The filmmaker already known for films like “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “Jamaica Inn” chose to release his first American film, “Rebecca” at a time when Charles Chaplin was actively promoting his “The Great Dictator,” John Ford was receiving accolades for his little movie “The Grapes of Wrath,” and “The Philadelphia Story” was already being discussed as one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time.

So, what was so special about Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel by the same name? How was Hitchcock able to outshine Chaplin and Ford and why with a resume boasting of projects like “Dial M for Murder,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” “Psycho,” “The Birds,” “Lifeboat,” and “Rear Window” did the Academy see “Rebecca” as the only Hitchcock offering worthy of a Best Picture award? And finally, do we really need Netflix to remake this movie with Lily James and Armie Hammer?

The answer to that last question is absolutely not.

Let’s look at those first two questions and, as we always do on KSL Movie Classics, talk about the movie’s highlights.

The story

The Criterion Collection captures the mood of this Hollywood classic when it states, “Romance becomes psychodrama in the elegantly crafted ‘Rebecca’, Alfred Hitchcock’s first foray into Hollywood filmmaking.”

The off-kilter, moody, black-and-white backdrop sets the stage for a young Joan Fontaine as she begins her married life as the very wealthy Mrs. de Winter. What promises to be an ideal leap into marital bliss quickly turns to suspense when she learns of the mysterious disappearance of Mr. de Winter’s previous wife.

At every turn details of the former Mrs. de Winter haunt her, and no one is happier to remind the new bride of the unsettling circumstances than the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

When speaking to Peter Bogdanovich in a 1963 interview, Hitchcock said of “Rebecca:”
“‘Rebecca’ was a Brontë thing really, a romantic Victorian novel in modern dress. In a sense you could get annoyed with the Joan Fontaine character because she never stood up for herself, she let Mrs. Danvers override her. But after all that’s applying a modern point of view to what I say is a Victorian heroine.”

The history

“Rebecca” was the second story of du Maurier’s to net Hitchcock’s professional services – the third and final being “The Birds.”

As Little White Lies points out, “Smuggling thriller ‘Jamaica Inn’ was the first Du Maurier novel to be brought to the big screen. Actor Charles Laughton purchased the film rights and appointed Alfred Hitchcock as director.”

As the story goes, Hitchcock was reluctant to do the project because of the amount of creative control granted Laughton, and as Little White Lies continues, “Sure enough, Laughton dominated the film, his overblown performance described by Time magazine as ‘magnificent in the eye-rolling, head-cocking, lip-pursing, massively mincing Laughton style.’ Du Maurier hated the film and Hitchcock all but disowned it.

But “Rebecca” was absolutely Hitchcock’s project. In fact, even in the face of his now famous skirmishes with “Gone with the Wind” producer David O. Selznick, Hitchcock’s first American project was entirely his own. He even managed to sneak in themes that were at the time prohibited.

Les Fabian Brathwaite of IndieWire points out, “Hitchcock reportedly played up the lesbianism of Mrs. Danvers, who was more of a maternal figure in the novel on which it was based, by noted bisexual, Daphne du Maurier. Hitch was even warned about including these subtle references to Danvers’ lesbianism, but in the end, he had his way.”

Incidentally, while the Hays office didn’t seem to notice references to Mrs. Danvers’ sexuality, there was one significant event changed from the original text to appease the Hays office.

(The following is a major spoiler by the way, so if – and I hope you are – planning to experience Hitchcock’s Best Picture win sometime, just skip down to the next section. Still, I’ll try my best to keep this ambiguous.)

At the time of release, the Motion Picture Production Code stated that a movie could not have a murderer go unpunished. This made Hitchcock repurpose the final reveals of the film, leaving some cynics to label the climax unnecessarily clumsy. They’re wrong, though. The extra hoops Hitchcock had to jump through absolutely work and make the and-another-thing aspect of the finale more entertaining.

The impact

“Rebecca” was a commercial and critical success at the time, and still today boasts a 100% on RottenTomatoes. Even the more temperamental audience score sits at 92%.
But what “Rebecca” is remembered for most, and the reason we’re still discussing it 80 years later, is its social and technical contributions.

In an article about his favorite Hitchcock movie, Michael Hann of The Guardian makes a bold claim that feminists will flip the perception of the story’s heroes and villains. I have yet to revisit the film since reading his suggestion, but at the very least it feeds into the idea that Hitchcock was not afraid of controversial topics and juxtaposed with films like “Psycho” and “Marnie,” one might even suggest he actively sought out uncomfortable topics to further keep his audiences uncertain of what to expect next.

“Rebecca” is also noteworthy because of the tools Hitchcock didn’t use. In that same Bogdanovich interview Hitchcock was asked, “Wasn’t Rebecca the first film in which you experimented with a tracking camera as opposed to the use of montage?”

He replied, “Pretty well, yes. But only because we were going around a big house. I don’t think it was really right, because after all, the eye must look at the character. It must not be conscious of a camera dollying unless you are dollying or zooming in for a particular purpose.”

Should you watch it today?

Left to its own merits, “Rebecca” holds up especially well.

It is one of those movies that starts you off in a secure place before inflicting a slow unraveling of the world around you. Add to that, Fontaine’s sympathetic performance and your constantly changing perspective of Laurence Olivier’s Mr. de Winter, and you have a very entertaining classic movie for any stay-in date or ice-cream-and-me solo evening.

If you call yourself a Hitchcock fan and you haven’t seen this, then stop whatever you’re doing and remedy that immediately.

