Film of the Year

Answers to the Professor's Movie Quiz

2009-12-07T09:56:27-08:00

One of my favorite film blogging traditions is the annual movie quiz with a funny title that Dennis hosts over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. This year the title is Professor Russell Johnson's "My Ancestors Came Over on the Minnow" Thanksgiving/Christmas Quiz -- wow, what monicker! I've completed a few of the past iterations of the quiz but never posted the results because, frankly, I didn't find my answers very interesting. But then I remembered how much I've enjoyed reading everyone else's responses. So this year I'm breaking the trend, ending my Scrooge-y ways, and sharing my own answers right here. Thanks to Dennis (and the rest) for asking the questions and providing the forum. Ok, coffee's ready, brain fired up, Imdb open in another window (it is not cheating), knuckles nicely cracked, let's go...

1) Second-favorite Coen Brothers movie.
The most honest answer is that at any given moment my second-favorite picture from the Coen Brothers alternates between three films. Think W.C. Fields juggling cigar boxes, each with one of the following titles written on it: Blood Simple (1983), Barton Fink (1991), The Big Lebowski (1998).

2) Movie seen only on home format that you would pay to see on the biggest movie screen possible? (Question submitted by Peter Nellhaus)
The complete version of Napoleon (1927) accompanied by a full orchestra and a Lillet with lime.

3) Japan or France? (Question submitted by Bob Westal)
If forced to choose: France, where I would live in Lyon and spend the rest of my days working in the Lumiere mansion doing research and writing new films for the cinematograph.

4) Favorite moment/line from a western.
This willl do:

5) Of all the arts the movies draw upon to become what they are, which is the most important, or the one you value most?
Writing is more important but I value photography, specifically lighting, the most.

6) Most misunderstood movie of the 2000s (The Naughties?).
How exactly is a movie misunderstood? By whom?

7) Name a filmmaker/actor/actress/film you once unashamedly loved who has fallen furthest in your esteem.
I've never loved an actor or filmmaker but I've fallen hard for an economic developer.

8) Herbert Lom or Patrick Magee?
I didn't recognize the names and had to look both of them up. It turns out that I don't hold a strong opinion about either one. I recall Lom did some funny work as the victim of a series of seemingly endless disasters in the Pink Panther movies.

9) Which is your least favorite David Lynch film (Submitted by Tony Dayoub)
I like 'em all, but Inland Empire (2006) was the first time I ever found myself feeling bored while watching a Lynch picture.

10) Gordon Willis or Conrad Hall? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)
I really like the look of the CU shots Hall achieved in the late 60s movies.

11) Second favorite Don Siegel movie.
Probably Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

12) Last movie you saw on DVD/Blu-ray? In theaters?
DVD: Puppet FIlms of Jiri Trnka (1951); BD: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006); Theater: A Generation (1955)

13) Which DVD in your private collection screams hardest to be replaced by a Blu-ray? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)
Good question. Unfortunately, I have a very small private DVD collection so there's not much to choose from. How about Mulholland Dr. (2001)?

14) Eddie Deezen or Christopher Mintz-Plasse?
They should join together and bring order to the galaxy as father and son!

15) Actor/actress who you feel automatically elevates whatever project they are in, or whom you would watch in virtually anything.
I don't agree that actors automatically elevate a project. A dud is a dud is a dud. I'll watch virtually anything with Chaplin, Groucho, or Daffy Duck though.

16) Fight Club -- yes or no?
Yes or no what?

17) Teresa Wright or Olivia De Havilland?
I like De Havilland's peformance in Snake Pit (1948). Besides, some family members told me that when my grandmother was young she looked a bit like Olivia so I'm voting for my granny.

18) Favorite moment/line from a film noir.
Too many to name but I posted a screencap of one of my favorite moments in a post about White Heat (1949)

19) Best (or worst) death scene involving an obvious dummy substituting for a human or any other unsuccessful special effect(s)—see the wonderful blog Destructible Man for inspiration.
For some reason the beheading of the gangster with multicolored blood in The Song Remains the Same (1976) leaps to mind.

