David Locke is a journalist who finds himself in the middle of the Sahara desert. The locals don't tend to speak English and some don't speak French either. The people who guide him around tend to wander off and leave him on his own. His Land Rover gets stuck in the sand dunes. He even picks up a sunburn. In short he doesn't seem to be having a particularly good time of it. So when he finally reaches a hotel and finds that the man in the room next to him is dead, he happily takes on the man's identity. It certainly doesn't hurt that he shares the same first name and even looks vaguely like him too.
In 1975 Jack Nicholson was a name to watch. He'd been building his career gradually upwards from his days in the Corman school and he'd just reached the heights of Chinatown, so it doesn't seem surprising to find him working with a major European director like Michelangelo Antonioni. As you'd expect from such a director, there's a theme and it's outlined by a comment from Nicholson's character early on. As David Locke talks with David Robertson in their Sahara hotel, they talk about airports and taxis and hotels. Robertson suggests that they're all the same but Locke points out that they bring the sameness with them.
As the literal translation of the Italian title (Profession: Reporter) suggests, Locke can become Robertson to the world, but he's still Locke. He's always going to be Locke and a reporter at heart, whoever he pretends to become. And David Robertson, who he becomes, is an international gunrunner tied to an extremist African guerrilla movement, hardly what he expected. As he travels, from Africa to London to Munich to Barcelona, he acquires a companion: a young architecture student, played by Maria Schneider, who becomes something of a point of consistency to him. When he thinks of giving it all up again, she keeps him on track, asking the right questions at the right times.
What's weirdest isn't that he has to find out how to be Robertson and pick up where Robertson had left off, without having much of the knowledge required. It's that his old life refuses to leave him alone. Someone he worked with wants to make a feature on him and his wife becomes involved. She finally learns what's really going on and begins to track him down. Suddenly people are looking for both of him, which is more than a little strange. Also strange is the finale, which is a stunning piece of cinematic technique but one whose meaning I think needs to resonate.
After finishing this film, unfortunately in multiple segments over multiple weeks (certainly not how it should be done), I read up quite a lot about it and see that it's repeat viewings that build this one. Its strengths are probably what appear to be weaknesses when viewing it in chunks. What happens? Where does it go? How does it go there? The easy answers are not much, nowhere and who cares, but better ones are that a man learns about who he is and why he can't stop being himself, it goes to where it inevitably must and it goes there in a very subtle manner indeed. Nicholson appears to not be acting but he had a talent for that in the early seventies, as I discovered in Chinatown. Watching that one again was a revelation. I wonder if this one will be the same.
Sunday, 7 September 2008
The Silence (1963)
As you can imagine from a title like this there's not a lot of noise at the beginning of the film. We're in a train, carrying a pair of sisters, Ester and Anna, along with Anna's young son Johan, to a foreign city at war called Timoka. Outside is nothing, until the nothing becomes long strings of tanks, and then to the city itself. Inside is just the three of them and the distances between them and it's these distances that constitute the silence that the title really speaks of. In this new city, they end up in a hotel suite where their complex relationships gradually clearer.
Ester is the eldest, played by Ingrid Thulin, and she's dying of some unnamed illness, though the coughing suggests tuberculosis. Once established in her bed, she stays there, ordering her drink through the hotel staff. She drinks and smokes, she tries to stay above her pain and she watches her sister. Anna is younger, more beautiful and not sick, and Esther watches her with a lot more than a sisterly eye.
There's a lot of sexual content here, which seems even more impactful than it would warrant because it's in an Ingmar Bergman movie from 1963. Even what is not inherently sexual is sexualised through context: Anna gets dressed and the brief nudity is highlighted because Ester is deliberately watching. It's no great leap to realise that it's Anna she's thinking about when she masturbates. Yes, that's another word I wasn't ever expecting to use in an Ingmar Bergman review. It's far from explicit: Esther remains fully dressed and the camera focuses on her face but there's no doubt as to what's happening. More explicit material comes later, rumours of which spiked Bergman's viewing figures for this film and prompted him to comment that it caused more unwanted viewers than any of his other pictures.
There are also dwarves (and yes, there are seven of them). With his aunt sick in bed and his mother out experiencing the town, Young Johan is mostly left to his own devices, so he wanders around the hotel meeting people, shooting his toy gun at them and urinating in the hallway. I'd love to say more about this but I'm not sure what to say. There's a lot of depth here, that's patently obvious, and it all ties to the relationship between the three of them, especially Ester and Anna but occasionally Johan too. However what that depth really is I don't really know. I didn't get it. Ester loves Anna but Anna thinks Ester hates Anna. Whatever subtleties I'm supposed to be seeing are floating right over my head.
Ester is the eldest, played by Ingrid Thulin, and she's dying of some unnamed illness, though the coughing suggests tuberculosis. Once established in her bed, she stays there, ordering her drink through the hotel staff. She drinks and smokes, she tries to stay above her pain and she watches her sister. Anna is younger, more beautiful and not sick, and Esther watches her with a lot more than a sisterly eye.
There's a lot of sexual content here, which seems even more impactful than it would warrant because it's in an Ingmar Bergman movie from 1963. Even what is not inherently sexual is sexualised through context: Anna gets dressed and the brief nudity is highlighted because Ester is deliberately watching. It's no great leap to realise that it's Anna she's thinking about when she masturbates. Yes, that's another word I wasn't ever expecting to use in an Ingmar Bergman review. It's far from explicit: Esther remains fully dressed and the camera focuses on her face but there's no doubt as to what's happening. More explicit material comes later, rumours of which spiked Bergman's viewing figures for this film and prompted him to comment that it caused more unwanted viewers than any of his other pictures.
There are also dwarves (and yes, there are seven of them). With his aunt sick in bed and his mother out experiencing the town, Young Johan is mostly left to his own devices, so he wanders around the hotel meeting people, shooting his toy gun at them and urinating in the hallway. I'd love to say more about this but I'm not sure what to say. There's a lot of depth here, that's patently obvious, and it all ties to the relationship between the three of them, especially Ester and Anna but occasionally Johan too. However what that depth really is I don't really know. I didn't get it. Ester loves Anna but Anna thinks Ester hates Anna. Whatever subtleties I'm supposed to be seeing are floating right over my head.