Knowing that Hitchcock was trying to keep his audience guessing while also theme-sneaking material past Selznick and the Hays Office makes for a pretty great hindsight experience. It’s also especially fun to watch a very confined Hitchcock who relies on a tracking camera to maintain his master-of-suspense status.

There are many great Best Picture winners worthy of a revisit before the 2020 Academy Awards on February 9, and this 80-year-old classic definitely enjoys a place on that list.
Next month, to honor the great nominations that don’t end up winning, we’ll chat about one of my favorite Best Picture nominees of all time that didn’t end up winning the award.

Tupperware was hitting department store shelves, bikinis were invented, Donald Trump was born, and a box office disappointment titled “It’s a Wonderful Life” marked the return of then-two-time Academy Award winning director, Frank Capra.

There’s no question each of the above mentions deserves its own article, but seeing as I write about classic films here at KSL.com, I’ll go ahead and focus on that last bit about Capra’s seemingly lackluster return to filmmaking.

As Emily Todd VanDerWerff of Vox puts it, “if you were to tell Capra back in the late ’40s that his film would go on to become a perennial favorite, he might have scoffed at you. Upon release, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ was greeted with weak box office earnings and reviews that amounted to, ‘It’s fine, but nothing special.'”

VanDerWerff goes onto point out the critical attention “It’s a Wonderful Life” enjoyed probably had more to do with Capra’s name than how the film was received at the time.

So, what happened?

How did a movie marked as forgettable holiday fodder go onto become the quintessential Christmas classic, and why did Capra’s name mean so much during a time of bikinis and plastic food containers?

As we do each month here with KSL’s Classic Movies, let’s talk about the highlights:

The history

In 1938, writer Author Philip Van Doren Stern had a dream which he eventually worked into a short story titled “The Greatest Gift.”

The story was collectively rejected by publishers, so in 1943, Van Doren Stern sent the 21-page story out as a holiday greeting and as the story goes, “The Greatest Gift” found its way to the desk of RKO Pictures producer David Hempstead who, fun fact, was born in Salt Lake City.

Hampstead liked the story so much he purchased the rights for $10,000 which is how it caught the eye of Capra, who at that time was considered by many to be America’s filmmaker.

Before transforming “The Greatest Gift” into “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Capra had already made one of my all-time favorite movies “It Happened One Night,” in addition to “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “You Can’t Take It with You,” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services noted of Capra, “In many ways, Capra, a naturalized Italian immigrant, made some of the most quintessentially ‘American’ movies of the era.”

But Capra was more than just a filmmaker living in America, Capra was a man who believed in American ideals. Just four days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Capra resigned as president of the Screen Director’s Guild and gave up his lucrative career as a filmmaker to become an enlisted man. He is quoted as saying of the decision:

“I had a guilty conscience. In my films I championed the cause of the gentle, the poor, the downtrodden. Yet I had begun to live like the Aga Khan. The curse of Hollywood is big money. It comes so fast it breeds and imposes its own mores, not of wealth, but of ostentation and phony status.”

Capra made “It’s a Wonderful Life” his first project after the war and said of the project, “I thought it was the greatest film I ever made. Better yet, I thought it was the greatest film anybody ever made.”

The influence

As the monthly KSL Classic Movies article goes, we discuss the history, the influence and the longevity of influential films. In this case, however, the beloved “It’s a Wonderful Life” has become a bit ubiquitous, hasn’t it?

As Donald Liebenson of Vanity Fair states, “It is perhaps the most cherished, quoted, and oft-seen American Christmas film.”

Every year the movie finds its way into new pop culture references and every year we see our personal favorite Christmas movie or television special protagonists take a minute to enjoy “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Why? Because if you want to make a character relatable, you have that character enjoy a movie you know 100% of your audience has already been affected by.

So, instead of discussing an obvious point here about how everyone cherishes a movie made over 70 years ago, let’s just discuss how one scene affected one of America’s favorite actors.

Alexandra Pollard of The Independent tells the story of how, like Capra, James Stewart had also recently returned from the war. As Stewart delivered his lines from the now-famous prayer in a roadside bar, Pollard records, “with an almost unwatchable desperation, to a god he only half believes [Stewart prays] ‘I’m not a praying man,’ he says, ‘but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, god…’ As he rubs a clenched, trembling hand against his mouth, he starts to cry. That moment, which actor Carol Burnett later described as ‘one of the finest pieces of acting anyone has ever done on the screen,’ wasn’t in the script.”

Stewart said of the scene, “I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing. That was not planned at all.”

Does it hold up today

Obviously, the answer to the question of “Does this movie hold up today?” is a resounding “Yes!”

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is the perfect marriage of an author’s dream, a director’s deepest beliefs, and an actor who understood that George Bailey represents every person who feels lost or broken during the holidays. When one watches “It’s a Wonderful Life,” there is “nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see,” to borrow a phrase from Linus van Pelt.

So, whether you’re feeling the sadness that often sneaks into the holiday season, or you just want to be reminded of the potential we humans have to be on the right side of love, it’s not too late to block 135 minutes of your holiday to be reminded just one more time in 2019 that “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Sure, you can enjoy a few episodes of “The Twilight Zone” any time of the year, and cruising down some highway with a 1920s radio drama playing is heaps of fun even before Oct. 31. But for some reason, adding the anticipation of trick-or-treaters, a bowl of fun-size candy, and a few well-lit jack-o-lanterns turns hackneyed dialogue and hammy delivery into something melodious.