20) What's the least you've spent on a film and still regretted it? (Submitted by Lucas McNelly)
However much I spent on the tickets for my first date, which went poorly. (No, I won't reveal any more details)

21) Van Johnson or Van Heflin?
It depends on the picture.

22) Favorite Alan Rudolph film.
Are you kidding?

23) Name a documentary that you believe more people should see.
N.Y., N.Y. (1957)

24) In deference to this quiz’s professor, name a favorite film which revolves around someone becoming stranded.
After Hours (1985)

25) Is there a moment when your knowledge of film, or lack thereof, caused you an unusual degree of embarrassment and/or humiliation?
I'm sure there's been a few moments but none that I recall. Film bloggers can often be very forgiving and helpful, thankfully.

26) Ann Sheridan or Geraldine Fitzgerald? (Submitted by Larry Aydlette)
I haven't seen enough of Fitzgerald to make fair a comparison.

27) Do you or any of your family members physically resemble movie actors or other notable figures in the film world? If so, who?
See answer to #17. Also, some of my relatives slightly resemble Robert Ryan but I'm told that there's no relation unfortunately -- I've got to get to work on that genealogy study.

28) Is there a movie you have purposely avoided seeing? If so, why?
I avoid gross-out comedies and torture-porn because there's no erase function for human memory and I don't need my brain recalling images of that #$%@.

29) Movie with the most palpable or otherwise effective wintry atmosphere or ambience.
The Holy Mountain (1926)

30) Gerrit Graham or Jeffrey Jones?
Jeffrey Jones by default.

31) The best cinematic antidote to a cultural stereotype (sexual, political, regional, whatever).
To paraphrase Lang, cinema cannot be an antidote to social issues; filmmakers can only point them out.

32) Second favorite John Wayne movie.
The Longest Day (1962).

33) Favorite movie car chase.
They're not strictly car chases but I adore the hilarious extended chase scenes in Chasing Choo-Choos (1927) and Raising Arizona (1987).

34) In the spirit of His Girl Friday, propose a gender-switched remake of a classic or not-so-classic film. (Submitted by Patrick Robbins)
I don't advocate remakes of any kind so I won't propose one now.

35) Barbara Rhoades or Barbara Feldon?
I enjoyed watching Feldon on Get Smart.

36) Favorite Andre De Toth movie.
Not House of Wax (1953)

37) If you could take one filmmaker's entire body of work and erase it from all time and memory, as if it had never happened, whose oeuvre would it be? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)
I'll leave that sort of thing to the likes of Torquemada and Goebbels.

38) Name a film you actively hated when you first encountered it, only to see it again later in life and fall in love with it.
Great question. There have been plenty over the years. Gigi (1958), for example.

39) Max Ophuls or Marcel Ophuls? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)
Max Ophuls for Lola Montes (1955) and Le Plaisir (1952)

40) In which club would you most want an active membership, the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, the Cutters or the Warriors? And which member would you most resemble, either physically or in personality?
Thus spake Groucho: "I wouldn't want to be part of any club that would accept me as a member."
I chuckle and concur.

41) Your favorite movie cliché.
Redemption. And misplaced suitcases filled with money. I like the big kiss too.

42) Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen? (Submitted by Bob Westal)
If he choreographed the crazy night club number near the end of Damn Yankees (1958) then Stanley Donen.

43) Favorite Christmas-themed horror movie or sequence.
The nightmare scene with too many Santa Clauses in La Cité des enfants perdus (1995)

44) Favorite moment of self- or selfless sacrifice in a movie.
High Noon (1952)

45) If you were the cinematic Spanish Inquisition, which movie cult (or cult movie) would you decimate? (Submitted by Bob Westal)
I'll leave that business to the likes of Torquemada and Goebbels too

46) Caroline Munro or Veronica Carlson?
I will not choose between such charming ladies.

47) Favorite eye-patch wearing director. (Submitted by Patty Cozzalio)
Fritz Lang

48) Favorite ambiguous movie ending. (Original somewhat ambiguous submission---“Something about ambiguous movie endings!”-- by Jim Emerson, who may have some inspiration of his own to offer you.)
There are many, but I'll choose The Graduate (1965).

49) In giving thanks for the movies this year, what are you most thankful for?
The invention of cinema, what else?

