skimpole

Sunset Boulevard Joe: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big." Norma: "I am big! It's the pictures that got small." In my view the best line of 1950

I have Orson Welles in Touch of Evil and Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter as supporting. As I recall Mitchum spends much of the movie chasing the children but not coming especially close. The Academy nominated Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause as supporting, but I always imagined she's be lead.

Three movies this week: Min and Bill was a rather slapdash movie, tolerable I suppose, but hardly interesting or profound. He was Her Man was better, since it had Cagney in it, and the ending was a bit surprising. On the other hand, it was not the best of his movies. Bridge of Spies was the last 2015 Best Picture nominee I saw. As it stands, it was OK. I'm not really a fan of Spielberg/Capra and the movie was overlong. On the other hand Mark Rylance was quite good.

Actor George Sanders, All About Eve Humphrey Bogart, In a Lonely Place 1949 movie nominated in 1950 Joseph Cotton, The Third Man William Holden, Sunset Blvd. Gregory Peck, The Gunfighter Substitute for Cotton Sterling Hayden, The Asphalt Jungle Runner-ups: Jean Marais, (Orpheus) Richard Widmark (Night and the City), John Dall (Gun Crazy), Burt Lancaster (The Flame and the Arrow), James Stewart (Winchester 73), Dana Andrews (Where the Sidewalk Ends) Actress Gloria Swanson, Sunset Blvd. Bette Davis, All About Eve Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli Anne Baxter, All About Eve Peggy Cummins, Gun Crazy Runner-Ups: Gloria Grahame (In a Lonely Place), Alida Valli (The Third Man), Maria Casares (Orpheus), Betty Hutton (Annie Get Your Gun), Machiko Kyo (Rashomon), Nicole Stephane (Les Enfants Terrible) Supporting Actor Anton Walbrook, La Ronde 1949 movie nominated in 1950: Orson Welles, The Third Man Takashi Shimura, Rashomon Erich von Stroheim, Sunset Blvd. Severnlo Pisacane, The Flowers of Saint Francis Substitute for Welles: Sam Jaffe, The Asphalt Jungle Supporting Actress Danielle Darrieux, La Ronde Celeste Holm, All About Eve Thelma Ritter, All About Eve Alma Delia Fuentes, Los Olividados Eleanor Audley, Cinderella Runner-ups: Marie Dea, (Orpheus), Verna Felton (Cinderella) Not seen: The Magnificent Yankee, Caged, Broken Arrow, Mister 880

So instead of each year lasting a week from Sunday to Saturday, it now lasts from Saturday to Friday?

That strikes me as a bit of cheap shot. Kes strikes me as the only movie that actually tries to get how working class people actually talk. And it's about a decade after the British "New Wave" started, and it's considerably tougher. It's also far more admired nowadays than the BNW, much of which looks rather stodgy.

Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca Arletty, Children of Paradise Claude Rains, Casablanca Margaret O'Brien, Meet me in St. Louis

I was inclined to see Kerr as supporting.

I saw five movies last week. Simon is about a university professor who is brainwashed by scientists into thinking he's an alien. It starts well, and it was probably a good idea that Marshall Brickman, who had worked with Woody Allen in the past, decided that someone other than Allen should be the lead. But the film lacks energy in the second half, and I suspect that it needs someone other than Alan Arkin to put it through. (And one thinks the outside world would be more skeptical about claims people had discovered an alien). Francofonia was clearly the movie of the week: an intelligent meditation on the Louvre especially in the world. It's elliptical, and carefully shot, with subtle camera movements and an intelligent use of archival footage and the recreation of archival footage. I love Melvin is an Ok musical, if not a particularly brilliant one. Harvey has a nice performance by James Stewart, and I remember seeing the play as a child. And I think the problem with the movie is the problem I had with the play. It lacks concentration, and it meanders. Stewart gives a nice performance, but the movie is too bland and too long for its anodyne point. I'm not a big Austen fan, and Persuasion didn't attract my full attention as I was watching it. Perhaps a second watch will make its virtues clearer. Oh yes, I also saw Ulzana's Raid last week. I suppose it doesn't say much about it that I omitted the first time around. It's more violent not only in the obvious way that seventies westerns would be over those made a decade or two or three earlier. It's also violent in that the cruelty of the Indians, in this case Apaches, is more emphasized than one would think. Westerns are not my favorite genre, so the ones that I'm likely to see have a higher critical reputation and they tend to have a bad conscience about how the United States has treated its aboriginal population. I've heard the movie compared to Vietnam, though it doesn't strike me as a good analogy. Vietnam is not almost empty, and it is overwhelmingly populated by Vietnamese, while the West in this movie is not dominated by Apaches. On its own terms, the movie is interesting.

