Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1936
3 out of 4 stars

Honestly, I am tempted to give the first two sequences 4 stars and the rest of the film 2 stars; as it is, I split the difference and ended up with the good-but-not-great 3 star rating.

This is actually my first Chaplin film, and as I am not a film student (but rather a "projectionist," in which capacity I saw this film), it will most likely be my last. I didn't find the conventions of the "silent" (with occasional speech near the beginning and sound effects throughout) film too difficult to get a hold of, and for the most part the humor was not incomprehensible.

If anything, the bar was perhaps set too high by the first sequence, in which Chaplin's "Little Tramp" desperately tries to make his way through a day at the factory, becoming increasingly unhinged with results that myself and most of the undergraduates found absolutely hillarious. No surpise that an English professor would assign this, as Chaplin demonstrates the "alienation of labor" concept far better than Karl Marx or any of his followers could hope to!

There are flickers of brilliance throghout (the first jail sequence is pretty solid), but the film increasingly becomes repetetive (near the end the Tramp ends up in yet another factory, even mirroring many of the earlier gags albeit in a different context. It seems that Chaplin was regrettably unable to maintain the high level of both social commentary and humor that he shows at the beginning.

Source: Warner DVD
15 April, 7:10 PM

Killer of Sheep

Charles Burnett, USA, 1977
3.5 out of 4 stars

You may or may not have heard of this film; it's was a UCLA film school thesis long ago, never got distribution until last year due to music rights issues (too expensive). It's basically European-style neo-realism applied to a depiction of working-class life in Watts (and if all that sounds like I am cribbing off of introductory remarks by academics from my university, well that's because I am).

I'm afraid that I don't really have much to add to what others have said about this film, but I'll solider on anyway since this may possibly be your introduction to it. I was impressed by the degree to which, as many pointed out, narrative was entirely eschewed throughout. Sometimes I find this frustrating, but it seems both appropriate and effective in this instance. Too many films about oppressed people rely too heavily on grand, impending tragedy, while the Hollywood version usually relies on implausible or unearned, uplift, but Burnett shows us that things are not that simple in this environment. He chooses to focus, to some extent, on the unspoken turmoil of a family man working in a slaughterhouse, drawing obvious but understated parallels between his job and the conditions of living in his neighborhood. People bluster their way through various mundane (and sometimes, grimly hilarious) situations, but are largely unable to articulate their deeper problems. Interspersed throughout are scenes of children playing, roughly, trying to claim their post-industrial spaces as best they can, visually paralleled directly with the sheep. I can't claim that I was able to come to that profound of an understanding of the film on my own, so I will say that I appreciated seeing it in this "academic" context. It's worth a look as long as you know what you are getting into!

Source: New Yorker DVD
17 Jan, 6:26 PM

The Maltese Falcon

John Huston, USA, 1941
4 out of 4 stars

I first saw this film before graduate school, and I have now shown it three times for the last class in the composition series. The last time, I went out for a sandwich at one point, so I don't consider that a "full" viewing.

The time before that, I registered some displeasure at the one time that my students laughed. Well, if that's truly a bad thing, then I should have been out of my mind this time, as a big chunk of my students laughed numerous times throughout the movie. Actually, one student later explained in office hours that one of her peers in that corner of the room had a very contagious laugh, which makes a lot of sense, if only because I found myself laughing quite a bit as well!

So, did it take the serendipity of a giggly 19-year-old woman to reveal that The Maltese Falcon was actually a comedy after all? I think that's going a bit far, but it did make me think more carefully about the obvious fact of how ridiculous many elements are - deliberately, mind you. Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), the walking gay/foreign stereotype is always throwing these absurd fits, while Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) at one point throws his own fit, just to get his foes into the right mindset (why this works is unclear, but it certianly does, and he calms down as soon as he leaves the room, to let us know he was just kidding - he doesn't really have that much emotion!).

I'm not sure I have much more to add than that for this viewing. I did raise the rating by a half star, if only because I'm not sure that I can find a whole half-star worth of flaws in this movie (does it really matter that much that Mary Astor is not that convincing? Maybe she's not supposed to be).

Source: Warner special edition DVD
24 July, 11:30 AM

The Thin Man

W.S. Van Dyke, USA, 1934
3 out of 4 stars

A few months back, NPR did a brief feature on the Thin Man series, explaining how what started as a throwaway, low-budget B picture, starring actors who were either no-names or washed out, actually gave rise to a mega-popular franchise based entirely on the witty banter and touching chemistry between the mystery-solving married couple. Having rented the film based on this description, I couldn’t help but be disappointed when the detective ditched his wife whenever it was time to actually do any sleuthing. Admittedly, it might beggar belief that he would bring his wife along to potentially violent encounters, but I can’t help but wonder if there is more of a sense of actual partnership, at least as far as the cases go, in successive films, after the producers realized what the draw really was. As for the film itself, it certainly has more filler than one might like, particularly since it’s only 90 minutes long, but the repartee between the two leads is quite entertaining, and there is an effective use of slapstick humor, much of it involving their very cute dog. And despite the separate beds we see the couple sleeping in, there is no shortage of often-hilarious innuendo; even my clueless students, who asserted in their papers that no one has sex in The Maltese Falcon, oughta be able to recognize the passion between this couple. I figured that the writers were just pushing the limits of the Hayes Code, but after a bit of research, it appears that this film was released about a month before the Code was actually enforced. If I do get around to watching the next film in the series, it will be interesting to see if and how the innuendo is reigned in.

Source: Warner DVD
30 June, 10:10 PM

Good Night, and Good Luck

George Clooney, USA, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

A film like this raises inevitable difficulties when one sets out to evaluate it, and it is safe to say that these difficulties have been well covered by the criticism that has already been written regarding Clooney’s agit-prop resurrection of the newsman who, we are told, took down McCarthy and therefore left a lesson to us all, media people and common people alike, that we are clearly not living up to in the age of Bush II.

