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An evening in old Hollywood
Jan. 18th, 2009 08:30 amI watched three movies last night, spanning thirty years and a nice variety of genres.
First up was A Modern Musketeer (1917). I'm still working my way through the collection of early Douglas Fairbanks films put out by Flicker Alley, and this is the film that gave the set its title. It's based on the story, "D'Artagnan of Kansas," and features Fairbanks as a typical (for this part of his career) rambunctious day-dreamer who was born in a cyclone (a hilarious sequence) to a mother who read Dumas during her pregnancy. He's too restless for the small Kansas town he grew up in and heads west. Wild West adventures around the Grand Canyon ensue. The movie opens with a dream sequence in which Fairbanks plays D'Artagnan, testing out the possibilities of his playing in costume adventures, which would eventually become his forte. This movie still has a lot of comedy in it, and Fairbanks is able to move between slapstick and amazing physical stunts with apparent ease. The director was Allan Dwan, who would direct a couple of his big budget smash hits in the '20s and who said they worked hard to make Fairbanks' stunts look effortless. One of the interesting things about this Flicker Alley set is that you can feel the Hollywood production machine growing in sophistication from movie to movie. It's also interesting that the Fairbanks character is often, as here, kind of an asshole. There's a bit of the ugly American beneath that cheerful, energetic, heroic surface.
Next up was Sign of the Cross (1932). 1932 was the greatest year in movies, and I continue my exploration of the riches. This one's by Cecil B. DeMille, and boy, hm, what can I say? This is a story set in Nero's Rome. Nero's top commander, Marcus Superbus (not to be confused with Atrios' Supertrain) falls in love with a Christian woman while resisting the overtures of the Empress Poppaea. DeMille is famous for making lurid morality tales, and this falls squarely in that contradictory category. 1932 was in the middle of the pre-Code era, so the lurid parts are pretty racy, perhaps most famously Claudette Colbert just barely up to her nipples in donkey milk, although honestly, all of the Roman women might as well be wandering around naked for as little as their clothes cover them. The film's stirring climax is a day at the coliseum in which depraved Romans (cf. the movie audience) avidly watch all manner of horrific killing, including the feeding of Christians to lions. The martyrdom of the Christians is played at the highest melodramatic pitch possible. Their heroism is their willingness to die for their beliefs, only adding to the overall morbidity of the movie. What's interesting is that the Romans get no comeuppance for their depravity, unlike in, say, The Last Days of Pompeii. One wrong note for me was Frederic March as Marcus. He seemed too wimpy for the role, in contrast to his great performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the year before. Charles Laughton chews the scenery as the effete Nero, with a very funny Roman nose glued on. This movie is a hoot, and I kept imagining that the cast of depraved actors and actresses were probably on the side of the Romans throughout.
Finally I watched They Live by Night (1948). This is categorized as a film noir, although except for the fatalism it didn't feel all that noirish to me. It's a story of lovers on the lam, directed by Nicholas Ray. It's visually striking, and there was something about the story that kept triggering unexpected feelings in me. I'm not actually sure what that's about. I guess I have a strong gut feeling that all romance is doomed. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play young hicks with no experience of the world (he's been in prison since he was sixteen) who fall in love and try to find a niche where he can go straight. Their naivety is heart-breaking, perhaps a little bit too much so, I dunno. There's definitely a melodramatic feel to it, but also, like the other Nicholas Ray movies from this era, a very personal feel that's strange in a genre movie. It feels both incredibly realistic and incredibly stagy and artificial. It's interesting to compare it to Gun Crazy (1950), which is a very similar story and yet miles different because the woman in the couple is an aggressive femme fatale who takes part in the crimes. I've got to say that on a first viewing, I prefer Gun Crazy to this one, although I also got the feeling that Gun Crazy was riffing off this movie, particularly in some of the shots from the backseat of the car. Anyway, this is another movie that I've wanted to see for years, and I'm glad to have caught up with it. Now could somebody release Ray's The Lusty Men (1952) on DVD? That's one I've wanted to see (without knowing its title at first) since I saw a clip of it in Wim Wenders bizarre memorial to Ray, Lightning Over Water, at the Neptune over twenty years ago.
