[Or eleven movies and one mini-series. Surely a seven-episode Netflix series equals at least one movie. One to four stars, four sentences each, no spoilers.]
Up the Down Staircase (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1967). I never tire of this movie: I adore Sandy Dennis, and I admire the indefatigable optimism that Miss Sylvia Barrett brings to the work of teaching in the trenches. I will also admit to admiring her students’ quickness to leap at any occasion for comedy: witness “There is no frigate like a book.” It didn’t register with me until this viewing that the movie confirms Hazard Adams’s description of the nonlife stereotype of the teacher: we see nothing of Miss Barrett’s life beyond her school and the block that she walks from and to the bus stop. Best scene: the trial: “I’m me.” ★★★★
*
Impact (dir. Arthur Lubin, 1949). A captain of industry and devoted husband (Brian Donleavy) finds his life turned upside down when he gives his wife’s “cousin” a ride. Donleavy and Ella Raines are wooden; Helen Walker, the story’s evil schemer, is far more compelling. Good scenes of small-town life and a wild chase through narrow San Francisco streets. My favorite line: “I’ll never think of our moments together without nausea.” ★★
*
Shadow of a Doubt (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943). I’ve written about this movie before, so I’ll limit myself to some noticings here. When we first see Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten), lying fully dressed on a bed, he looks embalmed, save that he’s smoking. The number of his rooming house: 13. Young Charlie Newton (Theresa Wright) is described as “the smartest girl in her class,” and we see her in what looks like a high-school graduation photograph, but her future is never even suggested. The scene in the ’Til-Two bar is a poignant picture of worlds colliding: goody two-shoes Charlie and sultry but tired waitress Louise Finch (Janet Shaw): “I never thought I’d see you in here.” ★★★★
*
The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948). The only place to go before or after you watch all 138 episodes of the television series. The plot is meh, and the actors, good though they may be, are almost superfluous, but so what: this movie is all about New York: El stops, swank shops, ratty tenements, crowded luncheonettes. “You got any cold root beer?” “Like ice.” ★★★★
*
Uncovering “The Naked City” (dir. Bruce Goldstein, 2020). One film lover’s exploration of the film’s locations and production. Bruce Goldstein is beyond knowledgable, about The Naked City and about Manhattan then and now. The detail that most amazed me: he tracked down the days for filming a scene from the changing titles on a theater marquee. A Criterion Channel exclusive. ★★★★
*
David Copperfield (dir. George Cukor, 1935). A feast for actors, especially character actors: Freddie Bartholomew and Frank Lawton as David the boy and man, Basil Rathbone as grim Mr. Murdstone, Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsey, Lionel Barrymore as Dan’l Peggotty, and Maureen O’Sullivan as Dora. The three standouts: W. C. Fields as Mr. Micawber, Lennox Pawle as Mr. Dick, and Roland Young as Uriah Heep. Such a raft of talent. The most poignant scenes: David and Dora. ★★★★
*
The Christmas Bow (dir. Clare Niederpruem, 2020). Lucia Micarelli and Michael Rady star in a story of
violins, injury, disability, shortbread, recorders, festive-themed dishes, street musicians, and Christmas socks. Oh, and a grandfather who comes out of retirement to give a young boy the gift of music. And speaking of music: since when do professional violinists spend their time on unaccompanied renditions of Christmas carols? I am taking away a star because the leads kiss long before the last two minutes of the movie: that’s just wrong. ★★
*
The Queen’s Gambit (dir. Scott Frank, 2020). Isla Johnston and Anya Taylor-Joy are eerily similar as Beth Harmon, child and young adult, a Kentucky orphan and addict with a dark past and the strong sense of pattern recognition that makes her an intuitive genius of chess. Taylor-Joy’s background as a model is unmistakable: Beth’s nerd vibe goes haywire every time we see her walk, runway-style, to a chessboard. Lots of nonsense to savor in the picture of the 1960s: check out the magazines for sale at the Lexington drugstore (which also happens to sell Café Bustelo and Malta Goya). Among the supporting players, Moses Ingram (Jolene), Marielle Heller (Alma Wheatley), and Harry Melling (Harry Beltik) are particularly good. ★★★
*
Strange Cargo (dir. Frank Borzage, 1940). Strange indeed. Lust and love and an escape from a penal colony, starrring a “waitress,” Julie (Joan Crawford), and a prisoner, Verne (Clark Gable), whose only name for Julie is “baby.” Peter Lorre lurks sinisterly in the background. What makes the movie really strange is the presence of Cambreau (Ian Hunter), a Christ-like figure performing miracles and bringing prisoners to redemption. ★★★
