slaytonf

Rounding out TCM's presentation of Jacques Tati's feature work, tomorrow's Import is his long-awaited (at least by me) Trafic (1971). It records the events of a car company's exhibit team at a car show. Escapades would be a more accurate description. Being a work by Tati, it naturally entails delightfully choreographed visual comedy. His movies are verbally sparse, and visually dense. Obviously influenced by the great silent comedians, his work is never derivative, or imitative. It's lively, witty and engaging. I've always thought of him as the fourth great silent film comedian. The only thing that would make this a more perfect world is to see his short films and his TV work.

I think you need to get more going on in your life. Or: If that's the worst you can find wrong, then I feel good about the future. Or: If you're so in love with this move why don't you watch it on your own blu-ray disc, rather than on a channel where you're going to see a poor third- or fourth-generation print? .

Experts? Experts? I don't need no stinking experts. I grew up in that time. I grew up in the Great Washed, the greatest Great Washed of 'em all. I know what went on, and I know what people thought of the different vehicles.

What will be done to maintain a point (or avoid conceding one!). Arguments become more discriminating, turning on ever finer distinctions, with corollary issues brought in to distract discussion from the main issue. Leaving aside the question of why a company would name a commercial vehicle 'Suburban', as I posted, it does not matter what the antecedents are in the dim history of automobiles. What matters is what served as the immediate vector for the current SUV epidemic. And that is the Suburban. Chevrolet hit on the optimal formula for the multi-use vehicle that could operate equally well in the Great Washed and Forest Service roads. It very specifically did not have frills and comforts. A big imposing beastie, it inspired bitter envy in your mall mates, and was tough enough to give blow for blow to byways barely worthy of the designation road. It is its competitors that resorted to fancies, comfort and such to make up for their shortcomings in design, appealing to the snobbery in people who wanted the cachet of trail thumping without ever leaving the oil slicked surface of shopping mall parking lots.

Oh damn.

Hm---lemme see---Yeah.

Yes, but have you seen them fifteen times!

I can say with confidence that TCM has not shown that. TV shows very rarely air on it. You can try video sites like YouTube and Vimeo. A number of plays of the month show up.

Try Hell Below (1933), with Walter Huston, Madge Evans, and Robert Montgomery: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1453/Hell-Below/

When I recorded it in March of 2016, it was aired in widescreen format.

Funny, to me that's her finest sound performance. I normally don't care for her post-silent work. Her acting style, which works fine in silents, seems mannered, exaggerated, and affected in sounds. But she's one of the few Hollywood actors to play Shakespeare on film and not appear clumsy and uncomfortable in the role.

Good on ya, midnight08. I have been known to slog my way through a movie because of who the director was, or who was in it. I made my comment so that people would not feel bad about missing out on something good. And if people feel compelled to see it, they can type The Wild Party 1929 into the search bar of their favorite browser. They might be pleasantly surprised.

I have to agree with TheCid here, Sarge. Your romancy esprit has made you look the wrong way down the history telescope. No doubt they provided great raw material for teen boys to play Frankenstein with in their high-school auto shops, but the Dart and it's contemporaries, like the Mustang, and even the Camaro, started out not as muscle cars, but sporty suburban get-abouts. Power and handling weren't the focus that they became in the 70s and in their modern incarnations. The Mustang, famously, was mostly new sheet metal on a Falcon chassis.

The Suburban goes back to the 30s. Regardless of the first appearance of a cargo carrying vehicle, what I was talking about was the first definitive manifestation of the phenomenon that has infected our transportation universe. You can see that in the Suburban, certainly by the 60s. Chevrolet hit on the right design, and to my mind it hasn't been surpassed. Other companies have tried, but nothing has ever been even as good.

1997 F150 XLT I bought--new.

*snif!* You hurt my feelings!

Per'aps. Everyone takes their own cup'a. To my mind the cars you listed appear as steroided descendants of their originals. Cars of the early and mid-60s (not all of them) had a cleanness and sharpness of line, and balance of proportion that stands out in all the history of design. It echoed, or paralleled contemporary styling in other areas of culture, like clothing and architecture. And for SUV function-to-form, I submit to you the grandaddy of 'em, the Chevrolet Suburban:

Another cherished hope disappointed.

If you want to watch it in the meantime, enter The Silver Cord 1933 into your search engine and you will find places to view it.

I mean honestly.

1966 Dodge Dart in Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966): Americans used to know how to design cars.

A lot of time I don't get that far!

Ok, I know one. But maybe people know of others. The one I'm talking about is called The Hatchet Man (1932), with Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young, directed by William Wellman. Mr. Robinson, as Wong Low Get, stars as a hereditary assassin for a tong in preWWI San Francisco-- --I know, I know, and I almost stopped watching when he entered with his wretched eye make-up--but stick with me. . . . So he's been ordered to whack his best friend who unknowingly has just that evening made out his will, leaving Wong his fortune and baby daughter to marry when she grows up-- --wait! wait! don't leave! I understand, but I promise what I said is true, the ending redeems the whole movie, really it does! So anyway, she grows up and he marries her, despite the age difference. But it's postWWI, and he's a modern guy, so it's not by the oldworld type of arranged marriage, but he asks her and she says ok. But this tong war starts up and a bunch of heavies are brought in from the East coast, including a young hotshot-- --and you can pretty well guess where the movie goes, and you'd be right, but don't give up, keep with it-- So the hotshot and wife hookup. Wong coming back finds them in delecto, but as he is about to hatchet the hotshot, the wife reminds him of his sacred oath to Buddha to dedicate himself to her happiness. So since she can only be happy with the hotshot, he sends them off with each other-- --and I was ready to turn it off at this point, too, but through some perverse fascination, I stuck with it-- So naturally, the hotshot drags the wife down to the pits, and Wong goes to save her, and finally we get the ending: Man, I don't know how they got away with that ending, even in pre code-enforcement 1932, but it saves the movie.

Nope, we're just left with The Party (1968): Was this the first toilet humor?