That’s why, for this month’s classic film article, we’re recommending one of the most gloriously melodramatic and rightfully influential horror movies of all time: James Whale’s “The Bride of Frankenstein.” As The Guardian declares, “Bride is a wild ride, even today. It flits between the classical and the gutter, the camp and the serious in a manner that’s hard to pin down.”

Here are some reasons why this classic is still relevant today.

The history

In 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was beginning his third year in office, 20% of the American population was unemployed, and filmmakers were ushering in the beginning of what we now call “The Golden Age of Hollywood.”

Silent films were being replaced with “talkies,” color films were making a comeback and studios were, according to AMC’s film site, exploring genres such as “gangster films, musicals, newspaper-reporting films, historical biopics, social-realism films, lighthearted screwball comedies, westerns and horror to name a few.”

The year 1935 was teeming with hardship and creativity, and it was also the year an openly gay director released, as the Alamo Draft House puts it, “the first sequel in Hollywood history to be better than the original.

To this day few titles enjoy that honor, and of those less than a handful followed an opening chapter met with as much praise as the original “Frankenstein.” Much like Joe Dante and his “Gremlins” sequel, that success can be credited to Whale’s insistence on more control.

Stephen Brophy of MIT’s “The Tech” said, “He (Whale) resisted a sequel but eventually gave in, insisting that he be allowed to develop the project in his own way. The mordant humor of ‘Bride’ is the delicious result.”

“Bride” was met with both commercial and financial success for Universal Pictures, but with that success came Whale’s narrowing circle of projects he was willing to work on.

There is a lot of speculation concerning what ultimately ended Whale’s career as a director, but biographer James Curtis says, “Whale’s success was short-lived. With his troubled production of Remarque’s ‘The Road Back‘, he was pitted against ominous forces that didn’t want the film made. His career faltered and, being openly gay, he found work increasingly hard to get. He quit just ten years after the triumph of ‘Frankenstein’, and died a suicide only months before the film’s eventual release to television.”

The influence

As Senses of Cinema points out concerning Whale, “one can make a strong case that he was the greatest director of horror in the history of cinema, or at least the most influential.”

Long before Tim Burton was dazzling our darker sides with striped villains and spiraled mountains, Whale’s flair for emotionally disorienting set pieces and theatrical reflection was defining the genre. Part of Whale’s influence came from his love of German silent sci-fi films like “Metropolis” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” while, again from Senses, “Whale was (also) a painter before he was a stage and film director, and his eye for design is part of what makes his films so memorable.”

Burton is perhaps the director who embraces Whale’s spirit most obviously, going as far as to create multiple versions of “Frankenweenie”— a love letter to both “Frankenstein” and “The Bride of Frankenstein” — but Lloyd Rose of The Washington Post notes several additional Hollywood juggernauts who are better off for Whale’s influence.

From Rose: “The mix of beauty, perversity, wit and fear in Whale’s monster pictures is the goal that every horror director worth his salt has aspired to since. His dark, horrid, funny work paved the way for Alfred Hitchcock‘s American career.” Rose goes onto include Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and “Gordon Willis‘ moodily lit interiors in the ‘Godfather’ films” as examples of Whale’s influence.

But Whale wasn’t only a visual artist, as Gloria Stuart semi-famously details on the laserdisc commentary of “The Old Dark House.” (A tip-of-the-hat to anyone who knows what makes that commentary semi-famous.)

Stuart said of Whale (as recorded by Dennis Polkow in the Chicago Tribune), “He was a real actor’s director. I worked twice with John Ford and there was no comparison. Ford would just say, ‘Action,’ and left you on your own. With James, everything you were to do had been carefully thought through and worked out in the most minute detail. He was a ‘hands-on’ director in that he was into every aspect of the picture — makeup, costumes, scenery, lighting, props: everything. He was always meticulous, discerning and helpful.”

Does it hold up today?

There are so many reasons to watch “The Bride of Frankenstein” this Halloween season, the least of which is its place in history. There will always be time to discuss what modern audiences see in Whale’s dark tale, but “The Bride of Frankenstein” is still a mesmerizing stand-alone classic.

As Roger Ebert said of the film, “You don’t have to deconstruct it to enjoy it; it’s satirical, exciting, funny, and an influential masterpiece of art direction.”

“The Bride of Frankenstein” should be taken moment by moment, as entire sub-plots just disappear and conclusions come suddenly. As a result, some viewers may find a few of Whale’s decisions frustrating, but taken scene-by-scene, it’s everything right with monster movies.

If there is a classic film you’d like to know more about, leave us a note in the comments or email Travis directly at travis@utah.film.

What would happen, he likely wondered, if you were to take a controversial novel, an obscene amount of money (roughly $110,000 in 1915), a boatload of resentment, and fold that into a single, aggressively marketed summer blockbuster titled “The Birth of a Nation?”

Would that be enough, he may have continued wondering, to be “perhaps, the most profitable film of all time” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica?

In Griffith’s case, the answer was “absolutely.” In fact, not only would Griffith’s idea go on to be obscenely profitable, but it would also cement itself into film history as one of the most influential and brilliantly directed movie masterpieces ever.

What Griffith probably didn’t anticipate was that in addition to wowing even modern audiences with his filmmaking techniques and revolutionary marketing strategies, his work would go on to be considered one of the most loathsome movies ever created.

