AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Max Steiner One of the few composers who knew the difference between honest sentiment and schmaltz.
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And this means that TCM has to adapt even more to the new formats and audience migration. AMC did not go away-- we saw it change radically. Of course, we may not see TCM change that way, but it is still going to have to adapt even more than it already has. So for people to say TCM is not changing, well that is something that I do not agree with-- because from most authentic vantage points, TCM is vulnerable to competition if it does not evolve and grow.
Of course if TCM were truly going to "adapt to the times" in ways beyond modern media strategies like streaming and such, it would probably be more likely to try to lock up the better more recent movies than to double down on vintage B&W's.
After all, there are far more non-current TCM viewers under the age of 50 who remember Robert DeNiro's Taxi Driver than there are those with fond memories of James Cagney's Taxi.
In short, people might be careful about what they ask for, because they might not like what they might be getting.
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With the name "Pat O'Brien", what would you expect?
That about the only thing he'd be remembered for by TV viewers of the 70's is that he knew how to spell "natureS" backwards?
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Bo strikes me as a socially re tarded, sexist a-hole who in real life would've gone to prison - and it would've been a better movie if he had.
But this was 1954 and the idea of a woman being able to make her own decisions about her life when there was a man available to own her was wrong to a whole lot of people. Marilyn is the only one I like in 'Bus Stop' and I'll always be disappointed in her character's eventual capitulation to the kidnapper.
It came off as a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome, and I couldn't agree more. I could barely sit through Bus Stop the first time I watched it, and having viewed the last half of it again last night, there was nothing in it to make me change my mind. It may have only been Cave Man / Cave Girl Lite as opposed to Lee Marvin-scale misogyny, but the whole undertone was positively creepy.
But as you say, this was 1954, and the only thing that would have gotten Pope Breen's attention would have been if Bo and Marilyn had announced that they were going to skip the wedding ceremony, and were heading off to live a life of UNMARRIED SIN.
OTOH this is one of the many reasons I love to watch a wide variety of films from past decades, even a piece of c r a p like Bus Stop: There's no better way to see what the cultural assumptions of Production Code America really were, underneath the pious platitudes. For that reason alone, I'm glad I didn't simply pass it up.
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I don't quite understand why people are more interested in talking about labels than in what's underneath.
Many people have written that there is no such thing as love, only evidence of it. I think we might say the same thing about "classic" films. Trying to define it is like trying to sew a button onto a melody.
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1944: Ernő Rubik and I were born, in Budapest and New York respectively. He invented the Rubik's cube, and I'm still trying to solve it.
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Or is "classic" a film that is timeless and memorable?
That's what the TCM programmers would have us believe, but we know better. We know that by definition, a classic film can only have been made in USA! USA! prior to 1970, with no confusing "subtitles", no "unappealing" characters, and above all, nothing "artsy". Take it from our spokesman below------
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(I apologize for this muddled post. I had some trouble expressing my thoughts.)
Not at all, and in fact it was I who muddled the point I was attempting to make.
Mitchum's "preacher" character in The Night of the Hunter may not have been statistically likely, but he was certainly well within the realm of human believability, given our rich and varied history of religious quacks and con men. And Mitchum played the part to perfection in a most "interesting" way.
An even better example would be Lee Eun-Shim's title character in The Housemaid, the classic 1960 South Korean psychological horror film that TCM showed just the other evening. Her character was farfetched but not impossible, and if she'd cut it just a bit shorter (i.e. skipping the poison and the violent scenes), she would've almost been a recognizable archetype from millions of bad relationships. And once again, it was the extraordinary acting that brought the viewers along for the ride without simply rolling our collective eyes and saying "Yeah, tell me another one!"
Beyond that, of course, there's a lot of subjectivity that comes into play, and my general preference for "realistic" movies doesn't mean that it's the only one. But the sort of "realism" you're talking about ("tears in the predictable places, music to tell the audience what to feel") is diametrically opposite to the sort of realism I like to see in a movie. The sort of "realism" I'm talking about is represented in films ranging from Bicycle Thieves to Goodfellas, with movies like The Night of the Hunter and The Housemaid most definitely included.
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Interesting movies feature interesting characters who aren't always predictable archetypes.
Interesting movies feature good actors (not necessarily "stars") who make their characters believable.
Interesting movies don't depend on syrupy soundtracks or cinematic gimmickry or pretty faces to be interesting. We get enough of that during Super Bowl commercials.
Interesting movies are usually (though not always) set in the present, because filmmakers are able to at least recognize the present much better than they understand the past.