Old Yeller (1957)
This didn't happen deliberately but there's a certain something in play that has me follow up last night's screening of Cannibal Holocaust at Chandler Cinemas with all its disturbing animal killing footage with Old Yeller, the granddaddy of all saccharine Disney kids and animals movies. Old Yeller is the 'best doggone dog in the west' according to the song that accompanies the title credits, but you wouldn't believe that from his first appearance. He chases a rabbit right through Travis Coates's corn patch, scaring Jumper in the process. Jumper is the mule who runs off and promptly wipes out half the fence. Like any good American boy, Travis wants to shoot him.
Travis is the eldest son of a wild west homesteading family in Texas. Pop is Jim Coates but he gets one soppy goodbye scene before heading off to join a cattle drive for a few months to raise some much needed money. He's played by Fess Parker, not that we see much of him. Mom is the sort of hardworking but happy and wise pillar of strength mother that usually gets played by Dorothy McGuire, and sure enough that's who Disney got for the part. Even though it's these adult actors who get the lead credits, the film is really about the kids and the animals.
Cast for the first time together as a pair of lively kids are Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran, who were so memorable together. Kirk was the elder of the two, the one who got into whatever trouble the film called for but all in the line of duty. Here he's effectively the man of the family while his pop is away and so he takes care of anything that needs to get taken care of: fetching food, marking hogs, killing rabid cattle and on up to the tearful finale with Old Yeller. He's aready taken on ownership of Old Yeller once he realised how useful he is. Before then he's young Arliss's dog.
Arliss is Corcoran's character. He was always the little pipsqueak who fetches home all sorts of odd little critters and is always asking dumb questions ('Ain't there no cows in heaven for the angels to milk?'). He also gets into all the dumb scrapes that headstrong young kids get into, like catching bear cubs by their hind legs or nearly let out rabid dogs. His character was always the comic relief that grounded Kirk's character and the pair of them worked very well indeed together. That's why the pair of them would go on to another five films, including Swiss Family Robinson, which reunited them both with Dorothy McGuire. The other four were The Shaggy Dog, Babes in Toyland, Bon Voyage! and Savage Sam.
We also have Jeff York, Chuck Connors and Beverly Washburn, but it's all about the rite of passage that Tommy Kirk goes through, that and the kids and the animals. This is the sort of thing that made Disney what it is today, not just an animation factory but the de facto place to go for anything to do with children, animals and sentimentality. This sort of thing is therefore what we can blame for starting the downward trail to saccharine nothingness in Hollywood, but at this point in time they were doing it pretty damn well and it stands up a lot better than The Shaggy Dog. No wonder this one's a legend. It's also a rite of passage in itself for at least one generation of Americans.
Travis is the eldest son of a wild west homesteading family in Texas. Pop is Jim Coates but he gets one soppy goodbye scene before heading off to join a cattle drive for a few months to raise some much needed money. He's played by Fess Parker, not that we see much of him. Mom is the sort of hardworking but happy and wise pillar of strength mother that usually gets played by Dorothy McGuire, and sure enough that's who Disney got for the part. Even though it's these adult actors who get the lead credits, the film is really about the kids and the animals.
Cast for the first time together as a pair of lively kids are Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran, who were so memorable together. Kirk was the elder of the two, the one who got into whatever trouble the film called for but all in the line of duty. Here he's effectively the man of the family while his pop is away and so he takes care of anything that needs to get taken care of: fetching food, marking hogs, killing rabid cattle and on up to the tearful finale with Old Yeller. He's aready taken on ownership of Old Yeller once he realised how useful he is. Before then he's young Arliss's dog.
Arliss is Corcoran's character. He was always the little pipsqueak who fetches home all sorts of odd little critters and is always asking dumb questions ('Ain't there no cows in heaven for the angels to milk?'). He also gets into all the dumb scrapes that headstrong young kids get into, like catching bear cubs by their hind legs or nearly let out rabid dogs. His character was always the comic relief that grounded Kirk's character and the pair of them worked very well indeed together. That's why the pair of them would go on to another five films, including Swiss Family Robinson, which reunited them both with Dorothy McGuire. The other four were The Shaggy Dog, Babes in Toyland, Bon Voyage! and Savage Sam.
We also have Jeff York, Chuck Connors and Beverly Washburn, but it's all about the rite of passage that Tommy Kirk goes through, that and the kids and the animals. This is the sort of thing that made Disney what it is today, not just an animation factory but the de facto place to go for anything to do with children, animals and sentimentality. This sort of thing is therefore what we can blame for starting the downward trail to saccharine nothingness in Hollywood, but at this point in time they were doing it pretty damn well and it stands up a lot better than The Shaggy Dog. No wonder this one's a legend. It's also a rite of passage in itself for at least one generation of Americans.
Saturday, 6 September 2008
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964)
I've waited a long, long time to see this film. Last time TCM showed it as part of their TCM Underground series, I set it to record but my local cable provider decided to change the channel they broadcast TCM on, so I got an hour and a half of the channel guide instead. Thanks, Cox. Luckily it worked out second time round and I can finally see the film with possibly the wildest title of all of those wild titles from the wild, wild sixties. It's my third Ray Dennis Steckler, after the Arch Hall Jr outsider pop movie Wild Guitar and the bizarrely mangled Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, which was two films in one because Steckler couldn't decide on what he actually wanted to make. It starred Carolyn Brandt who was merely being introduced here, and given the quality of her performance that's not surprising.
She's a dancer at the Hungry Mouth nightclub who is a little too fond of the bottle. She's called Marge Neilson and her partner is Bill Ward (not the drummer from Black Sabbath, the dancer playing himself). She has serious forebodings of doom and so visits a carnival fortune teller to find out exactly what that doom is going to be. When Madam Estrella confirms that death is in the cards, Marge rushes out and knocks over Jerry, Ray Dennis Steckler himself under his acting pseudonym of Cash Flagg, who is at the carnival with his uptown girlfriend Angie. Jerry's from the wrong side of the tracks and he doesn't buy into the gypsy fortune telling angle, so the gypsy gets her sister Carmelita, who dances at the next door girly show, to get him backstage alone and hypnotise him into killing Marge.
Given that no film could ever live up to the wildness of this title and given that Rat Pfink a Boo Boo was such a unique trainwreck of a movie, I was expecting this one to be pretty awful. However, like Wild Guitar, it's far better than it ought to be because it's put together in such a deadpan way. It can't hurt that it plays out like a wild hallucination. Is this what acid trips feel like? No, it's not a good film, don't get me wrong, but it's fascinating viewing, because of the wealth of exotic material that's just thrown at the screen. I kept thinking that it was the cinematic equivalent of an abstract painting created by throwing cans of paint at the canvas then rolling around in the result.
