that.

Henry/Harry is terrific in that movie. For creepy menace, I think he outdoes Elisha Cook Jr.

Have you read the novel, by Kenneth Fearing? (It's been reprinted by New York Review Books.) It's terrific, better, I think, than the movie (though I really like the movie).

(This comment takes the place of a previous one in which I had the facts mixed up.)

shallnot said...

I haven't read the novel and only chose to see the film because of the write-up and promo images.

Odd you should not the almost excessive humour. As I was watching it I imagined Cary Grant (and for a fleeting moment) James Stewart as George Stroud.

Of the five films that I saw in The Cinemateque's series: "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), "Big Clock" (1948), "The Naked City" (1948), "The Killing" (1956), and "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1959) ; it seemed that the MF and OAT were the most "noirish". The Elisha Cook scenes with his wife in "The Killing" as well but the rest of the movie was to much the heist-film.

Seeing The Maltese Falcon on a "big screen" was definitely a thrill.

"The Naked City" seemed particularly un-noirish. Almost domestic in its way. Even reminiscent of those "Jam Handy" instructional films. Howard Duff, though, was a stand-out.

Michael Leddy said...

I think movies sometimes get described as noir because the word sparks interest. It sells. I’d think of The Naked City as what's sometimes called a semi-documentary. Also a police procedural. But above all, a great movie. : )

I rewatched The Big Clock after reading the novel — that's why the humor seemed off to me.

The early Kubrick Killer’s Kiss is a lot more noirish than The Killing. I bet you'd like it.