*
Becoming (dir. Nadia Hallgren, 2020). A documentary: Michelle Obama, her book, and her book tour. I tried to imagine our current First Lady asking questions of and listening to young people as Michelle Obama does here: it’s just impossible. I still find it remarkable that I met Michelle Obama in 2004 in downstate Illinois, where she had come to campaign for her husband. I’m as giddy now as some of the people in this movie waiting in line to get their books signed. ★★★★
*
Vice Squad (dir. Arnold Laven, 1953). Elaine and I had the same thought: multi-tasking! This police procedural begins with a killing of an officer, goes off in all directions, and ends with a bank heist and hostage-taking. Edward G. Robinson is Captain Barnaby, the calm center in a story whose focus shifts every few minutes (as Yeats said, “The stone’s in the midst of all”). Among the nice turns: Paulette Goddard as the owner of an escort service, Percy Helton as a crackpot troubled by “television shadows,” Byron Kane as a professor who unmasks a phony Italian aristocrat (“His flat a s and his hard r s betray a background of the middle west”), and perennial bad guy Adam Williams as an increasingly desparate suspect. ★★★★
*
Beware, My Lovely (dir. Harry Horner, 1952). An unnerving tour de force for Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan. Lupino is Helen Gordon, a war widow (it’s 1918); Ryan is Howard Wilton, a psychotic handyman who comes in for a day’s work waxing the floors. The movie does a deft job of having Howard’s condition reveal itself ever so slowly, as Helen’s kindness changes to wariness and then desperation as she becomes a prisoner in her house. Close calls, near escapes, and some dramatic camerawork by George E. Diskant — watch for the reflections in the Christmas tree ornaments. ★★★★
Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)
[The nonlife stereotype is described in Hazard Adams’s The Academic Tribes (1988): “Either he is in his office or his classroom or he is nowhere.”]
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Twelve movies
Oops
A member of “the ‘little set,’ the ‘little circle,’ the ‘little clan’” — let’s say Mme. Verdurin’s little clique — has spoken of tomorrow’s plans for dinner in the Bois, a dinner to which Charles Swann has not been invited.
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Roku extender
Psst — if your Roku device heats up, you can get an extender, free, from the company. All you need is the serial number. It’s almost illegible on my Roku — I used my phone’s magnifier to get a good look.
[“My phone’s magnifier”: we’re really in the world of the future.]
Monday, December 21, 2020
A Backblaze offer
Backblaze is an online backup service. Wirecutter continues to recommend it as “the best cloud backup service for most people.”
If you’d like a free month of Backblaze, use this referral code. If you sign up — $6 a month or $60 a year or $110 for two years, each price for unlimited backup — you’ll get two more months for free, and I’ll get three free months too. The offer runs through January 31. You can read the details on this page.
One caution: without ultra-speedy wireless, the initial backup is likely to take several days. You just have to be patient, or find a library or other location with fast wireless. You can, of course, do other things on the computer while Backblaze is backing up. And you can control how much bandwidth it uses. Once the initial backup is done, you’re unlikely to ever notice Backblaze at work — until, that is, you need to restore a file or hard drive.
I switched to Backblaze from Mozy in 2018. This post explains why.
Make your own pencils
From Bridge City Tool Works: Pencil Precision, everything you need to make your own pencils (twenty-five of them). Available for pre-ordering, $699.
Thanks, Steven.
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Losing his mind
Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Wehner says that Donald Trump* is losing his mind:
And yet, as the psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee points out, this Washington Post report on the Trump* administration’s mishandling of COVID-19 says nothing about the part the president’s mental health has played in creating our current crisis.Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him — in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat — he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.
So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.
Hurry, January.
“Under a Rembrandt-style hat”
A friend of Charles Swann’s has seen Odette de Crécy walking, dressed in “a ‘visiting cloak’ trimmed with skunk, under a ‘Rembrandt-style’ hat, and with a bouquet of violets in her bodice.”
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