First, there is the question of whether this even really counts as a film. I would say yes, but just barely, and clearly filmmaking for its own sake was not key to Clooney’s agenda. It’s tempting then to ask what, exactly, this film is supposed to do. So-called intellectuals such as myself don’t really need to be educated on who McCarthy was. Perhaps I needed some education on Ed Murrow, the primary figure here, but amusingly, that has already been provided by the significant media coverage of the film. Of course, this coverage would not exist without the making of the film itself, and that leads me to conclude that the main reason that this is a motion picture is that, due to the medium, it therefore demands more attention than a book or, dare I say it, a television special, either of which might have been more appropriate for conveying this “lesson,” especially considering how much archival footage is used and how long the film spends showing us some of it.

Finally, then, we must consider how the “ignorant” would respond to such a film. I vaguely remember my roommate, who is not the brightest pulp in the package, being unsure as to what time period the damn thing took place in, but on the other hand, the undergraduate class that I watched most of it with (in my role as “projectionist”) seemed to get involved in the thing, cheering at some of Murrow’s more provocative lines.

And sure, I imagine we could have gotten the benefit of these choice tidbits from archival footage of Murrow’s show itself, but it goes back to the question of “would anyone have watched it in that case, even in a classroom?” I think the answer is no, and I have to admit that, for some reason, the film actually is pretty entertaining. It is a slight but also hard-hitting propaganda piece that has the benefit of being on the side of truth, more or less. So yeah, I recommend it, even if I’m somewhat bemused by it.

Source: Warner DVD
23 April, 6:37 PM

The Maltese Falcon

John Huston, USA, 1941
3.5 out of 4 stars

Having done a unit on Walter Mosely’s novel Devil in a Blue Dress, I showed my composition students this film so that they could get a handle on the more “archetypal” noir drama and therefore have something to compare the novel to. I knew I was in for some trouble, though, when Miles Archer was shot very early into the film, and most of the class started cackling at the slight whiff of cheese. I understand that sometimes it’s hard to relate to “old” film, but I was frustrated because I knew that they were consciously distancing themselves, rather than trying to bridge the gap and appreciate the film.

As for me, well this was my second time watching it, and I think it’s been more colored by the articles I’ve read in between (and right after this viewing). Mary Astor really does suck, this is even more apparent after watching Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep; granted, that’s an unfair comparison considering that Bacall’s character has agency and is likeable, but the gap between them is apparent enough even so. Astor just doesn’t seem like she would inspire any real passion, and she just doesn’t seem capable of leading all these men to their demise. The movie mostly survives on Bogart’s attitude, as well as the unique fact that you can actually follow the plot (Dashiell Hammett, unlike Raymond Chandler, has clearly accounted for the deaths of each of his characters). The sex is oblique thanks to the Hays Code, but this doesn’t detract too much. The best part, finally, is the ending; my reading of it may be unique (and that’s sort of the point), but I see it as a tragedy of morals, which (at least when I read the book, before even seeing the film) surprised me greatly.

Source: Warner special edition DVD
4 December, 9:13 AM

La dolce vita

Federico Fellini, Italy, 1960
4 out of 4 stars

I liked the previous Fellini film that I saw, but this one was leagues better Even though it’s one of the two longest movies I’ve watched this year, there were no slow spots whatsoever, especially impressive considering that’s one of my most frequent criticisms of films.

Even more than La strada, this is an extremely episodic film. Fellini fades away from one event to the other without giving any direct hint as to where we’ve gone or how much time has elapsed. Rather than causing needless difficulty for the viewer, this approach somehow seems organic and a fitting way to convey a sense of the protagonist’s progression, or lack thereof, as the case may be. I actually find myself, to a certain extent, at a loss in my attempt to explain why this was so good. It is nice to find yet another much-avowed “classic” that I really enjoyed, especially without having to make any special allowances for its age or something like that. This film really seemed closer to flawless than anything I’ve seen lately.

Source: Koch DVD
17 April, 5:12 PM

La strada

Federico Fellini, Italy, 1954
3.5 out of 4 stars

This film, my introduction to Federico Fellini, made a strong positive impression on me early on, which is good because it really tried my patience as it dragged on near the end. I actually don’t exactly know what to say about this film. I found the characters strangely compelling, an interesting balance between nuance and vapid emptiness. Everything was, fittingly, very stark but there was still a lot of dynamic camera work to say the least. The ideological contradictions were fascinating although this is probably unintentional to some extent. I do worry that his subsequent films, which like this one I will see in my role as “projectionist” for this Fellini class screening, are going to be much more self-indulgent than this one (partly from the little I’ve read). But this one mostly got on my good side.

Source: Home Vision DVD
10 April 5:10 PM

The Big Sleep

Howard Hawks, USA, 1946
3.5 out of 4 stars

I love Bogey! I can’t imagine what the 1945 version would be like, because when you’ve got a film where (as anyone will tell you) one of the murders isn’t even solved, it’s definitely all about the central relationship. Something I hadn’t picked up from The Long Goodbye (which I definitely should’ve watched after this, damn Blockbuster) is that Phillip Marlowe is a James Bond-esque player! Several women throw themselves at him, and he gets it on with at least one of them during a stake-out, then gives her a pretty callous brush-off when she pretty clearly wants at least to hook up again. I don’t think he had time for any more, but I imagine he did in the book (and all the action probably wasn’t contained off-screen, either). It does put a different spin on the whole relationship when you realize what a player he starts out as.

Source: Warner DVD
25 February, 10 PM