50) George Kennedy or Alan North? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)
I've always liked the sound of George Kennedy's voice.

Boris Karloff Blogathon: His Monster's Voice

2009-11-29T09:01:25-08:00

This post is part of the massive Boris Karloff blogathon conjured up by Pierre at Frankensteinia.

This week's Boris Karloff blogathon takes a look at one of the more intriguing and versatile actors in memory. He was a prolific actor too: by the time he moved up to that great silver screen in the sky in 1969 he spent nearly sixty of his eighty-one years acting on stage, screen, broadcast on television and radio. His Hollywood career began in the silent period circa 1919, but he didn't achieve star-level notoriety until he played The Monster in James Whale's version of Frankenstein (1931). In that role Karloff not only established a horror genre trademark for his talents, but he helped rip Mary Shelley's tragic undead creature from literature to establish him forever in the popular imagination as an icon of the cinema.

Karloff's original conception of the monster was more or less mute (Shelley's version is rather articulate) which seems a bit ironic considering the actor developed one of the more unusual vocal styles. His voice, like dry ice wrapped in cotton, and famous lisping delivery would become icons of horror. It might just be my favorite aspect of his talent. He probably used it to greatest effect in The Mummy (1932) where it suits his character's decrepit countenance perfectly. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then what do we make of Russell Steiner's parody of Karloff's voice in the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead (1968), Bobby Pickett's singing on Monster Mash, or the slurring Karloffian mode all narrators drop into pretty much anytime something spooky is advertised around Hallowe'en?

However, there's more to Karloff's voice talent than the ability to evoke frightful fun and gloomy doom. Recently, while watching a DVD of animated shorts and features by filmmaker, painter, sculptor Jiri Trnka I discovered another side of the actor's vocal ability and thought I'd share it for the blogathon as yet another indication of his versatility. The Emperor's Nightingale (1951) is a stop motion animated feature based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen originally released in Czechoslovakia in 1949. Two years later an English-language version was released in the U.S. that features narration by Karloff. I was surprised when I saw his name appear in the opening credits and wasn't exactly sure what to expect. In the picture, an ill and lonely child dreams about the toys in his room coming to life. He dreams he is the emperor of China, isolated and trapped in a court dominated by rigid routine symbolized by the crashing of cymbals. He hears a tale of a wonderful creature with a magical song, the nightingale. He commands his ministers to find the bird and bring her back to court. When they do the nightingale's song becomes the means by which the little emperor, and the little boy too, eventually discovers freedom.

Given the eerie power of Karloff's tombstone voice it is remarkable that his narration fits this children's picture like a velvet glove. To be honest his delivery works best in a death-dream sequence but, whether that's because he was more comfortable in such familiar haunted territory or because I just hear it that way due to my own expectations is anybody's guess. I wonder, was this the first time he branched out beyond the graveyard and allowed a more kindly persona to be heard in a motion picture? He would later perfect a sympathetic storytelling ability through recordings for children and, famously, in the television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). In that animated telling of Dr. Seuss's yuletide tale, Karloff's affectionate lispy reading appeals to the child in all of us --at least to anyone whose heart isn't two sizes too small.

1957: Motion Paintings

2009-11-15T19:30:37-08:00

N.Y., N.Y. (1957)
Film made by Francis Thompson
Music by Gene Forrell
15 min.; U.S.A.; Color; Mono

One of the greatest unexpected pleasures of writing this chronological film blog has been experiencing short format motion pictures. Shorts run the gamut of picture making from avant-garde to zoological documentary not to mention everything in-between. They remind us that movies are more than the feature releases of Hollywood and the national cinemas, that documentaries are more than motion pictures accompanied by narrative truth claims, and that experimental cinema is not just a convenient umbrella term for anything not given a commercial release. In 1957, Francis Thompson completed a fifteen minute abstract documentary titled N.Y. N.Y. (1957). It is at once an experimental film and a documentary, and it just may be my favorite short subject film. In the picture, Thompson used prisms, mirrors, lenses, and who knows what else to transform actuality footage of New York City into a personal impressionistic view of a day in the life of Gotham. This is the city as seen by one who finds it joyful, vibrant, comical, and always surreal. This is the city as one who loves it and lives in it might explain it to someone who has never experienced it--or even to one who has experienced it but never realized the magic of the world all around. Few things reveal or reminds us of the beauty of everyday things as seeing them in new ways. Filmmakers like Thompson offer us the chance to do just that.