First up was A Modern Musketeer (1917). I'm still working my way through the collection of early Douglas Fairbanks films put out by Flicker Alley, and this is the film that gave the set its title. It's based on the story, "D'Artagnan of Kansas," and features Fairbanks as a typical (for this part of his career) rambunctious day-dreamer who was born in a cyclone (a hilarious sequence) to a mother who read Dumas during her pregnancy. He's too restless for the small Kansas town he grew up in and heads west. Wild West adventures around the Grand Canyon ensue. The movie opens with a dream sequence in which Fairbanks plays D'Artagnan, testing out the possibilities of his playing in costume adventures, which would eventually become his forte. This movie still has a lot of comedy in it, and Fairbanks is able to move between slapstick and amazing physical stunts with apparent ease. The director was Allan Dwan, who would direct a couple of his big budget smash hits in the '20s and who said they worked hard to make Fairbanks' stunts look effortless. One of the interesting things about this Flicker Alley set is that you can feel the Hollywood production machine growing in sophistication from movie to movie. It's also interesting that the Fairbanks character is often, as here, kind of an asshole. There's a bit of the ugly American beneath that cheerful, energetic, heroic surface.
Next up was Sign of the Cross (1932). 1932 was the greatest year in movies, and I continue my exploration of the riches. This one's by Cecil B. DeMille, and boy, hm, what can I say? This is a story set in Nero's Rome. Nero's top commander, Marcus Superbus (not to be confused with Atrios' Supertrain) falls in love with a Christian woman while resisting the overtures of the Empress Poppaea. DeMille is famous for making lurid morality tales, and this falls squarely in that contradictory category. 1932 was in the middle of the pre-Code era, so the lurid parts are pretty racy, perhaps most famously Claudette Colbert just barely up to her nipples in donkey milk, although honestly, all of the Roman women might as well be wandering around naked for as little as their clothes cover them. The film's stirring climax is a day at the coliseum in which depraved Romans (cf. the movie audience) avidly watch all manner of horrific killing, including the feeding of Christians to lions. The martyrdom of the Christians is played at the highest melodramatic pitch possible. Their heroism is their willingness to die for their beliefs, only adding to the overall morbidity of the movie. What's interesting is that the Romans get no comeuppance for their depravity, unlike in, say, The Last Days of Pompeii. One wrong note for me was Frederic March as Marcus. He seemed too wimpy for the role, in contrast to his great performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the year before. Charles Laughton chews the scenery as the effete Nero, with a very funny Roman nose glued on. This movie is a hoot, and I kept imagining that the cast of depraved actors and actresses were probably on the side of the Romans throughout.
Finally I watched They Live by Night (1948). This is categorized as a film noir, although except for the fatalism it didn't feel all that noirish to me. It's a story of lovers on the lam, directed by Nicholas Ray. It's visually striking, and there was something about the story that kept triggering unexpected feelings in me. I'm not actually sure what that's about. I guess I have a strong gut feeling that all romance is doomed. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play young hicks with no experience of the world (he's been in prison since he was sixteen) who fall in love and try to find a niche where he can go straight. Their naivety is heart-breaking, perhaps a little bit too much so, I dunno. There's definitely a melodramatic feel to it, but also, like the other Nicholas Ray movies from this era, a very personal feel that's strange in a genre movie. It feels both incredibly realistic and incredibly stagy and artificial. It's interesting to compare it to Gun Crazy (1950), which is a very similar story and yet miles different because the woman in the couple is an aggressive femme fatale who takes part in the crimes. I've got to say that on a first viewing, I prefer Gun Crazy to this one, although I also got the feeling that Gun Crazy was riffing off this movie, particularly in some of the shots from the backseat of the car. Anyway, this is another movie that I've wanted to see for years, and I'm glad to have caught up with it. Now could somebody release Ray's The Lusty Men (1952) on DVD? That's one I've wanted to see (without knowing its title at first) since I saw a clip of it in Wim Wenders bizarre memorial to Ray, Lightning Over Water, at the Neptune over twenty years ago.