Today, directors like Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Justin Simien and Nate Parker take swipes at “The Birth of a Nation,” highlighting both its horrifying message and lasting influence.

Tarantino was quoted by “The Root” as saying “You have to understand, I’m obsessed with ‘The Birth of a Nation’ and its making.” He then went onto explain, “Thomas Dixon Jr. and D.W. Griffith, if they were held by Nuremberg Laws, they would be guilty of war crimes for making that movie because of what they created there.”

Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” which was released a year ago this weekend, features a prominent scene where members of the KKK watch “The Birth of a Nation” and wildly cheer on its racist heroes. Those moments are intercut with a scene in which another character tells a horrifying true story of the lynching of a black man — which happened around the time of the 1915 release of “The Birth of a Nation,” according to Screencrush.

Here’s an overview of why this old-time silent movie was so influential, and why its message has been causing protests and riots since its original release.

The history

Technically perfect or groundbreaking cinema is just white noise if it doesn’t weave its way into the conversation of its time.

For Americans in 1915, parents and grandparents remembered where they were when President Abraham Lincoln was shot. For the South, homes, lives, economic stability, pride and in many ways southern culture were all casualties to both the Civil War and Southern Reconstruction.

These topics would have been especially sensitive to Griffith, who was the son of a Confederate States Army colonel. Growing up in the Griffith home likely included regular first-hand accounts of the war from an antagonistic perspective.

So when Griffith was given Thomas Dixon Jr.’s novel “The Clansman,” which is every bit as terrible as the title suggests, the very disturbing courtship of talent and hate was ignited.

Dixon Jr. created a story in which, as filmsite.org points out, the “KKK (are portrayed) as heroes and Southern blacks as villains and violent rapists and threats to the social order.” The finale of the film includes the KKK riding in on horses triumphantly to save the town from “black mobs” and Union soldiers.

The film was met with fierce controversy around the country, which fueled its profit margins but also caused riots and protests in multiple cities.

It was also used as a propaganda film for the KKK, and as History.com points out, “Until the movie’s debut, the Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1865 by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, was a regional organization in the South that was all but obliterated due to government suppression. But ‘The Birth of a Nation’s’ racially charged Jim Crow narrative, coupled with America’s heightened anti-immigrant climate, led the Klan to align itself with the movie’s success and use it as a recruiting tool.”

The movie also ignited censorship debates, which influenced Griffith’s next film, “Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages.” According to Britannica, “Almost unanimously, critics have hailed ‘Intolerance’ as the finest achievement of the silent film.”

The influence

While “Intolerance” is praised as the finest silent film, filmsite.org points out “Film scholars agree… (“The Birth of a Nation”) is the single most important and key film of all time in American movie history.”

Charlie Chaplin is quoted as saying of Griffith, “He was the teacher of us all.”

So, what does that mean in quantifiable influence and contribution?

The list of techniques credited to Griffith is long and listed out in detail at Filmsite. It should be noted, however, that several of the specific claims have been contested over the years, so maybe it’s safe to just say his most important contribution is his influence on the moviegoing experience in general.

The next time you’re sitting in a darkened theater enjoying a long, cinematic story timed to glorious music with complex staging and interactions, that’s Griffith’s influence.

As the Hollywood Reporter notes, “he was the first American director to fluently integrate the language of cinema to create an entire ‘evening’s entertainment.”

That said, it’s probably important to note you’ll hear Griffith’s name, especially in relation to “The Birth of a Nation” attached to “moving, traveling or ‘panning’ camera tracking shots,” “the use of fade-outs and cameo-profiles,” “high-angle shots and the abundant use of panoramic long shots,” “the technique of the camera ‘iris’ effect, the definitive usage of the still-shot,” and many, many others, according to Filmsite.

Conclusion

The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody stated, “The worst thing about “Birth of a Nation” is how good it is.” That may be true, but it could also be said we’re better off because of the reminder it gives us.

Because “The Birth of a Nation” was so influential and shaped what cinema is today, we will never be allowed to sweep it under a rug. We will never be able to pretend racism isn’t a prominent and — in cases like “The Birth of a Nation” — incredibly lucrative part of our nation’s history.

In that way, “The Birth of a Nation” remains a relevant film, not only for its contributions in technical and commercial achievement but because it can shape the discussions we’re invested in: Can we separate an artist from his or her work? Should we celebrate artistic achievement in spite of its message? Should we as a society censor offensive or dangerously provocative material?

These are conversations we’re still having over 100 years after “The Birth of a Nation” was released, and I suspect on some level we’ll be enduring them 100 years from now.

With all this said, unless you’re a film student or especially interested in the controversy, “The Birth of a Nation” isn’t that classic movie you should project on your wall on a lazy evening.

A better use of your 3 hours and 15 minutes would include looking up some of the commentary from directors Lee and Tarantino. As far as viewing enjoyment goes, I’ll throw “The Birth of a Nation” in the category of “More interesting to talk about and research than actually watch.” 

The article focused on classic movies available on popular streaming services that in some way changed the filmmaking process or that maintain some significant place in Hollywood history. These are the movies that cinephiles see for the first time in a movie appreciation class or keep on their important-movies-to-see-before-I-die list.

However, because of the number of great films available among the three most popular streaming services (Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime), I limited the selection to just movies made before 1940.

In this article, we are following up with movies that meet the same criteria, but that were released between 1940 and 1979.