Steckler is no actor but he looks enough like Nicolas Cage to make his peformances hypnotic. Would the Oscar winning Cage play this role any better than Steckler? Somehow I doubt it. Brett O'Hara relishes her role as Madam Estrella, all done up in gypsy makeup but somehow out of place in her surroundings. Don Russell is almost a puppet as Ortega, her assistant, with his rigid mask. Atlas King has such a thick accent he's often nigh on unintelligible as Jerry's friend Harold. Acid burned freaks (Madam Estrella's pets) flounce around like a avant garde dancing troupe. This entire film could even be seen as a performance art piece, where the dancers are ambition and ineptitude.
The biggest flaw (or hidden charm) is the continuity. Scenes begin and end without any care being given to where the soundtrack will kick in or cut off. The editing is truly wild. There's no consistency to the colours, the contrast, the soundtrack, anything. There's not even much consistency to many of the set pieces. Erina Enyo may look OK but she's a terrible stripper, and everything about her performance clashes: The moves, not that there are many moves, clash with the costume which clashes with the music. Meanwhile we hear a whooping audience of guys throughout her performance but see few people sitting there, most of whom are women and all of whom are quiet.
The effects are truly no budget but I can't help but enjoy how shameless they are. Cameras tilt and whirl or focus in on spinning cardboard wheels. Jerry gets hypnotised while his eyes are shut then goes through a surreal nightmare sequence which probably contains the best dancing in the film. There's lots of fast paced editing with weird sound effects and superimposed images of women with painted faces. His murderous rampage, once he escapes from the dream, is conducted with him in a hoodie looking remarkably like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. Knives don't go anywhere near where they should and people get strangled by having hands placed on their shoulders. What an amazing film. It's terrible but I want to rewind and watch it again.
She's a dancer at the Hungry Mouth nightclub who is a little too fond of the bottle. She's called Marge Neilson and her partner is Bill Ward (not the drummer from Black Sabbath, the dancer playing himself). She has serious forebodings of doom and so visits a carnival fortune teller to find out exactly what that doom is going to be. When Madam Estrella confirms that death is in the cards, Marge rushes out and knocks over Jerry, Ray Dennis Steckler himself under his acting pseudonym of Cash Flagg, who is at the carnival with his uptown girlfriend Angie. Jerry's from the wrong side of the tracks and he doesn't buy into the gypsy fortune telling angle, so the gypsy gets her sister Carmelita, who dances at the next door girly show, to get him backstage alone and hypnotise him into killing Marge.
Given that no film could ever live up to the wildness of this title and given that Rat Pfink a Boo Boo was such a unique trainwreck of a movie, I was expecting this one to be pretty awful. However, like Wild Guitar, it's far better than it ought to be because it's put together in such a deadpan way. It can't hurt that it plays out like a wild hallucination. Is this what acid trips feel like? No, it's not a good film, don't get me wrong, but it's fascinating viewing, because of the wealth of exotic material that's just thrown at the screen. I kept thinking that it was the cinematic equivalent of an abstract painting created by throwing cans of paint at the canvas then rolling around in the result.
Steckler is no actor but he looks enough like Nicolas Cage to make his peformances hypnotic. Would the Oscar winning Cage play this role any better than Steckler? Somehow I doubt it. Brett O'Hara relishes her role as Madam Estrella, all done up in gypsy makeup but somehow out of place in her surroundings. Don Russell is almost a puppet as Ortega, her assistant, with his rigid mask. Atlas King has such a thick accent he's often nigh on unintelligible as Jerry's friend Harold. Acid burned freaks (Madam Estrella's pets) flounce around like a avant garde dancing troupe. This entire film could even be seen as a performance art piece, where the dancers are ambition and ineptitude.
The biggest flaw (or hidden charm) is the continuity. Scenes begin and end without any care being given to where the soundtrack will kick in or cut off. The editing is truly wild. There's no consistency to the colours, the contrast, the soundtrack, anything. There's not even much consistency to many of the set pieces. Erina Enyo may look OK but she's a terrible stripper, and everything about her performance clashes: The moves, not that there are many moves, clash with the costume which clashes with the music. Meanwhile we hear a whooping audience of guys throughout her performance but see few people sitting there, most of whom are women and all of whom are quiet.
The effects are truly no budget but I can't help but enjoy how shameless they are. Cameras tilt and whirl or focus in on spinning cardboard wheels. Jerry gets hypnotised while his eyes are shut then goes through a surreal nightmare sequence which probably contains the best dancing in the film. There's lots of fast paced editing with weird sound effects and superimposed images of women with painted faces. His murderous rampage, once he escapes from the dream, is conducted with him in a hoodie looking remarkably like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. Knives don't go anywhere near where they should and people get strangled by having hands placed on their shoulders. What an amazing film. It's terrible but I want to rewind and watch it again.
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
The Locked Door (1929)
We begin on a boat, a boat with a very long bar because it's a 'drinking boat'. Stanwyck is Ann Carter, the secretary of the father of her would be seducer, Frank Devereaux, played by Rod La Rocque who reminds very much of the wolf in the old Red Hot Riding Hood cartoon. He begins by wining and dining her, which she's initially quite happy about but gradually resists more and more. Luckily for her the drinking boat, carefully moored outside of applicable coastal limits, has its moorings cut and the police raid it in time to keep her decency intact, or at least as intact as it can be being caught up in a police raid.
18 months later she's married and celebrating her first wedding anniversary, but not to Frank Devereaux. Her husband is Larry Reagan, who seems to be quite a catch, if notably older than Ann. He's William Boyd and his younger sister Helen is Betty Bronson, and its Helen who brings Devereaux back into the story in person, though he's being brought back in anyway as the cause of a Reagan family friend's misfortune. I'm sure you can guess how. And out of this setup comes a murder mystery.
The Locked Door is of primary importance through being Barbara Stanwyck's sound debut (her second film overall), but it proves to have other interesting features. The story is overblown and overly emotional, with a disappointing but inevitable ending, but it's surprisingly solid for 1929. Like most early sound films, it's based on a play, this time by Channing Pollock, but it rattles along neatly enough to avoid the staginess of most such efforts. The sound is also surprisingly good, unlike most of its competitors. Maybe part of both surprises comes through the involvement of future legend William Cameron Menzies as what would later come to be called the production designer.