Thomspon's picture features the kind of playful cinematic whimsy we often see in animated shorts. Pedestrians are compressed into double-footed legs. Cars disappear when the light turns green (if only that were true). Steel girders gently float from the sky downward. Buildings look like they belong in a surreal landscape (see image above).

Gene Forrell composed a dynamic score that fuses symphonic music with everyday sound effects to underscore mood, and establish pacing and rhythm to the images. One of my favorite instances of Thompson and Forrell's cooperation is the visual sound of an alarm clock for the morning sequence of the film (see image above). It just screams: WAKE UP!

The short film received glowing reviews in the New York Times and earned awards in New York, Brussels, London, and Cannes. The Times review stated that Thompson was negotiating with United Artists for a 35 mm theatrical release but I've found no evidence that this ever happened.

Thompson trained as a painter, earning an art degree from the Carnegie institute in 1930. Soon after he was exposed to the artistic and documentary potential of cinema when he viewed the works of Eisenstein, Bunuel, Clair, Cocteau, Dali, Pudovkin and others while studying painting in Paris. Back in the United States, he made Evolution of a Skyscraper (1939) for the Museum of Modern Art before teaming up with filmmaker Julian Bryan to make documentaries for the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the State Department among others. By the early 1950s he was in business for himself creating documentaries and working on N.Y., N.Y.

Thompson's agenda was to create an abstract documentary, a "moving modernistic painting" of New York. His training as a painter and his exposure to art cinema is evident in every frame of surreal buildings, cubist avenues, and impressionistic elevator rides. He revealed that he shot the footage around New York on Kodachrome color film using 16mm Eastman Cine Special and Arriflex cameras but took the exact techniques and tools used to create the amazing distorted images to the grave (Thompson died in 2003). Perhaps it's for the best that his methods remain a secret. For when we deconstruct a thing we tend to diminish its power and shatter its magic. Anyway, I'd hate to see his talent reduced to a "Thompson" plug-in for Final Cut.

The 1957 Post Will Not Be About...

2009-11-13T09:28:44-08:00

...'cause I can't locate a copy of it on any acceptable format anywhere. My plan is (was) to move away from the problem of affluence in reckless teen pics and see how a social ill like drug addiction is presented in an American feature circa late fifties. Based on its description, A Hatful of Rain (1957) fills the bill perfectly. Not only that but Anthony Franciosa's performance in the movie earned an academy award nomination that put him in competition with the likes of Guinness, Brando, Quinn, and Laughton. This I gotta see. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate it. I'm presently in the middle of writing a post about a very different and very cool film (planning to go live with it late Sunday night). Still, I'd like a chance to at least see A Hatful of Rain. Anybody know if a digital download or DVD version exists or if plans are in the works for a release?

The British (Noir) are Coming

2009-11-10T13:16:28-08:00

A year or so ago I blogged about a post-war crime drama set in Northern Ireland and titled the piece Northern Noir. I was a little hesitant to apply that most overused and abused term "noir" in a piece about a British picture, but it evoked much of the look, feel, and themes of the the film in question perfectly. Apparently for similar reasons, the NWFilmCenter in Portland has titled its special screening series of post-war British films playing at the Whitsell Auditorium in December-January British Noir. Here's an excerpt from their website:

French film critics coined the term "noir" to epitomize the surprisingly bleak and pessimistic turn they observed in many American postwar films of the late forties and early fifties. Disillusionment and paranoid malaise were not, however, confined to the States alone; during this same period Great Britain turned out a number of films that are thoroughly evocative of the noir tradition yet maintain an unmistakable sense of British composure. Pitch black in form and content and rife with themes of fatalistic abandon, these films depict an underbelly of British society where decorum isn’t quite enough to suppress greed, deception, and murderous intent.