“Sunset Boulevard,” 1950

Netflix

I made the mistake of attending the Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, “Sunset Boulevard,” before seeing the original 1950 movie. I say this is a mistake not because Lloyd Webber did a terrible job, but because he lifted the film’s dialogue for his lyrics, which meant I couldn’t listen to William Holden or Gloria Swanson deliver a line without anticipating familiar musical queues.

I tell you this as a warning, because you may very well enjoy both takes on the Hollywood story, but be careful of the order you take them in.

Why is this movie important?

Sunset Boulevard is the original Hollywood take on behind-the-scenes Hollywood. It constantly crosses the lines between fiction and reality, going so far as to cast an aging silent-film actress for the role of the movie’s aging silent-film actress, Norma Desmond.

“Sunset Boulevard” constantly references real actors, films, locations and shop-talk, and ultimately created the framework for every Hollywood love letter since. Next time you’re humming a tune from “Singing in the Rain” or “La La Land,” take a minute to think to yourself, “Thank you, ‘Sunset Boulevard.’”

“The African Queen,” 1951

Netflix

I know the world loves their “Casablanca,” and with good reason, but personally, if I’m going to reach for a Humphrey Bogart movie, it’s going to be “The African Queen.”

Bogart and Katharine Hepburn give fantastic performances against this World War I set adventure, and the chemistry between the two actors, as they drift down the then-Belgian Congo, generated enough magic to land Bogart his only Best Actor Academy Award.

Why is the movie important?

Not only was “The African Queen” the vehicle Bogart, Hepburn and director John Huston used to step into color filmmaking, but the movie is often listed as an example of what can happen when you cast the right two actors. Interestingly enough, while the world still considers Hepburn and Bogart a timeless onscreen couple, “The African Queen” was the only movie the pair did together.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” 1951

Netflix

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” was my first introduction to classic, black and white sci-fi, and it didn’t disappoint. Everything you would hope for in an iconic ’50s UFO movie is on display and ended with one of the most iconic movie speeches in film history.

Why is the movie important?

Well, besides the ending monologue, which even if you aren’t going to watch the movie you should YouTube just to know the reference, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was a crowning achievement in special effects. This is Hollywood’s first sincere effort to use miniatures for flying saucers and enlist a giant robot as a central character. But history probably remembers “The Day the Earth Stood Still” more for what it didn’t achieve than what it did — an Academy Award nomination.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” is a very famous Oscar snub and is often cited as an example of award shows not giving science fiction and fantasy projects the respect they deserve. It might also be remembered for having a gloriously terrible remake starring Keanu Reeves.

“On the Waterfront,” 1954

Hulu

I’m not going to lie to you. I own “On the Waterfront” because there was a time when the only way to see the movie was to buy yourself a copy, but I’ve never had a desire to give this film a second look.

People swear by “On the Waterfront,” and I’m told all the time, I’m crazy not to love it. But aside from noticing the obviously impressive Marlon Brando performance, this just wasn’t a movie that resonated with me.

So why is it on my list of movie recommendations?

Well, for one thing, it has the “I should’ve been a contender” speech, and every person who is trying to catch-up on their movie history needs to understand the context of the now-famous Brando delivery.

But more importantly, this was a very controversial movie for the time, and anyone interested in the history surrounding Joseph McCarthy will appreciate the similarities between director Elia Kazan’s admission before the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) and protagonist Terry Malloy’s testimony. If you’re a fan of stories that act as commentary for the times they live in, you should definitely give “On the Waterfront” a watch.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” 1961

Amazon Prime

Can anyone say the title, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” without getting that ’90s Deep Blue Something song stuck in their head? It’s a shame really, since people should be thinking of “Moon River.”

Regardless, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is a regular on just about every “best 100 films of all times” compilations and is easily Audrey Hepburn’s most famous role.

Why is the movie important?

Well, for one, Mickey Rooney’s take on the character, I. Y. Yunioshi, has practically become the poster child for racism in Hollywood. That’s not a reason to watch “Tiffany’s,” but it’s a piece of history you’ll take away from your movie night. Outside of the controversy, “Tiffany’s” is a classic example of an actor defining a role they weren’t supposed to land. Truman Capote famously wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part of Holly Golightly, and while there are people who still wonder how Monroe would’ve played the part, no one would argue that everything we love about “Tiffany’s” rests on the shoulders of the very talented Hepburn.

“Patton,” 1970

Amazon Prime

“Patton” is a film that displays everything a moviegoer could ask for. It’s a 70 mm war-set epic based on a controversial and larger-than-life historical figure. “Patton” has career defining performances and more awards than an oversized trophy case knows what to do with.

Why is the movie important?

Any time a film defines an actor’s career, it’s worth taking a look at. Yes, that goes for the bad films as well. But in George C. Scott’s case, he’d already enjoyed a respectable defining role in “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Yes, in some ways Patton is an extension of Gen. ‘Buck’ Turgidson, but Scott injected enough realism into Patton that the Academy crowned him Best Actor in 1971.

Outside of Scott’s contributions to the movie, director Franklin J. Schaffner created a biography that embraced an American hero’s rough edges and even sold them as virtues.

“Apocalypse Now,” 1979

Amazon Prime, Hulu

Still considered one of the best war movies ever made, “Apocalypse Now” enjoys just about every producer’s dream when it comes to cast and crew. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, Dennis Hopper and Martin Sheen, “Apocalypse Now” probably would’ve surprised more people had it not done well.

Why is the movie important?

