Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.
Title: The Music Box Release Date: April 16, 1932 Director: James Parrott Production Company: Hal Roach Studios | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Summary/Review:
Laurel & Hardy are hired to deliver a player piano to a house at the top of a long staircase. Chaos ensues. It doesn’t help that everyone they meet while trying to their job is an asshole, including an abusive cop. I really lost it at the moment when they end up carrying the piano back down the stairs. The latter half of the film when they’re in the house causing destruction is less funny overall but it’s still a classic comedy nonetheless.
Title: The Shop Around the Corner Release Date: January 12, 1940 Director: Ernst Lubitsch Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Summary/Review:
A workplace comedy set in Budapest features veteran clerk Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) sparring with new hire Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) at the leathergoods shop run by the tyrannical Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan). Alfred and Klara’s disdain for one another is matched by their admiration for the anonymous correspondents they met through personal ads. Naturally, they are in fact writing one another. But this is more than an enemies-to-lovers story as it deals with several challenges to the ensemble cast in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
This film reminds me of The Apartmentin that it is a romantic comedy set around the holiday season that touches on some dark places, up to and including a character’s attempted suicide. It has that real life feeling juxtaposing the holiday festivities with the daily struggles of its characters. And pretty much everyone ends up in a better place than they started.
Title: The Red Shoes Release Date: 6 September 1948 Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Production Company: The Archers Summary/Review:
The team of Powell and Pressburger produced, wrote, and directed several prestigious British films known for their bold Technicolor and adventurous cinematography, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death. In this film, they use their talents to depict a melodrama behind the scenes of a touring ballet company. Moira Shearer, a professional dancer and stage actor, made her film debut in the lead role as ballerina Victoria Page. At the same time Vicky is rising up to become a premier dancer, a young composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) begins conducting and scoring for the company. They are both given their opportunity by the imperious impresario Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook).
The centerpiece of the film is a 17-minute performance of “The Ballet of the Red Shoes” based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen. In the tradition that ranges from films like Footlight Parade to Singin’ in the Rain, it is a fantastical dance number that would be physically impossible to actually perform on stage (but looks amazing on film). Returning to the story of the film itself, Vicky and Julian fall in love, something that the controlling Boris cannot allow leading to tragedy. If you’re like me, the conclusion of the movie will make you hate the men in this movie and the selfish things they demand of the the talented and free-spirited Vicky.
I’m kicking off 2023 by trying to watch and review one movie every day for the first 90 days, all of which will be 90 minutes or less.
Title: Meshes of the Afternoon Release Date: 1943 Director: Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid Production Company: Independent Summary/Review:
Meshes of the Afternoon ranked #16 in the most recent Sight & Sound Poll of The Greatest Films of All Time. The short experimental film by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is completely silent which serves as a good reminder of the importance of music and sound design to film even if there’s no dialogue. The movie is reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, which combined with the silence makes it feel around 15 years out of date. Then again, filmed in the sun-drenched streets of Los Angeles, it also feels like a precursor to film noir. Ultimately, David Lynch and Jordan Peele would draw inspiration from this film.
The story, as it is, involves a woman (Deren) pursuing a hooded figure with a mirror for a face. She ends up in a house and the sequence loops so that ultimately there are several versions of the same woman. There are repeated tropes of a key, a knife, and a telephone. Eventually, a man (Hammid) appears. Is he the hooded figure?
The movie is much darker than the previous movie I watched by the Deren and Hammid, The Private Life of a Cat. But they share a commonality in the way the camera is moved to provide point of view as well as the exploration of domestic interiors.It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but it does invite one to find an answer to the questions it spurs.
Title: Gandhi Release Date: 30 November 1982 Director: Richard Attenborough Production Company: Goldcrest Films | International Film Investors | National Film Development Corporation of India | Indo-British Films Summary/Review:
I saw Gandhi in its first run in the movie theaters which means I must’ve been 9-years-old at the time. That seems young to watch an epic historical drama, and it may be the only movie I ever went to with an intermission. But Gandhi resonated with me perhaps due to some combination of being a history geek inclined towards social justice and a budding cinephile. I saw the movie a few more times on tv but it has been more than 35 years since my last viewing.
I wondered if the movie would hold up since a lot of movies that received lots of awards in the 1980s are less well-regarded. There’s also the fact that the movie about a seminal figure in Indian history is directed and produced by British and American filmmakers. I did get the sense that throughout the movie the perspective is coming through white characters – a priest, journalists, politicians, and a pilgrim – which tends to keep Gandhi at a remove. Also the biggest criticism I’ve seen about this movie, with which I agree, is that it makes Gandhi too perfect. This has the unfortunate effect of making the characters around him look bad, even villainous, especially Muslim leader and founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Alyque Padamsee).
Despite these failures in cultural competence, I feel that Attenborough and co. were really trying their best to make a film that does justice to the life and movements of Mohandas K. Gandhi (Ben Kingsley). Kingsley performance is excellent and the cast features many top-notch Indian, British, and American actors, even in small roles. Compressing six decades of Gandhi’s life and the larger Indian independence movement into 3 hours is hard but the film has several memorable set pieces that I’ve remembered over the years, from the horrific Jallianwala Bagh massacre to Gandhi and his wife Kasturba (Rohini Hattangadi) sweetly recreating their wedding ceremony for a couple of reporters. The movie is also impressively filmed with beautiful cinematography framing intimate moments between a couple of characters ranging to massive crowd scenes.
So I’d say that Gandhi has held up and is a worthwhile introduction to his life and the history of India and Pakistan with issues that still reverberate to this day.