That clears things up, I'd say. The series includes two pictures by Carol Reed (The Third Man 1949, The Fallen Idol 1948), and one each by Michael Powell (Peeping Tom 1960), John Boulting (Brighton Rock 1947), and Robert Hamer (It Always Rains on Sunday 1947). Click the link above for further details and show times. Unfortunately, my favorite Reed picture, the previously alluded to Odd Man Out (1948) isn't on the list. Perhaps this series will become an annual event and we'll eventually get see that film on the big screen too. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to drinking in these dark and doom filled flicks from across the pond and may blog about 'em too. What better way to spend the grey days of winter? Hope to see you there.

You Know the Name, Look up the Number

2009-11-09T10:38:50-08:00

Is that martini stirred or shaken? Does he carry a Walther PPK or a Beretta?
Is he a homicidal sex maniac or just a patriot doing his bit for the homeland?
In which film does he fly a personal jetpack? (wish I had one sometimes)
Squish calls for a James Bond Blogathon to get to the bottom of it all.
It's the Bond-00-7thon today and all this week at Filmsquish.

1956: Those Crazy Kids

2009-11-03T09:53:14-08:00

Crazed Fruit (1956)
Directed by Ko Nakahira
86 min.; Japan; Black and White; Mono

This post contains spoilers

With the exception of Godzilla (1954) my viewing history of movies made in Japan in the 1950s has thus far been restricted to the art and prestige pictures that established a new international reputation for Japanese cinema following World War II: Rashomon (1950), Gate of Hell (1953), Ugetsu (1953, my favorite), Tokyo Story (1953), Seven Samurai (1954), and The Burmese Harp (1956). So, when TCM broadcast Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit (1956) a few months ago I decided to give the film a look. I'm glad that I did. In a way, the reckless youth tragedy is more fun to watch, more titillating, and more in touch with its own social milieu than the great prestige pictures. And something about the experience of watching it almost makes me want to forget all about those more famous films from Japan and seek out other gems from the popular cinema.

Impudent Natsuhisa, shy Haruji, and vampish Eri form a tragic love triangle in Crazed Fruit.

Crazed Fruit is a tale of tragic love and revenge among mid-fifties university students that uses the tradition versus modern trope to explain the reckless behavior of its disaffected characters. Brothers Natsuhisa (Yujiro Ishihara) and Haruji (Masahiko Tsugawa) form two sides of a love triangle. They vie for the affections of Eri (Mie Kitahara), a three-timing young wife neglected by her older American husband. Haruji is inexperienced in the ways of love and life, and believes that he and Eri are beginning a romantic love affair. Eri is using him to recapture her own lost innocence and to "be who I was long ago." Meanwhile, the competitive and sexually jaded Natsuhisa extorts sex from her in return for keeping his mouth shut about her marriage and casual affairs. As we expect Haruji eventually discovers the truth about Eri and Natsuhisa. However, as we might not expect, he then hunts them down and exacts a terrible revenge in the middle of Tokyo Bay.

Nakahira breaks up the narrative flow with an extemporaneous dance number (was Godard watching?).

The brothers are part of a group of affluent students who spend their days complaining about boredom and seek to overcome it through excessive drinking, gambling, petty crimes, sexual competitions, mindless pleasure seeking, and the conspicuous consumption of material wealth. They sport crew cuts, dress in aloha shirts, drive around in sporty cars, and spend their days on the water cruising for girls. Dubbed the Sun Tribe after Ishihara's book, Season of the Sun they eschew the teachings of their professors, traditional ideas about morality, social responsibility, the work ethic, and capitalism as outdated and unexciting. They see the past as worthless and the future as hopeless. Their only concern is a giant boring void of the present that they seek to fill with mindless diversions. We can ask if they behave this way simply because they are somehow incapable of anything save the pursuit of the satisfaction of their physical desires or because after distancing themselves from traditional ways of living they simply have no ideas of their own beyond a fear of boredom, but director Nakahira isn't going to tell us. He's more concerned with their actions than their psychologies.