Coppola’s vision for his Vietnam-based story embraces surrealistic sequences exploring the madness of war. The film was plagued with about every obstacle you could throw at a production, including weather, illness and personal crisis, yet the product originally included over six hours of material Coppola was ready to use. The film is often compared to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: a Space Odyssey,” which should already tell you this is a different kind of war movie, and eventually went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards.

“Apocalypse Now” is rated R for disturbing violent images, language, sexual content and some drug use.

That is the short and direct answer.

If you’d like to keep reading you can. Obviously, there is more content below where I yammer on about why one movie that wasn’t even on my radar caused me to walk away from pretty much the most fun I was having here in the Beehive state, but just know that every word I type from this point on will circle back to that first line.

So, if you don’t want to read about suicide rates, Utah politics, or the propaganda we digest as legitimate news, stop right here. Read that first line again, and then have a happy rest of the day.

If you’re still reading, well, damn. I don’t want to write this any more than you want to read it.

Me leaving KSL.com is one of those death-by-a-thousand-cuts things, and I really, really don’t want to cover each cut. Especially because, each cut should really be its own article, but I’m entirely too lazy to make this some four-part series on the state of the state I live in.

Instead, let’s do it this way. Let me just break this down into bite size, easy-to-read, and especially for my sake, easy-to-write chunks. You read what’s interesting to you and I finally get to put this ridiculous conversation behind me.

The last straw

Like I said above, me leaving all came down to a single movie – “Believer.”

Before finding out I couldn’t include “Believer” in my 2018 Sundance coverage, I barely knew anything about the film. I had some vague idea it involved the band Imagine Dragons, but beyond that, it was just one of the many Sundance documentaries I wouldn’t be writing about this year.

But when a fellow KSL movie contributor mentioned he’d like to add “Believer” to his coverage, we received the following text from our editor:

“I actually meant to bring that up— I don’t think we can do anything on the imagine dragons one. (Since it’s basically him speaking out against the church and we are owned by the church…) we did some stuff on their loveloud concert earlier this year and it ended up causing some issues and kinda being a mess.”

There might be a few ways to read that, right? I mean, looking back on it now, sure it seems straightforward but in the context of brainstorming event coverage, I originally read the message as, “Let’s not cover that one.”

And, let me just stop here for a minute. I need to be very clear that my editor is and has always been supportive of my personal convictions. No matter how you read this “Last straw” section, know that my editor is an amazing person who was only passing on the information she was given. I’ll let her speak to her personal beliefs whenever and wherever she chooses, but I hope no one takes anything said here as commentary on her personal convictions. She was simply the messenger.

That’s all. Back to the story.

I don’t really want to post our entire conversation for several reasons, but I also want to be transparent with how little this bothered me at first. My original reply was, “Well haha, I won’t even touch that. It was nowhere on my radar.”

And that, well, that was almost the end of it.

But as the conversation progressed, my mind kept getting pulled back to my editor’s comment. See, I had been battling the idea that KSL actively censored material for a long time. I had been especially concerned that KSL was spinning any information that looked bad for the church or cutting important details from stories at the expense of victims, if said details in any way contradicted the LDS narrative. I’ll get more into the why of that below, but for this section, just know this was already weighing on me when I said:

“I would just say I’ll take the Utah films but it would be pretty dishonest to not include the imagine dragons one…”

My editor agreed and gave some ideas on how we could cover the Utah angle without touching “Believer” or another film titled “Quiet Angels” – which she also identified as anti-Mormon and pro-LGBT.  Again, I get where she was coming from and I appreciate her trying to balance her marching orders with the coverage we felt best served Sundance. But by the end of the conversation, there was one line she texted that I just couldn’t let go of. She said:

“Lots of touchy politics when it comes to covering anything negative about the church… it’s like the ultimate nuke button of stories.”

To kind of wrap up this section and move onto why all of this was such a big deal to me, I’ll just say I didn’t end up covering anything for Sundance 2018. I wrote my editor about a week later, apologizing and explaining why I wouldn’t be able to write for her any longer, and as always, she was super understanding and supportive.

Believer

You might be wondering at this point, why is “Believer” so controversial?

I have no idea. I still haven’t seen it.

I grew up in a house where I was told Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” was the most blasphemous work every created and I should never, ever watch it. When I eventually did see it as an adult, I tried to understand the controversy. The only thing I could come up with was that God had been offended by the number of resources wasted on such a terrible movie.

Since wasting that 164 minutes of my life, I’ve decided never to comment on any controversy surrounding a movie I have yet to see.

The personal aspects

If you know me at all beyond a hello and neighborly wave, you’re probably aware I’ve battled serious depression most of my life. At my worst, suicide was a regularly considered option, and at my best I was still something of an unpleasant lunch date.

While I’ve tried meds, diet, exercise, self-help solutions, and about any other anecdotal offering out there, the only real progress I made in my fight with the illness was admitting to myself that the LDS church is not true.

Without spending too much time on this, I’ll just say I was raised Mormon. I served an LDS mission, graduated from BYU, married in a Mormon temple… all that. But the whole time I was in the faith, I would hear LDS solutions for cosmic quandaries and think, “That’s a pretty unlikely explanation, isn’t it?” Everyone else in my family or in some Mormon classroom would hear the same solution and nod as if the nonsensical answer made perfect sense, so I always assumed there was something wrong with me. I mean, if you’re in a room full of people you love and respect, and you’re the only one not buying that Native Americans are actually Jewish, you’re the problem, right?