Stanwyck is assured from moment one, which is hardly surprising, and Rod La Rocque was always a great romantic villain. William Boyd is too old for the part and while he's supposed to be playing a pillar of the community he's far too staid and boring to be believable. The remaining name on the title screen belongs to the tiny Betty Bronson, only five feet tall but one of a number of silent legends in this film. She's perhaps best known today as Mary in the original Ben-Hur, which put her higher in the credits than what seemed like everyone in Hollywood. Back in the silent era though she was best known for playing the title role in 1924's Peter Pan, which she landed over such names as Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. Bronson didn't make many sound films.
Backing up the stars from further down the credits are other great silent names like Mack Swain, Zasu Pitts and George Bunny. Swain was an old Keystone institution playing not just cops, but supporting roles in films starring Mabel Normand or Charlie Chaplin. He later established his own character called Ambrose, which he played in dozens of comic shorts. I first encountered Zasu Pitts as a silent actress, playing the leading lady in Erich von Stroheim's Greed. However she transitioned well into the sound era, playing ditzy old maids with a delightful touch. You can see the beginnings of those characters here, in her portrayal of a switchboard operator who is eager to see her first murder. Bunny was the brother of John Bunny, perhaps American's first major comedian, playing opposite Flora Finch in hundreds of shorts in the early teens. George was a long way into his brother's shadow but he lived a lot longer and kept working though until the early fifties.
The film would be a forgettable one if it wasn't for its year of release. Any other time, this would be an average everyday murder mystery feature, that doesn't really register much. It's not good but it's not bad, it's just there, almost the definition of OK. However being that it was released in 1929, it's pretty impressive. Because of the speed at which Hollywood tried to refit itself for sound, and because it took a while to get it right, 1929 is probably the worst year for American movies since the very early days. After so many great silent films throughout the twenties, 1929 is a huge hole into which all the quality vanished. While this one really isn't great, it's a darn sight better than most of its fellow films from that year.
18 months later she's married and celebrating her first wedding anniversary, but not to Frank Devereaux. Her husband is Larry Reagan, who seems to be quite a catch, if notably older than Ann. He's William Boyd and his younger sister Helen is Betty Bronson, and its Helen who brings Devereaux back into the story in person, though he's being brought back in anyway as the cause of a Reagan family friend's misfortune. I'm sure you can guess how. And out of this setup comes a murder mystery.
The Locked Door is of primary importance through being Barbara Stanwyck's sound debut (her second film overall), but it proves to have other interesting features. The story is overblown and overly emotional, with a disappointing but inevitable ending, but it's surprisingly solid for 1929. Like most early sound films, it's based on a play, this time by Channing Pollock, but it rattles along neatly enough to avoid the staginess of most such efforts. The sound is also surprisingly good, unlike most of its competitors. Maybe part of both surprises comes through the involvement of future legend William Cameron Menzies as what would later come to be called the production designer.
Stanwyck is assured from moment one, which is hardly surprising, and Rod La Rocque was always a great romantic villain. William Boyd is too old for the part and while he's supposed to be playing a pillar of the community he's far too staid and boring to be believable. The remaining name on the title screen belongs to the tiny Betty Bronson, only five feet tall but one of a number of silent legends in this film. She's perhaps best known today as Mary in the original Ben-Hur, which put her higher in the credits than what seemed like everyone in Hollywood. Back in the silent era though she was best known for playing the title role in 1924's Peter Pan, which she landed over such names as Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. Bronson didn't make many sound films.
Backing up the stars from further down the credits are other great silent names like Mack Swain, Zasu Pitts and George Bunny. Swain was an old Keystone institution playing not just cops, but supporting roles in films starring Mabel Normand or Charlie Chaplin. He later established his own character called Ambrose, which he played in dozens of comic shorts. I first encountered Zasu Pitts as a silent actress, playing the leading lady in Erich von Stroheim's Greed. However she transitioned well into the sound era, playing ditzy old maids with a delightful touch. You can see the beginnings of those characters here, in her portrayal of a switchboard operator who is eager to see her first murder. Bunny was the brother of John Bunny, perhaps American's first major comedian, playing opposite Flora Finch in hundreds of shorts in the early teens. George was a long way into his brother's shadow but he lived a lot longer and kept working though until the early fifties.
The film would be a forgettable one if it wasn't for its year of release. Any other time, this would be an average everyday murder mystery feature, that doesn't really register much. It's not good but it's not bad, it's just there, almost the definition of OK. However being that it was released in 1929, it's pretty impressive. Because of the speed at which Hollywood tried to refit itself for sound, and because it took a while to get it right, 1929 is probably the worst year for American movies since the very early days. After so many great silent films throughout the twenties, 1929 is a huge hole into which all the quality vanished. While this one really isn't great, it's a darn sight better than most of its fellow films from that year.
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Yep, this is Ingmar Bergman making a romantic comedy, but just because it's light and fluffy doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of meaning behind everything that goes on. Early on the lead actress in a play talks about love being something found in the head, the heart and the loins, and this is the key to the film. All the characters have live that revolve around love, but none of them seems to do so in all three ways, at least not to the same person.
Opening credits notwithstanding, the focus of the story is Fredrik Egerman, a lawyer played by Bergman regular Gunner Björnstrand. He's been married for two years to Anne, a young and beautiful wife that he hasn't slept with yet. His first wife died and in between marriages he had many dalliances, not least two years with an actress called Desiree Armfeldt, the one speaking of love in the play. He had a son from his first wife, who is now a man, one about to enter the church but far too sensitive and emotional for that. Young Henrik is tortured by love, wich he has in different ways, for his father's young wife and his equally young maid Petra. Both, in different ways and for different reasons, seem to return that love.
Fleshing out the story, pun very much intended, are Count and Countess Malcolm. The Count is a military man and a player at the game of love. Desiree is his mistress now, something that he is completely open about, even to his wife, and he has a bizarre sense of honour that keeps him faithful to both wife and mistress. When Egerman visits Desiree, just before the Count does precisely the same thing, it sparks a whole slew of consequences, given that the Countess is friends with Anne Egerman. Now we realise why Björnstrand was fifth credited. Just like love, it appears be all about the men but it's really all about the women and they have plenty of plans.