When interesting movies present a strong point of view, they do it in a manner that makes you say to yourself, "I never thought of it that way." Boring movies hit you over the head with that POV, usually with protagonists who are either too good or too evil to be real.
Interesting movies make you think, even if it's about nothing more than trying to remember who did what in the first reel. A truly interesting movie can't be half slept through or picked up after missing the first five minutes.
Interesting movies introduce you into other cultures without romanticizing or demonizing them.
Interesting movies age well. This may be the truest mark of all.
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I think Finance is correct that TCM's programming doesn't treat all decades the same; For the older decades, especially the 30s, TCM shows many movies that are only OK in quality (programmers and cheap pictures that were made to be viewed once and then forgotten). When TCM shows films from more recent decades they are mostly the high quality ones (e.g. Oscar winners or nominations) or 'art' pictures; films with a certain standing by so called film experts. (Expect for the TCM Underground since the focus there is cult films).
I agree that TCM's films from the "recent" and "Import" categories (and also their silent films) are generally of a much higher quality than the "average" film TCM shows from the studio era. You can see this by noting how many of the films from those first three categories that are part of the ultra-selective Criterion Collection have also been shown on TCM, whereas a much smaller percentage of TCM's studio era movies are part of that collection.
If TCM was go show LESS movies from the early decades and MORE from the recent decades, I assume TCM would cut out most of those only "OK" films. This would be a major change in their brand. I assume most long time TCM viewers like these programmers even with their lack of quality, because they represent a certain style or era of filmmaking.
Of course others may welcome that TCM doesn't show those cheaply made films with their insane plot twist, quick to the chase endings and played to death plots.
In spite of what I wrote above, I think that TCM is wise to keep its focus on the films of the 20's through the 60's in the proportion that it does now, because by doing so it gives viewers a unique opportunity to immerse ourselves in a world that relatively few of us lived through as adults. In many ways, the quality of many of these films is almost incidental to the fact that they're such perfect representations of the cultural assumptions of their era. It's like one painless history lesson after another, and as a bonus, these "lessons" are often presented by some of the best actors and directors ever.
As for "market share", IMO that should be a minor consideration at most. Stick to showing as many pre-1970 films as can be found, and supplement these with only the highest quality films that can be found from the 70's up through the present, and the market share will take care of itself.
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Also while the Cagney character is a hot head the basic reason for that isn't because he had some prior trama, but just because he was Irish (i.e. a certain type of man).
Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and Pat O'Brien could easily have built up respectable repertories based on that stock "Irish" character alone: Hotheaded, always more eager to talk than to listen, somewhat egomaniacal, etc. Cagney and Tracy were eventually able to transcend the "type" (though Tracy showed remnants of it right up to the end), but Pat O'Brien was more or less stuck with it throughout his entire career, as was the character actor Frank McHugh.
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I think THE KING OF COMEDY really should have been on your list, one of his most eerie performances.t
That's one I've yet to see, though it's somewhere on my Netflix queue. In truth that DeNiro list is made up of nearly every DeNiro movie I've seen, as the only one I truly disliked was Bang The Drum Slowly.
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It's interesting, too, that decades before De Niro so memorably portrayed a loner with deep psychopathic disturbances in Taxi Driver, Cagney's character in Taxi also demonstrates hot headed, at one point even murderous, rages that give a hint of a possible psychological disturbance. Of course, the screenplay of Taxi does not play up those darker aspects of his character's anger. He is, after all, the urban "hero" of the film for whom audiences members are expected to cheer.
I enjoyed Taxi immensely, but that film is typical of the sort of constraints that Hollywood "stars" (and Cagney was surely in that category) labored under even in the pre-code era. It's not just all those forced happy endings and final scene marriage proposals, it's the way that once a certain persona became established for a "star", the studios kept pressing them to stay within that screen character in all subsequent films, with little variation or room to breathe. Many "stars" like Muni and Davis fought back and kept pressing for less typecast roles, but with a few exceptions (Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson being among the more prominent ones), once that "persona" was set in place, it proved very hard to escape from. Cagney was lucky he was also a hoofer and a street Irishman*, because otherwise he might have been stuck in a gangster rut forever, entertaining as that comfort food "rut" may have been.
*Which made his tough guy character transferable to roles on the other side of the law, in an movie era where Irish priests and Irish lawmen were the perennial Good Guys of urban dramas, tough guys with a heart of gold.