You can answer that however you’d like, but my point is, I spent every day of my Mormon life feeling stupid for not totally buying that Earth’s earliest man was a Missouri resident. To anyone in my predicament who has felt like less of a person for doubting, well, the church offers this stunningly helpful advice. “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”—President Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

I’ve also known people who believe the LDS faith when it teaches your internet search histories can be next to murder. I’ve known women who feel guilty for wanting more of an identity than just being their husband’s wife, and worst of all, the church’s aggressive campaigns against the LGBTQ community leaves children wondering if becoming a suicide statistic would be easier on their families than admitting they’re gay.

In my opinion, the church needs to own this and admit they’re a big part of the suicide problem here in the state. I get there are people who will disagree with that. However, I hope even if you are someone who feels the church is not responsible for Utah having the highest suicide rate in the country, you would at least agree the church shouldn’t be in a position to censor any information that supports the correlation.

Who owns KSL?

To be honest, I have no idea how many people are aware of the fact the LDS church owns KSL.com, KSL radio, KSL Television and a myriad of other news and media outlets. I am also just as uncertain about how many people actually care. Seeing as most of the state of Utah belongs to the LDS church, I would guess residents here place their faith in, well, their faith over that of any mainstream media outlet. As a result, it’s very possible regular KSL readers are this far along in the article still wondering why I left KSL.

To those readers, I’ll just say, I find it concerning that the main source of information feeding through the state of Utah is actually coming from a special interest group pretending to be a legitimate news organization.

Utah’s suicide rate

Here is the crux of the issue. To quote Luke Ramseth of The Salt Lake Tribune,“suicide is the leading cause of death for Utah youths ages 10 to 17. The state’s suicide rate for all ages is more than 60 percent above the national average.”

The LDS church does not actively hide this statistic, and in fact, it’s even starting to put material out to help people better understand the issue. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, they’re also active doing everything they can to distance themselves from any correlation to the statistic. This is why my editor was not allowed to run anything on “Believer,” and this is also why the church’s material on suicide never mentions anything about the threat to the LGBTQ community.

To me, this is especially upsetting. Not only does the church aggressively criticize gay individuals, they pretend the community doesn’t exist when speaking out about the suicide problem here in Utah.

The history of the LDS church and the LGBTQ community

There’s just too much, isn’t there? If you’re unaware of how actively terrible the Mormon church has been to the LGBTQ community, I can’t even scratch the surface here.

Just in very recent history we have everything from church officials asking believers why God would ever create a gay person, to creating policy forbidding the blessing of babies of gay couples, to supporting discrimination laws. If you’re a gay person who believes in Mormon theology, there is no ambiguity concerning your standing in the church.

If you’re really interested in how bad it’s been, I suggest taking a look at this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_LGBT_Mormon_history

To be fair, everyone has a pretty terrible history with the LGBTQ community pre-1950. To save you time, just begin your reading at 1970 when “The church produced Hope for Transgressors,in which apostles Kimball and Mark Petersen offer ideas to leaders about how to effect a ‘total cure’ and ‘bring the lives of [men with homosexual tendencies] into total normalcy’ and ‘help these people recover.’”

My conclusion

I’m pretty tired of writing this post and I imagine you’ve either skipped straight to this section or you’re pretty tired of reading my ramblings as well. So, let me just say, I really love the people I worked with at KSL. I loved our podcast, our endless movie debates, covering live events and also meeting people I would have never met had I not started writing 10 years ago. There is no version of an article like this where I wouldn’t say thank you for every memory and experience I got to enjoy because I was part of the KSL team.

I hope on some level, that helps you realize how painful a decision like this has been for me, but at the same time, how impossible it would have been to stand by an information network that is more propaganda than news – especially one that works hard to present itself as a news only organization.

I don’t know, maybe if I was onboard with the propaganda it would be different. I suspect not. But, maybe if the narrative I was actively writing for had to do with preventing people from feeding sad puppies to snakes, I’d still be there. As it stands now, people are dying, and I personally couldn’t find a way to separate KSL from the problem. In short, go read the very first line of this post for my conclusion.

It is a beautiful, miniature town with olde tyme shoppes and calendar-worthy views to fit the seasons. The crime-rate is low, the people pleasant, and on the off chance some minor discrepancy demands another set of ears, well, Sheriff Andy Griffith walks the streets alongside an eager Deputy Fife, ready to help at a moment’s notice.

Sarcasm? Sans the Andy Griffith bit, not really.

Wellsville is a picturesque place, determined to hold onto simpler times and small-town values. But as Robert Gehrke pointed out in a semi-recent Salt Lake Tribune article, the burg has a bit of a dark side — or at the very least, a wildly warped recollection of its own history.

Gehrke describes in no-really-click-the-link-and-read-his-article detail, an event that takes place during Wellsville City’s annual Founder’s Day Celebration known as the Sham Battle — a yearly reenactment depicting the details surrounding the Bear River Massacre.

To make sure they commemorate the horrific slice of history with the proper level of respect, Wellsville residents paint their bodies red, put on loin clothes or dollar-store quality Indian costumes, and play fight with non-painted white people.

To be clear, this is a moment in Wellsville history where settlers held Native American children by their ankles and smashed their heads open. Gehrke points out “as many as 500 Shoshone were wiped out, and historians now consider the Bear River Massacre the bloodiest Indian slaughter in American history.”

But local residents don’t have time to worry about the story behind the big dance. The Sham Battle is just one stop in a weekend full of parades, game booths and chili trucks. As soon as cap-gun smoke clears from the baseball field, residents mindlessly applaud and get back to having a good time.