Actor (1948 film nominated in 1949: Ralph Richardson, The Fallen Idol)* Chishyu Ryu, Late Spring Gene Kelly, On the Town James Cagney, White Heat Gregory Peck, Twelve O'clock High Substitute for Richardson: Spencer Tracy, Adam's Rib Runner-ups: James Mason, (The Reckless Moment), Jacques Tati (Jour de Fete), Toshiro Mifune (Stray Dog), Burt Lancaster (Criss Cross), David Farrar (The Small Back Room), Robert Ryan (The Set-Up), Richard Conte (Thieves' Highway) Actress Setsuko Hara, Late Spring Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress Joan Bennett, The Reckless Moment Linda Darnell, A Letter to Three Wives Silvana Mangano, Bitter Rice Runner-ups: Katharine Hepburn (Adam's Rib), Doris Dowling (Bitter Rice), Yvonne De Carlo (Criss Cross), Ingrid Bergman (Under Capricorn) Supporting Actor Ralph Richardson, The Heiress Kirk Douglas, A Letter to Three Wives Takashi Shimura, Stray Dog Montgomery Clift, The Heiress Dan Duryea, Criss-Cross Runner-ups: Paul Douglas (A Letter to Three Wives), Lee J. Cobb (Thieves Highway), Dean Jagger (Twelve O'Clock High), Frank Sinatra (On the Town), Bobby Henrey (The Fallen Idol), Alec Guiness (Kind Hearts and Coronets), Basil Rathbone (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad), Edmond O'Brien (White Heat) Supporting Actress Virginia Mayo, Colorado Territory Ann Sothern, A Letter to Three Wives Ann Miller, On the Town Joan Greenwood, Kind Hearts and Coronets Margaret Wycherly, White Heat Not seen: Battleground, Champion, The Hasty Heart, Sands of Iwo Jima, Pinky, My Foolish Heart, Edward, my Son, Come to the Stable, *Presuming this isn't counted as a 1949 film, Richardson wouldn't beat my 1948 choice Anton Walbrook)

To consider another relationship, Josephine Hull was 31 years older than James Stewart in Harvey, but they play siblings.

I remember a joke in a MAD magazine c. 1980-81 parodying "That's Incredible" in which the incredible thing was the doctor making a house call. I suspect most people never had access to house calls, but it was common enough among the high middle class that their decline was something to complain about. I do recall that other people make jokes or comments in the seventies and eighties.

J. Hoberman Stuart Klawans Jonathan Rosenbaum Collectively, they have brought to attention most of the greatest new directors of the last three and a half decades, such as both Andersons, Burnett, Carax, Cisse, Cronenberg, the Dardennes, Davies, Denis, Hou, Jarmusch, Kiarostami, Lanzmann, Lee, Lynch, Ruiz, Sokurov, Tarkovsky, Tarr, Trier, Wong, and Yang. (The one gap is that none of them have written much about Theo Angelopoulos.)