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I also prefer the 1940 version because the plot was better developed, but I do think that Kent Douglass (AKA Douglass Montgomery) was also good, and very well cast for the part. One of the reasons for my thinking this is that he bore a striking resemblance to the soldier on the cover of Paul Fussell's landmark book, The Great War and Modern Memory. Remember that this was a 19 year old boy, and not a 29 year old man, which was Robert Taylor's age at the time of the remake. These weren't grizzled war veterans, they were for the great part young innocents who'd been thrust into history with no real preparation for the carnage that they were to see.
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Grodin is wonderful in it but it's DeNiro that I thought was the film's chief marvel. Aside from being funny in a tough guy sort of way, he also brought some vulnerabilty to the role, as well. A great performance, that few ever rank among his best.
DeNiro and Pacino and Daniel Day-Lewis and Cagney and Bogart and Jimmy Stewart all have one big thing in common: They're craftsmen first, and only incidentally "stars".
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Ahem, excuse me here Andy, but I THINK you forgot to include MIDNIGHT RUN on that there list o' yours.
(...and where Bobby showed some comedic chops within)
I might have, if I'd seen it. Much as I love DeNiro's movies, I've probably seen three Cagneys for every one of his. Too bad there's not a TCM 2 for more recent films.
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I really don't think De Niro, as good as he is, has had a career approaching Cagney's.
Really?
Mean Streets
The Godfather, Part 2
Taxi Driver
1900
The Deer Hunter
Raging Bull
Once Upon a Time in America
Goodfellas
Cape Fear
A Bronx Tale
Casino
Sleepers
Analyze This
City By the Sea
Righteous Kill
I'd put that incomplete list up against Cagney's best any day, even though I'd also consider Cagney at least DeNiro's equal as an actor. My only problem with Cagney is that so many of his post-1933 movies were truncated by the constraints of the Breen Code. It wasn't his fault, and he transcended those limitations as well as anyone, but there were too many artificial endings to too many of those movies for my taste. Other than The Roaring Twenties, White Heat, and the vastly underrated These Wilder Years (with Barbara Stanwyck), I can't think of any other post-1933 films of his that I'd put in the same class as those DeNiro films. You can add Yankee Doodle Dandy if you like musicals, but that's only one more movie and it doesn't change the balance.
That's exactly what I'm doing. Since we on these boards are assumed to be primarily old movie fans, you've got to go with Cagney.
Okay, then all you're saying is that you (or "we") like the studio era movies more than you like the ones from the past 40 years. Fair enough, but I was more trying to compare the actual quality of the films themselves rather than registering a genre preference.
What I would have most loved to have seen is what a young Cagney might have been able to do under a director such as Martin Scorcese, unconstrained by Pope Breen and his stupid production code. Then we could really make a fair comparison between these two great actors.
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The next time TCM shows The Salesman, it should combine it with a premiere showing of Glengarry Glen Ross, one of the great movies of the 90's. They'd be perfect complements to each other.
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I always sit up and take note of Bonita Granville because of These Three, for which she earned a richly deserved Best Supporting Actress nomination at a very young age.
She is an eeevil in that movie.
Makes Patty McCormick look like Shirley Temple.
Yes, but Lee Eun-shim in The Housemaid makes Bonita Granville look like the Blue Ribbon winning bunny rabbit in the Shangri-La Petting Zoo.
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I remember when this happened and it was outrageous, especially attributing his downward spiral partially to eating junk food.
Which became famously known as the "Twinkies defense".
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This is the kind of thing that I wish could be regularly slotted rather than grouped together in one night as they do strike the emotions and one should not go into say the third or fourth film in a block without some time to regain one's composure.
Good point, and well taken. The only exception I'd make would be for complementary documentaries by the same filmmaker, for instance if Louis Malle had done a followup work on the city then known as Bombay.
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I watched Salesman and the Milk documentary, and echo Hibi's take on both of them. The Milk film in particular was even better than I might have expected. I'd seen the Rogosin documentary on Africa in 2013 when they had the Rogosin evening, and that was also first rate. I recorded Calcutta and Sans Soleil and I look forward to seeing them both. I only wish that TCM could get the rights to some of those terrific PBS "American Experience" documentaries like Eyes on the Prize and Freedom Riders, because those really are the gold standard of the entire genre.
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What about James Cagney as Eddie Bartlett in The Roaring Twenties. Is he the biggest star to play a cabbie?
Well, there's no question that the 1976 megahit Taxi Driver was the biggest moneymaker and most critically acclaimed movie about a cabbie, but whether James Cagney or Robert DeNiro would be considered the "biggest star" is one of those questions whose answer likely depends on how you doctor the argument. Personally, I love em both, the movies and the stars, since they're both inimitable in their own ways.
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I would include Tomorrow: the World! (1944) on your list; in fact, it's my favorite baaaaaad movie ever I think (sadly I don't think its on DVD, so I depend on TCM to show it, and they haven't aired it in forever and a day.)
I saw that movie once before I got my DVD recorder, and yeah, it was kind of a hoot.
But it wasn't My Son John. NOTHING can beat My Son John for sheer derangement A brief synopsis from memory:
Time: Korean War
Place: Small town USA, somewhere in small town or suburban New York State
Characters:
Twin brother soldiers, about to be shipped overseas to fight. Seen playing catch with a football in their spacious front yard, and then not seen again
Evil brother John (Robert Walker, in his last movie---he died while it was being filmed), vaguely gayish, not so vaguely Communistic, smarmy and condescending to his slightly senile parents, played by Dean Jagger and Helen Hayes, both Catholics of the Cardinal Spellman persuasion. Jagger's character was depicted as a lovable and sentimental lush---the backbone of our country---and a vocal Commie hater who suspected the worst of John; Hayes was a mother in denial. Both were pious Catholics under their local priest, Frank McHugh (who else?), who as usual simply played his familiar screen persona, unchanged for 20 years at that point and counting.
Plot:
Van Heflin, the square jawed and solemn FBI agent, is the skunk at the garden party who tells John's parents that he's under suspicion of spying for the Russkies. Jagger naturally says "I knew it", but Hayes is comforted when John literally swears on the family Bible that he's not now and has never been, etc., etc. A neo-heavenly glow shines upon this memorable scene, as Hayes nearly cries with joy.
Yada yada yada, Jagger and the FBI get the goods on John, who then phones the FBI and tells them he wants to spill the beans on his comrades. The FBI agent warns John that the Commies are wiretapping the FBI's phone (er, it was usually the other way around, but never mind), and to take a circuitous route.
And here's where it really gets good, at least if you know the street layout of Washington.
John leaves his apartment, but just as his cab pulls out onto the street, a big bad black limo emerges from the Russian Embassy at 16th & L and starts following him. The FBI building was then at 9th and Pennsylvania, southeast of where John was.
But instead, the next thing we see is John getting tommygunned down on the steps of the Tidal Basin, just below the Lincoln Memorial at 23rd and Rock Creek Parkway. Quite a circuitous route, all right, sort of like a dragonfly buzzing around a room.
John's final words: "They got me."
But then there's the ending to end all endings. John is dead, but he'd been scheduled to deliver a commencement speech at his unnamed alma mater. At the time he'd accepted the invitation, he was still a Commie, and was going to convert all the innocent young things to lives in Stalin's secret service.
But not now! And so lo and behold, during the final scene, we see an absolutely comatose group of graduates, silently observing an old Revere tape recorder on the stage, with a heavenly set of spotlights shining on it. And on the tape is John, warning the graduates about how undefined "stimulants" can lead to the "narcotics" of Communism, and so on. Not a peep out of the grads, who file silently out of the hall.
And in the parking lot, we get one last look and Dean and Helen. Dean turns to his wife and says more or less that John got what was coming to him. What a lovely couple they made, and what a sweetly sentimental denouement to the life of John. Just in case we hadn't understood the message.
And here's the final kicker: The director of My Son John was none other than Leo McCarey of Duck Soup fame. God knows what he was thinking when he made this one, not to mention what Groucho might have thought if he'd stumbled across it.. But if you've never seen it, you simply have to. It's so unbelievably, bizarrely bad that it's a classic of unintentional humor, right up on Reefer Madness level, which is kind of the gold standard for movies like this.
Boring versus Interesting
in General Discussions
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There have been many times while watching a film in which I sense the director is attempting to push the narrative toward the "artsy"(for want of a better term) and done by staying much too long(IMO) with a particular scene and long after the "point" of the scene has been grasped by the audience, and as if the director wants us to grasp every little significance from it. I've always felt this sort of thing begins to slide toward pretentiousness by calling attention to itself and also needlessly slows down the pacing of an often otherwise interesting story premise.
IMO the two biggest culprits here are the repeated overuse of gooey soundtracks and slow motion takes, with two perfect examples being The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde. They're not generally considered "artsy" films, but they surely share some of that genre's supposedly worst characteristics, and unfortunately those two cinematic "breakthroughs" quickly became the dinner guest that Hollywood still can't get to go home.
OTOH many if not most of the allegedly "artsy" films shown on TCM (translation: foreign films) are refreshingly free of such artifice. Perhaps that's because the filmmakers realize that the audience doesn't need such blatantly manipulative gimmickry in order to get the point.