In fact, I once asked a neighbor if he thought the city should discontinue the Sham Battle, or if he personally found the way it played out to be offensive. Before I could even finish my question, my neighbor was already shaking his head slowly from side-to-side.

“You’re over thinking this, Travis,” he interrupted. “The Sham Battle is just Cowboys and Indians.”

That’s it.

To him, that was all that needed to be said on the issue. Sure, his statement was just as racially insensitive as the event itself, but in some weird way, he summed up the entire divide in our country. Didn’t he?

This country has become one giant episode of “Frasier.” Martin Crane (John Mahoney) is telling Frasier (Kelsey Grammer), once again, that all of his problems come from overthinking things. Frasier retorts, as he always does, that a life without empathy and perspective is not worth living.

So, who is right?

Frasier, of course. I hope that wasn’t any sort of cliffhanger.

The Martin Cranes of this world are some of the best neighbors this country has to offer. But when neighbor Crane reaches for the red body paint, it’s Frasier’s responsibility to prevent the insanity.  Likewise, there are many, many times the Martin Cranes needs to reel in Frasier’s crazy.

But in this case, Martin has lost his mind, and below is a gallery to prove it.

Back when I was writing for KSL.com, I thought about shedding some light on the event, but it never felt totally appropriate to jump from movie critic to social commentator. Still, the issue bugged me enough that I did take my camera down to the baseball diamond the following year, just in case I ever tackled the article.

As it turned out, Gehrke covered the event far better than I would have, but I did still want to get these pictures up in case nostalgia ever makes people miss the original Sham Battle.

In one of the many “thank, God” moments of this whole weird story, Courtney Tanner of the SLTrib recently reported Wellsville will no longer paint white people red, which is very progressive of them. I’d recommend checking out her article if you’re wondering what the Sham Battle looks like today.

While you’re here however, take a look at the gallery below:

In the near future, I’ll get to the state of things here at Utah.film and what happened over there at KSL.com, but for now, I’m enjoying going through my personal archives.

In a nutshell, this review came after an interview I did with local director, Kohl Glass. I was rereading the transcript of the conversation when I came across a line by Glass which read:

“Elwood P. Dowd is, in my opinion, one of the greatest characters in cinema history. He is so truly genuine and kind that it’s hard not to watch this movie over and over just to spend more time with him and his invisible 6′ 3.5″ tall best friend.”

After rereading the quote, I was lucky enough to find “Harvey” in one of those $5 movie bins, so I made plans for a lazy evening with the lovable classic. The DVD included a special introduction by Stewart, who noted:

“Of all the films I’ve made, ‘Harvey’ is one of my favorites. There’s just no question about that. I have a special admiration and love for that big white rabbit.”
The review

In a way, Glass summed up the entire movie. “Harvey” is a leisurely paced, black-and-white film with almost no soundtrack and a pretty random storyline, but I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoy hanging out with an old friend. It’s late at night, the conversation is trivial and circling, but give me latte and a few pretzels and I’m hoping things continue until sunrise.

In the film, Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd, a perceived village idiot who loves meeting new people and introducing them to his best friend, Harvey — an invisible 6-foot-3.5 tall rabbit.

This behavior would probably go unnoticed — since Dowd spends most of his time down at the local pub where patrons are more accepting of invisible rabbits — but Dowd’s sister, Josephine Hull, and niece, Myrtle Mae, are desperate to keep up social appearances; and each time they try to host respectable guests, Dowd returns home with a new friend he met at the bar, and of course, Harvey.

Frustrated, and feeling Myrtle Mae’s future is more important than Dowd’s aimless lifestyle, Josephine commits Elwood to the local asylum. There, the doctors promise Josephine that with a single shot, they can cure Dowd of his “hallucinations,” while also making him the down-to-earth, responsible man he’s supposed to be.

Sound bizarre? Maybe it is. But it is in the most lovable way imaginable.

At its core, “Harvey” asks the question, “Where is the line we draw when it comes to accepting the people we love, and standing up for personal convenience?” And, you know, it may not an entirely selfish question.

In the story, Josephine truly loves her brother, and she tries to rationalize that a personality altering medication may be the best thing for him. She knows that’s not true, but if it were, everything would just work out. If that one, crazy, lovable relative would just act like everyone else, everyone else’s life would make more sense. But by making her brother act like everyone else, Josephine would be forced to accept a hanging, and possibly terrible consequence — that crazy, lovable relative would be just like everyone else.

As the story progresses, and things look more and more bleak for Dowd, I found myself agreeing a little bit with Josephine. Even Dowd’s life would be so much easier if he was just a little less nice. But as Dowd explains to one of his doctors in the film:

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be’ — she always called me Elwood — ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

“Harvey” is wonderful, no question, first and foremost because of Stewart’s performance. Actors who can sell genuine chemistry with their cast-mates are always the most fun to watch. But Stewart sells an authentic connection with the air next to him, and in that way, I loved the air next to him — which we as the audience presume is a very tall invisible rabbit.

When the movie ends, as Glass pointed out, it’s like saying goodbye to the most likable house-guest you’ve ever had the good fortune of inviting into your home. The supporting cast is definitely fun, and there’s plenty to like about the 1950s film. But what you’ll remember about “Harvey” — what you’ll love and ultimately come back again and again for when it comes to “Harvey” — is that chance to spend some time with the oh-so-pleasant Elwood P. Dowd.