Ingmar Bergman is a name that invokes special attention. Of all those people who carry the description of great directors of the world, his has a tendency to find its way to the top. Woody Allen mentions him a lot, both by name and by reference. Martin Scorsese talked in a documentary about how when he was at film school everyone maintained shrines to Bergman. I presume he was talking metaphorically but it would ring true if he were being literal. And so, like anyone or anything so lauded, I tend to walk in with apprehension. Maybe it's that traditional English support of the underdog, but I have a tendency to look for hidden gems and because acknowledged masterpieces tend not to be hidden, I tend to find flaws in a lot of them. I think it's a truism that a lot of people rate things highly just because everyone else rates them highly. What I'm far less prepared for is when everyone else is right.
Bergman tends to be a place where everyone else tends to be right. He has a reputation for depth and meaning so you'd expect him to be dull and boring. At the very least he must be an acquired taste, like poetry, which would be a good comparison especially given titles like Smiles of a Summer Night. However none of this is really the case, this one being frothier than most of his work that I've seen but none of it being dull and boring at all. And however frothy this one gets, it doesn't lose either its sparkle or its depth. That's a fine balancing act to manage: sparkle and depth at the same time but it's where I'm learning Bergman spent much of his career.
Opening credits notwithstanding, the focus of the story is Fredrik Egerman, a lawyer played by Bergman regular Gunner Björnstrand. He's been married for two years to Anne, a young and beautiful wife that he hasn't slept with yet. His first wife died and in between marriages he had many dalliances, not least two years with an actress called Desiree Armfeldt, the one speaking of love in the play. He had a son from his first wife, who is now a man, one about to enter the church but far too sensitive and emotional for that. Young Henrik is tortured by love, wich he has in different ways, for his father's young wife and his equally young maid Petra. Both, in different ways and for different reasons, seem to return that love.
Fleshing out the story, pun very much intended, are Count and Countess Malcolm. The Count is a military man and a player at the game of love. Desiree is his mistress now, something that he is completely open about, even to his wife, and he has a bizarre sense of honour that keeps him faithful to both wife and mistress. When Egerman visits Desiree, just before the Count does precisely the same thing, it sparks a whole slew of consequences, given that the Countess is friends with Anne Egerman. Now we realise why Björnstrand was fifth credited. Just like love, it appears be all about the men but it's really all about the women and they have plenty of plans.
Ingmar Bergman is a name that invokes special attention. Of all those people who carry the description of great directors of the world, his has a tendency to find its way to the top. Woody Allen mentions him a lot, both by name and by reference. Martin Scorsese talked in a documentary about how when he was at film school everyone maintained shrines to Bergman. I presume he was talking metaphorically but it would ring true if he were being literal. And so, like anyone or anything so lauded, I tend to walk in with apprehension. Maybe it's that traditional English support of the underdog, but I have a tendency to look for hidden gems and because acknowledged masterpieces tend not to be hidden, I tend to find flaws in a lot of them. I think it's a truism that a lot of people rate things highly just because everyone else rates them highly. What I'm far less prepared for is when everyone else is right.
Bergman tends to be a place where everyone else tends to be right. He has a reputation for depth and meaning so you'd expect him to be dull and boring. At the very least he must be an acquired taste, like poetry, which would be a good comparison especially given titles like Smiles of a Summer Night. However none of this is really the case, this one being frothier than most of his work that I've seen but none of it being dull and boring at all. And however frothy this one gets, it doesn't lose either its sparkle or its depth. That's a fine balancing act to manage: sparkle and depth at the same time but it's where I'm learning Bergman spent much of his career.
Monday, 1 September 2008
The Big Knife (1955)
There were a number of serious contenders for the best film of 1955: Marty, Rififi, The Ladykillers, Death of a Cyclist, Les Diaboliques... and Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. This was the other film he made that year, and it's the one that probably shook up half of Hollywood. Based on a play by Clifford Odets, who had spent enough time there, as playwright, screenwriter and husband to stars to know what went on that the public didn't see. He certainly didn't hold back here and neither did James Poe who adapted his play for the screen.
Jack Palance took the role that half of Hollywood turned down: that of actor Charles Castle, failed artiste but successful star. He has the fame and fortune but at the cost of his integrity. Now his contract is up for renewal and he has the choice of staying in the Stanley Hoff stable or staying in his marriage. Both are formidable people to go up against, so Castle is going to lose whichever way he goes: Hoff, the studio head, who owns everything and everyone in his world, is played by a fierce Rod Steiger; Castle's wife Marion is played by Ida Lupino, she of the most powerful flared eyes in the business.
The problem is that Hoff has some serious dirt on Castle. I've read enough about the great studio heads to know that they all had fixers on their staffs, who could make anything right. The only thing that mattered was that the public wouldn't find out about what really went on in Hollywood Babylon. The dirt here is that Castle went drunk driving and killed a kid in a hit and run. He was even entertaining a young lady at the time, a young lady that wasn't his wife. Hoff or his employees, such as Smiley Coy, made the problem go away: someone else went to jail for ten months on his behalf. But of course the problem only looked like it went away, but it resonated and festered and rankled.
It's an interesting film but I felt it was very stagy. It's an open question as to whether that was a deliberate choice of style, given that the characters are all movie industry folks who act for a living, even when they're not actors. Certainly part of it comes from the very limited budget and timeframe Robert Aldrich had to play with. He shot long scenes and he had a set that came apart quickly and easily so he could shoot different angles. Whatever the reasons though, it feels like a play, which of course it was, and it suffers from all the inherent restrictions of a play.
Palance is good, as are Lupino and supporting actress Shelley Winters. I wasn't convinced by Rod Steiger, which surprised me, but maybe that is in part because Stanley Shriner Hoff looks unfortunately like Dr Strangelove. Best of all could be Wendell Corey as Hoff's fixer and Jean Hagen as the manipulative wife of a friend of the Castles. Robert Aldrich achieved far more with his other 1955 film, Kiss Me Deadly, though. That one is not to be missed.
Jack Palance took the role that half of Hollywood turned down: that of actor Charles Castle, failed artiste but successful star. He has the fame and fortune but at the cost of his integrity. Now his contract is up for renewal and he has the choice of staying in the Stanley Hoff stable or staying in his marriage. Both are formidable people to go up against, so Castle is going to lose whichever way he goes: Hoff, the studio head, who owns everything and everyone in his world, is played by a fierce Rod Steiger; Castle's wife Marion is played by Ida Lupino, she of the most powerful flared eyes in the business.
