Are we up for some movie reviews? Oh, sure we are.
First of all, My Favorite Wife, 1940, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. This is, let us be clear, one of those screwball romantic comedies in which the whole plot and every comedic opportunity revolves around someone behaving in a way that no real person ever would. In this specific case, Cary Grant is unable to bring himself to tell his new wife that his old wife (Irene Dunne), who was shipwrecked for seven years and declared legally dead, is back and very much alive. Okay, that's ridiculous but whatever. You go into watching this type of movie expecting that, no?
What really threw me out of my suspension of disbelief is that Irene Dunne comes back from her seven years of being shipwrecked on a South Pacific island as pale and peaches n' cream as the day she left. Please. The woman was not marooned with a vat of sunscreen or a convenient canopy to hide beneath between 9 and 4. I kept looking at her and thinking she ought to be really, really tanned/sunburned. (That's not even taking into consideration that when she arrives back at her former home dressed in men's sailor clothes apparently provided by the crew of the Portuguese freighter that rescued her she's also wearing a full face of perfectly applied makeup. Who *knew* those sailors were into the lipstick?) Yeah, yeah, I'm overthinking again. Gotcha.
Then there's the 1940 movie code-enforced sexual prudery that necessitates dancing around certain plot points. The judge, annulling the second marriage, asks Bride #2, "Kissless?" Apparently you couldn't use the word "consummated" in a 1940s movie even though every adult member of the audience knew what was really being asked. Oy. Then there's the whole subplot about Cary Grant being jealous of the (Johnny Weismuller-, Tarzen-, George of the Jungle-like) hunk Irene was marooned with. She denies that anything happened between them and I'm thinking, well, it's proven (by the two little tiny children she left behind) that she was a young, healthy, fertile woman when she was shipwrecked. If I were her, I'd be bringing up in my own defense that, hey, if I were hooking up with this guy for the past seven years, don't you think I'd have gotten knocked up at least once or twice? I mean, unless there was also a barrel of condoms on that island along with the vat o' sunscreen. But you couldn't touch that line of reasoning in a 1940 movie either. Sigh.
Not that I'm totally trashing this film. Both Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are very charming and it has its funny parts. The judge who both declares Irene dead at the beginning of the movie and annuls the second marriage toward the end in particular is fairly hilarious and steals the scenes he's in. So, y'know, enjoy it and don't dissect it. (Oops, too late.)
Okay, secondly, Blow Up, 1966. Premise: famous fashion photographer in swinging mod London accidentally photographs a murder in a park and tries to figure out what happened. This is a very, very slow movie. There are whole lonnnnnggggg scenes devoid of any dialogue in which the guy is just staring at his blown-up photographs. (In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't actually finished watching this. Maybe it picks up.) My bigger problem is, I don't know what I'm supposed to feel about this guy. Am I supposed to think he's the douchiest douche who ever douched?, because really, yeah. He's incredibly rude to, and dismissive of, the women who model for him, and he forcibly strips/indecently assaults a couple of young girls who are hanging around his studeo trying to be discovered (but it's okay! because they end up liking it and having a three-way with him). Or, in the cultural context of 1966, would I be expected to see him as an arrogant but cool, hip, happenin' kind of guy and not a complete slimeball? It's really hard for me to get into a film when I don't know if what I feel about the protagonist is what the writer/director is expecting me to feel. It changes the whole meaning of the film, y'know? On the plus side, this is a beautifully filmed movie and the hair and clothes are fabulous.
Finally--and I can admit this because Mr Barma already admitted it publicly--Twilight, 2008. Oh, what to say, what to say. First of all, as I may have already observed, I'm sure the auditions for this movie consisted of "ok! show me a brooding expression!" because 90% of this movie consists of various characters giving each other Meaningful Looks. Then there's the whole "sparkly vampire" thing, which they don't even do well. And the ridiculous baseball game. And the whole psychosexual subtext of OMG, you smell so good, I can barely keep from eating you, but I lurrrvvvve you, so I won't. Even though if I did, we could be together forevah. (Wha? Huh?) Though, as I may have already also observed, I would have been ALL OVER THIS SHIT when I was fifteen. I can't even tell you. And now I have this semi-scary urge to go read the books because the cheesetasticness is so delicious. Don't worry. I won't tell you all about it if I do.
