slaytonf
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Posts posted by slaytonf
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9 hours ago, laffite said:
Do you mean the audience in the theater is shocked? Or an audience in the movie? How does the movie "escape" and what do you mean by "expositional" slight of hand? Genuinely curious, if you don't mind my questions. I'm not challenging you or being pushy, just interested, thanks.
How is this an inversion? The clip seems typical, doesn't it? Or are you referring to events earlier in the film? Or is that what you mean by "contrast"?
Thanks for your interest, laffite. I'll explain.
I took a risk and concluded the reaction of 1930s theater audiences to seeing a white woman in love with a Chinese man. A lot of the questions you have are due to my not posting what happens at the end of the movie, for fear of the spoiler patrol leaping on me for ruining the movie for them. But, let's see, the movie's been around for, um, 89 years, so I'll take the chance. Even after whipping him, Allana is still so in love with him she pines away, even to the point of sickness. So she chases after him to San Francisco and throws herself at his feet, knowing it's wrong, knowing it's shameful, but she can't help it. So here is the train wreck the movie seems headed for: the marriage of a white woman and a Chinese man. An outcome impossible, and shocking to contemplate. But, what do you know! Sam Lee isn't Chinese, he's really white, being adopted by that fine rich Chinese merchant as an abandoned baby brought to him by a kindly Irish cop (major suspension of disbelief required here). So this is the cop-out the movie uses to escape the seemingly untenable conclusion.
The inversion of race portrayal in the movie is consistent. The standard is: Whites: good; Chinese: bad. The movie has: Chinese: good; Whites: bad. This is not absolute. There are some sympathetic whites in the movie. In the scene Allana comes off as violent, ugly, vicious, and vindictive. Sam Lee comes off as stoic, tolerant, and noble. After all, he could easily have defended himself. Perhaps he was just as shocked and dismayed as injured. True, audiences of the time may have felt she was justified. Still, it's an ugly Connie we see on the screen.
If you want to see the movie, you don't even have to wait for it to come back to TCM. It's available for viewing here:
https://ok.ru/video/677078960782
Seems like a Russian site, so venture at your own risk.
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Son of the Gods (1930):
Son of the Gods is one of the rare films of its time to openly examine race prejudice in America. Along with its melodramatic plot and stiff performances (even Constance Bennett doesn't quite manage to pull off her trademark breezy sophistication), it presents a unique inversion of the typical stereotypes. Whites are generally the ones who come off badly, acting disgracefully and selfishly. The Chinese are seen as honorable, noble, and "clean." For all its dealing with powerful themes, it conducts its business without fireworks, except for one moment startling in brutal contrast. It's the only time I know Constance Bennett has appeared, or did anything ugly on screen. Sam Lee (Richard Barthelmess), son of a rich Chinese merchant has travelled to southern France to escape prejudice in America. There he meets Allana (Constance Bennett) and becomes involved with her. His ambivalence about his heritage keeps him from telling her. When she says in a conversation that race doesn't matter to her, he decides to tell her and propose, and arranges a meeting with her.
In the clip he waits at a terrace cafe for Allana (Constance Bennett). Unknown to him, since they were last together, she has learned he is Chinese. Shocked at the deception she imagines he has played on her, she enters the cafe in her riding habit, insults him with the most vile language, and whips him with her riding crop. We share Sam's surprise and humiliation, made all the more painful by his now false understanding of their relationship.
In the end they do get together (they are the stars of the movie). Allana pines away for Sam Lee, and the audience is shocked to see her run after him and shamelessly declare her hopeless infatuation with him. But the movie escapes the impending horror with an expositional sleight of hand, a cop-out, really. But characteristic of the time. After all, you can't have a pure white girl marrying someone Chinese.
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The Pink Panther (1963):
It's corny. It's silly. It's obvious. And every time I see it, I laugh.
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My pleasure. It's lucky we hit on it so soon. It's one of the most common themes in movies.