If Crazed Fruit has anything in common with last week's picture it is an easy dislocation of time through editing. Almost the entire story unfolds in flashback so Nakahira is not tied to the restrictions of conventional storytelling. Hence, the director displays some events as they're haphazardly recalled through quick cuts, unexpected edits that break the linear narrative, the glaring artifice of back projection, dialogue-free scenes that rely on facial expressions, matching close-ups in the dialogue scenes, and action scenes with unusual cutaways in an impressionistic style that lets us see not only what the action looks like but how it feels for the characters to take part in it. The result is a film experience that burns with as much brazen energy as its erratic characters. It's not exactly New Wave style but it feels as though we're being pulled in that direction. Musically, events float along on a snaky Swing and Hawaiian guitar infected score by Takemitsu Toru and Sato Masaru. This is the first time I've knowingly heard music from either one, and I plan to keep my ears open for more as the score is superb (anybody know of a soundtrack album?).

An unusual aerial shot and the elegant design painted on the water by Haru's craft belie the violence about to unfold at the conclusion of Crazed Fruit.

Nearly every time I see a motion picture adapted from a novel I wish I'd read the book first. Not only because when I experience them the other way 'round (reading the book after seeing the movie) I find the characters concretized as specific actors in my mind, but also because I like to see if I can figure out why a producer considered the book ideal to adapt to cinema. That said, even though I hadn't read Ishihara Shintaro's 1956 novel about depraved youth Crazed Fruit nor its award-winning predecessor Season of the Sun before watching this week's Film of the Year it's pretty clear why Nikkatsu studio produced them as part of a strategy to establish a new youth genre in the mid-fifties. According to information on the DVD Ishihara's popular tales of depraved rich young things in post-Occupation Japan sparked a cult following that reflected the style of the characters (and the author too). So, the studio was simply savvy enough to try and cash in on what looked to be a growing trend. Of course that leads me to question why the books and movies would be popular in 1950s Japan in the first place. The Criterion website sums up the movie as "an anarchic outcry against tradition and the older generation" but I think its popularity had as much to do with the economic realities at the beginning of a new era. Recall that the six years, eight months occupation by American forces extended the war experience for Japan until April 1952. The majority of the population had to overcome great social, economic, and personal changes and hardships through those years. The young, affluent, carefree characters in the movie happen to be carefree and affluent at a time when the vast majority of the country were not. 1956 may have been the year when Japan's Economic Planning Agency issued an Economic White Paper that declared that the post-war period of the economy was finally ended and the country's economic rise was about to truly begin, but according to a Time magazine article on the Sun Tribe some seventy-six percent of college seniors in Japan that year had no prospects for employment ("Japan: The Rising Sun Tribe," Time, 17 December 1956). If that staggering statistic is anywhere near accurate then this film displays still mostly imaginative frontiers of personal gratification. The popularity of the film, then, probably had less to do with breaking with tradition than the fact that these mostly unavailable pleasures appealed to the voyeurism of its young audiences. Besides, the quick pace, fresh style, young actors, and the naughty happenings are a lot of fun to watch.

One last thing: In some ways the screenplay reminds me of the old Warner Bros. gangster cycle. The history buff in me noted that if WWII and the Occupation had never been then this story would not have existed. Yet in the same way that prohibition and the Depression are left out of Little Caesar (1931) these events, which it can be argued changed society and culture in Japan more than any other factors in the century, are not included in this picture. The characters may have been too young to remember much about the social solidarity, regimentation, and state-enforced public morality of the war years (we caught glimpses of these in The Most Beautiful (1944) previously on this blog) but given their ages they would have grown up among the economic hardships suffered during the Occupation. Their repudiation of traditional ways in favor of more modern Westernized styles and their declaration to embrace an irresponsible way of living would be influenced by the great social changes that occurred in this period yet like the 1930s gangster pictures Ishihara's screenplay tells his tale from the perspective of the characters and excludes any scenes of past events influencing their behavior. Despite the constant presentations of moral depravity this approach prevents the film from becoming a juvenile delinquency-as-social problem picture like Blackboard Jungle (1955), and it also keeps the characters from being written off as merely dangerous, antisocial heavies instead of infantile anti-heroes. And also like the old gangster films, the screenplay actually affirms traditional ideas by showing that those who behave in such ways are ultimately destroyed through faults of character.