Okey dokey. That is all!
xoxo
7 comments:
Just to touch on Blow Up: my recollection is that it does pick up speed (and menace) as the film goes on. At the same time the entire film, including the ending, is 100% ambiguous. But that's pretty much a hallmark of Antonioni's films: ambiguity. The fact that you don't know how to feel about the protagonist is deliberate choice by the filmmaker, not a deficiency in his filmmaking, so in your case Antonioni obviously succeeded in his mission.
I think you're right in your second reaction to the protagonist, "in the cultural context of 1966, would I be expected to see him as an arrogant but cool, hip, happenin' kind of guy and not a complete slimeball." And of course, the way he treats women was probably pretty much par for the pre-feminist post-pill '60s times, from what I've read and seen elsewhere. There was an awful lot of rock stars, artists, "underground" political types, even "egalitarian" hippies who weren't so egalitarian when it came to cooking, cleaning, and treating women like they were pretty much nothing but sexual accessories... and the women were supposed to like it, finally having all that sexual freedom to be treated like unemotionally involving sexual playthings for men.
Speaking of unemotionally involving, that's what most of Antonioni's movies were. Very high on the ambiguity and ennui, very low on the action, plot, or explanation of what the fuck is actually going on or who the people are it is going on with.
I really like two other Antonioni films, L'Avventura and The Passenger, the latter with a terrific performance by Jack Nicholson. But they're equally ambiguous--you have no idea whatsoever what's happening in L'Avventura or why. Mostly a lot of people walking around yelling "Anna, Anna" and it's never explained what actually happens to her, or why, etc. etc.
I thought L'Avventura (Antonioni's first major international hit) was really great, but I like some (not all) films that are ambiguous, like actual life. On the other hand, I've hated every other Antonioni film I've seen besides those three. Not 'cause they're ambiguous, I kinda liked that, but because they're so slow moving they're like watching paint dry, and you pretty much can never tell what the hell's going on in them or know why you should care.
You might want to check out Brian De Palma's Blow Out, which is his John Travolta starring remake of Blow Up, using sound rather than pictures for the ambiguous murder evidence. I think it got good reviews when it was new, which is when I saw it so I don't remember it much at all (and hadn't yet seen Blow Up). Suspect it's not nearly so ambiguous, being a Hollywood film from an American director.
Maybe Cary Grant knew she had had her tubes tied right before the trip, and that she wasn't the kind of girl to go more than a few minutes between bedroom scenes--though I think my point would have been, if she *hadn't* had sex with her shipwreckmate, then she wouldn't have been the kind of girl a guy would really want for a wife in the first place.
You know, you really should be a lot less critical of movies that come without the pretense of being sensible, so you can just enjoy the fun. Think of it as the Monty Python premise.
Mr Indemnity: I was afraid of that--that I wasn't supposed to think this douche as a douche. I guess, like watching Mad Men, this is proof to me, that despite the very very cool clothes involved, I need to be extremely glad that for the whole of the sixties I was too young to be filled with RAGE about how women were treated. (Except for when I watched Bewitched. I loved that show, but even when I was six I would get pissed at douchey Darrin being all repressive to cool Samantha and wish she'd just turn him into a lizard forever and be done with him.)
Mr Barma: I know. It's a sickness. Like that time I expended about a thousand words in here deconstructing the plot holes in The Bourne Whatever. *Jesus Christ, Andrea, it's a Bourne movie!* Maybe there's a 12 step program I can go to or something.
P.S. I found out today that one of the young girls being sexually assaulted and liking it in Blow Up is Jane fucking Birkin, of Birkin bag fame! How cool is that?
Ah yes...and having been of a certain age when Blow Up first appeared, I recall one other thing besides the ambiguity. It was notorious as the first non- grindhouse film to expose female pudenda. Kind of back to the putz factor.
Oh, you want Antonioni ambiguity, try "Red Desert." If you see it without benefit of controlled substances, tell me what you think.
(Nearly all these films had much more meaning if you were stoned.)
Aw, your hostess thanks you for using the word pudenda. And, yeah! There is a surprising amount of nudity in that movie.
But, at least where the models are concerned, it's very thin, scrawny, anorexic nudity. I think the movie was made around the height of Twiggy's (and her underfed imitators) fame.
But 1966 was pretty early in the US for nudity in anything that wasn't an exploitation movie. Then again, only three years later an X-rated movie won the Best Picture Oscar. We've been going backwards in terms of broadly culturally acceptable honesty in sexuality and the depiction of unclothed humans for the past forty years.
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