The problem is that Hoff has some serious dirt on Castle. I've read enough about the great studio heads to know that they all had fixers on their staffs, who could make anything right. The only thing that mattered was that the public wouldn't find out about what really went on in Hollywood Babylon. The dirt here is that Castle went drunk driving and killed a kid in a hit and run. He was even entertaining a young lady at the time, a young lady that wasn't his wife. Hoff or his employees, such as Smiley Coy, made the problem go away: someone else went to jail for ten months on his behalf. But of course the problem only looked like it went away, but it resonated and festered and rankled.
It's an interesting film but I felt it was very stagy. It's an open question as to whether that was a deliberate choice of style, given that the characters are all movie industry folks who act for a living, even when they're not actors. Certainly part of it comes from the very limited budget and timeframe Robert Aldrich had to play with. He shot long scenes and he had a set that came apart quickly and easily so he could shoot different angles. Whatever the reasons though, it feels like a play, which of course it was, and it suffers from all the inherent restrictions of a play.
Palance is good, as are Lupino and supporting actress Shelley Winters. I wasn't convinced by Rod Steiger, which surprised me, but maybe that is in part because Stanley Shriner Hoff looks unfortunately like Dr Strangelove. Best of all could be Wendell Corey as Hoff's fixer and Jean Hagen as the manipulative wife of a friend of the Castles. Robert Aldrich achieved far more with his other 1955 film, Kiss Me Deadly, though. That one is not to be missed.
Dear Wendy (2005)
If the official view of small town America is what comes out of films like Stand By Me or A Christmas Story, even Back to the Future, then the subversive view is what comes out of films like this, made by people who didn't grow up there: writer Lars von Trier and director Thomas Vinterberg, both Danish and founding members of the Dogme 95 movement that pushed for honesty in filmmaking. This isn't a Dogme 95 film though, it's a more traditionally made film that happens to have a lot of depth. I wonder which approach to small town America is more real: there are certainly no rose coloured glasses here, but there's just as certainly no overt anti-American bias.
It's all about guns, the people who wear them and how those people change. In fact it's a toss up as to who the lead character really is: Dickie, who narrates the story, or his gun Wendy, who he narrates it to. We're in a small American town, but there's nothing to say where or when other than it's a mining community and the middle of the town is Electric Park Square. We follow the entwined stories of a number of young misfits, led by Dickie, who bonds with a fellow shop clerk over use of guns.
Soon there are five of them, banded together into a club they call the Dandies. Guns are the focus but these young misfits are pacifists. Everything is built around the paradox of having guns, knowing how to use them and care of them and shoot them, but never actually bringing them out in public. The point isn't killing anyone, it's about having the empowerment to be able to do so and thus not needing to. In fact 'killing' is seen as a bad word here, instead euphemised into 'loving'.
'Loving' isn't just a euphemism though, but also a parallel, as the guns literally become partners to their owners, even through marriage ceremonies. Everything changes for Dick when Sheriff Krugsby picks him as the probation officer for a young man named Sebastian who has killed someone. Sebastian is the grandson of Dick's old housekeeper, and Dick is such a good boy that he would seem to be a natural pick to keep Sebastian away from guns. However Sebastian picks up Wendy and so Dick's whole life and philosophy suddenly get a serious kick of jealousy.
There's so much depth here that it's not easy to see everything that Lars Von Trier was intending us to see. Whole essays could be written about the loving/killing angle that equates both love and sex with death. Both are very apparent here. They could also be written about how fear is handled in this movie. In the Dandy philosophy guns are a tool of empowerment, not through actually using them but through awareness of their power. Every one of the Dandies changes through mere possession of a gun, seemingly into a better and fuller person. They find belonging and purpose. Nobody understands, of course. The gun is also an extension of the self, and so carries according characteristics. The Dandies trust people based on what sort of gun they carry: they certainly don't trust people who carry what they see to be treacherous guns.
Jamie Bell, initially best known as a dancer, is excellent in the lead. He was Billy Elliot in the film of the same name and it's good to see him taking on such diverse and interesting roles, from Billy Elliot to Nicholas Nickleby, from Dear Wendy to King Kong, from Flags of Our Fathers to Jumper. Bill Pullman, as Sheriff Krugsby, is the biggest name in the film and he gets a much smaller though integral part. People I don't know, such as Michael Angarano, Danso Gordon, Chris Owen, Alison Pill and Mark Webber fill out the cast in a talented fashion, along with Novella Nelson as a cranky old black woman and Thomas Vinterberg's good luck charm, Thomas Bo Larsen in a tiny role.
It's the story that carries this one again though, though Vinterberg uses some interesting cinematic devices to get his point across and to reference other parts of the film. Most obvious is in the final shootout scene, where we see certain things from the perspectives of those doing the shooting or being shot, not visually but mentally. Shots are taken with accompanying trajectory patterns or received in the manner of a documentary on forensic wounds. What a fascinating and thought inspiring film.
It's all about guns, the people who wear them and how those people change. In fact it's a toss up as to who the lead character really is: Dickie, who narrates the story, or his gun Wendy, who he narrates it to. We're in a small American town, but there's nothing to say where or when other than it's a mining community and the middle of the town is Electric Park Square. We follow the entwined stories of a number of young misfits, led by Dickie, who bonds with a fellow shop clerk over use of guns.
Soon there are five of them, banded together into a club they call the Dandies. Guns are the focus but these young misfits are pacifists. Everything is built around the paradox of having guns, knowing how to use them and care of them and shoot them, but never actually bringing them out in public. The point isn't killing anyone, it's about having the empowerment to be able to do so and thus not needing to. In fact 'killing' is seen as a bad word here, instead euphemised into 'loving'.
'Loving' isn't just a euphemism though, but also a parallel, as the guns literally become partners to their owners, even through marriage ceremonies. Everything changes for Dick when Sheriff Krugsby picks him as the probation officer for a young man named Sebastian who has killed someone. Sebastian is the grandson of Dick's old housekeeper, and Dick is such a good boy that he would seem to be a natural pick to keep Sebastian away from guns. However Sebastian picks up Wendy and so Dick's whole life and philosophy suddenly get a serious kick of jealousy.
There's so much depth here that it's not easy to see everything that Lars Von Trier was intending us to see. Whole essays could be written about the loving/killing angle that equates both love and sex with death. Both are very apparent here. They could also be written about how fear is handled in this movie. In the Dandy philosophy guns are a tool of empowerment, not through actually using them but through awareness of their power. Every one of the Dandies changes through mere possession of a gun, seemingly into a better and fuller person. They find belonging and purpose. Nobody understands, of course. The gun is also an extension of the self, and so carries according characteristics. The Dandies trust people based on what sort of gun they carry: they certainly don't trust people who carry what they see to be treacherous guns.
Jamie Bell, initially best known as a dancer, is excellent in the lead. He was Billy Elliot in the film of the same name and it's good to see him taking on such diverse and interesting roles, from Billy Elliot to Nicholas Nickleby, from Dear Wendy to King Kong, from Flags of Our Fathers to Jumper. Bill Pullman, as Sheriff Krugsby, is the biggest name in the film and he gets a much smaller though integral part. People I don't know, such as Michael Angarano, Danso Gordon, Chris Owen, Alison Pill and Mark Webber fill out the cast in a talented fashion, along with Novella Nelson as a cranky old black woman and Thomas Vinterberg's good luck charm, Thomas Bo Larsen in a tiny role.
It's the story that carries this one again though, though Vinterberg uses some interesting cinematic devices to get his point across and to reference other parts of the film. Most obvious is in the final shootout scene, where we see certain things from the perspectives of those doing the shooting or being shot, not visually but mentally. Shots are taken with accompanying trajectory patterns or received in the manner of a documentary on forensic wounds. What a fascinating and thought inspiring film.
It's All About Love (2003)
We're in 2021 and John Marczewski is on his way to Calgary, but he stops off in New York to divorce his wife Elena during the two hours he has between flights. He's a teacher but she's a professional ice skater, at the peak of her profession, and is stuck at her hotel with a large entourage making last minute preparations for a premiere she has the next day. Everyone seems very happy to see him and frequent mentions of 'the happy family' don't appear to be artificial. However something is definitely going on. This family has secrets, as the family in Vinterberg's previous film, The Celebration, had, though in a very different way.
Part of it is on a human, personal level. Elena is being manipulated for purposes that are unclear, but those doing the manipulating are not afraid to use force to ensure that they happen. She's not aware of many of the plans, and becomes deeply suspicious of them she becomes aware. There's also a mysterious Mr Morrison, who is also flying into New York, though why and for what purpose we're unaware. John is deliberately kept out of it all, but becomes inextricably drawn deeper and deeper into it.
However part of it is on a more epic scale. Strange things are happening that seem nothing short of biblical in their scope. The news is full of phenomena in Uganda where the temperature is dropping daily and gravity is failing. In New York, people seem to be falling over dead without warning, frequent enough that it's not comment worthy. When John arrives at the airport, there's a corpse at the bottom of the escalator, and everyone merely steps over it. It's something to do with the heart, people say. Soon it starts snowing in July.
This is the future though it doesn't look particularly futuristic, but this isn't meant to be Blade Runner. I think that the futuristic setting was only to allow the global changes to appear believable, and as expressed by one of the characters, the chaos in the world is a parallel to the chaos in the hearts of the characters. The story is the key here and I was very much impressed because I couldn't see where it was going. That's rare, not only in modern films but in films generally. Surprises tend to come in the details or through twist endings, so that the overall framework is reasonably obvious even if the details aren't. This whole film is a surprise.
It took me a while to get used to Joaquin Phoenix as John. He comes off very artificial, though I think he was merely attempting to sound like someone who knows English only as a second language, the Marcewskis being Polish. I enjoyed Walk the Line, while not being knocked out by it the way many people were, but I was just as impressed by his performance, which was powerful in a very different way to this one. He's definitely a versatile talent. Claire Danes is very good indeed as Elena. Sean Penn plays an intruiging but ultimately pointless character who only interacts with the rest of the cast via phone calls from planes. He's more like a narrator.
Most impressive to my eyes was Douglas Henshall, a Scots actor with a decent list of credits to his name. I've only seen him in odd things here and there, never as a lead, and he's never stuck in my brain. I think I'm going to remember here him though, as Elena's brother. He has a shifting but pivotal role in proceedings and there's a lot of subtlety in his performance. At the end of the day, this one belongs to the story though, written by director Thomas Vinterberg with Mogens Rukov. It invites a lot of thought and is beautifully put together, often like a painting. It'll be interesting to watch it again a few years down the road.
Part of it is on a human, personal level. Elena is being manipulated for purposes that are unclear, but those doing the manipulating are not afraid to use force to ensure that they happen. She's not aware of many of the plans, and becomes deeply suspicious of them she becomes aware. There's also a mysterious Mr Morrison, who is also flying into New York, though why and for what purpose we're unaware. John is deliberately kept out of it all, but becomes inextricably drawn deeper and deeper into it.
However part of it is on a more epic scale. Strange things are happening that seem nothing short of biblical in their scope. The news is full of phenomena in Uganda where the temperature is dropping daily and gravity is failing. In New York, people seem to be falling over dead without warning, frequent enough that it's not comment worthy. When John arrives at the airport, there's a corpse at the bottom of the escalator, and everyone merely steps over it. It's something to do with the heart, people say. Soon it starts snowing in July.
This is the future though it doesn't look particularly futuristic, but this isn't meant to be Blade Runner. I think that the futuristic setting was only to allow the global changes to appear believable, and as expressed by one of the characters, the chaos in the world is a parallel to the chaos in the hearts of the characters. The story is the key here and I was very much impressed because I couldn't see where it was going. That's rare, not only in modern films but in films generally. Surprises tend to come in the details or through twist endings, so that the overall framework is reasonably obvious even if the details aren't. This whole film is a surprise.
It took me a while to get used to Joaquin Phoenix as John. He comes off very artificial, though I think he was merely attempting to sound like someone who knows English only as a second language, the Marcewskis being Polish. I enjoyed Walk the Line, while not being knocked out by it the way many people were, but I was just as impressed by his performance, which was powerful in a very different way to this one. He's definitely a versatile talent. Claire Danes is very good indeed as Elena. Sean Penn plays an intruiging but ultimately pointless character who only interacts with the rest of the cast via phone calls from planes. He's more like a narrator.
Most impressive to my eyes was Douglas Henshall, a Scots actor with a decent list of credits to his name. I've only seen him in odd things here and there, never as a lead, and he's never stuck in my brain. I think I'm going to remember here him though, as Elena's brother. He has a shifting but pivotal role in proceedings and there's a lot of subtlety in his performance. At the end of the day, this one belongs to the story though, written by director Thomas Vinterberg with Mogens Rukov. It invites a lot of thought and is beautifully put together, often like a painting. It'll be interesting to watch it again a few years down the road.
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Auntie Mame (1958)
In the mood for something funny that isn't likely to make me think too much, I wandered down the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list to see what I hadn't seen. This one leapt out, given that I'd recently seen Rosalind Russell in a flamboyant role in Picnic. This, from all accounts, was her flamboyant role of roles and naturally she's the Auntie Mame of the title. It won her an Oscar nomination, among others, and the film was nominated for Best Picture. Six nominations equated to zero wins though.
Russell is Mame Dennis, Auntie Mame to young Patrick, the only son of her brother Edwin. Even though he's in the best of health Edwin writes his will, just in time for him to unexpectedly kick the bucket. He leaves everything to Patrick, of course, but as he thinks his only relative is a crazy eccentric loon he only leaves her Patrick's custody. The executor of the will, the ultra-conservative Mr Babcock of the Knickerbocker Bank, gets all the trump cards so that Patrick can get a stable upbringing, and it doesn't take long before he packs him off to boarding school.
As we're in 1928 it also doesn't take long before the stock market crashes and Auntie Mame's net worth crashes with it, so off she goes to find work with the inevitable consequences for someone who's a crazy eccentric loon. Up until this point, I enjoyed the film but wasn't particularly knocked out. The whole thing was very stagy, as emphasised by the memorably lighted transitions, and populated mostly by risque jokes that are funny only through the afterthoughts of those that speak them, given that they're spoken in the presence of young Patrick.
In fact I was initially more impressed by the acting of Jan Handzlik (now a prominent lawyer) in his first and only film role, as one dimensional as it is, than I was with Rosalind Russell. I could say the same for Coral Browne, as Mame's drunk actress friend Vera Charles and Connie Gilchrist as her Irish housekeeper, all because Russell seemed to be so prominently acting rather than being Auntie Mame. Once Mame hits the stage though as a bit part in one of Vera's plays, Russell gets into the full swing of it and establishes that Auntie Mame spends most of her time acting anyway.
By the time we pick up love interest Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, played by Forrest Tucker, and we switch from Manhattan to the Peckerwood Plantation in Georgia, everyone is acting their socks off playing characters who overact their socks off. There's what can only be can be described as a duel between Auntie Mame and Brook Byron as the jealous Sally Cato MacDougall, fought with wits, bravado and sheer flamboyance, which is hilarious but so overacted its unreal.
Much of the reason is that this screwball comedy, fifties style, is based on a successful stage play and seems to be indecently happy to revel in that fact. There are some rear projection shots here that are so bad that they couldn't be accidental. I can only assume that they were deliberately done that way to remind us of stage backdrops. The play starred Rosalind Russell, who reprised her role here, and also featured the other frequent award nominee for this film: Peggy Cass. She played Agnes Gooch on both stage and screen and she's certainly memorable, not only for her unique rasp or her, shall we say, transformation.
By the time the film is over, it's easy to see what makes Rosalind Russell's performance so lauded. In a film where almost every single actor is out to steal every scene they're in, she battles them all and wins out in style. It's all complete lunacy, of course. It makes next to no sense whatsoever and there are so many conveniences that you wouldn't be able to count them, but it's all done with panache and power. What's more, it's a comedy that slaps you between the eyes and bludgeons you over the head without ever resorting to a fart joke. That's refreshing, but I'd love to see this on stage.
Russell is Mame Dennis, Auntie Mame to young Patrick, the only son of her brother Edwin. Even though he's in the best of health Edwin writes his will, just in time for him to unexpectedly kick the bucket. He leaves everything to Patrick, of course, but as he thinks his only relative is a crazy eccentric loon he only leaves her Patrick's custody. The executor of the will, the ultra-conservative Mr Babcock of the Knickerbocker Bank, gets all the trump cards so that Patrick can get a stable upbringing, and it doesn't take long before he packs him off to boarding school.
As we're in 1928 it also doesn't take long before the stock market crashes and Auntie Mame's net worth crashes with it, so off she goes to find work with the inevitable consequences for someone who's a crazy eccentric loon. Up until this point, I enjoyed the film but wasn't particularly knocked out. The whole thing was very stagy, as emphasised by the memorably lighted transitions, and populated mostly by risque jokes that are funny only through the afterthoughts of those that speak them, given that they're spoken in the presence of young Patrick.
In fact I was initially more impressed by the acting of Jan Handzlik (now a prominent lawyer) in his first and only film role, as one dimensional as it is, than I was with Rosalind Russell. I could say the same for Coral Browne, as Mame's drunk actress friend Vera Charles and Connie Gilchrist as her Irish housekeeper, all because Russell seemed to be so prominently acting rather than being Auntie Mame. Once Mame hits the stage though as a bit part in one of Vera's plays, Russell gets into the full swing of it and establishes that Auntie Mame spends most of her time acting anyway.
By the time we pick up love interest Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, played by Forrest Tucker, and we switch from Manhattan to the Peckerwood Plantation in Georgia, everyone is acting their socks off playing characters who overact their socks off. There's what can only be can be described as a duel between Auntie Mame and Brook Byron as the jealous Sally Cato MacDougall, fought with wits, bravado and sheer flamboyance, which is hilarious but so overacted its unreal.
Much of the reason is that this screwball comedy, fifties style, is based on a successful stage play and seems to be indecently happy to revel in that fact. There are some rear projection shots here that are so bad that they couldn't be accidental. I can only assume that they were deliberately done that way to remind us of stage backdrops. The play starred Rosalind Russell, who reprised her role here, and also featured the other frequent award nominee for this film: Peggy Cass. She played Agnes Gooch on both stage and screen and she's certainly memorable, not only for her unique rasp or her, shall we say, transformation.
By the time the film is over, it's easy to see what makes Rosalind Russell's performance so lauded. In a film where almost every single actor is out to steal every scene they're in, she battles them all and wins out in style. It's all complete lunacy, of course. It makes next to no sense whatsoever and there are so many conveniences that you wouldn't be able to count them, but it's all done with panache and power. What's more, it's a comedy that slaps you between the eyes and bludgeons you over the head without ever resorting to a fart joke. That's refreshing, but I'd love to see this on stage.
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