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Golly, how many movies are like that! You can try any one of these:
Baby Face (1933)
More Than A Secretary (1936)
Behind Office Doors (1931)
Success at Any Price (1934)
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From the UK TV series Danger Man (or Secret Agent, as known here in the US):
1955 Jaguar XK 140 Roadster:
If that's what you get for being a secret agent, sign me up!
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Jabba the Hut. Like him, hate him. You still talk about him.
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A lot of that stuff ends up on YouTube. You can try searching there.
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35 minutes ago, sewhite2000 said:
the Han and Jabba scene, later restored with the CGI Jabba as he was later envisioned (he was originally a human), was an easy cut.
Too bad it was put back.
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It's surprising how complete my memory of the movie was, not having seen it since it was in theaters way then. There were only a few scenes, shots even, that I did not recall. The worst I misremembered was Luke's womp rat reference. I thought it was made in the bar scene, and not the final battle briefing. Here's a pic, btw:
Ugly cusses.
It's just as fun to watch. Some of the effects are a little dated, but I don't think it worthwhile to go a lot into that, considering how poor the print was. Here is a true case also of the wrong aspect ratio. You can even see it switch back and forth from true widescreen to pseudo widescreen (i.e., TV ratio). Too bad, as I'm sure that takes a lot away from the look of the movie. I sensed something didn't feel right while I was watching (no, not a disturbance in the force). I even switched through the different aspect ratio options on my superdelux LG HDTV (ha!). Nope, 16:9 all the way, so I guess this is the modern pan and scan. Perhaps it was Fox, or Lucas, or Disney--who owns it now?--trying to encourage people to buy a Blu ray disc to get the real ratio.
The CGI interpolations people above were complaining about were annoying, but fortunately weren't many, and just at the beginning of the movie. Perhaps it was George Lucas' OCD that compelled him to fiddle with the Tatooine scenes because the effect of budget limitations always rankled him. To me they aren't an outrage, but just stoopid, and they don't fit the look of the movie. You can go on and on all you want about who has creative 'ownership' of anything, the artist or the audience, but I look at it this way. Just because a filmmaker is brilliant (and George Lucas can be brilliant), or a genius (which he is not), that doesn't mean everything they do, or every idea they have is brilliant or a work of genius.
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1 hour ago, NipkowDisc said:
democrat debate on cnn.
As opposed to the republic debate?
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The science fiction/fantasy/super hero universe the film industry often inhabits today I'm sure would be traced back by many to this seminal movie. The mania it produced was like no other, to which, I'm forced to admit, I was subject. I knew people who went to see it ten, fifteen times--even more. I saw it I think some four times. The magic of computer-controlled cameras on a scale unknown married to a romance-infused storyline proved irresistible. It was certainly eye-splitting, not the least of which for that immobilizing opening shot of the galactic battleship endlessly growing. Added to that the years of inspired build-up as the movie was being made, with tantalizing treats released bit by bit (even a pic of storm troopers!), and you can imagine the salivating public ready to devour it. But I think while the special effects of the movie were influential, more played into it. The culture was primed for the arrival of the movie.
There was the growing area of adventure fantasy and sword and sorcery in fiction. Lots would point to the Lord of the Rings, or the Conan the Barbarian stories as the source for that. But that had always had a low-grade, if enthusiastic, audience. What I remember as the break-out was a series by Anne McCaffery called The Dragon Riders of Pern. It joined two rich veins in culture, extra-terriestrial human activity and dragons.
Also, the first role playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, had been making a big splash. It allowed people to adventure in exotic worlds of strange creatures with extraordinary powers, fulfilling their fantasies of power and giving them freedom from the constraints of ordinary life.
As for that stunning opening:
Think George Lucas knew this? Yes, he did.
Star Wars (1977) tonight, 7pm Pacific time.
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22 hours ago, laffite said:
An afterthought. That joy didn't last too long. It turned to heartache almost immediately. I'm sure you remember that anticipated and dreaded phone call. But even if you can feel that for an instant (and especially the way you put it), it is of great moment.
One of the most delightfully excruciating sequences of anti-phone tag. I didn't mention it because I figured it wasn't what you were interested in.