Here are some comments on my choice for Best Actor from the defunct blog Criterion Contraption: Believe it or not, Page and Craster are the closest the movie gets to working class characters; Anton Walbrook's portrayal of Boris Lermontov will go down in history as the definitive European aristocrat. Here he is early in the film and early in the morning, smoking a cigarette and reading his mail: Yes, that's a tartar robe he's wearing. In a few seconds, he's going to hold out that cigarette until his butler appears from nowhere, takes it from his hand and extinguishes it; walking to the ashtray himself would be too, too exhausting. And here he is taking a stroll with other members of his company on the streets of Monte-Carlo, wearing exquisitely bizarro sunglasses: Lermontov is a bully, he's arrogant, he's jealous, he's manipulative, and he cares for nothing but his ballet. As a result, he's able to extract brilliant work from everyone who works for him. Craster and Page join the Ballet Lermontov at the same time (in fact, on the same morning), and the early part of the movie follows them as Lermontov carefully cultivates their talents. They both get their big chance at the same time, too: Lermontov asks Victoria Page to dance the lead in a new ballet that Craster is writing. The subject is "The Red Shoes," and here's how Lermontov describes the story to Craster: "The Ballet of The Red Shoes" is from a fairy tale by Hans Andersen. It is the story of a young girl who is devoured with an ambition to attend a dance in a pair of red shoes. She gets the shoes and goes to the dance. For a time, all goes well and she is very happy. At the end of the evening she is tired and wants to go home, but the red shoes are not tired. In fact, the red shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by. But the red shoes go on. Craster asks, "What happens at the end?" and Lermontov carelessly replies, "Oh, in the end she dies." The careful reader will guess that there are some similarities between the story and Victoria Page's. The movie is, in fact, about the way art consumes life. Lermontov, while not an artist himself, understands this better than Page or Craster; it's the source of his power over them. He has no understanding and even less interest in what he calls "the doubtful comforts of human love," so his reaction on hearing that Craster and Page are seeing each other must be seen to be believed. He finds out at the birthday party of his head choreographer; here's his reaction shot, surrounded by people having a good time: The life of the party. And later, when he discovers they've just been married: Note the full ashtray next to him and that unbelievable Russian velvet shirt. When you break out the red velvet, you know it's been a long, dark night of the soul. He's not conventionally jealous, however: he simply thinks Victoria Page can't be a great dancer if she allows herself to spend any time on normal life.

I too would high recommend The Heiress. And De Havailand's performance is one of the best to win an oscar. But there was a better performance that year, one of the truly great performances in the history of cinema. You'll find out what it is next week.

Actor Anton Walbrook, The Red Shoes John Wayne, Red River John Dall, Rope Rex Harrison, Unfaithfully Yours Fred Astaire, Easter Parade Runner-ups: Lamberto Maggiorani (The Bicycle Thieves), Edmund Moeschke (Germany, Year Zero), Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), Montgomery Clift (Red River), Gary Cooper (Good Sam), Laurence Olivier (Hamlet), Gene Kelly (The Pirate), Henry Fonda (Fort Apache), Bob Hope (The Paleface) Actress Anna Magnani, L'Amore Kinuyo Tanaka, A Hen in the Wind (1947 film considered a 1948 film: Rita Hayworth, The Lady from Shanghai) Judy Garland, Easter Parade Moira Shearer, The Red Shoes Substitute for Hayworth: Linda Darnell, Unfaithfully Yours Runner-ups: Jane Russell (The Paleface) Cathy O'Donnell (They Live by Night), Gail Russell (Moonrise), Joan Fontaine (Letter from an Unknown Woman) Supporting Actor James Stewart, Rope Walter Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Enzo Staiola, The Bicycle Thieves (1947 movie considered a 1948 movie Everett Sloane, The Lady from Shanghai) Robert Ryan, Act of Violence Substitute for Sloane: Walter Slezak, The Pirate Supporting Actress Jean Simmons, Hamlet Ann Miller, Easter Parade Lianella Carell, The Bicycle Thieves Joanne Dru, Red River Marlene Dietrich, A Foreign Affair Movies not seen: Johnny Belinda, When my Baby Smiles at Me, Joan of Arc, The Luck of the Irish It says a lot about the Best Supporting Actress category that it went to an actress in a movie while the three leads that everyone remembers the movie for weren't even nominated.

I saw six movies this week. The Patsy was a very amusing performance and Marion Davies gave a great comedic performance. Everybody Wants Some!! is sort of a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused. I don't think it's as successful. It looks like a better movie, sort of what would a frat house movie be like if it was made by somebody with a genuine point of view. But there's the occasional false note, a problem that it had with Before Midnight. There's a certain evasion of race and gender problems, which allows the baseball team a certain presumption of decency that it hasn't earned. Equus is less successful, and it's most likely because of the play is shallow, despite the best efforts of the cast and the director. The ideas were fashionable in the seventies and it doesn't work very well. The King and I was also not successful. The songs are memorable, but they oddly don't match the emotional beats of the plot. Although Brynner won the oscar, it's Kerr who gives the better performance. Although a more convincing Siamese monarch than Pr. Henry Higgins, Brynner's more an Asiatic stereotype provided for our amusement who keeps repeating catchphrases. Rio 40 Graus is an early film of Nelson Pereira dos Santos. It appears to be a hot afternoon in the day of the life of Rio. It shows the class and racial divisions of Rio, but it's not as good as his later Barren Lives. Finally there's Pasolini's Oedipus Rex which is a powerful rendition of the Greek myth, filmed in Morocco with haunting cinematography.