Title: The Adventures of Robin Hood Release Date: May 14, 1938 Director: Michael Curtiz and William Keighley Production Company: Warner Bros. Pictures Summary/Review:
I have not read Robin Hood books and the only Robin Hood movies I’ve seen are the 1973 Disney animated film and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. And yet, I feel I’ve absorbed most of the Robin Hood mythology by osmosis, and thus The Adventures of Robin Hood feels to me like it’s the iconic Robin Hood story. The films strengths include a technicolor brilliance that looks better than many color films made decades later. It also has the captivating performance of Errol Flynn in the lead role. Flynn feels very modern in his acting, like he could time travel to the future and replace George Clooney in a contemporary movie.
The cast overall is strong with Olivia de Havilland (Lady Marian Fitzwalter), Basil Rathbone (Guy of Gisbourne), Claude Rains (King John), Eugene Pallette (Friar Tuck), Alan Hale, Sr. (Little John), and Herbert Mundin (Herbert Mundin) among others. There are great action sequences and Flynn gets to exchange zingers with Rathbone and Rains. There’s also a lot of people throwing their heads back in explosive laughter and men dropping out of trees in ambush. It’s a fun movie but it feels very slight in the connective tissue between the big set pieces.
Title: The Princess Bride Release Date: September 25, 1987 Director: Rob Reiner Production Company: Act III Communications | Buttercup Films | The Princess Bride Ltd. Summary/Review:
I don’t remember The Princess Bride making any impression when it got its theatrical release in 1987, but in the ensuing years it was played endlessly on cable tv. When I was in college in 1991, it was a movie frequently rented and watched among my friend groups. And that was how it became a beloved classic!
At the time I first watched The Princess Bride, fantasy action adventure movies were rather unusual, seemingly old fashioned. And yet it was also modern with self-referential humor that also felt unusual for the time. Years later I would read the original book by William Goldman, itself a classic that bridges the border between spoof and homage to fairy tale romance. The movie proved to be a master class in adapting a great book by capturing the spirit of the book rather than the literal. This is fitting since the book was a parody of adaptation.
The success of the movie is due to its terrific cast. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, then hot young newcomers, lead the film as Westley and Buttercup and in my mind are forever associated with those roles. Mandy Patinkin, André Roussimoff, and Wallace Shawn play the trio of villains Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini (the former two latter become heroes). The real villains are Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) and his sadistic henchman with six fingers, Count Rugen (Christopher Guest). The supporting cast includes comic legend like Carol Kane, Billy Crystal, Mel Smith, and Peter Kane. And then there’s a framing story with Peter Falk and Fred Savage as a grandfather and grandson reading the story.
Title: The Flowers of St. Francis Release Date: 14 December 1950 Director: Roberto Rossellini Production Company: Joseph Burstyn Inc. Summary/Review: I saw this movie at Brattle Theater many years ago in a tribute to Roberto Rossellini (it was preceded by Isabella Rossellini and Guy Maddin’s odd tribute film My Dad is 100 Years Old). It was my first Rossellini movie and probably my first Italian neorealist movie too. I remember being touched by the depiction of the simple faith of Francis of Assisi and his followers in medieval Italy.
The movie features actual Franciscan brothers playing the roles instead of professional actors. It’s broken up into several chapters or vignettes each with a different moral lesson. This movie is less dogmatically religious as some viewers may fear, but instead focuses on the whimsy of Francis who was known as “God’s Jester.” It’s a beautifully filmed and touching movie that I think I like even more upon revisiting. Rating: ****1/2
Title: Airplane! Release Date: July 2, 1980 Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker Production Company: Paramount Pictures | Howard W. Koch Productions Summary/Review:
The team of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker didn’t invent the spoof movie but their style of clever wordplay and visual gags set a pattern that’s still being followed 40+ years later. This is a movie I remember watching again and again in my childhood (mostly in an edited for tv version, more on that later) and still remember most of the gags revisiting the movie all these years later. Nevertheless, there are so many jokes packed into this movie that you always notice something new.
Now I’ll admit that there is an element of nostalgia to this movie. Air travel has changed so much in 40 years and there are references in this movie that a younger viewer just might not get the jokes. As always with 70s/80s comedy there’s a concern with racially and sexually insensitive jokes and Airplane! has a few (African villagers playing basketball, jiggling breasts) but fortunately not too many as much of the humor is situational rather than stereotypical. I won’t excuse Airplane for being “of its time” because I remember people in the 80s criticizing the movie for being crass.
I first watched this movie on TV in the mid-80s and I think watched a video tape of that version for years afterwards. The TV version not only cut out the raunchier parts but actually added scenes. I particularly remember the “Hi, Jack!” gag and more scenes with the children acting like they’re grownup business travelers. I found a compilation of the cut scenes on YouTube and remember every single one vividly. I would totally watch a cut of the movie that reincorporated these scenes into the theatrical version.
So, I have just three movies to watch and review. But they are three doozies!
La Maman et la Putain (#23 on Cahiers du Cinéma and #61 on Sight and Sound) – a 3 hour 40 minute film not available to stream or rent online and also not on DVD at any local libraries. It is on YouTube, but I’m hoping to find a better source to watch it.
Histoire(s) du Cinéma (#49 on Sight and Sound) – an 8-part film project of Jean-Luc Godard’s that totals up to 4 hours, 26 minutes.
Shoah (#30 on Sight and Sound) – a 9 hour 20 minute documentary about the Holocaust.
I suspect that I will get to these early on in 2021, but effectively I will no longer be posting weekly Classic Movie Reviews on this blog.
Panorama of the Mountains 