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22 hours ago, laffite said:
I chose to show it as a link. Sometime I think the splash of an embedded video is rather crude and perhaps gives away something too soon, especially if there is a comment to read prior to viewing. I don't usually do it that way, it just occurred to do it this time. Maybe I wanted to instill a little added curiosity and anticipation (I guess).
Ahh. . .
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You think they got the way Star Trek people were tossed around the bridge when they encountered ion storms from the way Seaview people were tossed around when the monsters grabbed it? Oh, wait, Star Trek was first. . . .was it?
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All the sea monsters on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, kelp, alien, rock, or crustacean, made the same roar. And they all died by electrocution touching the hull of the Seaview, which had been electrified for the purpose.
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Great moment form a great movie, laffite--Dodsworth (1936). Mary Astor knocks us over portraying Edith's growing astonishment. Imagine how she looked at her life. Perhaps she saw, or feared it was at a dead end. Perhaps she told herself her life, where and how she lived was quite pleasant, quite pleasant--that it was really enjoyable, and the people around her were so dear to her. And yet maybe she did that because it was quite lonely. And then, put in front of her is this incomprehensible gift, of love, of adventure, of purpose. Joy so intense, it must have hurt.
I'm wondering why the link didn't embed. But sometimes you run into one that's been blocked for a reason. The jerkiness of the clip, if I'm right, is due paradoxically to a video stabilization program. I think the way it works is that it focuses on one element of the frame (a face, perhaps) and tries to keep that centered. When the focus moves, it attempts to keep it centered, jerking the rest of the frame around it.
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1 hour ago, Dargo said:
(...it's still no "Citizen Kane" of course, but other than that final sequence where Antonioni had Daria imagining the exploding destruction of that cool as hell Carefree Arizona desert home over and over and over again, and as an overt symbolism of her later rejection of crass American commercialism and/or The Establishment, I found the film not as bad nor as unwatchable as I earlier had)
To Pink Floyd music!
Gorgeous destruction.
Sounded like Meddle to me, but looks like it was written for the movie.
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I like this movie a lot. One thing I thought should have been incorporated at the end was a little bit better tribute to the real players. But I to see this in the IMDB trivia section for the movie:
The characters at the Baseball Hall of Fame, and seen playing as the credits roll, are real original players from the league portrayed in the film.
This seems to be corroborated by at least one other source. And the ladies playing know their stuff.
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23 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
I'm going to try to think of something less obvious for a future post, but the final 10 minutes of The Graduate blew me away the first time I saw it. It's probably a stretch to call it a subversive film, but it does flout religious and societal convention. By all previously conventional Hollywood narratives, Benjamin has arrived at the church too late. But he and Elaine run off with each other, anyway, and Benjamin even waves around a cross like a weapon and jams the door handles of the church with it to help facilitate their escape. Then, the denouement of all that excitement, as Ben and Elaine come down from their sugar rush and actually seem to have nothing to say to each other. Then that shot of their heads through the back window of the bus where they seem to be two miles apart. And we're left to wonder now what?
Nothing wrong with being obvious, and the scene definitely definitely is subversive. While Dustin Hoffman takes swipes at his adversaries, Mike Nichols is taking swipes at conventions, conventionality, and domineering institutions that would seek to stifle our independent spirits.
As for that que_er ending that knocks the audience off-kilter, it makes one wonder what Ben's aims were. Whether he was after Elaine, or he did it just to get back at Mrs. Robinson out of his resentment for seducing him. Her sharp prohibition of any contact with Elaine makes him think she considers him contemptible, as something corrupted. There's an Oedipal angle here that I am surprised I've never heard or seen discussed. But maybe I've been oblivious. Anyway, he's not totally blameless. He took her up on the offer.
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For some reason I had always considered you a person of refined and discriminating tastes. You now confirm my intuition. Age of Consent (1969) along with being a favorite movie of mine is also one with some of the best artwork created for it. In fact it was one of the movies I referred to in my original post, lo these many pages ago. So long, that the link to the only pic I could find for it has expired. But never fear, I now have technology to get pics from DVDs I've made and will post some of 'em. But first, I'll quote from myself about this movie that competes very strongly with The Red Shoes (1948) for my top Micheal Powell movie:
Age of Consent, a movie directed by Michael Powell and starring James Mason as an artist who, feeling his wellsprings of creativity dried up, removes himself to a remote retreat, there encountering a young Hellen Mirren, who gets them going again. Simultaneous with this process, we watch him progressively paint the interior of his hermit shack with playful, unaffected murals. The art was done by Paul Delprat. I couldn't find any pics of the shack walls, but there were some paintings-watercolors?-he did which can give you an idea of the mood he created:
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On July 18, 2019 at 6:43 AM, BrownShoes said:
Henry Fonda's death scene in Once Upon a Time in the West was great.
One of the two payoff moments in the movie. The other being where it's revealed what the hell Frank McBain was out in the middle of nowhere for. Here we get the resolution of Harmonica's (Charles Bronson) mystery, the musical theme associated with him, and his motivation for involving himself with Jill McBain. It's a revenge tale, and just guess who's going to come out on the short end? Well, 'nuff said.
Sergio Leone and his editor, Nino Baragli, handled it just right for this standard western plot device. Cutting back and forth between the present gunfight and the memories playing out in Harmonica's mind completes drawing the curtain from the mystery to coincide with it's culmination. Can't hurt to watch it again:
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10 hours ago, laffite said:
And yet the way the young woman who is constant with regard to her injured boyfriend is rather moving in a similar way. A scene where love and compassion commingle a bit.
They go well together.
I did not mention it in my post because it would have been a distraction, but at the end of the scene, just as Peggy is leaving she hesitates a moment looking at Fred. That, I believe, is when she falls in love with him.
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The Best Years of Our Lives (1946):
Psychological themes have been important in movies, especially after World War II. Unfortunately, most efforts at addressing them have proven inept, with clumsy exposition, ill-disguised (if at all) lecturing by medical professionals, and downright inaccuracies. The results are either uninteresting, inspire impatience in the viewer, or are intolerable, and even painful to watch. Some get it right. This is the best of them. It tells the story of three returning servicemen and their struggles coping with the changes in them and their families. It deals with many of the common challenges facing them, including the fragility of wartime marriages, physical and psychic trauma, disillusionment, misunderstanding, and readjustment. In doing so, it transcends the specific issues of post-war soldiers, saying something about the general human condition. Because the problems they face and they way they deal with them are applicable everywhere. Maybe the storylines work out too neatly, but the movie's intent is to show how things can and ought to happen.
And it does all of this without one clinical term or avuncular psychologist.
In the scene, Fred Derry has a nightmare about what must have been a traumatic event on one of his air missions. There are not many details, but what is important is that it is a deep source of guilt for him, deserved or not. The condition once known as shell shock, or battle fatigue, but now recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder is shown to lead to these kinds of effects. But it's also implied that it has a greater effect on his life, that it is the basis for his low estimate of himself, his general bleak outlook and sense of hopelessness. It's plain that he has had this nightmare repeatedly, only this time he is lucky to have Peggy Stephenson to comfort him. Her training has obviously enabled her to relieve momentarily his distress. She intentionally places her hand in front of his eyes to block him from seeing the events play out one more time. Imagine all the other times he's been wracked, waking up sweating, panicked, desperate, and alone. The sense of fear and vulnerability that creates is truly debilitating. To function at least minimally, he cultivates a cynical detachment to protect himself from the overpowering emotions in him.
But the scene is also, and most importantly for me, the most beautiful depiction of simple human compassion in movies. By that word I mean the unselfish concern for the well being of another. It is the finest human emotion, finer than love, because even the most exalted love still has self-interest in it. Compassion expects no return for any effort. It is the basis for society and civilization. Without the reflexive impulse to aid or protect another, no order could be maintained. And don't Peggy's actions relieving Fred's suffering, have an effect one everyone watching? Doesn't it resonate in all our psyches and provide some comfort?
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I thought some of you would appreciate this film.
in General Discussions
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I do! I do!