Cary Grant and Ralph Bellamy playing each other's roles. Groucho Marx as straight man to Bellamy.

For the eighties, I'd give Costa-Gavras a nomination. Ordinary People and Broadcast News aren't my favorite movies of the eighties, but the oscars have nominated worse people than Donald Sutherland and James Brooks.

Looking at the nineties missing 1 out of 5, I would think that Howard's End was the only one that deserved to have a chance the get the full five. It certainly has one of the best post-megastar Hopkins performances, which makes his failure to be nominated even more striking.

Last night I saw Everybody Wants Some!! and it occurred to me that this is the movie that frat boys and college athletes would most admire about themselves as if presents them as fundamentally benign. They wouldn't immediately admire it because it's a movie where the characters constantly talk about sex and there's only very brief nudity. But once they gain a little perspective they'd like this movie because it shows them in such a good light. This leads me to other movies that appeal to a group's self-regard. The Caine Mutiny would appeal to the naval hierarchy because it argues that the chain of command is sacrosanct and anyone who argues otherwise is a cowardly, spiteful intriguer. This is true even if the navy was actually uncooperative to the makers of the movie, and kept insisting that the American navy had never had a mutiny. What other movies are there? I'm not thinking of movies which consists of people doing admirable things, like lawyers in To Kill a Mockingbird or The Verdict or Erin Brockovich. I'm not thinking of movies like Edison the Man, Dr. Erlich's Magic Bullet or The Story of Louis Pasteur, which say how wonderful it is to be a great scientist of world-historical importance. I'm thinking more of movies which argue that a particular group deserve our admiration more on their terms, rather than on terms outside their group. It looks at what appears to be a major flaw of the group in question, and then says it's all right. What movies come to mind?

I'm pleased that Dall and Granger are viewed as the leads for Rope, I was assuming Stewart was supporting, which is good news for him awards wise. I had Gwenn as supporting, but in some years I think an arguably supporting performance is so good it should be considered the lead.

I want to second the support for Conversation Piece.

Arguably this is more a short speech than a one-liners. But from the 1963 Cleopatra Octavian speaks of his dead rival: Is that how one says it? As simply as that. "Mark Antony is dead. Lord Antony is dead." "The soup is hot; the soup is cold." "Antony is living; Antony is dead." Shake with terror when such words pass your lips, for fear they be untrue and Antony'd cut out your tongue for the lie! And if true, for your lifetime boast that you were honored to speak his name even in death. The dying of such a man, must be shouted, screamed! It must echo back from the corners of the universe. "Antony is dead! Mark Antony of Rome lives no more!"

Actor Charles Chaplin, Monsieur Verdoux James Mason, Odd Man Out Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past Louis Jouvet, Quai des Orfevres Trevor Howard, They Made me a Fugitive Actress Deborah Kerr, Black Narcissus Joan Crawford, Daisy Kenyon Bai Yang, The Spring River Flows East Jane Greer, Out of the Past Gene Tierney, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Supporting Actor Edmund Gwenn, Miracle on 34th Street Kirk Douglas, Out of the Past Richard Widmark, Kiss of Death [1946 Movie nominated in 1947 Alec Guinness, Great Expectations] Hume Cronyn, Brute Force Replacement for Guinness: George Sanders, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Supporting Actress Martha Raye, Monsieur Verdoux Mary Merrall, They Made me a Fugitive [1946 Movie nominated in 1947 Jean Simmons, Great Expectations] Natalie Wood, Miracle on 34th Street Kathleen Byron, Black Narcissus Replacement for Simmons: Judith Anderson, Pursued Movies I haven't seen: The Bishop's Wife, A Double Life, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Farmer's Daughter, Possessed, Ride the Pink Horse, The Paradine Case, The Egg and I Performances worthy of attention Burt Lancaster (Brute Force), Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall (Dark Passage). Rex Harrison (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir).