SCREENING LOG - 7/17/2006-7/23/2006

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This Gun for Hire (1942, Frank Tuttle)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035432/
This was one of the most unexpected pleasures I've viewed so far -- I enjoyed this much more than I expected to. Tuttle's direction is a bit off at spots - some cutesy parts I don't recall very well nor really want to. Some of the line readings were clunky and the patriotic stuff felt forced. But through it all there was a genuine concern for these characters and a vague sense of social malaise threatening all of them - still a bit of the 30s social protest Hollywood present, even as it was morphing into an overtly conscious dark style that came to be known as Noir.

The patriotic angle feels more tacked-on than, say, CASABLANCA (where it feels more integral to the story, or at least the convictions of the storyteller). In Philip Lopate's newly published anthology of American film critics, he includes an intriguing essay (I forget the author) about why there were so many Hollywood movies around WWII featuring jaded, un-patriotic protagonists. I think you should read it given your interest in film noir and the prevalence of antisocial cynicism during that time of alleged unison against a common enemy.

It's certainly alert to the strain caused by both Veronica Lake and Robert Preston's characters wanting to pursue their careers - but I don't think it concludes that Lake should give hers up for the sake of the relationship, does it? At any rate I found Lake's relationship with Ladd far more intriguing -- if this story is meant to be read in any allegorical manner, I'm not sure what their temporary relationship is meant to suggest.

In her initial scenes I didn't find Lake to be terribly stunning -- she's cute and sunny but oddly plain in a way -- I think it's the way she's lit, which is more to the front. But when she first meets Ladd she's literally lit differently, I think --the odd angles of her face are eliminated and she's more shadowy and sultry -- and then a few scenes later when her hair gets to come down, fuggetabout it. Her character is as fascinating as Ladd's in how she is transformed through encountering him - and as an extension of her attempt to establish her own career, it makes for an interesting coming-of-age modern woman narrative in its own right. As far as noir sexual dynamics go, it's interesting to see the male exhibiting the neuroses and the female being more self-possessed. I did like Ladd, quite a bit. Kind of a missing link between Henry Fonda's desperate wronged man and Robert Mitchum's clammed-up tough guy.

yes (#6 for 1942 between LES VISITEURS DU SOIR and THERE WAS A FATHER)

Blow Out (1981, Brian De Palma)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082085/
TSPDT #876
mixed - for a gimmicky, art cinema-derivative Hollywood thriller, it reveals a startling layer of profundity at the end about the artist's ability to affect real lives, though I suppose it too is borrowed from other movies

The Swimmer (1968, Frank Perry)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063663/
TSPDT #877
yes - at first I thought much of what's good about the movie rests on the superior short story upon which it was based, but over time the attributes of the film have crept up on me.

Accident (1967, Joseph Losey)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061328/
yes - another movie that crept up on me after watching it -- what surprised me the most was the lack of dialogue and number of quiet scenes, which seems more characteristic of Continental art cinema. Then again the 60s was the period where blankness and stasis started to creeep into more art films, as if to counteract the hyperactive cutting of other films (which this film indulges a bit in as well)

Flamingo Road (1949, Michael Curtiz)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041373/
I didn't quite sink my teeth into this one as much as I expected. Based on you guys' comments I was expecting some outrageous Hollywood freak anomaly -- but come to think of it, I think some of the most deranged Hollywood output can be found today (LITTLE MAN, anyone?)

Perhaps Michael Curtiz' direction is too "clean" to make it truly outrageous camp. His self-serious approach can work for an issues movie like MILDRED PIERCE -- and perhaps it could be said that FLAMINGO ROAD deals with social issues like smalltown political corruption, but when the film opens with Crawford in carnival showgirl gear, there's no point in approaching your directing your material with dignity. A lot of the sordidness has to be read between the lines, like what Joan Crawford does at the bordello besides serving drinks, or just what the hell is up with Sydney Greenstreet's character (or Sydney Greenstreet). Crawford's Lane Bellamy endures a series of highly improbable rises and falls to her fate, but Crawford makes it work -- she has a presence that just makes you want to see her get dragged face first through the mud and then get hosed off to see how much of that irrepressible spark endures.

The lead men in the movie didn't do much for me -- it was all Joan. Greenstreet looked like he was in bad shape, virtually immobile, even in his line readings. When he has the final showdown with Joan it felt rather anticlimactic -- there was no way an overstuffed penguin like Greenstreet would be able to go mano a mano with Crawford.

Perhaps my biggest turnoff, surprisingly, was the usually reliable Max Steiner's odd and uninspired use of the jazz song "If I Could Be One Hour With You [Tonight]", a song I'm quite fond of but gets orchestrated to death in this movie. It ain't no "As Time Goes By", Max.

Strangely, Crawford's embracing her man at the end is eerily identical to a similar moment in POSSESSED, with the same creepy glint in her eye. I don't have a screenshot from the VHS of FLAMINGO I watched, but here's the shot in POSSESSED, and it really is the same:

http://www.alsolikelife.com/images/images2006/20060123-02.jpg

All in all, a decent diversion mostly laudable for Crawford, but as far as small town sluts stiff-arming their way to the top, it doesn't hold up to THE NAKED KISS or SHOWGIRLS.

yes

Films by Christopher Maclaine:

Maclaine was a member of the underpraised filmmaking wing of the '50s Beat movement. He made a number of short films before eventually being committed to a mental asylum where he spent the rest of his life. He left behind some of the most exciting and deranged portraits of societal dysfunction I've witnessed, and certainly some of the most original films ever made in my beloved hometown of San Francisco. I hadn't even heard of Maclaine, much less pursued his films, if it hadn't been for my goal (insane in its own right) of seeing every film on the They Shoot Pictures 1000 Greatest Films list, and discovering this obscure treasure is more than enough encouragement for me to continue my project.

The Man Who Invented Gold (1957, not listed on IMDb) was kind of a twisted fairy tale about a man who invents gold but can't find anyone who believes in his accomplishment, until he get all Midas on their asses. Eerily conveys the anxiety expressed in many Beat works, a postwar desire to contribute something truly original to a society it regards with both paranoia and alienation.

Beat (1958, not listed on IMDb) was possibly my favorite of the bunch because it seemed the purest distillation of Maclaine's vision: off-kilter, intense and often clairvoyant in its jarring arrangement of unexpected imagery.

Scotch Hop (IMDb lists 1953 but I'm more inclined to believe the Anthology Film Archives date 1959)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046282/
Maclaine's attempt at portraying his own ethnic background, an oddly rhythmic assemblage of footage from a local Scottish rites festival. Worth watching if only for the very sensual physical movements of footage of women kilt dancers followed by a half naked old man power-walking across a running track.

The End (1953)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045728/
TSPDT #878
I was actually a bit worn out by the time we got to Maclaine's most famous film, six vignettes of literal and figurative suicides in the age of the atomic bomb, what Maclaine's voiceover calls a mass species suicide just waiting to happen. I'll have to see this again to make sense of it beyond a relentless sense of doom. yes

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